Allowing residential construction on commercial property doesn’t displace any poor people, ducy?
Even if the new construction is targeted at the upper middle class, the advantage is those people aren’t forced to live in working class neighborhoods
The answer will still be build, baby, build. The people who are moving here and dropping $1.5M on a 1500 square foot house are coming no matter what, and they’ll snap up whatever’s available, and it just gets harder and harder for people with less money.
3 Likes
Increasing density in sustainable ways with mixed used development is a good thing.
All of your concerns and observations are entirely valid in general. I’ve frequently made similar arguments about what I consider misguided and overly simplistic calls to basically eliminate all land use regulations.
But it sounds like you’re opposed to basically doing anything at all, ever, on the principle that bad things have been done in the past. This bill in particular sounds quite reasonable to me, and it is precisely the sort of change I want to see more of.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB6
2 Likes
ok, now give us your theory on how … not building any new housing is going to stop rents from going up?
if you google for 10 seconds you can find a billion of these papers
essentially you have the cause and effect backwards. rising rents are what signal to developers “this is a good area to build in”.
I’m not, I want the state to build section 8 housing and the like, and stricter rent control and even more tenant rights.
1 Like
not going to argue this anymore. I’ve been watching this slow motion trainwreck for years now. whether or not you believe me, I offered my prop bet.
Are set asides like this one not standard?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.multihousingnews.com/mixed-income-community-opens-in-san-francisco/
Yes, it’s a luxury building but 25% of it is set aside for median income residents. Not allowing this building to proceed is cutting off your nose to spite your face, no?
As to why every new is luxury, I’m not a developer but if I was spending infinity per square foot for the land then seems like common sense to spend a relatively trivial amount on premium appliances and finishes to make the units feel way nicer. But don’t worry, all of that will deteriorate over 10-20 years, which is I guess is good?
Divide into four lots, build four tiny homes for $50k each and you have four theoretically affordable 400 sq. ft. homes for under a quarter of a million each.
The NIMBYS go apeshit about that kind of thing. Would need multifamily to put 4 units there, which is only slightly easier.
Your prop bet hinges entirely on living in some very particular coastal town of california and doesn’t make sense even the slightest bit outside of that. It’s not relevant. There’s a lot more to california than that
I visited a friend who was going to grad school at UC Irvine, and he literally lived in a Spanish speaking ghetto that was only a few blocks away from the school. We were there for the Rose Bowl and went out all dressed up on NYE and the only way back we could find was a limo, so we took it, and then when we got back there were a bunch of very intimidating looking guys drinking in the driveway across the street, and one of them walked directly at me with a gun in his hand, I almost shit my pants. He got right up close to me, lifted the gun around my chest level and said “yo, you wanna shoot it?!” What? Considering what I thought was about to happen this was a pretty good turn of events. I said, uhhh okay, then he handed it to me and I fired it straight up in the air. Two of my buddies did the same thing. And that was it, we thanked him for letting us shoot his gun then we went inside our friends apartment. Only time I’ve ever fired a handgun. That was a weird night.
But it was crazy to me that he was going to a very good school and that was seemingly his best housing option for his budget.
3 Likes
I do not believe there is enough space to meet demand to do this unless they build up which I know is not going to happen due to the reasons you just stated.
honestly if they thoroughly tackled the problem of traffic in Southern California at least, but I think it affects northern California as well, then we wouldn’t have as big of a crunch in the coastal cities because you would actually be able to live inland and have a decent living. That would require investing in rail and public transit which state has never been good at doing. there is also the looming problem of water and climate change. California is a desert , I don’t think it’s meant to support this many people at all.
One of the more disturbing trends I’ve seen in the last few years is an alarming number of new homeless that are obviously not mentally ill or have any substance abuse problems, just like literally poor without any other options. I have a lady that’s helping me that’s actually technically homeless right now, she’s couch surfing because she got evicted, she doesn’t have a down payment on a new place, and she can’t afford to move.
FYI, “Section 8” housing is just rental housing. The whole point of the voucher program is that the state builds nothing, rather the funds go to the landloard via the tenents.
4 Likes
i think it does more to provide affordable housing other than yoloing zoning stuff and hoping cities do the right thing
To clarify- Section 8 vouchers are a great help to the tenents who get them, and the landlords who ultimately get the funds. But they definately do not lower housing costs. It is a demand-side program, all things being equal it increases market rents.
1 Like
I don’t really care about lowering housing cost because I believe it is a complete fantasy here without some horrific market crash and very draconian laws put in place that no one will go for. If the place is more affordable I am happy.
this is near and dear to me because in the space in the last two years I have had three close family members move out of state and several friends and it was 100% I was the only one left because I was the only one that could afford to live here anymore
even something like a rent ceiling I would be in favor for, but that probably has a bunch of unintentional side effects that aren’t great either.
the reason I like govt subsidized housing is the state has a nearly 100 billion surplus. they could house everyone for free if they want. the fact we have homeless at all is fucking embarrassing.
Part of the solution is moving people out of California.
3 Likes
California is one of, if not the, best in the world in agriculture production. It’s not a desert. Farming is what uses the water in massive amounts.