Current Events > California housing bills fails yet again.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-29/high-profile-california-housing-bill-to-allow-mid-rise-apartments-near-transit-falls-short

SACRAMENTO After more than two years of debate, five major revisions and two tense days of counting votes, a high-profile legislative effort to dramatically increase home building across California is officially dead.
Senate Bill 50 was an effort to undo Californias decades-long reliance on single-family housing and suburban sprawl stretching inland by spurring a development boom near transit and job centers. But arguments that the legislation would help reduce the housing shortage at the root of the states affordability problems and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars met resistance from those who believed the measure took too much power away from local governments and failed to sufficiently address low-income housing needs.
And this week, for the third year in a row, California state senators rejected the measure.

My home state bends over backwards for NIMBYs yet again. For anyone still in CA, you can probably kiss any thought of home ownership goodbye already unless you make oodles of money, then you're probably fine.

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SpudForce posted...

Senate Bill 50 was an effort to undo Californias decades-long reliance on single-family housing and suburban sprawl stretching inland by spurring a development boom near transit and job centers.

So they were literally trying to fix California's main, underlying problem.

Well that's a shame.
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Nimby's are the fucking worst. Saint Louis has a huge amount of them.

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Does anyone have the text of the bill?
It seems strange that the NIMBYs and anti-gentrifiers combined to kill it.

Damn_Underscore posted...

So they were literally trying to fix California's main, underlying problem.

Well that's a shame.

The problem of too many low income workers swarming to the most expensive city in the country?

FigurineFan462 posted...

The problem of too many low income workers swarming to the most expensive city in the country?

California's housing being too expensive is not just an issue in the Bay Area
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The DemocratsFigurineFan462 posted...

The problem of too many low income workers swarming to the most expensive city in the country?

"Swarming." Buddy, they work there. There isn't a city in the world that can get by without the sort of work that doesn't get paid well.
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SpudForce posted...

failed to sufficiently address low-income housing needs.

Don't Nimbys hate low-income housing?

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Damn_Underscore posted...

California's housing being too expensive is not just an issue in the Bay Area

The city where i live its cheaper to own a house than an apt.

The average mortgage payment is lower than the average rent payment by a few hundred bucks if i remember correctly. The issue would be a down payment

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I4NRulez posted...

The city where i live its cheaper to own a house than an apt.

The average mortgage payment is lower than the average rent payment by a few hundred bucks if i remember correctly. The issue would be a down payment

Yeah but in California both renting and buying are extremely expensive in most of the state.
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Damn_Underscore posted...

Yeah but in California both renting and buying are extremely expensive in most of the state.

im in california

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Webmaster4531 posted...

SpudForce posted...

failed to sufficiently address low-income housing needs.

Don't Nimbys hate low-income housing?

They use pro low-income housing as a rhetorical tool to deny any new housing
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emblem boy posted...

They use pro low-income housing as a rhetorical tool to deny any new housing

This. The rhetoric of "supporting" low income housing is used as convenient tool to keep denying any new housing that may potentially threaten the property values of the local nobility errrrr I mean homeowners.

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emblem boy posted...

They use pro low-income housing as a rhetorical tool to deny any new housing

Any new housing is pro low-income housing.
Some rich fuck moving into a mansion on hillside means his old place is a vacant unit some slightly-less-rich fuck can move into, and that's guy's old place is a vacant unit someone else can move into and so on and so on.

Where this fails, is when property tax and other local taxes make a unit too expensive to buy (and thus also too expensive to rent), and building codes make it too expensive to bulldoze and rebuild.

Then, there's the problem of housing surpluses being where people just don't want to live. The most effective remedy for this is rampant gentrification, but creates it's own venom and howls.

Questionmarktarius posted...

emblem boy posted...

They use pro low-income housing as a rhetorical tool to deny any new housing

Any new housing is pro low-income housing.
Some rich fuck moving into a mansion on hillside means his old place is a vacant unit some slightly-less-rich fuck can move into, and that's guy's old place is a vacant unit someone else can move into and so on and so on.

Where this fails, is when property tax and other local taxes make a unit too expensive to buy (and thus also too expensive to rent), and building codes make it too expensive to bulldoze and rebuild.

Then, there's the problem of housing surpluses being where people just don't want to live. The most effective remedy for this is rampant gentrification, but creates it's own venom and howls.

Oh trust me, I 100% agree. Many people don't realize this though. So they still differentiate between low income housing and market rate housing. It ends up being an effective tool
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Any new housing is pro low-income housing.
Some rich fuck moving into a mansion on hillside means his old place is a vacant unit some slightly-less-rich fuck can move into, and that's guy's old place is a vacant unit someone else can move into and so on and so on.

Wrong, as usual.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00420980500533612
https://www.urbandisplacement.org/sites/default/files/images/udp_research_brief_052316.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive-cities-rents-fall-for-the-rich--but-rise-for-the-poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html?utm_term=.ac7d38f04e1e


What's actually going to happen is that any vacancies that end being created are going to be filled by "rich fucks" either buying those units to renovate to flip at higher prices or to rent out as AirBnBs. There might be a small overall price reduction as a result of filtering, but it will take decades for middle and low-income earners to actually see any benefit from filtering as a result of high-income housing construction. Gee, who would have thought that applying Reaganomics to the housing market works out about as well for the working class as it does for every other sector of the economy.

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Frolex posted...

Wrong, as usual.

Alright, what do you want, then?

Questionmarktarius posted...

Alright, what do you want, then?

A robust nationwide initiative expanding the level of social and public housing and investment and subsidization of co-operative and non-profit housing development with a focus on reducing the level of national income segregation in metropolitan areas coupled with a strengthening of the social safety net.

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Frolex posted...

A robust nationwide initiative expanding the level of social and public housing and investment and subsidization of co-operative and non-profit housing development with a focus on reducing the level of national income segregation in metropolitan areas coupled with a strengthening of the social safety net.

Why not double down on Section 8?
Or steal UK's Council Housing concept?

We can't just do "the projects" again. That didn't work.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why not double down on Section 8?
Or steal UK's Council Housing concept?

We can't just do "the projects" again. That didn't work.

Which is why you focus on promoting socioeconomic integration and the construction of mixed-income neighborhoods and developments. The housing crisis is something that's not going to be fixed without a top-down approach.


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Frolex posted...

The housing crisis is something that's not going to be fixed without a top-down approach.

Here's a dumb idea:
Instead of shady "sweetheart" tax-break deals to develop a luxury building with a token amount of "affordable" set-asides that get a dogpile lottery and aren't really affordable anyway, Why not just offer a public-private partnership with the developments for "set-asides" that the public jurisdiction essentially owns.

The bigger problem here is that taxes are screwed up to the point that development needs those shady breaks, which just undermines the purpose for even having those crazy taxes while encouraging even more crazy taxes and sweetheart-deal breaks, while not really accomplishing much of anything for housing - especially so for anyone in that huge chasm between public housing eligibility and the luxury units that have to be built for the building to break even even with the sweetheart deal.

If anything the biggest problem is that great chasm, of those not rich enough but not poor enough, having nowhere to live (apart from the 'burbs). Work on that.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Here's a dumb idea:
Instead of shady "sweetheart" tax-break deals to develop a luxury building with a token amount of "affordable" set-asides that get a dogpile lottery and aren't really affordable anyway, Why not just offer a public-private partnership with the developments for "set-asides" that the public jurisdiction essentially owns.

Governement subsidies for new housing development doesn't translate to "shady tax breaks", and doesn't even have to necessarily involve reduction in property taxes at all. That said, while partnerships with existing developments could be part of wider initiative, the bigger problem is the extant lack of available housing unit and construction that hasn't keep up with the level of population growth or economic development in urban areas.

Questionmarktarius posted...

The bigger problem here is that taxes are screwed up to the point that development needs those shady breaks, which just undermines the purpose for even having those crazy taxes while encouraging even more crazy taxes and sweetheart-deal breaks, while not really accomplishing much of anything for housing - especially so for anyone in that huge chasm between public housing eligibility and the luxury units that have to be built for the building to break even even with the sweetheart deal.

No, taxes are not the reason for shortfalls in housing development. It results from the inflated property values in areas like San Francisco coupled with lobbying by NIMBY's and investment groups to legislate the construction of new developments out of existence. California already implemented legislation that drastically reduced the level of property tax, and it only served to further exacerbate the housing crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13


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Questionmarktarius posted...

If anything the biggest problem is that great chasm, of those not rich enough but not poor enough, having nowhere to live (apart from the 'burbs). Work on that.

Do you not think the housing crisis serves to hamper the social mobility of the working class? It might feel real good and righteous to say "lol just get rich" as a solution to all the worlds problems, but that's not exactly tenable when those problems are the reason people are continually less able to "just get rich" in the first place.

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Cities don't have nearly enough money to build the amount of public housing required to solve the shortage. Even if they did they'd run into the same issues with zoning when building it. Then you'd have to deal with the issues that always come with public housing. NIMBYs only bring this stuff up when they want to stop housing from being built, then they go back to not caring. It's just a lame excuse to block zoning reforms.

Increased supply can have an immediate impact on housing prices, even after decades of low supply.

Frolex posted...

Do you not think the housing crisis serves to hamper the social mobility of the working class?

The great middle is the working class, and it's vanishing for some reason.

Broseph_Stalin posted...

Even if they did they'd run into the same issues with zoning when building it.

This may be the true root issue. Zoning is effectively just taking the place of covenants and redlining.

Antifar posted...

The Democrats

"Swarming." Buddy, they work there. There isn't a city in the world that can get by without the sort of work that doesn't get paid well.

The problem is these people come to these cities to make it big but all too often fail.