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Leperflesh posted:There's loads of empty housing! in Detroit Therefore it's evil for companies to build housing in California! Argh!
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Apr 1, 2015 01:35
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FRINGE posted:I was originally addressing the hand-wringing over the "poor real estate developers". Okay but the "hand-wringing" was actually somebody saying there's a major shortage of housing supply in the bay area, not arguing about whether we have a surplus of housing nationally.
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Apr 1, 2015 02:12
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Leperflesh posted:There's loads of empty housing! in Detroit Therefore it's evil for companies to build housing in California! Argh! Hey now! Richmond and Riverside aren't detroit!
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Apr 1, 2015 02:15
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FRINGE posted:I was originally addressing the hand-wringing over the "poor real estate developers". Nobody is wringing their hands. We have a severe shortage of housing in California's major cities, we have developers who want to build housing those cities, and we have a woeful lack of new housing being built - especially downtown - in those cities. There are a lot of reasons for it, but most of them boil down to NIMBYism and a lack of regional cooperation. We need to increase density any way we can. People complain that new developments focus on the wealthy - they don't understand that overall pricing is dependent on overall supply. The wealthy move up, the middle move up, the poor move up, everyone wins. That may sound like trickle-down economics, and it is, to an extent. But experiments with government-built housing have tended to go... poorly, let's say. It's a tough problem, but blaming it on greedy developers isn't helpful.
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Apr 1, 2015 06:57
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Leperflesh posted:The wealthy move up, the middle move up, the poor move up, everyone wins. This is tied to the great game.   In a non-broken system it might be otherwise.
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Apr 1, 2015 07:24
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Kinda. I think there are plenty of people that would rather have a nice luxury apartment in downtown instead of a place like the Marina where prices are hilariously inflated. Especially for things like "weekend" homes that a fair number of people keep. We aren't quite at NYC levels where "luxury apartment" is a code word for "off shore bank vaults for Emirs", people still live in our luxury apartments/condos (even if they only live there part time). Relaxing pressure on the top will make life a lot easier for the upper middle class ($120K+/yr households). Median income folks (~75K/yr households) will still be pretty hosed. Which is why we need "poor doors" like NYC is pioneering with mixed income houses. Ideally we wouldn't have to do that and, you know, treat people like human beings instead of animals, but that's not gonna happen anytime too soon. Especially since a lot of the people driving the luxury market won't be living there full time, so they will be extra worried that the poors might steal their stuff. It's a loving childish worldview. Just talking about it makes me depressed.
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Apr 1, 2015 08:29
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Shbobdb posted:Which is why we need "poor doors" like NYC is pioneering with mixed income houses. Ideally we wouldn't have to do that and, you know, treat people like human beings instead of animals, but that's not gonna happen anytime too soon. Especially since a lot of the people driving the luxury market won't be living there full time, so they will be extra worried that the poors might steal their stuff. On-site BMR units are better than nothing, but they'll never be a scalable solution since they're literally a lottery for subsidized housing and in CA's major urban areas the most significant source of funding for that subsidy is fees on market-rate development.
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Apr 1, 2015 16:57
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FRINGE posted:Except that this is not happening. The wealthy move up, the middle class move down, and the poor get cardboard boxes. The market stays inflated and the things that would be "for the poors" are inflated along with everything else, or destroyed if they threaten the profits of the controlling parties. That's actually sorta my point, though. It's not happening, because we're not building anywhere near enough housing. The (still inadequate) development of luxury housing feeds the demand at the top, but the total demand still outstrips supply, so overall prices continue to rise. We can't know exactly how much housing for the folks at the bottom would cost if we had built no luxury housing in the past few years, but my argument is, it'd be even higher. Maybe. Much more importantly, I'm arguing that we need to massively accelerate the rate at which we're building housing, and it doesn't really matter what kind, if we can start building enough to regain ground on the enormous unsatisfied demand that has accumulated since, oh, 1980 or so. In the meantime, shaking one's fist at the luxury developers is counterproductive. I'm not saying real estate development companies are heroes or anything like that; just that our problem is inadequate supply, and the only solution is to make whatever changes are needed in policy, zoning, public attitude, whatever, to encourage a whole lot more housing construction. As much as we possibly can, and if we don't want to watch our beautiful state get paved over, it needs to mostly be in the form of increased density instead of increased sprawl. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 17:10
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Leperflesh posted:We can't know exactly how much housing for the folks at the bottom would cost if we had built no luxury housing in the past few years, but my argument is, it'd be even higher. Maybe. Much more importantly, I'm arguing that we need to massively accelerate the rate at which we're building housing, and it doesn't really matter what kind, if we can start building enough to regain ground on the enormous unsatisfied demand that has accumulated since, oh, 1980 or so. Development costs have continued to rise since he published this, but this is a pretty informative look at what it actually costs to build: http://markasaurus.com/2013/10/22/w...f-for-the-rich/ Basically, we're screwed. It isn't possible with today's construction costs to build something that's both new and affordable. We basically stopped building new housing in our cities once people started taking off for the suburbs decades ago, so there's no formerly upmarket housing filtering downwards. Generational preference shifts and job opportunities have people migrating back into cities. Affordability activists have formed an unholy alliance with homeowners benefitting from Prop13 to fight any effort to add new construction out of the severely misguided belief that developers *could* be building affordable housing but choose not to because they're greedy. For a clumsy metaphor, we can all agree that for certain budgets it will never make financial sense to buy a new car, but buying a decent used car is totally within reach. The manufacturer will never be able to make a new car that costs less than a used car. Does it make sense to storm the factory and demand that they shut down all production until a "solution" is figured out? gonger fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 17:32
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gonger posted:Development costs have continued to rise since he published this, but this is a pretty informative look at what it actually costs to build: Someone put an unescaped apostrophe in that URL, so it doesn't work. Here's one that does: http://markasaurus.com/2013/10/22/w...f-for-the-rich/ The key rebuttal here would be that he's talking about "central" San Francisco itself, the most expensive place in the Bay Area to build. One of the biggest issues with the Bay Area is a lack of cooperation between its cities when it comes to zoning for housing; SF is the most desirable spot, so obviously the most expensive. What we desperately need is to increase density everywhere there's housing within reasonable commute of the job centers... and the job centers are all up and down the peninsula, as well as Oakland and various spots in the East Bay. The worst-case scenario is pretty bad, as he points out. But we can and should develop higher density along the Caltrain and BART corridors, in Dublin/Pleasanton, in San Jose, in Oakland, etc. While also expanding public transit capacity, such as running BART to San Jose and wrapping it around to Fremont, perhaps adding a new second transbay tunnel or a transbay BART crossing in the south bay, and more. People enjoying their $700k 1300-square-foot houses in neighborhoods all over the bay area are not interested in having them torn down and replaced with apartment buildings, condos, mixed residential/commercial centers, etc. though. They want their suburban feel in the middle of an urban center, and newcomers be damned. Even if they're wealthy newcomers who would buy luxury apartments and condos. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 17:39
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gonger posted:Development costs have continued to rise since he published this, but this is a pretty informative look at what it actually costs to build: We're only "screwed" so long as the only place people can live is the 230 sq mi. at the top of the SF peninsula.
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Apr 1, 2015 17:42
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How vertical is Brooklyn Basin going to be?
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Apr 1, 2015 17:57
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I listened to a Forum segment the other day on the Redwood City Saltworks project. Supposedly it is a 25,000 unit housing project on an old industrial site on the bay that has been completely stalled by activists. Not knowing a thing about the project, the developer advocates did not avail themselves well. I came away agreeing with the anti-development side. Is anyone here more informed about the project?
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Apr 1, 2015 18:04
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FRINGE posted:I was originally addressing the hand-wringing over the "poor real estate developers".
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Apr 1, 2015 18:06
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Kobayashi posted:I listened to a Forum segment the other day on the Redwood City Saltworks project. Supposedly it is a 25,000 unit housing project on an old industrial site on the bay that has been completely stalled by activists. Not knowing a thing about the project, the developer advocates did not avail themselves well. I came away agreeing with the anti-development side. Is anyone here more informed about the project? Well technically, the proposal for the project was withdrawn years ago because they're having regulation issues. The issue is that Cargill and the developer want EPA to not have jurisdiction over the project, arguing that the salt ponds aren't "waters of the United States" because they're too nasty to be water anymore. If the EPA has jurisdiction, they'll want more of the land cleaned up and returned to marshland. Meanwhile, Redwood City has decided it wants to focus on core growth and not increase sprawl, especially sprawl that would be heavily highway dependent (as anything on that side of the 101 would have to be). So now the project doesn't fit the city's planning goals either.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:23
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Trabisnikof posted:We're only "screwed" so long as the only place people can live is the 230 sq mi. at the top of the SF peninsula. This is the key I think. The people that want to live in SF proper hold their noses up at Oakland, and none of them would even consider San Jose (even the downtown, urban part of it). It's like moving to NYC and refusing to even consider living anywhere other than Manhattan.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:44
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Family Values posted:This is the key I think. The people that want to live in SF proper hold their noses up at Oakland, and none of them would even consider San Jose (even the downtown, urban part of it). Nyc at least has a decent rail infrastructure to get people to work in Manhattan. Marin and the 650 has nimby'd that to hell.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:48
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gonger posted:For a clumsy metaphor, we can all agree that for certain budgets it will never make financial sense to buy a new car, but buying a decent used car is totally within reach. The manufacturer will never be able to make a new car that costs less than a used car. Does it make sense to storm the factory and demand that they shut down all production until a "solution" is figured out? I understand what you're saying here, but the metaphor is indeed quite clumsy because manufacturers can of course build a new affordable compact that costs less than a used luxury sedan. That said, I agree with the stroke of your argument, and that barring some pretty fundamental and perhaps unpalatable changes in land use regulation and municipal involvement in residential housing it is probably the only way forward. Developers don't build rundown apartments, just the way they don't build cars with dents in them and janky engines.
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Apr 1, 2015 19:33
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Kaal posted:I understand what you're saying here, but the metaphor is indeed quite clumsy because manufacturers can of course build a new affordable compact that costs less than a used luxury sedan.
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Apr 1, 2015 19:44
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Gov. Jerry Brown has introduced new mandatory restrictions aiming for a 25% reduction in water use. None of the enforcement seems to be aimed at agriculture. The only parts of the the bill aimed at Ag are requiring farmers to come up with drought plans.quote:Brown ordered the California Water Resources Control Board to implement mandatory restrictions to reduce water usage by 25%. The water savings are expected to amount to 1.5 million acre-feet of water over the next nine months. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-snowpack-20150331-story.html#page=1 So new homes can't have sprinklers, water boards are encouraged to jack up water rates and grass medians go dry. Central Valley farmers have to draft up some documents Full document can be found here: http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/04/01/50717/gov-brown-announces-mandatory-statewide-california/
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Apr 1, 2015 19:56
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Kaal posted:I understand what you're saying here, but the metaphor is indeed quite clumsy because manufacturers can of course build a new affordable compact that costs less than a used luxury sedan. That said, I agree with the stroke of your argument, and that barring some pretty fundamental and perhaps unpalatable changes in land use regulation and municipal involvement in residential housing it is probably the only way forward. Developers don't build rundown apartments, just the way they don't build cars with dents in them and janky engines. Actually it's a great analogy. Automakers can only afford to sell inexpensive economy cars if they can make and sell them in huge volume, because the margins are so razor thin. Luxury cars can be profitable in much smaller volume, to the point that supercars costing hundreds of thousands can be built in runs of 200 to 1000 a year, often largely by hand. Land costs what it costs, labor and materials cost what they cost. You can either create opportunity to develop huge projects for cheap housing (aand that's got big social problems), or you can use govenment to build cheap housing at a loss, (big problems there too), or... you can let developers make profitable low-volume housing in sufficient quantity that the used market addresses the need for cheaper housing. SFis doing the latter, but not enough. Not nearly, remotely enough.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:31
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FCKGW posted:Gov. Jerry Brown has introduced new mandatory restrictions aiming for a 25% reduction in water use. None of the enforcement seems to be aimed at agriculture. The only parts of the the bill aimed at Ag are requiring farmers to come up with drought plans. Of course, those central valley farmers aren't receiving any water from the Central Valley Project this year or last, but that's only 5 Million acre-feet of water a year.
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Apr 1, 2015 20:55
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Ron Jeremy posted:Nyc at least has a decent rail infrastructure to get people to work in Manhattan. Marin and the 650 has nimby'd that to hell. Not just that, but people moving to NYC basically want to live close to where they work. So do most people living in NYC. We've got a really strange situation in the Bay where people are choosing not to live near their work because they want the city life. It'd be like if the financial industry was based way out on Long Island but they all lived on Manhattan and drove. It would really create a lot of weird pressures everywhere.
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Apr 1, 2015 21:19
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The other problem with the Bay Area to NYC comparison is size and size of tax bases. NYC is huge. Also the Bay never merged into one mega-city and that's really what is needed. That or an effective regional government. However, with as much poo poo as ABAG gets I doubt mega-city is in the future for SF.
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Apr 1, 2015 21:28
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Shbobdb posted:Not just that, but people moving to NYC basically want to live close to where they work. So do most people living in NYC. We've got a really strange situation in the Bay where people are choosing not to live near their work because they want the city life. It'd be like if the financial industry was based way out on Long Island but they all lived on Manhattan and drove. It would really create a lot of weird pressures everywhere. The people that want to live in SF and work in the valley are a recent trend. Most of the people that work in the valley live here, too. And it's not like there isn't a nearby city either, so the Long Island analogy doesn't really work I think. I mean that's exactly what I was saying earlier, people act like the only 'city life' available is in SF. I'm not opposed to more infrastructure investment, but I would still think commuting 40 miles each way is a huge waste of time and resources even if you're on a train.
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Apr 1, 2015 22:51
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Shbobdb posted:Not just that, but people moving to NYC basically want to live close to where they work. So do most people living in NYC. We've got a really strange situation in the Bay where people are choosing not to live near their work because they want the city life. It'd be like if the financial industry was based way out on Long Island but they all lived on Manhattan and drove. It would really create a lot of weird pressures everywhere. This is really exaggerated by most people in regards to SF though. There are definitely more "reverse commuters" in SF than there used to be, and most of them seem to work in the tech industry, but around 80% of employed SF residents actually work within SF city limits. Not to mention It's the largest single job center in the Bay Area, and draws around 200,000 commuters into it every weekday (compared to Oakland drawing 40,000 per day and San Jose actually losing 5% of it's population to suburban job centers). Downtown SF has like four times as much office space as Downtown Oakland and downtown San Jose combined.
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Apr 1, 2015 23:00
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Small world syndrome is "finally real" because now theres numbers. http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=11170 quote:Secondhand smog: Scientists determine amount of ozone pollution drifting to California from overseas Industry will fight back.
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Apr 2, 2015 06:34
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Sure, but finance in NYC = tech in SF. Most people in NYC don't work in finance. But it has a huge impact on the city and how it is structured. Kebab vendors aren't a driving force when it comes to the upward trend in housing prices.
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Apr 2, 2015 06:53
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As an aside, SF is a financial center, too. See page three of this PDF report from Bay Area Council Economic Institute (warning: direct link to a PDF).
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Apr 3, 2015 01:56
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Totally, so what?
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Apr 3, 2015 06:52
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The ultimate problem is there is no real solution to a bunch of people wanting to live in one particular area. Poor people simply are hosed, there's no known way to create "affordable" housing in areas that have great demand and the salaries to back it up. Like lord knows it has been tried everywhere and has failed literally every time because it doesn't matter what you do, loopholes will be found or made. Increasing density will alleviate it somewhat but at the end of the day it will never be affordable in the sense some people are thinking- you will still need to be solidly middle class if you want to live comfortably in high-demand areas.
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Apr 3, 2015 17:18
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Oh, shoot me now. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/us/california-imposes-first-ever-water-restrictions-to-deal-with-drought.html New York Times posted:Within hours of Mr. Brown’s announcement, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is the House majority leader, announced plans to renew efforts in Congress to pass legislation requiring the building of two huge water facilities in the state. The efforts had been blocked by Democrats concerned that the water projects would harm the environment and damage endangered species of fish. I'm from one of the most prolific water-wasters in the state, and God knows we can't be bothered to do anything about it.
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Apr 3, 2015 17:30
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tsa posted:The ultimate problem is there is no real solution to a bunch of people wanting to live in one particular area. Poor people simply are hosed, there's no known way to create "affordable" housing in areas that have great demand and the salaries to back it up. Like lord knows it has been tried everywhere and has failed literally every time because it doesn't matter what you do, loopholes will be found or made. Increasing density will alleviate it somewhat but at the end of the day it will never be affordable in the sense some people are thinking- you will still need to be solidly middle class if you want to live comfortably in high-demand areas. People living in one area isn't the problem, it's the rate of migration. A large but stable population would only have issues with housing when the buildings reach their natural lifespan.
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Apr 3, 2015 17:39
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Oh, shoot me now. In the middle of a drought we'll build water facilities.. which will never be filled or use, because when we're not in a drought we use all the water we can so we can export cash crops. Hell, people still talk about how we're not building any more reservoirs.. ignoring that storage isn't the problem, it's the overall use over time (and we've already built all the dams that would be useful to build for capturing water). Maybe they got confused by field of dreams.
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Apr 3, 2015 17:45
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At least he's not arguing we should stop allocating water to natural flows, which was long considered a waste.
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Apr 3, 2015 18:45
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"I’m from the Central Valley, and we know that we cannot conserve or ration our way out of this drought,” he said. " As someone kind of from the central valley, please stop being a loving stereotype.
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Apr 3, 2015 20:42
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FRINGE posted:Until a lot more changes, that will not work in LA. It's gotten pretty good, at least on the Westside and Downtown.
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Apr 3, 2015 23:40
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At least the Freeper types who write the newspapers every day have started including "desalinization" plants along with their usual demands for just more "reservoirs" being built and stopping any water from entering the pacific ocean. The preferred name for "reservoirs" is now "storage."
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Apr 3, 2015 23:56
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Keyser S0ze posted:At least the Freeper types who write the newspapers every day have started including "desalinization" plants along with their usual demands for just more "reservoirs" being built and stopping any water from entering the pacific ocean. The preferred name for "reservoirs" is now "storage." Desalination is not a realistic option for solving the California water problem. They're an incredibly expensive and have huge waste issues. It would be cheaper to just subsidize the pressurizers and sand filters that Ag users need to switch to drop irrigation instead. Or heck, if you want to throw money at the problem, I'd suggest covering the ditches that transport most of our water. Fewer dead deer in the LA water supply as a nice bonus!
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Apr 4, 2015 00:14
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Well the state is already throwing money at the problem via desalination plants - the Carlsbad facility is scheduled to begin operation next year:
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Apr 4, 2015 00:16
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