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Rent control is kind of a band aid knee jerk response to other systemic problems that are causing astronomical rent. It's a symptom rather than a disease; if you need a rent control law then something else has gone horribly wrong.
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Apr 6, 2019 01:43
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Insanite posted:So, a bill repealing a ban on rent control is up for debate in my home state. it's pretty much guaranteed to reduce the market's ability to supply housing. Of course if the state steps up and fills that hole its not a problem. Alternatively if you don't want the state to be buying or building housing, you could achieve the same effect as rent control by providing a cash housing subsidy to working class renters. This would provide affordable housing without disincentivizing the provision of private rentals. Of course doing things requires money. Rent control gives you free benefits today in exchange for screwing your children. If you hate your children and want them to live far away rent control might work for you.
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Apr 6, 2019 05:09
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If you want to look at some hardcore NIMBYism in action, look no farther than the proposed solar farm in Spotsylvania County VA. The land is all former timber farm that is being sold by the timber company, who has explicitly stated that it will either go to this particular solar project or be sold to a developer for a new subdivision. That has not stopped the NIMBY locals from losing their loving minds over the very concept of something other than trees existing on this plot of land that has already been harvested of trees, and they have been pulling out all of the misinformation stops to try to oppose this project, completely ignoring the fact that it can and will be developed into more housing if the solar farm project falls through (more development in the area being one of their chief concerns). I live in the neighboring county, so I don't get any real say in the matter, except to try to call out their bullshit on facebook, which is exactly as effective as you would think. There aren't many good links to this story out there, so you might have to answer a stupid question to read the article. Sorry! https://www.fredericksburg.com/news...0dd733b867.html
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Apr 6, 2019 06:40
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BLARGHLE posted:If you want to look at some hardcore NIMBYism in action, look no farther than the proposed solar farm in Spotsylvania County VA. The land is all former timber farm that is being sold by the timber company, who has explicitly stated that it will either go to this particular solar project or be sold to a developer for a new subdivision. That has not stopped the NIMBY locals from losing their loving minds over the very concept of something other than trees existing on this plot of land that has already been harvested of trees, and they have been pulling out all of the misinformation stops to try to oppose this project, completely ignoring the fact that it can and will be developed into more housing if the solar farm project falls through (more development in the area being one of their chief concerns). I live in the neighboring county, so I don't get any real say in the matter, except to try to call out their bullshit on facebook, which is exactly as effective as you would think. I don't know, the article makes it sound like the solar farm wouldn't really be doing a whole lot for their county--most of the electricity would not go to them. I don't think that solar farms really create many jobs. On the other hand, the solar farm wouldn't really hurt them a lot. Unlike normal power plants, solar farms don't have heavy machinery and smoke stacks and would be pretty benign. Here's a quote from the article: quote:prohibiting solar panels with cadmium telluride This would be a pretty ignorant regulation. CdTe is a stable compound (if it weren't, they wouldn't use it in solar cells which are expected to last 30 years out in the sun), and CdTe solar cells sitting out in an open field are pretty benign. You could even try to set the the solar cells on fire, and the CdTe wouldn't evaporate from the cell, since CdTe has such a low vapor pressure. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2019 13:39
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https://twitter.com/jamesleerwc/status/1113709134946361344?s=21 Can’t build in poor neighborhoods because it causes gentrification Can’t build in rich neighborhoods because it doesn’t cause gentrification (SB50 is the new version of the California bill from last year that upzones everything around a transit stop. It’s been amended this session to focus more on upzoning rich neighborhoods)
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Apr 6, 2019 15:31
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luxury handset posted:a major source of NIMBYism is that land use decisions are often left up to the free market (within constraints) but transportation networks to support land uses are firmly a governmental decision, and thus the two systems develop out of synch with each other and one often has to catch up to the other. this generates traffic issues and other friction from development which seems ill advised because the effects of development shake out on a much longer timescale than on which people get annoyed at changes in neighborhood character This is completely wrong. Land-use decisions in all major American cities except Houston are made by direct government intervention that tells developers not only what uses are allowed but how big their lots are, the setbacks, the floor plate sizes, etc. The problem is that the government rules are mostly holdovers from the mid century and are proxies for keeping white people insulated from things they don't like, and the prescribed development patterns that were developed as a result aren't compatible with transit, ie https://books.google.com/books?id=0...%20plan&f=false The Oldest Man fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2019 15:33
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Rent control is kind of a band aid knee jerk response to other systemic problems that are causing astronomical rent. It's a symptom rather than a disease; if you need a rent control law then something else has gone horribly wrong. I know several old people on social security here in SF who would be on the street if it wasn’t for rent control. On that note, there seems to be this lovely mindset among anti-rent control folks that renters shouldn’t be able to stay in their apartments long term because “they don’t own it”. I say rent control fine as a stopgap so long as supply and demand are completely out of whack. Which they are just about everywhere semi-desirable. ProperGanderPusher fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Apr 6, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2019 16:46
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Badger of Basra posted:Can’t build in poor neighborhoods because it causes gentrification here is the tough thing around building affordable housing, from the things I have read. Laws that create physical affordable housing (so say requiring to build X amount of units in a Y project) have to be super careful to NOT destroy the ACTUAL affordable housing that exists. Developers will just rebuild the units and not add more, so no net gain in affordable units. The 40B law in Massachusetts works outside of urban centers because it essentially forces small to medium sized towns to build apartment complexes that they would otherwise not build. It hasn't been enough to stave off the current crisis but I do find utility in that. But I agree, one of the solutions just needs to provide more rental supply where it is needed and try to bring down demand as much as possible. Mixed income is a good idea but you have to really find a good combo of adding units and telling the developers they need to take a slightly smaller cut. That being said, I think suburban towns really need to put moratoriums on SFH that is larger than 2000 square feet or at least charging a bigger tax at a certain point. The home I see coming up around me are not intended for middle class families but its the only type of housing I ever see being built.
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Apr 6, 2019 17:48
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ProperGanderPusher posted:I say rent control fine as a stopgap so long as supply and demand are completely out of whack. Which they are just about everywhere semi-desirable. I feel like one of the biggest reasons people on the left on the east coast are less likely to be outright YIMBY is because urban areas are already denser and the average person more likely to be a renter—when you see new developments replacing existing apartments and displacing the disadvantaged, it's hard to get behind. Here in the Twin Cities, so much more of the fight is focused on neighborhoods zoned exclusively for single family homes in the early 20th century with the clear intent to enforce racial and economic segregation. Enabling construction of a duplexes, triplexes, or larger multi-family buildings is being fought for as an alternative to the replacement of expensive single family homes from the 1950s and earlier with ridiculous McMansions. There is less direct displacement going on from new developments, though some newly trendy neighborhoods are seeing rents increasing well over the already excessive baseline increases.
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Apr 6, 2019 17:50
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Mooseontheloose posted:here is the tough thing around building affordable housing, from the things I have read. Laws that create physical affordable housing (so say requiring to build X amount of units in a Y project) have to be super careful to NOT destroy the ACTUAL affordable housing that exists. Developers will just rebuild the units and not add more, so no net gain in affordable units. I think that's why the new SB50 focuses more on rich areas - there's way less existing affordable housing to demolish (or just very little housing in the first place)
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Apr 6, 2019 17:51
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Badger of Basra posted:I think that's why the new SB50 focuses more on rich areas - there's way less existing affordable housing to demolish (or just very little housing in the first place) When I did my thesis on affordable housing I saw that a community in the San Franisco Bay Area had 3 acre zoning and my mind was blown. That is TOXIC. This is one of the articles I used to really help me understand why it is legal in the United States.
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Apr 6, 2019 17:58
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The Oldest Man posted:This is completely wrong. Land-use decisions in all major American cities except Houston are made by direct government intervention that tells developers not only what uses are allowed but how big their lots are, the setbacks, the floor plate sizes, etc. The problem is that the government rules are mostly holdovers from the mid century and are proxies for keeping white people insulated from things they don't like, and the prescribed development patterns that were developed as a result aren't compatible with transit, ie https://books.google.com/books?id=0...%20plan&f=false Government regulations generally set maximums, while the "free market" will generally work on minimums. So the government can mandate that buildings be no bigger than a certain criteria and essentially define a maximum density and build a transportation network for that, but a developer is under no obligation to hit that maximum and so could drastically underbuild according to that maximum. Considering the life cycle of a building things change very slowly, and they do so not because zoning allows it, but because the market allows it.
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Apr 6, 2019 18:04
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The Oldest Man posted:This is completely wrong. Land-use decisions in all major American cities except Houston are made by direct government intervention that tells developers not only what uses are allowed but how big their lots are, the setbacks, the floor plate sizes, etc. ProperGanderPusher posted:I know several old people on social security here in SF who would be on the street if it wasn’t for rent control. FISHMANPET posted:Government regulations generally set maximums, while the "free market" will generally work on minimums. So the government can mandate that buildings be no bigger than a certain criteria and essentially define a maximum density and build a transportation network for that, but a developer is under no obligation to hit that maximum and so could drastically underbuild according to that maximum.
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Apr 6, 2019 19:00
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I think the original point is kind of nonsense which has resulted in a number of nonsense replies including mine... I don't actually think transportation networks have anything to do with NIMBYism. I've seen people on one side of their mouths fight transit expansion in their neighborhood and out the other side fight new housing because the transportation infrastructure isn't good enough. But I think people in the US drastically overestimate the power of the government to direct development. Property owners are in no way compelled by the government to build, it's only when a property owner or developer decides to build that the government can step in and say IT CAN ONLY BE THIS BIG. In very rare cases they can say "this isn't big enough" with height minimums and the such in certain areas, but the property owner or developer always has the relief valve of just not doing anything instead.
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Apr 6, 2019 19:29
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FISHMANPET posted:
That's not exactly true. At least where I live you have to go to the planning board and say what you are building in why and the planning board has to approve it. So if you buy 20 acres of land and put like 1 house on it the planning board can come in and say something.
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Apr 6, 2019 19:37
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Um, which part isn't true? Nothing compels the developer to build what the planning board wants. If they want to build one house and the rules don't allow that they're not forced to build what the rules allow, they can just not build anything. Minimums exist but they're far less common then maximums.
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Apr 6, 2019 19:44
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In St. Paul, the city council is well on the way to gutting the originally ambitious plan for medium-density, mixed-use development on the site of a former Ford auto factory, all at the behest of the developer. One small, but infinitely frustrating part is eliminating the minimum unit requirements in what's regarded as the most desirable part of the site along the river. It was previously merely requiring at least duplexes, but now will welcome what will undoubtedly be a segregated zone of extreme wealth as they set up mansions. All the opponents of the initial plan who so exploited the rhetoric of affordability when railing against multi-family buildings are inexplicably* supportive of the change. *Actually 100% explicable: it's racism and classism
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Apr 6, 2019 20:04
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The Oldest Man posted:This is completely wrong. Land-use decisions in all major American cities except Houston are made by direct government intervention that tells developers not only what uses are allowed but how big their lots are, the setbacks, the floor plate sizes, etc. you're confusing land use regulation with what developers choose to do within the constraints of that land use designation, assuming variances can't be obtained. basically of the quoted post you are pouncing on the bolded section and trying to expand that, which misses the original point i am making which is that land development and transportation development are often not in synch luxury handset posted:a major source of NIMBYism is that land use decisions are often left up to the free market (within constraints) but transportation networks to support land uses are firmly a governmental decision, and thus the two systems develop out of synch with each other and one often has to catch up to the other. this generates traffic issues and other friction from development which seems ill advised because the effects of development shake out on a much longer timescale than on which people get annoyed at changes in neighborhood character the constraints being zoning codes, which may be very restrictive and which may be not restrictive at all - it's too varied to generalize, unless you want to make a point about how zoning is restrictive, but i don't see why you would need to quote me to make that point and it's a point i would assume everyone reading this thread knows about and agrees with you on
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Apr 6, 2019 21:07
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plus, if we're assuming some kind of lovely r-100 quarter acre nightmare then generally also this is not the kind of area prone to infill and gentrification...
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Apr 6, 2019 21:15
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Badger of Basra posted:https://twitter.com/jamesleerwc/status/1113709134946361344?s=21 I'm getting the feeling that "build more housing" wasn't a genuine argument, but a fig leaf to avoid the rent control argument.
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Apr 6, 2019 21:55
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showbiz_liz posted:I work for a nonprofit that uses community organizing and advocacy/lobbying to push for better streetscape and transportation infrastructure and policies. It's extremely effective. We can claim a large part (and sometimes essentially all) of the credit for almost every cool streetscape thing the city has done in decades. We're now in a position to be directly advising policymakers on transportation policy, which makes us a lot more powerful than a single legislator with a term limit. We're far from the only urban planning org with this model. Do you mind sharing the name of your org (over pm if you don't want to disclose it publicly)? We are trying to do similar things in my city so I'm interested in seeing some examples of what's been successful.
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Apr 6, 2019 22:49
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I feel like it's actually not very hard to generalize, even in major cities in the US it's common for the vast majority of residential land to be allocated just for single family homes. Obviously there's still variation there, but the broad strokes of what's causing the problem are generally pretty consistent across most of the country. It's similar to how car culture being dominant is true in almost every city.
Cicero fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 00:35
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Cicero posted:I feel like it's actually not very hard to generalize, even in major cities in the US it's common for the vast majority of residential land to be allocated just for single family homes. Obviously there's still variation there, but the broad strokes of what's causing the problem are generally pretty consistent across most of the country. It's similar to how car culture being dominant is true in almost every city. And gently caress, we just built a multi-billion dollar car tunnel that only gets people about two miles, and doesn't help anyone commuting into/out of Seattle. That's money that could have been spent on a tremendous amount of mass transit infrastructure.
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Apr 7, 2019 07:23
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everyone approaches this discussion with their own local model of land use/transportation in mind as the 'ideal city' meaning that it's assumed folks will talk past each other with a different baseline for 'normal' inherent in each advocacy
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Apr 7, 2019 08:10
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thehoodie posted:Do you mind sharing the name of your org (over pm if you don't want to disclose it publicly)? We are trying to do similar things in my city so I'm interested in seeing some examples of what's been successful. No, happy to - it's Transportation Alternatives, in NYC.
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Apr 7, 2019 19:05
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Some recent talk about golf and how much it sucks and how a lot of golf course communities are dying because their game is expensive and sucks and no one under 70 wants to play it in numbers to keep all those places afloat in another thread got me thinking, are there any examples anywhere of these places being turned into European style allotment farms? I saw some mention of some developer or another wanting to do something along those lines to a failed course, but it was in Arizona or some other hot deserty place entirely unsuited to farming pretty much anything. It feels like a pretty solid idea, though. I know urban farming has taken off in some rust belt cities, but could suburban farming also work? Turn the course into farming plots, maybe set aside some space for small scale livestock or dairy, clubhouse becomes workshops and crafting spaces, you could hold regular trading markets for people to share their stuff; I think it could work and might actually be something that in some places could actually get some younger folk interested in living somewhere they otherwise might not consider.
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Apr 8, 2019 17:12
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Many golf courses are well-situated to turn into public parks.
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Apr 8, 2019 18:48
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ReidRansom posted:Some recent talk about golf and how much it sucks and how a lot of golf course communities are dying because their game is expensive and sucks and no one under 70 wants to play it in numbers to keep all those places afloat in another thread got me thinking, are there any examples anywhere of these places being turned into European style allotment farms? I saw some mention of some developer or another wanting to do something along those lines to a failed course, but it was in Arizona or some other hot deserty place entirely unsuited to farming pretty much anything. It feels like a pretty solid idea, though. I know urban farming has taken off in some rust belt cities, but could suburban farming also work? Turn the course into farming plots, maybe set aside some space for small scale livestock or dairy, clubhouse becomes workshops and crafting spaces, you could hold regular trading markets for people to share their stuff; I think it could work and might actually be something that in some places could actually get some younger folk interested in living somewhere they otherwise might not consider. I don’t know how much point there would be in that since most of the houses in neighborhoods with golf courses will also have yards large enough for their own gardens. In America we usually call an allotment farm community gardens, they are not uncommon but given average lot sizes in North America they aren’t a necessity for most people who just wants a few herbs and tomatoes. If golf’s popularity continues to decline I expect a lot of these will be converted to various other uses, no point spending money on maintenance if nobody wants to play. Also I’m not sure what a “trading market” is but I suspect it will be somewhat analogous to the American ‘yard sale’ when you put your junk out in front of the house and sell stuff you don’t need for a few pennies on the dollar. You don’t normally trade stuff for stuff as the idea is generally to reduce clutter, but you could.
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Apr 8, 2019 19:01
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Squalid posted:I don’t know how much point there would be in that since most of the houses in neighborhoods with golf courses will also have yards large enough for their own gardens. I was thinking something larger scale than your average community garden or backyard vegetable garden, and that would allow for cooperative use and such. And I guess I don't really know what exactly you'd call the market. Farmer's market I suppose, not like a yard sale, but maybe less selling and more exchanging. How about some of my onions for a few of your tomatoes and so on. Community produce exchange or something. I dunno. BarbarianElephant posted:Many golf courses are well-situated to turn into public parks. I'm talking about largely failing planned communities. Usually there are already small parks scattered throughout. We're not talking a municipal course in the city. I mean repurposing lovely suburbs.
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Apr 8, 2019 19:22
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the problem with repurposing these developments into a productive agriculture use is that you're likely to run into water issues. actual for-profit crop raising requires a lot of water which isn't really sustainable in many areas that are already nothing but farmland. think, aquifer depletion, shrinking lakes, that sort of thing. while it takes water to maintain a golf course, it could require more water to turn the thing into a farm. probably a better use is just to xeriscape the golf course and let it return to something like a nature preserve. or maybe a common pasture if the climate is right also if you want to turn it into a lifestyle farm, as squalid said yards are often large enough to provide plenty of space for hobbyist farming. the thing about farming is that it sucks, and the level at which people want to do really hardcore gardening to have a little food garden is already enough work to consume the leisure time people want to devote to farming. actual no-poo poo farming is a lot of hard, thankless work, and people generally won't do it if they don't need to for survival, either to supplement their diets with yard crops if not something you do as a full time vocation. community farms and the like kind of operate on the business model that "farming sucks, it is a LOT of work, but we can get people to actually pay us to do a little work on our farm if they only do like, an hour's worth of vegetable picking, so that they can feel connected to the land in some way". remember that the agriculture industry relies on low-wage specialist labor because picking crops rapidly reaches a point of diminishing marginal utility in that picking cucumbers or whatever for 30 minutes is nice and quaint and a good thing to do once a month, but picking cucumbers for 8 hours a day is not something people willingly choose to do for kicks and then on top of that you'll have to power through the community's HOA to actually convert the golf course into a bird refuge or a goat farm or what have you, meaning you'll have to have most people on board with the potential terror in a hit to property values or whatever else would cause massive neighborhood conflicts
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Apr 8, 2019 19:35
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one model you could use is serenbe, outside of atlanta, which is a master planned community centered around sustainability and organic farming and all that stuff but the reason this community kind of works is that it directly attracts stuffy rich hippies who love that kind of poo poo. trying to replace a golf course community with something like this would first entail trying to convince the sort of people who bought homes in a golf course community to embrace a more "sustainable lifestyle" which is still just as car-oriented and exclusionary, but for the NPR set https://serenbe.com/community#sustain
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Apr 8, 2019 19:40
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 The fetishisation of self sufficiency through farming for city dwellers is dumb, it's the sort of thing that people who don't work on a farm would think of. Having the occasional community garden/mini farm is ok as an educational experience so people don't completely forget that food grows in dirt and/or runs around making GBS threads on everything before you eat it but anything beyond that is going to be highly unusual and doesn't make sense unless it's actively requested by locals. Having in-town nature spaces (I hesitate to say nature reserves, because those may come with all sorts of restrictions that aren't really compatible with recreational use depending on what your local regulations are) can be very sensible when there's green space left after lawns to sit around and play games on have been planned for.
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Apr 8, 2019 19:54
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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suck my woke dick posted:
While pastoral self-sustainability is fetishized... there may be other ways to implement food localism in urban spaces: namely hydroponics and aquaponics. The latter is particularly neat, since it allows for city-dwellers to use vertical structures for "farming". Not sure how scalable that stuff is though.
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Apr 8, 2019 21:13
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Taking a golf course and changing it into local grown artisanal onions seems like a pretty horizontal transfer. Like the guy who was way into golf in 1969 would have kids way into artisanal small batch ultra local grown cilantro in 2019.
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Apr 9, 2019 16:56
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Replacing golf courses with medium-density subsidized housing is the way to go, IMO. Get those property values for the neighboring SFHs down.
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Apr 9, 2019 17:10
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Taking a golf course and changing it into local grown artisanal onions seems like a pretty horizontal transfer. Like the guy who was way into golf in 1969 would have kids way into artisanal small batch ultra local grown cilantro in 2019. that guy's kids probably aren't going to want to own a 5/3 boomer mansion on an acre of land way out in the suburbs though. one of the big reasons there's a housing affordability crisis in many american cities is because millenials are rejecting suburban living pretty hard - there are plenty of millenials who do live in suburbs, but just as many (and now, a growing young adult cohort of post-millenials) who are trying not to https://www.governing.com/columns/assessments/gov-millennials-cities-suburbs.html https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/07/will-millennials-stay-downtown/566078/ it is not productive to argue about what millenials want. but what we can say is that while the parents of boomers largely rejected urban living while possible, leading to the largest wave of suburban expansion and white flight, later generations reversed this trend leading to white reinvestment in urban living. and this means that some of the peaks of suburban housing - for example, master planned subdivisions focused on golf courses - are relatively oversupplied and thus will fall in value compared to other forms of suburban communities
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Apr 9, 2019 17:17
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Thanatosian posted:Replacing golf courses with medium-density subsidized housing is the way to go, IMO. Get those property values for the neighboring SFHs down. Or we could do towers in the park style high rise mixed use multifamily development and cast some long rear end shadows on NIMBY scum yards.
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Apr 10, 2019 00:31
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KingFisher posted:Or we could do towers in the park style high rise mixed use multifamily development and cast some long rear end shadows on NIMBY scum yards.
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Apr 10, 2019 01:52
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Thanatosian posted:Replacing golf courses with medium-density subsidized housing is the way to go, IMO. Get those property values for the neighboring SFHs down. Du, Tri, Quadplexes and then turn leftover land into conservation land would be my ideal. Get the housing, do some environmental restoration.
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Apr 10, 2019 01:55
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KingFisher posted:Or we could do towers in the park style high rise mixed use multifamily development and cast some long rear end shadows on NIMBY scum yards. People basically hate living in huge tower blocks of public housing, because nowhere ever puts aside enough money to upkeep them, so unkempt empty space and broken lifts make them a mugger's paradise.
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Apr 10, 2019 16:00
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