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luxury handset posted:in my extremely personal, controversial, and not to be extrapolated beyond the musings of a single person opinion - i think that leftists discovered housing policy and urban planning through yimby memes for new urbanist teens sometime around 2014 and we have not yet collectively progressed beyond the nuance level of sloganeering. but again, that's just me, and my very individual opinion I think this is part of a lot of the problem. Especially in a state like California, but in every subburb everywhere in the United States, there's a lot of people who maybe identify as left or liberal but it's really a shallow identity thing for them -- while they actually have a petit bourgeoisie class interest. As a result they end up supporting a bunch of cynical and self-serving policy but go through bizarre contortions to try and justify it through a leftwing lens. and this is my own controversial musing -- but I've noticed in this kind of discussion there can be an unstated conflict in perspective that leads to disagreement. From the perspective of reducing the rate of increase of housing prices it seems pretty much impossible to make a coherent argument against ADUs. Judging by Boot and Rally's posts he doesn't even really try to argue they are bad per se, I guess he's mainly just saying they aren't enough. So what explains his hostility to the idea in the California thread? It seems like he primarily looks at the housing crisis from the perspective of a political contest, rather than as a technical and logistical problem. The protests in the other thread tend to be along the lines of ADUs are "not a substitute for reasonable housing policy," or that ADUs expand "the renter-landlord dynamic." Alternatively zoning for ADUs suggests that "the very wealthiest are the ones who need more housing resources in California," and "it lets people delay solving the actual problem." The overriding concern seems to be less with whether changing laws to allow ADUs will have a positive effect, but that this change will somehow lend political advantage to the political enemies, or that it will be used as an excuse to avoid other necessary changes, or that it will be someone else who benefits. Rather than asking "does this provide more housing or reduce the rate of increase in rents," they ask "Will this give lead to us having more political power and authority?" It's not that such questions don't matter, but to some extent you have to be able to prioritize solving real problems on the ground. I've also noticed public discussions of housing issues seem similar to those about healthcare. People are extremely risk averse and fear change more than even the terrible status quo. Obama had to reassure people they could keep their terrible private insurance when he was campaigning for the Affordable Healthcare Act because people were terrified of losing what little healthcare they had. Likewise, even small changes to zoning regs like permitting ADUs inspire that same kind of irrational fear which makes people act crazy. There's a powerful normalcy bias at work
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Sep 30, 2019 05:11
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There is a lot of rambling in your post, but two things:Squalid posted:and this is my own controversial musing -- but I've noticed in this kind of discussion there can be an unstated conflict in perspective that leads to disagreement. From the perspective of reducing the rate of increase of housing prices it seems pretty much impossible to make a coherent argument against ADUs. The only data I found said ADUs raise the price of ownership in the areas they are added to. I posted it. Technically it was "infill", of which an ADU is one variety. The other paper mentions, and others have in this thread, that ADUs build housing on the smaller end of the spectrum. Because it is smaller, ADU housing can be cheaper, and they postulate that this can decrease housing costs. It also assumed public transportation was readily available to avoid externalized traffic costs loving everything up. Squalid posted:Judging by Boot and Rally's posts he doesn't even really try to argue they are bad per se, I guess he's mainly just saying they aren't enough. So what explains his hostility to the idea in the California thread? It seems like he primarily looks at the housing crisis from the perspective of a political contest, rather than as a technical and logistical problem. Where are you getting this nonsense? I think you're confusing me for someone else.
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Sep 30, 2019 06:13
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Boot and Rally posted:The only data I found said in what market? housing analysis is inherently hedonic and subject to highly local, individual constrants on outcomes - not frequently replicable across different environments. do you want to talk about housing in the san francisco or los angeles metro areas? great, cool, very good. are you taking some study and using it to make general statements about housing in different locations across the united states, or even worldwide? hold up now, well, Boot and Rally posted:ADUs build housing on the smaller end of the spectrum. Because it is smaller, ADU housing can be cheaper, and they postulate that this can decrease housing costs. it absolutely does decrease housing costs. whether or not this is a good, local, small scale thing or a bad, neoliberal trap that perpetuates predatory landlordship, depends entirely on the scope of your perspective. how revolutionary do we want to be here, on the "one family housed is a small step for mankind" vs "if it were me, i would simply ban money" spectrum Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Sep 30, 2019 |
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Sep 30, 2019 06:58
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Boot and Rally posted:There is a lot of rambling in your post, but two things: I mean its hard for me to extrapolate exactly what you think is the consequence of that. It is not surprising permitting ADUs increases the cost of ownership because it takes housing that had been for one household and converts it into housing for two. Since more use can be had from parcels it makes sense that they would have higher value. It doesn’t actually follow from this that the cost average or median people will pay for housing will necessarily increase. More likely it will decrease as renters are able to enter neighborhoods from which they were previously excluded. So that data and the theory in the papers you looked at sound to me like exactly what we would expect to see. If I have misread your position I am sorry. I was trying to generalize to more posters than just you so maybe calling you out specifically was a mistake, I just like giving people the ability to respond. I guess your specific complaint is that you “see ADUs as predatory rent seeking at worst, and pointless at best.“ You are mistaken that someone opposing ADUs because it is rent seeking won’t find themselves working with wealthy NIMBYs however, because they absolutely will join you in this fight. If you’re afraid of predatory behavior, it’s probably best to address it directly, rather than instead going for a blanket ban on something that is otherwise good.
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Sep 30, 2019 07:25
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Boot and Rally posted:Nice job running to a different thread even though this was explained very clearly in the other thread. You are an idiot. The opposition to ADUs do not support "rich, single family home owners". They are not defending these people. They see ADUs as predatory rent seeking at worst, and pointless at best. No NIMBYs and leftist are teaming up. You don’t need to call other posters names when you are unable to refute their valid points. Also I have seen leftist and NIMBYs team up with regards to development moratoriums . It has happened here in Moco. And it is deeply frustrating. Stopping development does nothing to build housing for the homeless or reduce rent prices for those struggling.
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Sep 30, 2019 15:26
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luxury handset posted:in what market? housing analysis is inherently hedonic and subject to highly local, individual constrants on outcomes - not frequently replicable across different environments. do you want to talk about housing in the san francisco or los angeles metro areas? great, cool, very good. are you taking some study and using it to make general statements about housing in different locations across the united states, or even worldwide? hold up now, well, This started in the California thread, so clearly I am talking about California. Your position here seems to be "you have to talk about specific locations" in the first paragraph, then "but here is a general statement about it" in the next. I can't find anyone publishing on circumstances in which rental prices went down because of it (I give no fucks about the politics). Only people saying "more housing = costs less". Part of the problem is that it is almost un-googleable because so much of the research has gone into reassuring property owners that their houses will not be worth less. To be clear, I don't think it will work in California because it is too small of an effect. Not that prices will go down, but not enough, but that nothing at all will happen. Some people will get help paying their mortgage, that is it. The aforementioned work said something like 1% of lots will build these types of units and that most that want them already have them, even if they were legally dubious. It is a solution that relies on NIMBYs actually building in their backyard, which is absurd. Squalid posted:I mean its hard for me to extrapolate exactly what you think is the consequence of that. It is not surprising permitting ADUs increases the cost of ownership because it takes housing that had been for one household and converts it into housing for two. Since more use can be had from parcels it makes sense that they would have higher value. It doesn’t actually follow from this that the cost average or median people will pay for housing will necessarily increase. More likely it will decrease as renters are able to enter neighborhoods from which they were previously excluded. So that data and the theory in the papers you looked at sound to me like exactly what we would expect to see. Squalid posted:If I have misread your position I am sorry. I was trying to generalize to more posters than just you so maybe calling you out specifically was a mistake, I just like giving people the ability to respond. I guess your specific complaint is that you “see ADUs as predatory rent seeking at worst, and pointless at best.“ You are mistaken that someone opposing ADUs because it is rent seeking won’t find themselves working with wealthy NIMBYs however, because they absolutely will join you in this fight. If you’re afraid of predatory behavior, it’s probably best to address it directly, rather than instead going for a blanket ban on something that is otherwise good. This explains the confusion. I am not "opposed" to ADUs. I don't think they are going to change anything to do with the rental market. They are are an issue on the order of whether or not one moderately sized apartment building opened. Celebrating this rule change is like congratulating each other for finding the good champagne on the Titanic. In order for this to do anything they would have to be mandatory, but if you got the clout for that you might as well start knocking things down.
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Sep 30, 2019 15:31
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Boot and Rally posted:This started in the California thread, so clearly I am talking about California. i was asking where your data came from, not the subject of your argument. the articles you cited are behind paywalls and from the abstract it looks like one is specifically about san francisco, the other about singapore Boot and Rally posted:To be clear, I don't think it will work in California because it is too small of an effect. Not that prices will go down, but not enough, but that nothing at all will happen. Some people will get help paying their mortgage, that is it. The aforementioned work said something like 1% of lots will build these types of units and that most that want them already have them, even if they were legally dubious. It is a solution that relies on NIMBYs actually building in their backyard, which is absurd. there's no magic bullet solution for unaffordable housing go off about NIMBYs, nobody's going to disagree with you that they suck, but i don't really find it compelling to finger wag at theoretical people as to why incremental reform away from exclusionary zoning is a bad thing
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Sep 30, 2019 16:46
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luxury handset posted:go off about NIMBYs, nobody's going to disagree with you that they suck, but i don't really find it compelling to finger wag at theoretical people as to why incremental reform away from exclusionary zoning is a bad thing I'm trying to discuss what will and will not work. People seem to keep careening into discussions as to what is politically feasible and digging up grudges from other discussions. You can comment on data when you start posting some. I can't tell what your point is because you are of two minds on the subject. Solaris 2.0 posted:You don’t need to call other posters names when you are unable to refute their valid points. I'm sorry someone hurt your feelings in a meeting. No one on this board is a leftist teaming up with NIMBYs so stop accusing them of it and demanding they explain it.
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Sep 30, 2019 17:27
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Boot and Rally posted:You can comment on data when you start posting some. you don't have to answer my questions, i'm not a cop, but it doesn't make for much of a discussion  imo it's polite to share salient information if you're citing journals that people probably don't have access to. or don't, your choice Boot and Rally posted:I can't tell what your point is because you are of two minds on the subject. i'm pretty clearly in favor of ADUs as part of zoning reform but repeating myself wouldn't clarify things any further
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Sep 30, 2019 17:42
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Boot and Rally posted:No, it is hard for you to extrapolate what any of the consequences of it are. You're assuming it will do good and accusing people of some horse shoe theory bullshit when they disagree. Alright, well I think you should excuse me for being confused about your position as you're sending out confusing signals. Like if you are not opposed to ADUs its a little confusing why you felt you had to come to this thread and defend the honor of the NIMBYs in the California thread who really are opposed to ADUs. You also keep using loaded language that suggests you are opposed to ADUs, for example when you said you "assume this is a rent grab" regarding this zoning reform. But whatever, as long as you aren't one of the people actively fighting these reforms I guess I have no issue with you. Just going by the literature you've cited and the points you have raised in this thread I think there's enough evidence to support it as a sensible, if insufficient policy change. For example converting illegal ADUs into legal ones is clearly a net positive. You then provided theoretical research that we should expect positive effects from ADUs, so that's another point in their favor. You provided another paper which suggested they can increase property values locally. That can be good or bad depending on perspective, but we also have to ask what is the global effect? Even if there is a local property price increase, we might expect additional supply to cause a global decrease. You keep providing reasons to support ADU development but then use very negative adjectives to describe it, which is confusing.
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Sep 30, 2019 17:54
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luxury handset posted:you don't have to answer my questions, i'm not a cop, but it doesn't make for much of a discussion I don't get it, are you "just asking questions"? Why do you care what areas the papers I've posted reference? Can you make your point? Anyway, I did share the salient information: property owners see a rise in home value and ADUs have not been shown to decrease rental prices. What happens to rental prices hasn't been shown either way. There is some evidence that infill that builds up condemned properties can reduce rents. Anyway, I think this is an open source white paper of the aforementioned study on the Bay Area. It says essentially the same thing as the other Bay Area paper I mentioned. It is by the same people.
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Sep 30, 2019 17:57
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Skimming that paper it seems highly supportive of permitting ADU development.
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Sep 30, 2019 18:14
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Boot and Rally posted:I don't get it, are you "just asking questions"? Why do you care what areas the papers I've posted reference? i'm just interested in seeing the meat of the articles you're citing since i cannot otherwise read them and i'm not sold on your paraphrased summary Squalid posted:Skimming that paper it seems highly supportive of permitting ADU development. same, on the basis that "people are doing it anyway so might as well legalize it" the indication that a survey figured something like 2.5% of the housing stock in los angeles, 1980 as illegal second unit conversions was pretty eye popping Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Sep 30, 2019 |
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Sep 30, 2019 18:16
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It does support permitting ADU development. It does not support the apparent consensus of the people currently engaged in this thread that it will lower rental prices. That conclusion assumes facts not in evidence. Because of the author's support, I assume that if such evidence was available they surely would have mentioned it. BTW the journal version of the paper is on ResearchGate. quote:Regardless, it is our contention that backyard cottages and other types of secondary units are increasingly worthy of scholars’ attention as a potentially effective and equitable infill strategy in the Flatlands and beyond. It is a good read though.
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Sep 30, 2019 19:39
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Boot and Rally posted:It does support permitting ADU development. It does not support the apparent consensus of the people currently engaged in this thread that it will lower rental prices. That conclusion assumes facts not in evidence. Because of the author's support, I assume that if such evidence was available they surely would have mentioned it. okay reading this this evening and it seems to absolutely provide evidence that ADUs can lower rents via increasing the supply of affordable units. It is based on economic models rather than empirical work but idk why you think it says anything different: quote:This evidence supports, therefore, a view of secondary units as likelier to provide rental quote:The benefits to affordability and, by extension, to place vitality provided by these (mostly Also because California barely even builds 50% of the housing necessary to meet demand, even really good effective policy is unlikely to actually lower housing prices. A policy that added an extra 25% of affordable housing supply, which would be a huge effect, would simply slow the rate of increase. Realistically no single policy is actually going to be able to reduce housing prices in this context. You need to implement lots of different policies, each of which makes some small contribution. The research on ADUs you have posted seems pretty clear that it is a good way to provide more housing that is more affordable.
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Oct 1, 2019 00:56
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Squalid posted:okay reading this this evening and it seems to absolutely provide evidence that ADUs can lower rents via increasing the supply of affordable units. It is based on economic models rather than empirical work but idk why you think it says anything different: None of those are evidence. Notice it uses “assume” and “likelier”. You’re also not posting the caveats that mass transit is required, the NIMBYs are responsible for actually building it, that traditionally cheap cottages go to family and that previous implementations have been very, very racist because of the aforementioned NIMBYs. Pop the crys if you want, I’m not celebrating a few studios for Stanford students that pay down someone’s mortgage for them.
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Oct 1, 2019 02:21
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well, that was thoroughly unpersuasive i am a bit tickled though at pulling out the "this policy is traditionally racist" card when we're talking about incremental reform of exclusionary zoning which, uh, has some similar baggage historically
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Oct 1, 2019 02:27
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luxury handset posted:well, that was thoroughly unpersuasive Don’t go putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say that is certainly, or is always, what would happen. I’m pointing out that Squalid is cherry picking, and then ignoring the qualifiers. Vvvv Ah, so it is bad faith then, got it. Pointing out the same historical context as the author is not playing a card. The traditional applies to the renting to family part, not the racist. Boot and Rally fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 02:42
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Boot and Rally posted:Don’t go putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say that is certainly, or is always, what would happen. Boot and Rally posted:traditionally cheap cottages go to family and that previous implementations have been very, very racist 
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Oct 1, 2019 02:48
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Boot and Rally posted:None of those are evidence. Notice it uses “assume” and “likelier”. You’re also not posting the caveats that mass transit is required, the NIMBYs are responsible for actually building it, that traditionally cheap cottages go to family and that previous implementations have been very, very racist because of the aforementioned NIMBYs. Pop the crys if you want, I’m not celebrating a few studios for Stanford students that pay down someone’s mortgage for them. you are being really weird about what constitutes evidence. I'm not posting the caveats because this is a work of theoretical economic modelling. Obviously there are tons of caveats. I don't know why I have to say this since you have clearly read the paper? In favor of the idea ADUs increase the supply of housing and provide more affordable housing we have several decades of theory from urban planners, developers, and economists. Then we also have specific economic models from California which strongly support the idea permitting ADUs will increase the supply of affordable units. What is missing: hard empirical verification of the theory. That would be nice, but in the real world we rarely have that in economics. That's why people put so much effort into models and theory in the first place. Also Boot and Rally, you keep contradicting yourself itt. Contrary to everything said by the economists and urban planners (who you yourself have posted itt!), you insist "Not that prices will go down, but not enough, but that nothing at all will happen," to rental prices following the permitting of ADUs. However then you go onto say that this change might have the effect of "one moderately sized apartment building opened," presumably per neighborhood or w/e. If this were true though then the basic tenet of supply and demand suggest that it WOULD have at least a small effect. Then you go on to suggest that it might provide more affordable housing, just that the problem is it will go to the wrong people. It actually is kind of lovely of you not to care about affordable housing for students. The cost of housing is a huge barrier to higher education for low income families, one that is all too often insurmountable. You say you aren't opposed to permitting ADUs but you keep trying paint them in a bad light. They're lived in by the wrong people. Also they're racist. Also it's just rent seeking. If you aren't opposed to ADUs, you sound an awful lot like someone who is. Can you at least admit permitting them is a positive reform, even if it won't reduce rents and solve the housing crisis?
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Oct 1, 2019 03:19
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Boot and Rally posted:Anyway, I think this is an open source white paper of the aforementioned study on the Bay Area. It says essentially the same thing as the other Bay Area paper I mentioned. It is by the same people. I've had a chance to more than glance at this paper and I'm skeptical that ADUs will do much good in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara Housing Market Area (SJHMA). The white paper says we can expect "municipalities that do not place onerous restrictions on secondary unit production can expect to see net additions at the rate of roughly one legal secondary unit per one thousand single family house lots per year" (page 4, white paper). Since the SJHMA has roughly 350k owner units (not just single family houses), we can reasonably expect 350 new secondary units per year as an upper estimate because not all owners own single family houses. The same HUD report shows that newly constructed rental housing for 3-years (2017-2020) is expected to be 3500 market rate units, whereas the total demand over the same period is expected to be 11,100 market rate units. So, we might expect that new secondary infill will provide 1050 new units over that same 3-year time period. That sounds sizable, but there are some significant exceptions and buts in that white paper about the secondary units. For example, "households without children and retirement-age households are more likely than other groups to prioritize decreased auto dependency and proximity to public transportation, work, and shopping" (page 5), so infill without public transport (a big problem in the SJHMA) isn't worth as much as infill in areas with public transport. There are also issues with older residents simply not wanting to build secondary units, while I don't have any data on the age distribution in the SJHMA, I'd guess the average single family house owner is older than the population because that is when housing was affordable. It is probably a crap shoot that we will get the 1050 units at all, especially considering that the NIMBY house owners fighting the ADU laws are the ones who have sole discretion about whether or not to build secondary units. Moreover, the cheapness of these units as a whole is partially due to friends and family moving in to do chores (along with racism, always racism): page 8 posted:Tenants who were relatives of their landowners accounted for 30 percent of secondary unit residents, and paid an average of 37 percent less in rent than those secondary unit tenants not related to their landlords. One side effect of this informality was a striking racial division: although African- Americans made up 20 percent of Babylon’s population, the survey found almost no African-Americans living in secondary units. Survey work in Connecticut and New York suggests that because secondary unit owners charge family members less, relatives occupying secondary units often perform chores and provide other forms of assistance to homeowners (Hare, 1989). Or you can become a helper monkey for an old person: page 6 posted:[S]econdary units benefit elderly homeowners by giving them the option to generate extra income by renting out a secondary unit, or even more income by moving into the secondary unit and renting out the main house to another household. In addition, according to this view, secondary units increase the possibility that elderly households will have helpful younger people, whether or not they are friends or family, living on their property and helping them with the daily tasks needed to allow them to continue to function in a mixed-age, residential community. I'd speculate then, that most of the cost savings will go to family and friends and the ones that don't will represent a modest increase (again, at most) in new market-rate housing, approximately 20% more than the 3500 units expected to be produced from 2017-2020. Based on all that, I'd further speculate that this change is going to do very little to improve the rental housing market in the SJHMA, because there is still a significant short fall between demand and supply. What's more interesting to me is a few sentences in the Research Gate paper: quote:Because secondary unit development is readily implementable inhigher-income neighborhoods, the strategy contributes to neighborhood diversity and helpsmeet fair housing goals. By adding small rental units to neighborhoods dominated by large,homeowner-occupied, units, the strategy providesflexibility. For instance, more familiesare able to age in place. This in turn leads to more ecological (and fiscal) sustainability by relying on existing infrastructure in places otherwise unlikely to redevelop. This appears to me to be saying that secondary unit construction is useful because superior redevelopment options are not available. My assessment of secondary units are that they are a boon for home owners who want to build them and their friends and family who are most likely to benefit, as well. But the effect of the housing market in the SJHMA is likely to be small, even in the event of average construction rate of secondary units and I am skeptical that those rates will be reached. But, as always, the light at the end of the tunnel is boomer death: white paper, page 5 posted:Myers and Ryu (2007) project that overall demand for housing will begin to contract by 2030 as the baby boomers age and home sellers start to exceed buyers in all 50 states.
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Oct 1, 2019 08:12
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Why should Boomer's dying prevent them influencing the way we live. After all, don't they have a legitimate interest in preserving the character of the areas surrounding their resting places and the heritage of the places they lived in? I'm sure that many would only feel comfortable having their cemetery mowed with a gas powered mower and be unable to rest if train lines were built nearby, or, god forbid, congestion increased due to bike lanes.
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Oct 1, 2019 14:23
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I appreciate the effort you put into this post and your points are good and interesting. However I don't think anyone believes the magnitude of the effect of this policy change will be large. It's just one small engagement in the battle against single use zoning. The fact that such a small reform engenders such bitter and nonsensical resistance is just symptomatic of the hosed up way Americans think about urbanism.
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Oct 1, 2019 16:05
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Squalid posted:I appreciate the effort you put into this post and your points are good and interesting. However I don't think anyone believes the magnitude of the effect of this policy change will be large. It's just one small engagement in the battle against single use zoning. The fact that such a small reform engenders such bitter and nonsensical resistance is just symptomatic of the hosed up way Americans think about urbanism. It's true, ADU s have the big benefit that they are occasionally possible to get through the legislature. Public housing, lifting apartment bans, transit oriented development etc all fail almost every time in the places they are needed most.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:15
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Squalid posted:I appreciate the effort you put into this post and your points are good and interesting. However I don't think anyone believes the magnitude of the effect of this policy change will be large. It's just one small engagement in the battle against single use zoning. The fact that such a small reform engenders such bitter and nonsensical resistance is just symptomatic of the hosed up way Americans think about urbanism. Also looking for studies that specifically target ADU's seems odd, like if you were looking for studies that talked about only duplexes or only townhomes or only apartment buildings exactly four stories tall. ADU's get you increased density...but not very much of it. So you can basically expect what happens with increasing density in general to occur, except it'll only be a tiny amount in that direction. Which, if you're looking at areas where housing prices are already rising semi-steadily over the years, may be impossible to detect. It's like putting in a single new bike lane and being surprised that it had no discernable impact on city-wide bike mode share.
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Oct 1, 2019 19:21
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Squalid posted:I appreciate the effort you put into this post and your points are good and interesting. However I don't think anyone believes the magnitude of the effect of this policy change will be large. It's just one small engagement in the battle against single use zoning. The fact that such a small reform engenders such bitter and nonsensical resistance is just symptomatic of the hosed up way Americans think about urbanism. To stretch your war metaphor a little further, the anti-NIMBY side appears to have expended resources (time, money, attention of legislators) and come back with a "small reform." Whereas the NIMBY side has come away with discretion over the implementation of that small reform and have fortified their position with a (bad faith) argument that they have already given ground on density that we should wait to see play out and a further argument that, if (I believe when, not if) a modest increase in secondary units does nothing to change the fundamentals of housing (in the SJHMA), density isn't the problem (also bad faith). This isn't a loss, but it also seems like a battle we (anti-NIMBYs) should not have fought. Maybe my analysis is off and this is the beginning of the end of NIMBY-ism in CA, but that doesn't seem likely. pointsofdata posted:Why should Boomer's dying prevent them influencing the way we live. After all, don't they have a legitimate interest in preserving the character of the areas surrounding their resting places and the heritage of the places they lived in? I'm sure that many would only feel comfortable having their cemetery mowed with a gas powered mower and be unable to rest if train lines were built nearby, or, god forbid, congestion increased due to bike lanes. While I approve of this level of cynicism a lawyer friend once explained to me that trusts are exist because the "dead aren't allowed to control the hands of the living" in US law. I dimly remember that point and I hope it is true here. Edit to include Cicero's post: Cicero posted:This 100%. I don't understand your point. I would just as eagerly be saying that installation of a single bike lane isn't going to help bike mode share or traffic or GHG emission. That isn't me being negative or disliking the additional bike lane, I'm just pointing out what everyone knows, it doesn't really matter. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Oct 1, 2019 |
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Oct 1, 2019 19:28
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Your point about not shifting the fundamentals is valid, but I don't think this is a case of activists getting distracted and wasting effort on side issues. This line of discussion was originally inspired by this article regarding some bills making their way to Governor Newsom's desk. During the spring there was a push for much more wide reaching reforms which ended up failing amidst a horrible embarrassing spectacle. These bills are the consolation prize. Maybe next year we can get something more impactful. You can't let bad faith arguments dictate policy, regardless of what you do the NIMBYs will always come up with some other excuse to stall reform. Still, each blow against exclusionary zoning does matter, as does every bike line. The bike network is built one lane at a time after all. If you keep saying "it doesn't really matter" each you put down another piece of the puzzle after a while you start looking a bit silly. There seems to be a certain kind of opposition to the idea from the left that has nothing to do with the scale of effect on housing prices. Instead people like are afraid these kinds of policy changes will lead to "rent seeking" or "expanding the renter-landlord dynamic." I think this is an example of how some people have let their view of housing policy be distorted by concerns other than the purely technocratic interest of providing affordable housing. I mean maybe there's some higher political strategy going on, but it just seems bizarre to me to let these concerns get in the way of sensible if small moves in a good direction.
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Oct 1, 2019 22:06
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the greater purpose is to demonstrate that you have identified a landlord and pointed out they are bad, then something happens, then we have a better society
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Oct 1, 2019 23:34
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Squalid posted:Your point about not shifting the fundamentals is valid, but I don't think this is a case of activists getting distracted and wasting effort on side issues. This line of discussion was originally inspired by this article regarding some bills making their way to Governor Newsom's desk. During the spring there was a push for much more wide reaching reforms which ended up failing amidst a horrible embarrassing spectacle. These bills are the consolation prize. Maybe next year we can get something more impactful. You can't let bad faith arguments dictate policy, regardless of what you do the NIMBYs will always come up with some other excuse to stall reform. I see. In your war metaphor, the battle was lost by the anti-NIMBY side. This is, as you clearly say here, unambiguously a loss. That it didn't end in a complete route is something to be cheery about, I guess. quote:Still, each blow against exclusionary zoning does matter, as does every bike line. The bike network is built one lane at a time after all. If you keep saying "it doesn't really matter" each you put down another piece of the puzzle after a while you start looking a bit silly. This metaphor is flawed. How many pieces does the puzzle have? At what rate are we placing pieces? If you see the puzzle as small and quickly being assembled, you'll assess the outcome here as good. If you see the puzzle as enormous and coming together slowly, such that it won't be finished in your children's lifetimes, you'll assess the outcome as meaningless. I don't think it is true that "[t]he bike network is built one lane at a time after all" except in the most infantile sense. Places with good bike networks put real effort in to building bike infrastructure (think Amsterdam) they didn't wait for individual bike lanes to appear when few enough people in proximity stopped complaining. More so because good infrastructure requires planning and allowing it to be done piecemeal will result in poorer results. luxury handset posted:the greater purpose is to demonstrate that you have identified a landlord and pointed out they are I updated this post to reflect the reality of secondary unit housing.
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Oct 2, 2019 06:06
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You can totally build a bike network piecemeal just like you can increase housing availability in chunks. You don't have to bulldoze entire neighborhoods at once to make a city better (as attractive as that sounds for certain places). Cycling facilities in Amsterdam are still evolving now decades after they stopped demolishing neighborhoods to build roads.
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Oct 2, 2019 07:26
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Idk about the rest of this guy's posts but I think this is worth thinking about. https://twitter.com/JakeAnbinder/status/1164972898580357120?s=19 Some sort of co-operative structure where the residents have control of the maintenance and improvement budget seems superficially attractive to me but I'd be interested in reading about any case studies or research in this area.
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Oct 2, 2019 07:28
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pointsofdata posted:You can totally build a bike network piecemeal just like you can increase housing availability in chunks. You don't have to bulldoze entire neighborhoods at once to make a city better (as attractive as that sounds for certain places). Cycling facilities in Amsterdam are still evolving now decades after they stopped demolishing neighborhoods to build roads. Your argument that you can expand a functioning biking system piecemeal is not persuasive for bike systems starting from scratch (or much smaller). There are network effects that make small changes to a big network far more valuable than small changes to a much smaller network. We need the “demolishing neighborhoods” part first and now and in decades we, too, can benefit from those network effects with piecemeal additions. Edit: this argument applies to housing and public transport as well
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Oct 2, 2019 09:27
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Are bike lanes typically held as assets by massively powerful, largely unaccountable investors from all over the world?
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Oct 2, 2019 11:55
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Yes the local governments
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Oct 2, 2019 12:02
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pointsofdata posted:Some sort of co-operative structure where the residents have control of the maintenance and improvement budget seems superficially attractive to me but I'd be interested in reading about any case studies or research in this area. you're thinking of condos/an HOA
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Oct 2, 2019 12:04
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luxury handset posted:you're thinking of condos/an HOA Sure, but are they used anywhere for public housing?
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Oct 2, 2019 12:08
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pointsofdata posted:Sure, but are they used anywhere for public housing? One of the sticking points (and something that's frustratingly ignored by most leftist urban policy advocates) is that people poor enough to be eligible for public housing usually don't have the time or mental energy to take on additional administrative tasks like this. It's impossible for people who've always lived a safe middle-class life to understand how relentlessly draining extreme poverty is. Co-op run housing is great in theory, but anyone who's ever lived in one (or worked in a co-op store) knows that the people who run the show are the ones willing and able to spend a lot of time on it. You can't ask people struggling with the obscene levels of poverty we allow to exist in this country to take on an additional unpaid job. Our public housing needs competent, motivated, well-compensated full-time site managers who make it as easy as possible for residents to communicate their needs in whatever way works best for them.
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Oct 4, 2019 18:51
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extremely online posted:One of the sticking points (and something that's frustratingly ignored by most leftist urban policy advocates) is that people poor enough to be eligible for public housing usually don't have the time or mental energy to take on additional administrative tasks like this. It's impossible for people who've always lived a safe middle-class life to understand how relentlessly draining extreme poverty is. Co-op run housing is great in theory, but anyone who's ever lived in one (or worked in a co-op store) knows that the people who run the show are the ones willing and able to spend a lot of time on it. This reason you talk about is why Section 8 is under a voucher program, which when used is extremely successful but is also super underfunded. Letting people choose where they live is much better then poverty concentration which is what happend in the 60s and 70s with housing. This is to say, the goal was laudable: give people housing but they put the public housing in low-income areas and concentrating that much poverty causes issues. As much as you can, free movement is good because people will move towards economic opportunity or better school systems if they are informed of their choices. That being said, we need more funding in public housing because we need more public housing to be built and integrated into high income and suburban areas.
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Oct 4, 2019 21:24
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I don't know about where you are, but in many places it is legal to discriminate against section 8 recipients. Even if you can get your voucher, good luck finding a listing in a desirable place that doesn't say "No Section 8! No Exceptions!'
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Oct 5, 2019 00:53
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extremely online posted:I only lurk but that sounds really interesting to me. Did you purchase a home or are you renting? Ok, here's my situation in three parts: Where I live. Who I am. And what can I do. ------Where I Live. I just moved to Tampa, in a neighborhood named Seminole Heights. See this map here. Seminole Heights is bounded on the east by I-275, the south by Hillsborough Avenue, and north and west by a bend in the HIllsborough River. This place is a perfect example of gentrification. It was built in the early 1900's as a suburb of Tampa and Ybor City (they were separate cities at the time). It was a multi-ethnic neighborhood where working and middle class families from the city could afford small homes for their families. After World War II and the introduction of cars, Seminole Heights went downhill. I275 sliced through the area north to south, and I-4 sliced it east to west. From the 1950's to the 2000's, it was a poor, crime- and drug-ridden place. Lots of daily and hourly motels popped up, prostitutes walked the main avenues, the pretty bungalows started falling apart, In the early aughts, people started buying cheap bungalows with "good bones" and fixing them up. During the recession, a major home builders bought dozens of condemned and abandoned homes, tore them down, and started building new ones. After 2010, young chefs started opening restaurants, and food co-ops popped up as well. Today, Seminole Heights is a popular neighborhood, with home prices going up, and new restaurants appearing every month. Cross the 275, though, and you see what the neighborhood used to be. Payday loans, empty storefronts, homeless people pushing shopping carts, trash along the streets. Even the parks and playgrounds are worse than those on the other side. It's a reminder that, for rich people like me to move in, some poor people had to move out. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------Who I am. The epitome of the petite bourgeoisie we decry in this thread. Middle-aged, white, wife and kid, $100k+ salary. I vote Democrat and volunteer at a food pantry on the weekends. Now I'm in a new city and want to do something to help my community. I think I'm to the right of most of D&D. I think I've earned my wealth, and I'm not interested in full-blown socialism. At the same time, I recognize that I've had a lot of help to get where I am, help that many, many people didn't get. For all the people and institutions that gave me a healthy childhood, a good education, and a fair shake with the law. If my choice of neighborhood means I displaced some people, I have an obligation to make sure those displaced people land on their feet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------What can I do. I have a job and a young child, so I don't have a lot of spare time. I do have spare money, if I can find a worthwhile cause to donate to. With what little spare time I have, I've found my city council members (4 apparently, as Tampa has 4 districts and 3 at-large members). I've also found a very full calendar of city council meetings. I hope to attend one or two. If I could focus one major issue in Tampa, it would be mass transit. Tampa has some of the worst mass transit in the country. I think it's awful that a typical bus trips takes 10 times longer than a given car trip (literally, according to Google Maps). Ok, that's all I got. Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
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Oct 6, 2019 23:48
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