(Sorry, this was supposed to be a reply to a complaint that people should be allowed to have “nice things” like suburban-style housing.)
> The bill only applies in urban transit counties. These are counties with 15 or more passenger rail stations. This includes the counties of Alameda, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara.
That already excludes most of the rural land in California. Some of those counties are still pretty big, however, so the next bit is also important:
> Within these counties, areas within a half-mile of most of the following stations are now designated as transit-oriented development (TOD) zones:
> Areas within a half-mile of all heavy rail (e.g., BART) and/or very high-frequency commuter rail stations—defined as stations that run 72 or more trains per day—are designated as Tier 1 TOD zones.
> Areas within a half-mile of all light rail (e.g., the San Diego Trolley), BRT, and/or high-frequency commuter rail stations—defined as stations that run 48 or more trains per day—are designated as Tier 2 TOD zones.
> In smaller cities, defined as cities with a population of less than 35,000 residents, only the quarter-mile area of the TOD zone is covered. And if a county becomes an urban transit county after January 1, 2026, only heavy rail, light rail, and eligible commuter rail will be covered—not BRT.
It is bad planning to build this kind of transportation and expect the area within 1/2 mile of the stations to stay “suburban,” (which really means single-family; there’s plenty of apartment buildings in suburbs around the world) much less “rural.”
SB79 is a great step forward for California. Hopefully other states implement similar (and more aggressive) bills in their states. My dream world would see an elimination of local zoning as we do in the US, and a move to a zoning system more like the Japanese use. I would also love to see states adopt a Land-Value Tax to help incentivize development. Similar to SB79 I have always hoped for a bill that enforced something like within 1 mile of a school, all roads need to have cross walks, lights, and side walks to help kick start walkability in the US.
I think Prop79 will be good long term but it will take decades for the changes to be felt. I hope that something with a bit more immediate shows up this year as well. Relooking at prop 13 seems to be one option.
I agree with the sentiment, but sadly even in its watered down form, SB79 was the result of a brutal legislative battle over the course of years, and even then it barely passed.
Getting Prop 13 overturned is about as likely as California seceding from the US.
I think getting Prop 13 repealed along the lines of Prop 15 (basically for investment property) may actually happen. I think the pro group is much more organized today than they were in 2020 and so it will stand a much better chance of succeeding.
That said, I fully agree with you that Prop 13 repeal for homeowners will "never" happen. The backlash would obviously be massive. But if they could keep it for homeowners and repeal it for all other types of property, including land, then that could be a major improvement because property owners would have to improve their properties to a "highest and best use" or sell it to pay the taxes.
Residential real estate isn't causing the big issue. It's been under Prop 13 long enough that people have died off and the properties are now sufficiently staggered that residential real estate reassesses even if it does so slowly. Consequently, it's not really religious to remove commercial real estate from Prop 13.
The problem is that Prop 13 is worth sooooo much money to entrenched California commercial real estate owners (like The Irvine Company) that you have to be prepared for a MASSIVE money firefight if you really want to go after commercial real estate on it.
Houses built from advantage of SB79 are encumbered by the fact virtually every typical piece of pipe used to build a house is made a controlled material requiring a background check, under SB704.
It could take up to 5 years to come into full effect, from my skim of the article. So, as revolutions in housing go, this is slow-burn.
Needed, won't fix housing next month or even next year.
Sometimes I wonder if a state went out and bought the input supply stocks (wood, particleboard, roofing materials) and sold them below cost at the longer base-line price, but exclusively to builders constructing homes, if they could prevent a grey market re-sale to the less housing oriented market. The problem with trying to drag supply prices back down is making secondary markets between your rate, and the market rate.
I am not believing there is an actual shortage worldwide of either construction grade lumber, or other inputs: Its shipping related, its logjams backing up because .. well .. the wheels fell off at the start of 2020 and we haven't got momentum back up.
Oh right. Ships. So maybe the state has to buy ships.. which demands steel.. which is hard to get right now...
onerous and overly burdensome regulations make it nye impossible to build in this state. The environmentalists have a throttle on California. That is coupled with the wealthy not wanting their home values to go down with new low cost housing built anywhere near them. These add up to skyrocketing home prices in CA.
These are not hard things to understand or solve, it's just that the majority of people don't want to understand them or face reality and the politicians will always serve up these kinds of con artist lies to placate people.
You cannot add ~60 million foreign national people to the US population in the last 25 years without severely impacting the housing situation when the USA has only built 1.1 million housing units on average over that period; most of those being locked into high prices due to the massive inflation over that time.
What makes it even worse is this obsession with both concentrating populations and jobs in urban centers, while at the same time being concerned with climate change and environmental protection. They are mutually exclusive things. This is an iron triangle issue, you can only have two of three things: affordable housing, immigration, climate/environment protection.
No single thing will fix housing, and lots of things will interact to make any fix complicated and slow. The fast single things like forms of eminent domain and retrospective law changes turn out to incur massive legal cost to enact.
Short of seizing property and approvals for already lodged designs which were turned down for local opposition, it's all about time now. Time to start doing things under a new legal planning system.
Love to see it. It's great to have rural low-density for people who want it, but if you're building public mass transit in a big city, you really gotta commit to density.
Exactly this. So much money for transit has been completely wasted because the zoning around stops is hilariously low. We shouldn't be spending any money for trains on places that are not fully committed to having 4-7 story apartments all around the stops.
Great for much needed housing, but this will poison the well for public transit and cause NIMBYs to triple down on opposition to public transit expansion…
That could happen. But on the other hand, all those new housing will create more people living around stations, providing more ridership and more revenue for public transportation, and hopefully more stations along the way.
Also, these new people would vote. The old NIMBYs are already opposing everything; how harder can they go? The demographic change might be enough to change local politics in some places.
Sounds a lot like replacement theory. New people come in, replace and marginalize the existing ones, who will be left with a changed neighborhood and no voice?
I'm not intimately familiar with Californian zoning, but I have to say, all this talk of the 'seventh Regional Housing Needs Assessment cycle' reminded me of the Five Year Plans used in socialist countries.
I wish the people of California the best of luck exceeding dwelling quotas in the upcoming seventh cycle! :P
Edit: I forgot how sensitive people can be to the word 'socialism'. I am not trying imply - with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer - that California is the Soviet Union. I am just genuinely amused by the language being used, speaking as someone with family history of living under socialism.
It’s quite common in the affairs of humans to plan recurring work on a schedule. It’s not quite as common to vote on the schedule and how to do it, but at least California seems to be a democracy in this respect.
Despite people mocking the parallel, I think it's actually pretty apt. RHNA is basically a socialist planning exercise because people were unwilling to stomach a market economy for housing construction and demanded state control through zoning.
It's better than the alternative of letting local governments do what they want, but it very much is a socialist planning exercise.
So you're not implying that CA is the Soviet Union, but you are drawing the parallel with whatever socialist country you have a "family history of living under"? Gee, I wonder what that means. Seems like a distinction without a difference.
Just to give a little insight on this legislation, it has been described, rightfully so, as a boon to for-profit real estate developers so it's one of the least socialist things California has done in recent memory. It's stripping away local control and more or less forcing municipalities, in the limited geographies where this legislation applies, to allow housing to be built with far fewer government regulations. Frankly I'm shocked it passed, but just goes to show how bad the housing crisis has gotten.
That of course doesn't rebut your comment about RHNA reminding you of socialism, but bringing up socialism when this thread is about legislation that's about as capitalist as you're going to get in California is a bit ironic.
Edit: I'm not criticizing you by pointing out the irony, but since you said you're not that familiar with California I thought I'd mention how capitalist this legislation is.
Readit News
> The bill only applies in urban transit counties. These are counties with 15 or more passenger rail stations. This includes the counties of Alameda, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara.
That already excludes most of the rural land in California. Some of those counties are still pretty big, however, so the next bit is also important:
> Within these counties, areas within a half-mile of most of the following stations are now designated as transit-oriented development (TOD) zones:
> Areas within a half-mile of all heavy rail (e.g., BART) and/or very high-frequency commuter rail stations—defined as stations that run 72 or more trains per day—are designated as Tier 1 TOD zones.
> Areas within a half-mile of all light rail (e.g., the San Diego Trolley), BRT, and/or high-frequency commuter rail stations—defined as stations that run 48 or more trains per day—are designated as Tier 2 TOD zones.
> In smaller cities, defined as cities with a population of less than 35,000 residents, only the quarter-mile area of the TOD zone is covered. And if a county becomes an urban transit county after January 1, 2026, only heavy rail, light rail, and eligible commuter rail will be covered—not BRT.
It is bad planning to build this kind of transportation and expect the area within 1/2 mile of the stations to stay “suburban,” (which really means single-family; there’s plenty of apartment buildings in suburbs around the world) much less “rural.”
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Getting Prop 13 overturned is about as likely as California seceding from the US.
Actually, it might even be less likely than that.
That said, I fully agree with you that Prop 13 repeal for homeowners will "never" happen. The backlash would obviously be massive. But if they could keep it for homeowners and repeal it for all other types of property, including land, then that could be a major improvement because property owners would have to improve their properties to a "highest and best use" or sell it to pay the taxes.
You'd have more luck persuading the Catholic Church to repeal the Bible.
Residential real estate isn't causing the big issue. It's been under Prop 13 long enough that people have died off and the properties are now sufficiently staggered that residential real estate reassesses even if it does so slowly. Consequently, it's not really religious to remove commercial real estate from Prop 13.
The problem is that Prop 13 is worth sooooo much money to entrenched California commercial real estate owners (like The Irvine Company) that you have to be prepared for a MASSIVE money firefight if you really want to go after commercial real estate on it.
Needed, won't fix housing next month or even next year.
Sometimes I wonder if a state went out and bought the input supply stocks (wood, particleboard, roofing materials) and sold them below cost at the longer base-line price, but exclusively to builders constructing homes, if they could prevent a grey market re-sale to the less housing oriented market. The problem with trying to drag supply prices back down is making secondary markets between your rate, and the market rate.
I am not believing there is an actual shortage worldwide of either construction grade lumber, or other inputs: Its shipping related, its logjams backing up because .. well .. the wheels fell off at the start of 2020 and we haven't got momentum back up.
Oh right. Ships. So maybe the state has to buy ships.. which demands steel.. which is hard to get right now...
It's utterly absurd looking from the outside that officials are claiming the permits are being "fast tracked" even now.
You cannot add ~60 million foreign national people to the US population in the last 25 years without severely impacting the housing situation when the USA has only built 1.1 million housing units on average over that period; most of those being locked into high prices due to the massive inflation over that time.
What makes it even worse is this obsession with both concentrating populations and jobs in urban centers, while at the same time being concerned with climate change and environmental protection. They are mutually exclusive things. This is an iron triangle issue, you can only have two of three things: affordable housing, immigration, climate/environment protection.
Short of seizing property and approvals for already lodged designs which were turned down for local opposition, it's all about time now. Time to start doing things under a new legal planning system.
Also, these new people would vote. The old NIMBYs are already opposing everything; how harder can they go? The demographic change might be enough to change local politics in some places.
I wish the people of California the best of luck exceeding dwelling quotas in the upcoming seventh cycle! :P
Edit: I forgot how sensitive people can be to the word 'socialism'. I am not trying imply - with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer - that California is the Soviet Union. I am just genuinely amused by the language being used, speaking as someone with family history of living under socialism.
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It's better than the alternative of letting local governments do what they want, but it very much is a socialist planning exercise.
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That of course doesn't rebut your comment about RHNA reminding you of socialism, but bringing up socialism when this thread is about legislation that's about as capitalist as you're going to get in California is a bit ironic.
Edit: I'm not criticizing you by pointing out the irony, but since you said you're not that familiar with California I thought I'd mention how capitalist this legislation is.
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