> No council meeting has been scheduled yet but Berkeley residents should email the city council at council@cityofberkeley.info with the title “Support Missing Middle Housing.” Request that the city council should pass the Planning Commission’s proposal “as is.” Feel free to discuss your own housing woes as reasons for why it should be passed. These letters will be filed by staff into the future item and can make or break Missing Middle housing in Berkeley.

Not until a majority of Berkeley residents are politically active renters.

Like I said, I don't know the answer and while I made a token effort to check, Berkeley city code actually seems somewhat difficult to find from a first party source. Just want to make sure this wasn't an off the cuff remark.

[1]: https://ballotpedia.org/Oakland,_California,_Measure_S,_Nonc...

[2]: https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco,_California,_Non-Citiz...

This seems weird. I’m all in favor of getting rid of legislated parking minimums, but it seems to me that, if a developer thinks that adding parking is more economical, they should be allowed to do so.

I live in a UK city and I've read the plans for the building I live in, it was submitted twice before it was accepted. Nobody had a problem with the interiors, they're nice which is why I bought one. But the original plan was rejected in the 1980s for lack of parking -everybody needs two cars right?. The same plan (with internal upgrades, nobody wants 1980s bathrooms in a 21st century home) was submitted twenty years later and now it had too much parking. So they removed some spaces and it got the OK. Today it is 0.8 spaces per unit.

Mandated minimums for parking are stupid, but so are mandated maximums. This is one of those cases where the invisible hand will approximate an alright solution (and I say that as someone who finds market efficiency arguments generally uncompelling). Even along transit lines, some developers may choose to add extra parking as a unique value proposition to those who need it.

Here in Tokyo, lots of people have cars that just stay parked at home most of the time, only used for weekend trips. They don't use them for normal stuff because 1) public transit is generally convenient and 2) there's no convenient (or affordable) parking in most parts of the city.

The key to all of this is parking. Parking takes of a LOT of space in a city. Here, there's no requirements about parking: you can build as much or as little as you like. Land is highly valuable, so land owners generally only allocate as much land to parking as makes sense to them economically. So apartments don't have that much (and those spaces cost a lot), and most businesses don't have any. There are some privately-owned parking lots/garages, but they cost a small fortune, and might not be that close to your destination anyway. If you want to buy a building in a dense area, tear it down, and build a parking, lot, you're free to do so, but it would usually be a stupid way to spend your money, so it doesn't happen.

getaround is quite expensive tbh, it was much better to just have a relationship with an existing car rental that you could just muni to and pick up - difference between ~$40 and ~$100

You cannot build better roads because cars are bad, so rush hour is just a polluting nightmare. You cannot have better public transportation because there will be at least one person that going to block it for any number of reasons.

What if I have kids? There’s a million reasons your solution is awful.

Rent a car. Millions of people do it just fine

> What if I don’t want to ride a bike

Deal with it

> the weather is bad

Deal with it

> What if I have kids

Kids ride bikes just fine.

I don’t think people with infants and toddlers expect them to ride a bike. Taking kids around to their clubs and sports, etc isn’t practical.

I’m happy almost no one thinks like you do. You sound miserable. I hope you recover.

Tons of parents around here use cargo bikes - my son went to daycare ~5 miles away on the back of mine and still hops on the back for longer trips in grade school. With e-assist it’s faster than driving, way less stressful and expensive, and the difference is that kids love getting on bikes in a way that they don’t riding in cars because they can see so much more of the world.

Obviously, you've never been to Japan. I see infants and toddlers on (their parents') bikes all the time. Parents regularly carry 2 kids on a bike with them.

When it comes to housing the US seems to suffer some kind of disability that makes it impossible to not be tempted to steer towards a planned economy.

modern city planners have realized that car centric cities does not scale. ie. if you want to city that scales to Tokyo levels it needs mostly to rely on transit schemes.

The US has an (alas, quite new) history of overindexing on cars. moves like this will drive the development faster than the market alone.

however, parallel to this, tax for roads in cities should be increased and passed on to car owners. (in Denmark we pay 150% tax on cars. and that is on top of the 25% VAT we already pay) - right now car owners are being handed prime land almost for free in the US.

I think the problem goes further though, but maybe once the fears of "congestion" are gone the fear of shadows and "becoming Manhattan" won't need able to hold us back

Rather the inverse; they have more money because they haven't spent it on things yet.

Although it's not a good general metaphor because strawberries are a consumption good and not used for your income like a car is.

It feels good to say cars are bad and implement parking maximums, but similar to the Neighborhood preservation rules in Berkeley, it’s really negatively impacting those without wealth.

Not for those with small children. Unless you have a private chauffeur, transporting a family to somewhere without parking that is poorly served by transit is a pain. And if you’re going somewhere where traffic patterns make light rail favorable but you need last-mile transportation that isn’t well-served by transit, I guess you need two chauffeurs so that you send one ahead to meet you at the fair end of the train?

My theory has always been that, if policy makers want people to use cars less, they should make the alternatives better instead of making cars worse.

I also agree on your theory. We should not be making cars worse but the alternative better. That should happen first. We can implement parking maximums but that is not going to fix the roadblocks on getting better public transit.

My point is that rules like this impact the lower socioeconomic individuals.

I also like Dingbats. And parking.

Removing parking minimums is a noble idea, but one thing I have noticed is that the new “parking free” apartment buildings in San Francisco, such as the Tenderloin and SOMA, are having a hard time getting all of their units filled, even with prices slashed. This is a problem that buildings with parking seem to not have. Even with good transit, the city is much easier to navigate by car. People who have the means to drive, will mostly drive when factoring decisions like this:

Today I went from Church/Market to Chestnut/Fillmore in the Marina on public transit, which took me about 40 minutes. If I was going to drive my car, 15 minutes.

In Berkeley, there are also buses that traverse every major street, BART cutting through downtown and then over to North Berkeley, but it is significantly more difficult to get everything done without a car - food deserts abound, and the main retail and entertainment areas are also lopsided on the east side of town, with the other being 4th street, which is more like a destination retail area - CB2, Apple.

Without a 1:1 ratio of parking, we gain an abundance of traffic congestion in people circling blocks to find a parking spot on the street.

If parking is available for rent in less than a 1:1 ratio, the affluent - with the deeded parking space in their market rate apartments - usually end up with the few parking spots in a development, on the idea that they can afford to pay premiums for it. Below Market Rate units usually only have a few spots available for multiple residents to pay for at full price.

Parking imbalances give credence to the idea that cars are exclusive, everyone else should take the bus. Its not easy to force people to give up their cars.

This is self-correcting. Minimums only ensure an inappropriate amount of parking will be built

It can't be if the regulation prohibits building parking for each home, as in this case.

Building housing units without parking just externalizes the problem and makes the whole neighborhood worse. People still need a car, so if they can't have parking they will have to find it on the streets somewhere, which is worse for everyone involved.

I've lived in a neighborhood where apartment buildings didn't have enough parking for residents, it was not pretty. Constant fights over parking, vandalized cars, people circling four hours looking for a spot. Nothing good came out of that.

How would that solve it? There still aren't enough spots.

If you do unreserved spaces through parking meters or resident window stickers, people are still stuck doing all the same things (circling for hours, getting into fights).

To solve that you'd need to have reserved street spots so people are guaranteed which spot is theirs. So now you have to staff up enforcement and towing so the spots they reserved is available. But wait.. so we're back to dedicated spots, but in a less convenient and more cumbersome way. So to solve that, just have the apartment buildings themselves provide the spot for each resident. So we're full circle back to where we started.

As long as cars are needed (in the US, they are needed) the optimal solution is for each housing unit to provide it built-in, instead of externalizing the problem onto the neighborhood.

Anyway pricing means that people can allocate the scarce resource of land in a city efficiently.

That's a good question, difficult to answer in the general sense.

At the individual level the answer seems very easy. Of course I wouldn't want it to be illegal to live however you want or configure your apartment however you like, with or without parking! You do you.

But what about the next owner? If the very first owner gets to spec the apartment however they like (before it gets built) and opts for no parking that's fine. But later they sell it and the next owner needs a car so now they join the street parking scene. Multiply this by all the units and over time it's a problem.

Because ultimately housing lasts for a very long time. That new building is likely to stand there for a century or more, so those initial decisions of how many parking spots it has vs. units will last for a very long time, far beyond the preferences of the first buyer. So it's not that easy.

OK, they can pay market rate for street parking.

Ultimately what I see you proposing is denying people homes because you want to use public land to store your private property free of charge.

See previous response for why this does not work. Either the street spots are first come first served which does not solve anything, or they are reserved which creates unnecessary inefficiency.

> Ultimately what I see you proposing is denying people homes because you want to use public land to store your private property free of charge.

I'm advocating the exact opposite.

I'm saying it never works well if residents have to participate in the street parking scene because residents are by definition there every night/day, so they need a dedicated spot. And the optimal way to provide that, is for the building they live in to have a spot for them (which they pay for, in either rent or mortgage).

That's why mandated parking minimums are still the best compromise solution. Anything else just externalizes the problem which is worse for everyone.

You can build parking! Just don't force people to build it when price signals indicate housing is a more valuable use of said land.

Yes, of course it does. The goal ultimately is to create livable housing, not just pack the maximum numbers of units into a space without practical considerations. Everything is a compromise.

I mentioned above what happens when you build apartments without enough parking: Constant fights over parking, vandalized cars, people circling four hours looking for a spot.

> You can build parking!

Where?

You can't build parking after the fact into an apartment building. It had to be designed in before construction started. If the building is already done and doesn't have enough parking, it will never have enough parking. You'd have to tear it down and that's too disruptive and expensive, will never get done.

(I am assuming city blocks which are fully built-out already. If there's a bunch of empty land nearby there probably is no parking problem either so this is all a moot point.)

> Just don't force people to build it when price signals indicate housing is a more valuable use of said land.

Capitalism always seeks maximum profit, not a sustainable long term solution. In the absence of regulation the builder will maximize units, which is more profit. The problems that arise when new residents realize they won't find street parking only occur after the builder is done and gone, not their problem. They are very happy to externalize the problem to others.

You "can", but that's right up there with spherical cows. Let's be serious.

It will never happen that a recently built apartment building gets demolished because they realize in hindsight that it does not have enough parking. That will never happen.

The problem will simply be externalized to the surrounding neighborhood, good luck in the street parking wars.

It seems obvious to me that parking maximums can do the same thing.

Sure, the US is a bit different in that getting to other cities is more difficult without a car, that's definitely true. However within the city itself? My building has dedicated parking spaces for the residents - as in you can't even get into the garage if you don't have a keyfob that opens the garage doors - and of the neighbours I'm acquainted with, people avoid taking their cars as much as possible. And this isn't due to congestion or whatever, cycling or taking a train/bus/metro is just cheaper & more convenient if we're talking within the Netherlands.

My favorite anecdote about a country getting rid of car infrastructure is actually in the city I live in now, Utrecht, where they replaced a highway with a canal [1], and right now Amsterdam has an initiative to bring the number of cars down drastically. They're getting rid of parking spaces in favor of better, human-friendly spaces, small gardens and things of that variety. There's similar initiatives across the whole country, and they've all worked out pretty amazingly in terms of QoL for people.

The US has a planning issue where life is unlivable unless you drive everywhere, but there's no reason for major cities like SF to have this issue if the people in charge really gave a shit. Having good public transportation is an easily attainable goal for cities with so many resources, yet it keeps getting fucked over by car-centric infrastructure.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restor...

I own a car myself and use it regularly for longer road trips the few times of year I do that, but I avoid using my car like the plague if I'm traveling within 90% of the Netherlands.

Now upzone the city, oh dear it’s utter gridlock.

Edit: but actually forbidding the building of parking is just as misguided as requiring it. Did not initially see that it was actually proposed to be prohibited rather than simply not required.

Have lived in SOMA for the past 9 years or so. No car. Works great.

To be fair I think of The Avenues and the Marina as almost another planet. It’s easier to get to Oakland than over there. Although I do run past the Marina every weekend, but most people don’t do weekly 16mile runs just for fun.

In my area most daily trips are easier by bicycle or public transit than by car. My gym is 15min by car, 12min by bicycle, 20min by bus, and 25min by foot away. During rush hour, which is when I go to the gym, that car trip easily turns into 20min+. I can literally outpace cars uphill on my bicycle thanks to slight fudging around red lights.

Cities stop being "easy to navigate by car" when they have too many cars around. And car-congested streets are also very hostile to bikes and pedestrians, so it's very hard to correct the problem once it gets ingrained. So it makes sense to give the latter uses high priority, and keep car use as a rare exception.

Also, if you price street parking appropriately people don't need to circle for blocks.

Cars _are_ exclusive. They're one of those things where the more people get them, the worse the experience is for existing users. It makes sense to price their negative externalities appropriately.

> instead of mandating the redevelopment of blighted formerly-industrial

Economically infeasible as there isn't currently a way to rehabilitate contaminated land and hope to break even on development. More superfund-like efforts at all levels of government need to do the cleanup and then turn things loose for development.

> commercial areas and dying malls with boarded-up Macy's and Fry's

Couldn't agree more, those areas should be turned into fantastic mixed-use development neighbourhoods. That shouldn't be exclusive to tearing down generations of bad zoning exclusions and restrictions.

> prevent groundwater percolation

Advocating for affordable water management solutions being made part of any substantial renovation or re-devleopment like permeable pavement makes a lot of sense. I'd want to make sure it doesn't become another barrier that keeps construction costs high, but there isn't a reason better water management and infill density can't go hand in hand.

And you make a lot of unsupported assumptions about commercial areas all being contaminated. It's absurd. Commercial areas are rapidly redeveloped all the time. I've seen condos go up on the site of an auto-paint shop in a matter of months, even in CA.

Then there are the shams regarding "mass transit corridors," used to excuse even more concessions to developers. You know what's considered a "mass transit corridor" in CA? ONE ZIPCAR in a four-block area. ONE. And what happens when that car gets moved or destroyed? Tear down all the buildings?

And, even if it were possible to integrate groundwater management effectively while allowing massive ground coverage, it's NOT BEING DONE. It's too late; the laws are on the books. Gross omissions like these testify that these laws are handouts and shams, hurriedly rushed through during holiday sessions or piggybacked onto other bills to avoid public scrutiny.

So people can petulantly downvote all they want. The fact remains that these bills and these ridiculous claims that destroying single-family-home neighborhoods will "solve the homeless crisis" are a massive rip-off that won't solve the problem.

Meanwhile, in addition to the disused properties gathering weeds in non-residential areas today, states are ignoring the biggest threat to home ownership: corporate buy-ups of entire neighborhoods. It's well-documented that home ownership is the best way to build wealth, but the scourge of corporate home-hoarding is putting homes PERMANENTLY out of reach for millions more Americans every year. Yet it's ignored by politicians.

Gee, I wonder why.

But they put it on the market, so won't different developers compete and bid up the price, eating up potential profits? Calling it a handout is incorrect.

That comment was specifically about industrial, not commercial. We agree on redeveloping unused commercial space, but I suspect you wouldn't be interested in the sort of mid-rise mixed use neighbourhood I would be.

Your complaints basically all boil down to change isn't perfect, therefore it shouldn't happen. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. The solution is to advocate for the aspects of better zoning and building codes you'd like to see, not just cynically declare the entire enterprise doomed.

> handouts to developers because they guarantee that a developer can buy one house and put up 10 units (in CA, for example) without any opposition or time-consuming permitting process

That isn't a handout. That's preventing NIMBYs from tying development up so tightly it's impossible to build anything. Handouts would be giving away public land for a song or massive subsidies to build. Developers still have to pay the going rate to acquire the property.

> the laws are on the books

The linked law is not on the books, it's a proposal.

Just like giving homeless people food is just handouts to farmers.

> targeting already-residential neighborhoods instead of mandating the redevelopment of blighted formerly-industrial and -commercial areas and dying malls with boarded-up Macy's and Fry's.

No neighborhood should ever allowed to be only restricted single family home. There is absolutely no justification for that what so ever.

Things like four-plex are the very minimum that should be allowed.

In addition to that you should also rearrange the tax and fee structures. The reality is, single family homes never actual pay their own way. They are a subsidy from the poor to the rich. Single family homes should pay more taxes and more fees.

And in addition to that, you shouldn't allow housing only zones, no zone should be without low-impact commercial. In Japans system, there is no purely housing zone for example.

But you are also correct that there is far to much commercially zoned. All commercial zones should be approved for mixed use zoning.

> "The ensuing housing shortage caused mass homelessness." What a crock. That doesn't even make sense.

They are called homeless. Not enough people have housing. But I'm sure actual houses have nothing to do with it.

There's plenty of justification for allowing people to choose what type of neighborhood they want to live in. Downtown L.A. is not "full." If you want high-density living, that's already available. There's no reason to destroy already-residential neighborhoods when there are tracts of disused non-residential areas to convert into housing, or high-density areas that aren't fully occupied.

Nothing in these laws helps the homeless. Nothing. If you're eating from garbage cans, you're not going to be able to buy the "luxury" housing that developers are going to build, nor the ONE "affordable" unit they're required to include to get all kinds of waivers.

What we are talking about is going from ridiculously low density that was literately created to keep out 'negros' to another form of low density zoning.

That the actual reality, acting like 2 families living is the same as Hong Kong is just fearmongering.

> Nothing in these laws helps the homeless. Nothing. If you're eating from garbage cans,

See the problem is you don't actually understand homelessness. You have one image in your head of what homeless is, and you can't see beyond that.

There are lots of people who have jobs and live in their cars. And there are plenty of people who start out that way and their situation gets worse.

You have people now living in cheap apartment blocks, those people might have the money to move to a newly built four-plex. That leaves an opening in an apartment block. Then somebody from a shelter might be able to move in. People go from older buildings into newer, leaving those housing units available.

This is the actual mechanism that you need to employ on all level to lower rents and make more space available for affordable apartments.

> nor the ONE "affordable" unit they're required to include to get all kinds of waivers.

Forcing developers to build 'affordable' units is the wrong approach.

https://www.kvue.com/amp/article/money/economy/boomtown-2040...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38855427

We are capable of great things here in Berkeley, primarily in comedy, jazz, and food. I wouldn't expect much out of our local government.

My city upzoned the entire city from 1 to 3 units per lot across the whole city a few years ago, which is great. Except they left a parking minimum of 1 per unit, setback requirements, lot coverage maximums, and height restrictions that make it nearly impossible to build additional units that are fit for habitation. A policy that looks great at a glance is awful in practice. I looked into adding a rental unit in my backyard with an architect. The limits resulted in something that would have to be under 400 sq ft / 37 sq m and would be awful to live in.

To their credit the city is now looking at moving to 4 units per lot by right and as part of that process is considering fixing some of the gaps they left the last time, but it illustrates the need to look at zoning codes very closely to make sure the intended development is actually allowed (or question if the gaps are being left on purpose).

That would encourage development and encourage making additional reforms to accommodate any unseen / unaddressed issues with the reform

Seems like magical thinking.

In addition to what you mentioned. There are also issues with building regulation as well.

The city should work with architects to develop models for housing types that are pre-approved. Such as four-plex that fit into single family neighborhoods. So developers can just pick those up and get building in a short period of time.

Maybe I'm late to the party, but I recently found out some cities are doing exactly that and I'd love to see it become extremely common. South Bend, IN is an example that has plans ready to be used of housing that is reasonably affordable to build. I'd love to see even more multi-family options, but let's not have perfect be the enemy of good.

In my city I'd love to have a catalogue of ADUs shapes and configurations I could just add by right.

https://southbendin.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/SBBT_Cata...

There is a related conversation that our building codes have gone too far and are driving up costs due to the space and materials required to comply, and yet I also like bathrooms with grab handles and wide doorways for accessibility. Tricky problem (though we need to kill the 2 stair rule for low and mid-rise apartments asap. There are tons of modern ways to prevent and suppress fires that don't require anywhere near the expense or form-constricting compliance).

I'd assume that between setbacks, parking minimums, height limits, and floor-area-ratio requirements, they're going to end up changing basically nothing.

> All density limits for the R-1, R-2 and R-1A zones have been removed. Any number of homes can be built, provided the building does not exceed 3 stories, with a 4 foot side or rear setback and 15-20 foot front yards. In practice, this will allow about 6 to 10 homes on most city parcels.

> Allow 60% of a parcel to be developed, up from the 30 - 45% standard. No floor area ratio requirements.

> No parking is required per the city’s climate change anti-driving policy.

The article also mentions that under the status quo most of these parcels can only see 1-2 homes.

US building codes aren't national but local. The local may point to one of the national association standards like the IBC or NFPA standards and such. But they then add/remove from those standards as they like.

This is a problem people need to take up on local level.

I know. Nobody else does though.

They still have enough other changes that we can't build something like a cavernous old NYC apartment, though I don't remember the other issues. I think it might be related to nobody wanting to build condos because they'll get sued for it.

Single family homes are literally the least efficient use of space. They are the reason there isn't enough space for parks in the first place.

I agree that you might more schools, but given how much lower the birthrate is, the existing facilities are likely ok.

Maybe you you'd be interesting in buying a bridge which I'd gladly sell to you?

I am not surprised.

I believe the national org is now YIMBY and most chapters are, but there are certainly many progressive/environmental orgs that have blocked construction for decades.

https://sf.curbed.com/2020/2/6/21122825/affordable-housing-h...

The Sierra Club are liberal activists with zero historically left wing affiliations or common causes. It's entirely irrelevant as far as I can tell.

If you are saying it's "not truly left wing" then that scenes like a high bar. Sure, there are plenty of orgs to the left of them, but they seem even more anti new housing.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-...

https://knock-la.com/of-course-republicans-are-yimbys-5a2ef0...

I am optimistic things are shifting. I know DSA members who are YIMBY's, but I don't think historically that's been the case.

The DSA, however, might be a better candidate for a relative comparison, but it is still effectively just a liberal organization, despite it insisting otherwise. No historically left wing agenda would take any side in the shortsighted NIMBY/YIMBY dichotomy, both of which presume capitalism marks the end of history, which is definitionally a right wing position insofar as it effectively reinforces the established order (capitalism). A left wing agenda under a capitalist society must pursue progress while also undermining profit. The NIMBY/YIMBY dichotomy simply offers no capacity for that, meaning it is right wing by default.

These are of course contextual political categories but, by virtue of the enlightenment that produced them and the inherent forward direction of history, they can only become more complicated over time rather than more simplified. The definitions you're insisting on are strictly deteriorations of meanings and distinctions; they add nothing whatsoever to the discourse. With all due respect, their contribution is mere idiocy. It's the propaganda of American exceptionalism, a well documented anti-history that thankfully hasn't penetrated in every part of the world. I hope we can keep it that way for a bit longer.

If everyone is ignorantly incorrect maybe it’s just a different thing now.

I agree it has less utility as a word / set of words though.

This is the point I think you are missing. No definitions are "changed" because there is nothing new. It is only regression. It's anti-intellectual at best. Humanity can only become more ignorant as a result. By virtue of enlightenment principles, the only acceptable way forward is to question why such a degenerate tendency has arisen and consider what to do about it.

While not all anti-growth sentiment is left-wing (there are some right-leaning areas of California, particularly in the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills, that also have slow-growth or no-growth policies for maintaining "quality of life" and "rural character"), much of the anti-growth sentiment along the coast traditionally had an environmentalist and grassroots community preservationist flavor to it, with opposition to "developers" who threaten it.

We should all be grateful for those. The proposals to put freeways across SF would have ruined the city. Similar freeway construction did ruin other cities all over the USA, and was especially horrible for working-class neighborhoods that got bulldozed in the name of "progress" (i.e. the convenience of unsustainable car commuters from the suburbs).

Your definition is overly narrow. Were the Nazis left wing or were they fighting to preserve Weimar? Is the contemporary far right fighting to maintain the current status quo? Was overturning Roe v Wade aligned with left wing interests or right wing? Etc.

>Were the Nazis left wing or were they fighting to preserve Weimar?

They were right wing by every account. Any doubt was universally discarded with the Night of the Long Knives. No serious historians disagree with this.

>Is the contemporary far right fighting to maintain the current status quo?

Definitely. The current status quo is capitalism and all stripes of the right, including both the Republicans and Democrats in the US, merely represent the interests of different capitalists, including the minority who insist their desires are closer to feudalism (like Peter Thiel).

>Was overturning Roe v Wade aligned with left wing interests or right wing? Etc.

It's only right wing under capitalism, due to the drastically unequal burden of raising children under capitalism.

Furthermore, defending Roe v Wade alongside the Hyde ammendment (as the Democrats do) is also right wing. The Hyde ammendment is a strictly economic measure that outlaws subsidizing abortion services with tax revenue, ever further dividing the rich from the poor.

A left wing effort would have focused on overturning the Hyde ammendment decades ago in addition to codifying Roe v Wade, but doing so would undermine the tremendously profitable American heathcare system so the Democrats (a right wing party) would never consider it. Note Obamacare was a windfall for the healthcare industry, a key donor of the Democratic Party.

Upzoning doesn't guarantee increased development as developers only build when it makes financial sense to do so, and flooding the market with more units would decrease the potential profit they can make.

Existing residents who don't develop their land usually end up with a big windfall of higher land prices, because their large lot sizes could have many more housing units built on it with new upzoning laws.

Now, they still might revolt for other reasons, like not wanting undesirables like people poorer than themselves to move in next door, or not wanting to see as many houses in their morning walk, but from a financial sense, upzoning is a big positive for existing landowners.

This is a very uncharitable take. People choose a place to live based on criteria they like. If you want to live in a super dense city you might gravitate to Manhattan. If you want to live in a quiet suburb you end up in such a place.

If suddenly that reality is torn down and substituted for something you didn't want, it's going to hurt. If you wanted a quiet suburb and you found it, you won't be happy if suddenly all your neighbor houses are torn down and replaced with apartment buildings. It has nothing to do with "not wanting undesirables". It is because the conditions they wanted and bought into are no longer there.

> from a financial sense, upzoning is a big positive for existing landowners

Except for house flippers, people don't care about the financial sense. A house is a home, in a place they like. Telling someone that the neighborhood they cared about it no longer a reality but it's ok because they made money, will not satisfy anyone. It's not about money.

You should go to a city council meeting and see how NIMBY homeowners behave. It is impossible to be worse than they are and it's impossible to describe them uncharitably.

You can say "they just like their neighborhoods" all you like but they hate poor people, young people, richer people, anyone who might park a car in front of their house, anyone who might use all the parking spots at the grocery store, any men (they'll molest their daughters, you know), and anyone who might approve a cell phone tower (it'll give them 5G cancer).

The above will be communicated half in claims they've lived there longer than you and you're a developer shill / corporate plant and half in death threats.

You paint with a very broad brush. I have no doubt that for each aspect you list, you can indeed find an example of some extremist who hates it.

But the average regular person doesn't particularly hate any of these, they just want to live in their home in an area they like.

> You can say "they just like their neighborhoods"

I assume you have selected place(s) to live? Did you have any criteria for selecting the area?

Most people have a list of things they absolutely want, and deal breakers they won't put up with. So you find a home that meets these. This is what I mean by they like the neighborhood they selected when making that decision.

Is it at all surprising that after they selected a suitable neighborhood, they don't particularly want it to transform into something completely different that no longer meets any of their criteria?

No I don't, this is realistic. You can easily experience it anytime you like. They're also on Nextdoor if you can't go to any planning meetings.

> I have no doubt that for each aspect you list, you can indeed find an example of some extremist who hates it.

The problem is the political system is set up to only listen to these people, because urban planners are embarrassed about when they did urban renewal, and now they make up for it for every new project by delaying it until someone like this tells them to cancel it and then cancelling it.

> I assume you have selected place(s) to live? Did you have any criteria for selecting the area?

Walkable to a grocery store. Obviously it can close, but I can't stop that from happening.

And we're not supposed to care what these people want; they have influence over their property. They don't have influence over the "neighborhood" because they're not paying for it.

> Walkable to a grocery store. Obviously it can close, but I can't stop that from happening.

But I bet you'd be unhappy if you chose this place specifically for the walkable grocery store and suddenly it's gone and now you need to drive. Maybe you don't even have a car, or even parking, because you built your life plans around the choice to walk to the grocery. Surely you'd be quite sad and probably annoyed by all that, suddenly having rearrange your life in a big way (either move, or get a car and parking).

(Also, people do protest and lobby for stores to remain open all the time. Sometimes they succeed sometimes they don't.)

> And we're not supposed to care what these people want; they have influence over their property. They don't have influence over the "neighborhood" because they're not paying for it.

That is a very dystopian world to live in. The whole point of society is that there are common norms in an area. If you're not allowed to have a voice about anything except what you financially own, that's a bleak future.

I would say the point of housing abundance is to make moving easy. This is both the best way to increase customer power vs landlords and the best way to let people reduce their commutes as their life circumstances change (like where their job is and where their children go to school).

> The whole point of society is that there are common norms in an area. If you're not allowed to have a voice about anything except what you financially own, that's a bleak future.

There's room for it, but overly local democracy is usually bad because it's more corrupt and people pursue things that are against the interests of every other local area. In particular because of Prop 13 in CA, everyone wants the job sites but not the employee housing.

That's an interesting take, although I can't agree these are related.

It's not scarcity of housing that keep people from moving, it is that moving is mostly undesirable once you settle somewhere. If both spouses have a job and kids in school, you have three sites anchoring you there. And you like your neighbors and friends in the area and you like the neighborhood. Why would I move, even if there is an infinite supply of housing?

Maybe the underlying truth is merely "I don't like change", but the actual literal reasons given by many people when blocking development in their neighbourhoods in my city are not saying they don't want change, it's far more targeted at the kinds of people who will move in. I tend to operate on the assumption that the true reasons they have for not wanting development are worse than what they will voice in public, and at least certainly not better.

> Except for house flippers, people don't care about the financial sense.

I agree that typically this isn't the issue; the person I responded to did seem to think it might be though.

While the proposals here can be implemented on a local level, any change to prop 13 would be a state level ballot proposition.

(For the record, I'd love to see reform of prop 13. While I love the idea of smoothing out over a number of years the impact of sudden inflation or increases in local housing prices on existing residents, it should be a smoothing rather than an entitlement for long term owners of multi-million dollar homes to avoid property taxes.)

This doesn't really matter; developers aren't a cartel and they don't care if the margin on new projects goes down. They only have to care that the smaller margin goes to them and not someone else.

(To the extent they are a cartel, it's because they got one enforced by downzoning, because only legal force can keep people in the cartel.)

https://www.fresheconomicthinking.com/p/upzoning-predictions...

For one example of how upzoning alone doesn't result in developers exceeding the market saturation rate.

To be clear, I support upzoning but I think it should be accompanied with an increase in the holding cost of land, so landowners are incentivised to develop now rather than later.

The US does tons of this on the demand side already, but of course if you limit supply too hard that just makes everything infinitely expensive.

Rents right now are an unreliable indicator because they are heavily affected by the downtown blights that are spreading in many cities.

Sale prices are much more reliable, and Minneapolis prices (as expected) grew: https://www.redfin.com/city/10943/MN/Minneapolis/housing-mar...

> Do you have a single data point to back up your assertion?

Is there any case of increased density causing a reduction in housing costs?

Manhattan is the most dense area in the US. It is also the most expensive.

If density reduced cost, one might think Manhattan should be the cheapest?

Can you mention a city that massively increased density and the consequence was reduced cost? I'm very curious to know which ones?

""" Notably, intensively-developed properties decrease in value relative to similar dwellings that were not upzoned, showing that the large-scale upzoning had an immediate depreciative effect on pre-existing intensive housing. """

Or this https://research.upjohn.org/up_workingpapers/307/

""" . Next, I combine the address histories with a simulation model to estimate that building 100 new market-rate units leads 45-70 and 17-39 people to move out of below-median and bottom-quintile income tracts, respectively, with almost all of the effect occurring within five years. This suggests that new construction reduces demand and loosens the housing market in low- and middle-income areas, even in the short run. """ To give some random examples

The summary of the paper seems sound, can't disagree.

But then, why have we never seen these effects at a macro level, citi-wide?

How come there are no examples of an expensive city that became cheap as density increased?

See https://www.fresheconomicthinking.com/p/the-auckland-myth-th...

Let's start by defining "cheaper" as "cheaper rent" specifically. Rent will only decrease or stabilise when supply outstrips the absorption rate of the market. In New Zealand, for example, at least one analyst sees the equilibrium absorption rate of rentals to be 2.5% vacancies to total rentals. This means that to make rents go down (or stop going up at the same rate as household income), the available rentals must be greater than 2.5% of the total rentals.

One way to achieve that is to build a whole lot of housing and rent it out, far in excess of population growth in a city. To enable building a whole lot of housing, you can upzone a city. However, increasing potential housing does not actually increase the amount of housing.

To do that, you need to actually build houses. Now, anyone who wants to build a house will usually only do so if it makes financial sense to do so; essentially, when the risk-adjusted return on investment is high enough. Upzoning doesn't really change the risk-adjusted return on investment for developing a house.

Now, lowering rents WILL change the risk-adjusted RoI for building a house; it will LOWER the RoI! So builders will stop building when rents start decreasing, because the financials stop making sense. This is a natural hand-brake on (private) house-building rates, regardless of upzoning. Build enough housing to lower rents, and house builders will stop building houses!

----

The kind of counter-factual we are looking for is not really expensive cities that become cheap as density increases, because density brings about more jobs, income, competition, and so on that mixes in with housing data as confounding variables.

Instead, we want: cities where rent as a proportion of disposable income goes down, while increasing population and density. Most likely, any city in that situation is going to be increasing housing units faster than population growth.

The next part of the analysis would be to figure out how they managed to do that despite absorption rates being a handbrake on the market :)

----

A side-note; Auckland, which did upzone in ~2016 and again more recently, has not had a notable reduction in rent as a proportion of household income, despite increased density. Population growth meant that it hasn't really beaten the absorption rate of the market, except during Covid (lots of house-building going on at the same time as population decrease).

This is why I tend to question the YIMBY war cry of build build build until rent is affordable, as unrealistic. As you say, the build rate has to be consistently above the absorption rate. But that seems quite unlikely since builders are not chasing diminishing profits.

That's why don't see real world examples of cities that become denser and denser while becoming more affortable (relative to income, as you point out).

If you can build a 100 floor skyscraper on a piece of land, that land is insanely valuable!

If you could build 100 floor skyscrapers in the entire metropolitan area, this advantage goes away.

No. I'm reading it exactly right. Density _causes_ higher prices. It makes it easier to create jobs near dense locations, which in turn makes it more attractive for people to move in. This in turn increases housing costs.

There should be plenty of different levels of density for people to choose to live in as everyone has different preferences. What's not sustainable in any way is exclusive single family zoning. If, as so many backers of exclusionary zoning claim, people only want to live in SFH, why would we need a law to force that to be the only built form? Surely every single unit built of any other type would fail to find a resident.

This had the effect of driving all the developers into fewer land parcels, hiking up prices. New York has not substantially deviated from this zoning model since then.

it's not a good look. hope my comment doesn't flag me in unforeseen ways 20 years from now.

To be clear, I'm saying effectively yep need bedrock otherwise it makes zero actual sense. (I do take you point, and lesson learned on my part)

That's because rising house prices means rising property taxes.

California has a bizarre problem where the most expensive areas to live cannot fund their schools. Cupertino, the city of Apple's HQ, median home selling price over 2 million dollars - relies on state funds to pay for its public school district, since local property taxes aren't enough:

https://siliconvalleythings.medium.com/why-do-silicon-valley...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

I will not get a larger house because my property taxes would triple if I wanted another bedroom. A marginally larger house is not worth the marginal cost to move.

And with my 2.8% refinanced mortgage and 60% equity, and current rates today, there's no chance I'd sell.

It's a dream of mine to build a custom home, I can afford it, but I'm not willing to put up with a multi year struggle to get a house approved.

What neighborhood?

The largest gap I've been able to find is ~2.5x, the one you mention is more than 5x.

And in South Berkeley, I pay almost $30k/year. Neighbor pays $3.5k.

https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/

Thanks for the link, I had seen that site before but forgotten about it.

Have you confirmed that 3.5k number with the neighbor, or is it from the website?

I see a few large errors on that site for my neighborhood, so can't really trust it.

There is one house similar to mine shown as paying less than one fifth property tax. But if I look up the tax history in zillow, it's not true, their property tax history is quite similar to mine.

Then there are two interesting cases, where their property tax is shown as minuscule, less than $1k. And interestingly, zillow agrees.

But here's the interesting part: looking at the history in zillow, it shows that both these houses were paying around $9K in property tax and then suddenly one year it dropped to $900.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there is any mechanism in California property tax code that makes it possible for the property tax to drop like that.

I know one can request a revision if the market drops significantly (like in 2008) but this is not that, it dropped to 1/10th of previous value! And these are all very similar homes from a mass produced builder, they're all within a handful percentage of each other in estimated market price. None of the other houses in the neighborhood dropped in assessed value like that.

So I'm guessing it is just a typo or otherwise bad data from the county, feeding into both zillow and this website.

I should add: The $900 property tax shown is quite a bit less than the property tax on year one when these houses were built in the 90s. Which seems quite impossible, so I conclude the data is wrong.

But all the tax bills are published (though in a harder to navigate format) on the country website. I went and checked all my neighbors property taxes there when signs against a modest tax increase for road fixing started going up in the neighborhood.

As for property tax drop: there are such mechanisms, like those in the Mills act. They’re not easy to use though

You can compare in zillow which lists it year by year (though some data is missing).

> As for property tax drop: there are such mechanisms, like those in the Mills act.

I looked up Mills act, it is for designated historical buildings.

These are cookie-cutter houses, all built by the same builder during the same year in the 90s. No designated historical buildings here, so that's not it.

First year after being built in the 90s that house paid near $3K in property taxes. I'm pretty sure there is no mechanism for it to actually pay $900 in property taxes in 2024. It's just bad data in the system.

To add to my previous comment, for my neighborhood, if one thought all the numbers there are true, there is 15x multiplier from the cheapest property tax to the most expensive. Which sounds wild.

But if you take out the obviously wrong values, the multiplier from lowest to highest tax is actually only ~2.5x. And that's lowest to highest. The mean difference is far less, under $1K.

One might say there shouldn't be any multiplier, perhaps. But the point is that the impact of Prop13 is often far overstated.

I bought my house, substantially the same, for 800k, currently worth about 1.5M.

I'm in Pleasanton.

If you look at prime-earning-age householders in the Census, Berkeley is way off the scale.

"Berkeley's housing expenses are 198% higher than the national average and the utility prices are 30% higher than the national average. Transportation expenses like bus fares and gas prices are 34% higher than the national average."

It’s very high.

Congestion may get worse in some places but the status quo is people commuting from places like Antioch to get to service jobs in Berkeley/Oakland/SF so from a "vehicle miles traveled" perspective it might get better.

In general, rents for the dense housing have declined the most.

This is because the Bay Area is a highly desirable place to live and will continue to get more so as climate change gets worse but the Bay Area stays gorgeous.

Crime is a problem to solve in any Western urban area and is particularly bad here now. Congestion is another problem to solve.

Manhattan has solved both to a degree. I’d imagine we can too.

And Napa is dry, rural, and has no employment options.

SFBA OTOH: Temperate, verdant, urban, and swimming in jobs.

I do like Sacramento and Napa. But they are very different lifestyles, despite being so close.

Also, it's very difficult to build in Napa, due to water availability. Sacramento is easier, and it gets even easier as you get farther out...but fewer people want to.

Napa is more green than the SFBA in general. It also is about as hot as most of the Bay Area outside of SF.

> and has no jobs.

Good. Keep asking questions. What caused the lack of jobs?

I didn't say Napa was hot. Sacramento is hot.

But SFBA comprises a large area and large climatic variations. I don't think it's meaningful to consider all 9 (or 13) counties in comparisons, because all things become true. Cold, hot, humid, dry, windy, placid, densely populated, sparsely so.

If you're asking why SF is SF and Sacramento is Sacramento, then I don't think there is a satisfying answer. If you're trying to lead me to a preexisting conclusion, I'd prefer that you just engage directly.

All that matters is proximity to jobs. Sacramento doesn't have a lot of them (although that is changing now), so it's not attracting significantly more population.

Taking it further -- all that matters is proximity to trade routes. SF has (had) a port, and so it grew first. Jobs resulted. The effects were compounded over years.

Sacramento has a river. The river is why Sacramento is not Vacaville. Also, it was selected as the state capital (partially for the available and inexpensive land!), which has greatly accelerated its growth.

Sacramento is the fastest-growing city in CA. It's actually almost as populous as SF, though of course much less dense. And the job market is good, but the jobs are not the same kind as in SF (and fewer are applicable to the typical HN denizen).

I really don't know what you're going for here. Different places are different, for myriad reasons. It's not as one-dimensional as you seem to suggest.

I said a lot about housing, now let's talk about crime. None of the ultra-liberal West Coast cities will be able to solve it within this decade. It'd likely require a Federal-level intervention by the National Guard, ordered by the Emperor Eric Trump (Long May He Rule).

Dealing with drug and gang crimes requires strict law enforcement with zero tolerance for nonsense. And I don't see Democratic governments doing that. They'll just keep ineffectually repeating nonsense about "solving the root causes", "system racism", "affordable housing", and so on.

I'm the bicycle commuter dude who likes walkable and dense cities. Of course course I want just enough of my own private solitude to retreat to as well. But sign me up for density!

I really am ok with living with less possible surface area if it means i can have walkable access to all civilization's great ideas and achievements.

that doesn't mean ZERO surface area. and it doesn't mean i would take a mcmansion on 5 acres if i could. Really though, I wouldn't if you gave it to me!

but also: come on, Japan is the planet's most economically significant TINY ISLAND. you don't have to reach for capitalist conspiracy theories to reason about Japan's issues.

and i say this as a kind of inevitable anti-capitalist!

But if you ask me to live a life of Suburban commuting, I'd tell you, from experience: that's inhumane.

I'm born and raised in Los Angeles. It's not the absolute worst, but it gives me the credibility I need to say yeah i'd rather literally walk and bike everywhere than suffer the inhumanity of car culture.

and that's what i do.