Lengthy permitting processes are responsible for housing affordability problems in many cities, reports the Washington Post. Of course, I’ve been saying this for nearly two decades, but it doesn’t become true until it is reported in one of our newspapers of record.
While the Post is right about the problem with permitting, the article gets a lot of other things wrong. “Land is obviously part of the problem,” says the article. “San Francisco and Boston, hemmed in by water, have only so much of it left to build on.” Um, not really. The San Francisco Bay Area has built on less than 18 percent of the land available. Just 53 percent of the Massachusetts counties in the Boston metropolitan area have been urbanized, and that doesn’t count parts of the metro area in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Why do people think that water on one side means they can’t expand in the other three directions?
The article never mentions urban-growth boundaries or other artificial constraints on urban expansion. Instead, it says “critics” have “blamed zoning laws.” In fact, zoning by itself isn’t the issue. Houston doesn’t have zoning, while Dallas does, yet both are growing rapidly and about equally affordable. Instead, the problem is urban containment.
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Finally, the Post complains that cities “outlaw denser buildings with single-family zoning,” specifically citing Portland, Oregon restrictions on duplexes in single-family neighborhoods. But the reality is that the demand for duplexes and other multifamily housing is low so long as there is plenty of room to build single-family homes.
The Trulia report correctly points out that approval delays are a significant problem, but itself fails to recognize the relationship between such delays and containment policies. The report includes a variety of indices for 100 urban areas, including zoning restrictions, density restrictions, and state land-use restrictions. However, it doesn’t include an index for urban containment policies. The “supply restrictions index” only counts limits on new building permits issued each year, while the “open space index” only measures whether cities require developers to set aside open space as a part of their projects. By leaving out growth boundaries (found in California, Florida, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and several other states), the report neglects the most important explanation of high housing prices.
In a sense, defenders of urban-growth boundaries are partially correct when they argue that the boundaries by themselves aren’t primarily responsible for making housing expensive. one In addition to permit delays, other factors include high impact fees, inclusionary zoning ordinances, large scale set asides of open spaces, and other policies cities impose on builders when they know builders have nowhere else to go.
But without the boundaries, all the other restrictions would be unimportant, either because cities wouldn’t impose them or, if they did, developers would simply build elsewhere, thus keeping regional housing affordable.
“No, permit delays aren’t connected with zoning; they are connected with urban-growth boundaries. With no boundaries, developers can build wherever they like”
Um, no? If a property is zoned residential, the commercial developers can’t build there, so no, developers can’t build wherever they like. Both are a problem.
Urban growth boundaries are only one part of the problem.
Permit delays are also caused by needing approvals from multiple agencies in some cities and states. Oftentimes, each approval is subject to another approval so the process can be extended way beyond anything reasonably necessary to make a final determination.
Each agency or board which gets to take its shot against the project is its own fiefdom, often without a care for the other agencies’ concerns. They often issue rulings which require you to do something that violates another agency’s rules. Kafka would appreciate the permitting process.
I recently saw a newspaper article cheering on a certain project that every imaginable interest group was in favor of getting done. The last line in the article said, without any comment or complaint: ‘The permitting process is expected to take two years.” For a project that had no opposition.
In 2003 we added onto our house. The permit was approved over the counter in the unincorporated Bay area county. The county had set up one floor of their office building with building inspectors, zoning, fire etc all on the same floor. One had to take a number and wait and plan on being their early in the morning. However, but for example, if building inspection said “you will need fire department approval for sprinklers” you walked across the room and stood in line for the fire department inspection. It worked remarkably well. All building permits should be issued this way. Some cities in the same county took as long as six months for the same process.
We did need a zoning variance, and while I watched the zoning person plugged in software that printed out each of our immediate neighbors addresses onto envelopes to notify them that we had applied for a zoning variance. The efficiency was impressive. There was a delay period for neighbors to comment, but no one complained. Delays may be due to neighbors complaints, but not actually the building inspections, etc. If the zoning was not changed, then there was no delay issuing the building permit.
I see what the AP is saying. Rather than complaining about your neighborhood zoning laws, just move out farther to where the zoning laws are more to your liking. With self-driving cars coming online, there’s no reason to get attached to a particular neighborhood. Instead you can spend more of your valuable time working, sleeping and eating while you ride around in your car.
Great! Could the Antiplanner please show his readers on a map all this available land he’s discovered for the Bay Area to build on?
“Land is obviously part of the problem,” says the article. “San Francisco and Boston, hemmed in by water, have only so much of it left to build on.” Um, not really.
Um, yeah. Land is not unlimited. If it were, it would be cheap as dirt.
Why do people think that water on one side means they can’t expand in the other three directions?
Um, because SF is a peninsula surrounded by water on sides? Perhaps you would suggest turning Golden Gate Park into what? SFHs development?
“The San Francisco Bay Area has built on less than 18 percent of the land available.”
The article was talking about SF; you’ve conflated SF proper with the entire Bay Area. Half the Bay area is comprised of peninsulas, and as the article notes, the parts that aren’t developed are hilly or mountainous. How much would it cost to develop those areas? What would prices be for homes? How much would it affect prices were those hilly and mountainous areas developed? Who would live there? How low would the percentage open spaces in the area have to drop before people no longer wanted to live there?
Finally, who really wants to work in SF and live in Livermore? SF city limit prices will always be high because of limited supply. Accept that fact.
And let’s get real here.
“Um, because SF is a peninsula surrounded by water on sides?”
But there is no water on the south side on the SF peninsular. This is west of Silicon valley where there is a chronic hosing shortage. Use the Greenbelt Alliance map at: http://www.greenbelt.org/greenbelt-mapper/
Click on the “Cities and Roads” and click each box to show the built up area. The rest is open space. Note the amount of open space south of San Francisco and west of Silicon Valley. Also note how much of the SF Bay area is open space. I hike in much of this space regularly and only a very small proportion on the population ever uses it. I suspect that the reason most people think the Bay Area is built up is that they drive on the freeways which run almost continually through built up areas. This gives the impression that the area is built up when in fact there is a great deal of open space. I suspect that if some visible open space had been maintained between cities then the perception of a lack of open space would diminish.
Click on the “Open Space” menu on the map and click on each box. Note that this fills in all undeveloped space, meaning that Greenbelt Alliance does now want any development outside of already developed areas. This seems unreasonable.
There is no proposal to build on Golden Gate Park, etc. But we should consider building on some of the open space that most Bay Area residents are not even aware exists. Keep some open space between cities so that they can see it as they drive from one city to another.
That land is part of the watershed for the water supply. You can’t build on it and expect to keep the water supply safe.
Right, only the small proportion of the population that drinks water.
Come on, Ohai. I like my drinking water with a sheen of motor oil from road runoff. Puts hair on your chest.
According to that map, the entire City of San Francisco consists of Important Watershed Lands. As such, should the entire city be be demolished and returned to its natural, pre-human state? To keep the water supply safe.
“As such, should the entire city be be demolished and returned to its natural, pre-human state?”
Awesome strawman argument. Textbook, really. Who’s arguing that? Nobody. That’s who.
Cities like Portland and Seattle protect their drinking water supply by not only prohibiting development in those areas but by excluding people.
But hey. If you like drinking oil and sewage, you go right ahead.
The level of rhetoric around these here parts has sunk to an all-time low.
Is all the undeveloped land watershed for drinking water? I cannot easily find a map that just shows what is watershed for drinking water. I did find maps that show the entire peninsular as being watershed of one sort or another, but not for drinking water. This map shows unincorporated areas of San Mateo county but doesn’t show actual watershed for reservoirs.
I did find this article http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_29636740/peninsula-watershed-access-delayed
that described how even hikers are denied reasonable access to hike in watershed, which seems excessive. It seems we could allow more building on some undeveloped land and allow more hiking the watershed for the reservoirs.
Note that groups such as Greenbelt Alliance simply have reasons not to develop all undeveloped land. If it is not watershed then they will claim it is for necessary wildlife habitat, etc. They simply do not appear to want any new building outside of existing cities.
“They simply do not appear to want any new building outside of existing cities.”
How much lower would housing prices be if the entire SF Peninsula were to be developed? How much lower would quality of life be if the entire SF Peninsula were to be developed? This question keeps getting ignored, likely because it exposes the absurdity that housing prices are affected more by growth boundaries than demand.
“hikers are denied reasonable access to hike in watershed, which seems excessive.”
If the water sources were privatized, do you think the public would be given access? Think about that for a moment. In this day and age of terrorism and idiots, a privately owned water supply owner would be held liable for contamination and its effects.
Therefore the public is denied access to the San Andreas Reservoir along with five others in the Alameda and Peninsula watersheds, which collect rain and runoff and contribute to SF’s water supply. Some store water from Yosemite.
So, again, if you like the taste of human sewage and oil, build away!
Non sequitur. Look at the map. The entire City of San Francisco consists of Important Watershed Lands, as does San Bruno Mountain State Park. Why is it that San Francisco has buildings all over its Important Watershed Lands without the deleterious effects of drinking oil and sewage but building on the the state park land would result in the population drinking oil and sewage?
I am not talking about building in the watershed of the reservoirs. Only in the none watershed, but allow hiking in the watershed. East Bay MUD allows hiking in the watershed and there is no problem with their water supply. No map showing the watershed for the reservoirs and the area with no watershed has been provided so that potential buildable areas are shown. A blanket ban on all building on areas outside existing urban development seems unreasonable and must increase housing prices. How much is hard to determine.
Crater Lake National Park showed the folly of placing extensive development at the top of the watershed that provided drinking water for residents and visitors. In the 1970s, thousands were sickened by a sewage spill in to Annie Creek. Shit was bubbling up at Rim Village. The NPS covered up a second spill that occured in the 2000s.
The question is: how much land would a privately owned and operated water company need to ensure the safety and cleanliness of the water supply. Certainly quite a lot.
“A blanket ban on all building on areas outside existing urban development seems unreasonable and must increase housing prices. How much is hard to determine.”
Any new housing built on those hills would likely be out of reach of many buyers and would likely be comparable to current prices as housing doesn’t come on the market all at once. It would take years before any downward pressure would be put on prices in the area. The next market correction will have a greater effect on prices than new inventory.