A bill being considered by the California legislature aims to make the state’s housing more affordable. According to this analysis, the bill amends the state’s Planning and Zoning Act by requiring cities and counties to take more steps to keep housing affordable.
The bill is supported by various home building associations as well as some non-profit groups such as the California Council of Churches, St. Vincent DePaul, and the California State Firefighters Association, which worries that firefighters and other public employees can’t afford to live in the cities they serve.
Is California’s housing system broken? This house would cost $150,000 in Houston, $400,000 in Bakersfield, $950,000 in Marin County, and well over $1.2 million in San Jose.
On the other hand, according to this article, the League of California Cities and a number of city councils have come out against the bill because they believe it would “promote suburban sprawl.” They think that infill housing will adequately provide for affordable housing. Have they looked at housing prices in their communities lately?
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The real reason for the cities’ opposition may be because they fear that residential areas add to their urban-service costs without producing enough property taxes to cover that cost. This is probably not true: prop. 13, which keeps property taxes on existing homes low, allows cities and counties to tax the full market value of new homes and to revise tax rates every time a home is sold.
Under current law, “density is used as a proxy for affordability.” If cities include some dense zoning in their plans, they satisfy the law’s affordability requirements even if the density ends up being million-dollar condos. The proposed law requires cities to include in their plans “quantified objectives (i.e. production estimates) for the development, preservation, and rehabilitation of housing for extremely low-, very-low-, low-, and moderate-income households.”
In addition, the plans must look ahead ten years (instead of the current five) to insure that they have enough properly zoned land to meet these objectives. The law also attempts to simplify and reduce the length of the permitting process.
“California’s housing system is broken,” UC Berkeley professor of urban planning John Landis told a reporter for the Half Moon Bay Review. It suffers from “unnecessary construction delays, reduced housing supplies, higher housing costs, increased crowding and reduced opportunities for home ownership, especially for young and middle-income households.”
If passed, this bill would do more to revolutionize land use in California than measure 37 has done for Oregon. The good news is that the Senate Housing Committee passed it unanimously. The bad news is it still has to go through several more committees whose members may not look on as favorably.
Is California’s housing system broken? This house would cost $150,000 in Houston, $400,000 in Bakersfield, $950,000 in Marin County, and well over $1.2 million in San Jose
JK: But its because those are such popular areas that everyone wants to move there. At least that’s what the planners tell every area after they wreck housing affordability.
They claim to be professionals, but don’t even understand that it is about supply as well as demand. They kill off the supply in order to drive up prices to the point that density becomes economically viable. (Density is their god.)
For Dan: OK I do realize that some planners might understand supply and demand – they are lying about not understanding it to hide their real goal of cramming all of us into condo towers so that they can return vast areas of the country into wild lands. (google wildlands) Then forbid humans outside of the UGBs (ie: concentration camps)
Thanks
JK
I like it.
Randal is tacitly arguing for more regulation that requires more planning.
This proposed added regulation also does nothing for funding, so subsidies and grants must be tacked on or found elsewhere for it to work. Lots of opportunity for TIF, subsidy, cost overruns.
DS
Is California’s housing system broken? This house would cost $150,000 in Houston, $400,000 in Bakersfield, $950,000 in Marin County, and well over $1.2 million in San Jose
No, the microeconomic system is broken.
See, it allows people to want to live in areas with benign climates, lots of high-paying jobs, plentiful amenities, and agglomeration economies like SJC and Marin Co. But, gosh, thinking about why this happens goes against our wishes that there’s something wrong so we can find anything to grasp on to and complain about.
See, because many, many people want to live in nice places rather than in far, far, far less attractive places like BFL or HOU, many, many people bid up prices to live in nice places rather than being stuck in bad places. That’s why rents are cheaper in bad places to live than in nice places to live.
It’s that simple. Really.
DS
Dan said: See, because many, many people want to live in nice places rather than in far, far, far less attractive places like BFL or HOU, many, many people bid up prices to live in nice places rather than being stuck in bad places.
JK: You are forgetting basic economics. It is not about demand it is about SUPPLY and demand.
Planners like to use demand as an excuse for their making housing un-affordable. They conveniently forget about supply – the other half of the law of supply AND demand. When the two get out of balance, the price changes to put them back in balance. Simple. Logical and outside of the world of planners.
Quit restricting supply and the prices will again become affordable. Simple and doable in most (but not all) areas.
Dan said: It’s that simple. Really.
JK: It is really that simple, but planners, as usual, have it all wrong.
Thanks
JK
I hate to have it appear I’m replying to Karlock, but I should have explored the other flaw in this argument but did not:
Supply arguments for the Bay Area would be cogent if there were flat, cheap land left upon which to build. Let’s find out if this is the case. This will tell us if the implication is valid.
What is left out of the argument is whether there is buildable land left, hence the 2.25 hr commute from Tracy or the 1.5 hr commute from Livermore or the 2 hr commute from Sacto. is just burdensome to everyone.
Someone help out the communists-are-out-to-git-us arguments:
I won’t hold my breath.
Nonetheless. Numbers.
What is possible, now, at build-out with vacant land. Then give us non-teardown infill numbers at the standard 2%/yr (say, 50% of 1+ac substandard potential, or 10% of parcels under 10,000 sf supply for the next 7 years).
Potential supply numbers. Let’s get them out on the table.
What is the actual supply.
The argumentation here implies adequate supply. Let’s see the numbers showing adequate supply, both now and potential.
Show the numbers to back the implied claim.
DS
Waiting for the data that show the supply of land in the Bay Area within an hour drive of SFO or SJC is sufficient to noticeably drive down prices & provide affordability…
Waiting…
Waiting…
hmmm…
DS
Dan said: I hate to have it appear I’m replying to Karlock,
JK: Why? Having problems backing up typical planner’s delusions with facts?
Thanks
JK
Dan said: Waiting for the data that show the supply of land in the Bay Area within an hour drive of SFO or SJC is sufficient to noticeably drive down prices & provide affordability…
JK: How big is that military base they abandoned a couple years ago? How much housing would that supply?
Thanks
JK
DanS,
I’ve been on the road to places that don’t have free internet, so wasn’t able to respond to your request for data. But how is this:
Counties in the SF Bay Area have set aside more land as “regional parks” than has been urbanized. Several times more land are in those same counties but outside of urban-growth boundaries.
There is plenty of land. They have just created an artificial shortage of it.
There is an “artificial shortage” only if you think that people shouldn’t be free to choose to have places to recreate.
There is an “artificial shortage” only if you think that after all the engineering costs there is enough room in the loan for plenty of houses on fire-prone ridges.
There is an “artificial shortage” only if you think that people should look at an endless expanse of rooftops with no green.
There is an “artificial shortage” only if you think that people shouldn’t be free to choose quality of life as a component to their community.
IOW, people freely chose to have open space to go to and to look at. These places they chose are generally already steep slopes and/or ridgetops.
But that’s only part of it. Very, very few people will give up greenspaces. People choose greenspaces because they make nice places to live.
It’s only an “artificial shortage” if you want the outcome to be roofs, roofs, roofs as far as the eye can see so people have to drive to get to a park or open space. Fuhgeddaboutit. Non-starter. Weak argument. Weak, and few buy it.
DS