Last weekend, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 2923, which gives BART the authority to ignore local zoning rules and build high-density housing on its own land in the Bay Area. This bill faced fierce opposition from mayors and city councils in Contra Costa County, but was supported by affordable housing advocates.
Ignoring the debate over density at the moment, what makes anyone think that BART, which can’t even effectively run a transit system, can suddenly become an expert housing developer? BART estimates that, with passage of this bill, it will be able to build 20,000 units of housing, about a third of which will be “affordable” (which in the Bay Area can mean affordable to people who earn $115,000 a year or less). While the region could use 20,000 housing units, there is no reason to think that BART can build them affordably or that high-density housing can even be affordable.
BART is well known for the cost overruns, maintenance problems, and crime problems on its transit system. It will be interesting to see how it applies these skills to housing. It’s hard to imagine the results will be very desirable.
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While it isn’t specifically BART’s problem, San Francisco is also in the news for finding cracks in the beams supporting its brand-new $2.2-billion transit center. This transit center is where riders on California’s unlikely-to-be-completed high-speed rail line were supposed to connect with local transit lines. The 1.5-million-square-foot transit center cost almost $1,500 per square foot to build; just think how affordable housing would be if it were built by the same people!
As the Antiplanner has noted before, mid-rise and high-rise high-density housing costs 50 to 68 percent more per square foot than low-rise housing. Add in the cost of government inefficiency and poor design and the A.B. 2923 is more likely to produce boondoggles than affordable housing.
What reasons do we have to believe that BART would manage the housing and retail developments directly? I’m currently assuming that they will contract out developers to build and manage properties. I haven’t managed to find information that would either confirm or deny this assumption.
Still 20,000 units is better than none.
Meanwhile in the Eastern Liberal Trashhole, NYC.
Bill DeBlasio’s administration hasn’t done much to curb auto use, infact it’s growing. “Auto ownership is going up in New York City right now,” DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg told a crowd at the National Association of City Transportation Officials’ annual conference in Los Angeles, confirming DMV records.
Streetsblog argues the collapse of the city’s transit system under Governor Cuomo is just one reason for the growth in auto ownership, according to advocates. Mayor de Blasio’s policies — such as dolling out 50,000 new parking placards to teachers — aren’t helping.
I don’t know why a state leader is responsible for the daily upkeep of a city system. The NYC subway is owned by the city, exists entirely within the city and so on.
Cuomo is also anti-rail too :$
So they’re going to make housing more affordable by promoting policies that increase the price of land? The only way that could (nominally) work would be to build smaller housing units, which of course do not provide the same quality of housing and would still result in more expensive housing per unit of area.
The city thinks the state should pay more. The state thinks the city should pay more. Eventually, they will come to an agreement that non-New York residents should pay more.
Anyone else think it’s funny that New York’s DOT commissioner is wringing her hands over an increase in auto ownership?