5 ms·

Excellent news! More handouts for developers, targeting already-residential neighborhoods instead of mandating the redevelopment of blighted formerly-industrial

Excellent news! More handouts for developers, 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. And in a drought- and heat-stricken state, let's pave over what little soil remains, to prevent groundwater percolation and exacerbate urban "heat islands." This article regurgitates all the usual bullshit with no citations, such as "The ensuing housing shortage caused mass homelessness." What a crock. That doesn't even make sense.

theluketaylor 3y ago
How exactly is this a "more handouts for developers"? Removing zoning restrictions just makes building possible, it doesn't create any subsidies for building. Handouts for developers is opening good agricultural land for development. Fixing generations of terrible zoning for infill development is just unlocking existing sites to be more than exclusively single family homes. > 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.
- NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
  Maybe you haven't looked into how these laws work, but they are 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. So when an elderly person with out-of-state children dies, those children are going to sell to the quickest and most-secure bidder... a developer with a cash offer. 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.
  - user9925 3y ago
    > So when an elderly person with out-of-state children dies, those children are going to sell to the quickest and most-secure bidder... a developer with a cash offer. 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.
  - theluketaylor 3y ago
    > And you make a lot of unsupported assumptions about commercial areas all being contaminated. 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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
matrix87 3y ago
Excellent news! Less property value for you! Next stop, no more prop 13 either
- slater 3y ago
  Don’t you be threatening everyone with a good time, now!
- NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
  Yay, and then you can join the homeless when your taxes double overnight and render your life savings worthless!
  - caskstrength 3y ago
    With several millions of dollars from selling your house? Those Cali homeless are apparently quite rich...
tptacek 3y ago
"Developers" is the term of art for people who build housing.
panick21_ 3y ago
> More handouts for developers 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.
- NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
  False equivalency galore there. Talk about ridiculous. 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.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Your perspective that allowing things like four-plexes is 'destroying' neighberhoods is just complexly delusional. Having four-plexes is not 'high density', not even closes. And nobody is destroying anything, the existing houses mostly stay there and most will remain single family homes. 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.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

theluketaylor 3y ago

How exactly is this a "more handouts for developers"? Removing zoning restrictions just makes building possible, it doesn't create any subsidies for building. Handouts for developers is opening good agricultural land for development. Fixing generations of terrible zoning for infill development is just unlocking existing sites to be more than exclusively single family homes. > 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.

NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
Maybe you haven't looked into how these laws work, but they are 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. So when an elderly person with out-of-state children dies, those children are going to sell to the quickest and most-secure bidder... a developer with a cash offer. 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.
- user9925 3y ago
  > So when an elderly person with out-of-state children dies, those children are going to sell to the quickest and most-secure bidder... a developer with a cash offer. 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.
- theluketaylor 3y ago
  > And you make a lot of unsupported assumptions about commercial areas all being contaminated. 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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

matrix87 3y ago

Excellent news! Less property value for you! Next stop, no more prop 13 either

slater 3y ago
Don’t you be threatening everyone with a good time, now!
NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
Yay, and then you can join the homeless when your taxes double overnight and render your life savings worthless!
- caskstrength 3y ago
  With several millions of dollars from selling your house? Those Cali homeless are apparently quite rich...

tptacek 3y ago

"Developers" is the term of art for people who build housing.

panick21_ 3y ago

> More handouts for developers 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.

NoPedantsThanks 3y ago
False equivalency galore there. Talk about ridiculous. 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.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Your perspective that allowing things like four-plexes is 'destroying' neighberhoods is just complexly delusional. Having four-plexes is not 'high density', not even closes. And nobody is destroying anything, the existing houses mostly stay there and most will remain single family homes. 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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]