> “I straight up told people I was going to file something if things didn’t shape up. I went to all the meetings and said, ‘Here are the deficiencies,’ he said. “We have so grossly underbuilt housing in California for a half century that you could drop a tent on the ground anywhere in the state and someone will occupy it.”
I really like that quote. Unfortunately I'm concerned instead of drafting adequate plans the city will just use all of its resources to sue people for using builders remedy permits.
Whether or not developers take advantage will still depend on market conditions and the costs to develop housing. For example, recently in LA county voters passed a transfer tax that is espected to quiet development somewhat: https://www.planetizen.com/news/2022/12/120395-critics-expec...
Plenty of other things beyond taxes add to costs as well. Onerous environmental review, having to add amenities like open courtyard space or balconies, how many elevators might be required, parking requirements, all adds to the cost per unit which leads to fewer units built per loan and the need for higher rents to make those costs pencil out. Even the amount of time things sit in review at city hall has costs. You could very well hit a situation where due to these constraints, not nearly as many builders take advantage of builders remedy as one might expect. This is part of the issue with allowing the onus of adding housing supply in our cities fall on an overregulated industry that depends on achieving a certain profit margin to function.
The next target should be CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. NIMBYs can endlessly delay new construction by requesting CEQA assessments. I am hugely pro-environment, mind you, but an environmental assessment for a new development should be relatively fast and easy to complete, and it shouldn't prevent new builds wholesale except in the direst cases.
I think this article overstates the risks to those wanting to use the builder's remedy. It suggests wealthy towns would have the means to fight this in court. But the reality is the towns have very little legal defense. Just last year, 4000+ new units were approved via the builder's remedy in Santa Monica, a rich envlcave of LA that has notoriously fought development with oppressive zoning for decades.
Also, the point isn't to build giant high rises in the middle of Los Altos. It is to bypass restrictive zoning that doesn't let you build anything at all other than single family houses on large lots. In a lot of Bay Area towns that will be townhouses and low-rise apartments. But this can make a massive difference to the local housing markets.
The builder's remedy is just one of many measures the state has passed in recent years. Others include automatic approval for building residential above commercial and bypassing zoning for lots with wide rights of way. It all adds up.
Another aspect to this is just because you have an approved project, as a builder, it doesn't mean you have to build it. It does give you a hell of a bargaining chip with the city over something else you want to build however.
All these Bay Area NIMBY enclaves have been fucking around and I imagine a large number of them are about to find out.
This week a viral video tour of a high school in Carmel, IN has been circulating [1]. For those who don't understand, particularly non-Americans, schools are funded primarily by local property taxes. This means wealthy towns have facilities like this and poorer communities have buildings that are falling apart.
This is economic segregation.
A lot of wealthy towns in CA have been fighting state housing mandates because they want to maintain their "character". This includes some ultra-wealthy towns like Atherton.
One reason I support what CA is doing here is because by allowing a mix of accomodation it will increase access to facilities like this beyond just the ultra-wealthy.
[1]: https://www.insider.com/carmel-high-school-tour-tiktok-publi...
Hey, it's HN's zbrozek in the article. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zbrozek
Is there anywhere to see the list of projects that are being insta-approved as they come in?
Also, does anyone know what legal recourse there is to block projects that are submitted under the current no-zoning state?
That guy in the Mission District of SF who fought this for decades should deserve a windfall...
Ill try to find a link, but basically this guy got initial approval to build a building and got hit with a typhoon of zoning laws and knew he was in the right, but a bunch of SF NIMBYS were fighting him forever and he got F'd...
This guy deserves something like a payout for someone imprisoned for no reason.
> The builder’s remedy says that noncompliant cities must allow housing at any density and any height, anywhere in the city, as long as at least 20% of the new homes are affordable.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/builde...
For most places in the Bay Area, is there an existing affordability percentage requirement? How much of an increase is this? I'm not a development/construction insider, but a quick search pulls up a claim that builders often are in the range of 10-20% gross profit. Does a 20% affordable unit requirement swing a normal project to being unprofitable, even if cities can't block it for zoning reasons?
Who’s gonna take the risk to develop when they can come back and say this development is illegal, lots of legal blind spots and gotchas
"affordable" homes are just a give away to people on a magic list. I am all for more supply but spending significant quantities of cash on this is wasteful and counter-productive...
This is awesome. I imagine the state will put some weight behind the first lawsuits as well. Build baby build.
Does this work in say HOA zoned areas?
median residential home prices in Solano County (just north-east of San Francisco) went up twenty one percent over one year in 2021. The county overall lost population (again) primarily due to residents moving out of California.
source: Solano County Govt. Economic Report 2022
https://archive.is/nHQgm (non paywall)
Zoning laws broadly are probably still in effect, right? I doubt you could build something industrial in residential zones. It's just the bad parts of zoning that are disabled, if I understood the article correctly.
Excellent development in any case. Hope a lot of good dense housing gets built.
Build baby build.
I love when crushing bureaucracy ends up crushing itself
We're going to build oil refineries and chemical factories next to your house and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
This is just a play from high-powered NIMBY SF players to placate the devs, landlords, scumlords and hedgies (like blackRock)
Nothing more.
REPLY TO BELOW:
- If they are not hedge funds, then what are they, BE SPECIFIC.
What's to stop a landlord from turning a floor in his apartment building into a chicken battery farm now?
https://archive.is/nHQgm