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.
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.
Personally, I think they should just write down that anything inside the boundary of an incorporated city, built on a site that previously had something on it, is not a project.
This is my favorite graph for explaining how I can be pro-environment without necessarily being pro-Environmentalism™ https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gentrification...
https://www.sfgate.com/green/article/MERCED-UC-expansion-pla...
If anything, that appears to be a successful use of CEQA, where a large and important building project was effectively balanced with the need to protect wildlife without major disruption to the final buildings.
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...
Cities have various ways to stop projects. They can drag out things like demolition permits forever.
This was true historically, and may still be true in some states, but court cases since the 1970s [1] have been forcing reforms on school funding to be more equitable at the state level.
[1] https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/section-4-lawsuits/landma...
https://www.z blozek.com
Also, does anyone know what legal recourse there is to block projects that are submitted under the current no-zoning state?
> Environmental review is one such way. Normally, cities perform one environmental review for a citywide or neighborhood-wide zoning plan. So long as project applications comply with those plans, they can piggyback on the parent environmental report. But since builder’s remedy applications often disregard local zoning, cities can ask developers to complete a full environmental impact report for a project. Once that’s done, cities can then claim that any impact — noise, shadows, pollution — in the report was insufficiently studied and demand costly redos. Community groups can also take builders to court.
> Cities can further pile on costs for builder’s remedy projects by requiring infrastructure upgrades like new sewer connections. Local governments can also potentially exact revenge by making other applications from developers more unpleasant — for instance, by subjecting them to additional scrutiny or longer processing times. This threat will likely dissuade many developers from pursuing a builder’s remedy project.
The last portion, where local governments might intentionally punish developers, may be why there's not a bunch of large experienced developers rushing to submit plans.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/builde...
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.
> Among large cities, only San Francisco is in compliance.
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?
San Francisco has IZ set at between 20 and 33% depending on the project and this is widely seen as a blanket anti-development policy.
Now it could be doable with a lot of that red tape is gone.
source: Solano County Govt. Economic Report 2022
Excellent development in any case. Hope a lot of good dense housing gets built.
https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/ca-cities-to-lose-all-zo...
Basically, until these cities get a housing plan validated with the state, who is apparently sick of their crap like zoning in the middle of an active mall that will not be torn down, builder’s remedy is in place.
Great organizations to get involved with if you care about other people being able to afford a place to live.
I could see the cities just refusing to submit any plans at all. The state should then make its own housing plans with the developers directly. Cities should be cut out of the loop.
A bulletin from the Association of Bay Area Governments alludes to being able to use environmental laws to block the projects instead. https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-10/Bu...
It's just that you can build a duplex on a "single-family residential lot".
But you still can't teach piano lessons out of your house without one of your neighbors constantly calling the city and complaining about how you're causing traffic problems, right?
And you definitely can't wash other people's clothes or dishes in your house, right??
I wish I could mind-meld with you and transmit the memories and experiences of growing up in a residential area with no zoning.
You know that sci-fi trope where the empath gets the memory dump and breaks away screaming and crying because they can't handle the trauma that comes through ?
It would be like that.
You think you'll get cute shops and pop-ups and delightful mixed-use and stimulating workshop spaces and crafty folks doing things artisanally.
What you will actually get is half-built cars. Everywhere. You will get mobile homes and immobile RVs. You will get horses. Not rich-people horses, but "Grandma died and she had a horse and nobody knew what to do with it so we fenced part of the front yard" horses. Someone will disconnect from city sewer because they "know how to build septic". Someone will get llamas.
You think I'm making this up and I promise you I am not.
You've lived so long in a nicely regulated, rules-based order that you have no idea the kind of bullshit people engage in the minute the rules go away.
The implication that this is anarchy is incorrect. Construction and zoning are still highly regulated, just by someone else this time (FWIW, I fully support this and hope many projects built and cities stop crying and get in compliance with the HCD).
I'd also expect more people who have space for ADUs to build them, although many of the lots aren't the right size or shape to fit one.
The really big, dense housing projects are being built on commercial land -- stuff like what is being built in downtown Sunnyvale, Santa Clara Square, Lawrence Station, and the proposed replacement of Cambrian Plaza.
Notably, all that big stuff is either already finished, or in the process of building, and didn't need the builder's remedy to get done.
https://therealdeal.com/la/2023/01/18/shekhters-ws-communiti...
Here, for instance: "Santa Monica officials later indicated they would wait to respond until WSC filed its full project application, which is due six months from the preliminary filing."
Interesting that the developer that started the commotion is listing some of the sites they started the application process on for sale, but not necessarily indicative of it not going to happen - "Even as it prepares the listing WSC is still moving ahead with the full application, Walter confirmed this week." from this Jan 2023 article. Could just be looking to offload some risk to someone else who now thinks there's enough of a chance of these things getting built to pay more for the lots than they would've last year.
https://smdp.com/2022/10/24/16-projects-4562-housing-units-h...
Nothing more.
REPLY TO BELOW:
- If they are not hedge funds, then what are they, BE SPECIFIC.
Care to point me somewhere?
blackrock - primarily sells shares in index funds; one of the big 3 index managers (started as a partnership between blackstone and others... that's why the similar name)
Of course land in the bay is valuable enough that nobody will do what you suggest. However that is economics, it shouldn't be law.
Where I live, a lot of zoning laws are really ordinances, and the enforcement of different aspects of sanitation is split between the zoning ordinance and other ordinances. I wonder how the new anti-zoning law law handles that.
If someone invents a way to do it safely, they should have the burden of safely proving that first.
If someone wants to stockpile 100 tons of explosive material in my neighborhood, I don't want my estate to use the courts to find remedy after my section of the neighborhood gets leveled/cratered. I want the obviously harmful activity to be stopped before the hazard is created.
Also, given prevailing rents that would likely lose them money over renting it out, though you can certainly regulate your way into that being the best option if you "protect" renters enough.
