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Re: And a California news roundup... - 97fan - 07-02-2014

(07-02-2014, 05:28 PM)Publius link Wrote:[quote author=97fan link=topic=10167.msg91859#msg91859 date=1404339401]
So why does it matter whether the new arrivals are from Dayton or Singapore?

I grew up in Dayton, and resided in Singapore for 3 years.  There's a BIG difference between the two places.
[/quote]

Both places have changed history for the better. One is the birthplace of aviation, while the other is the birthplace of chili crab. It's hard to say which contribution is more important.

Re: And a California news roundup... - CTcard - 07-02-2014

(07-02-2014, 05:06 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:And I think people underestimate the amount of density you can generate from simply building a little bit higher. Paris and Barcelona, for example, are very dense cities -- but are certainly aesthetically charming and don't exactly have a ton of skyscrapers.

Here is a list of large cities in the world by population density.
http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html

The biggest surprise? [At least to me and apparently to the flow of this conversation]
The densest cities in the USA are #1 Los Angeles (world #90) and #2 San Francisco (world #104).

Re: And a California news roundup... - washingtonismoney - 07-02-2014

(07-02-2014, 08:15 PM)CTcard link Wrote:The biggest surprise? [At least to me and apparently to the flow of this conversation]
The densest cities in the USA are #1 Los Angeles (world #90) and #2 San Francisco (world #104).

Yes -- that can be a bit deceptive. I think the problem here is that they're probably using MSAs rather than the city proper. According to that statistic NYC has double the land area of LA, which seems highly unlikely to me.

Make your choices and count your blessings - Redrum - 07-02-2014

Grew up in California, went to college in California, progenitors were in California in the horse-drawn transportation days.  So, naturally, I now live in Alabama.  The AC came on in early June (bit late) and will be on until October.  Both my daughters were born in CA.  My family moved back and forth between Alabama and Calif. twice. 

By not living in California, I have been able live in a decent house, in a mountain forest, raise and educate two great daughters who graduated college (one from Stanford) debt free.  All this as a basically one-income family. (Long story) And, no, unfortunately my income isn't THAT magnitude of single income.  I can state categorically that would not have been possible in Calif.  We watched as my best friend's modest house in San Jose raised in value into the $$million range while his property taxes started looking like my whole house payment.  I also watched while he and his wife ran harder and harder on the treadmill to keep up with the costs.  I drive down this mountain and to work in a modern research park in 10 minutes.  Things like that have value.  I'd have to drive 2 hours to Nashville or (heaven forfend) 4 hours to Atlanta just to get reacquainted with everyday urban traffic nightmares people have in the Bay Area or LA. 

And I miss California almost every day.  I love the California landscape, even if it's brown hills and oak trees.  I miss the ocean.  I miss being able to watch Stanford football in person.  If I won the lottery big time,  the first serious thing I'd do is get some pied a terre somewhere in the Bay Area.  I read that guy's malediction and at every blow he struck I could call up a matching stupidity and cupidity in our state house.  He rails against unions as if they are the only ones with a leash on legislators' testicles.  He should visit the halls of gummint in Montgomery or Austin some time.  He talks waste, fraud and abuse as if it were some unique California disease.  How about a legislature, like ours, with members that openly question the whole idea of public education.  There are worse things than bigness.

But I came to the end of his piece with the same thought as others on the board:  Don't let the door hit you in the a** on the way out, mofo.  And please, don't come to Alabama.  Go to Texas. Better yet, go live in Houston, Texas.  I hear it's a freaking paradise.

Re: And a California news roundup... - CrazedZooChimp - 07-02-2014

(07-02-2014, 08:18 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:[quote author=CTcard link=topic=10167.msg91877#msg91877 date=1404357314]

The biggest surprise? [At least to me and apparently to the flow of this conversation]
The densest cities in the USA are #1 Los Angeles (world #90) and #2 San Francisco (world #104).

Yes -- that can be a bit deceptive. I think the problem here is that they're probably using MSAs rather than the city proper. According to that statistic NYC has double the land area of LA, which seems highly unlikely to me.
[/quote]

It does (you'll notice San Francisco is actually San Francisco/Oakland and has 3+ mil people).  If you look at just cities/land area SF is still #2 in the US, but it's #2 behind NY.  Still, it could be denser than it is, there were some long stretches of almost no construction, and being a landlord in this city seems horrible.

But really, if someone wants to leave California because they think it's too expensive or poorly run, they should.  I personally feel it's worth paying my super high rent to live here rather than somewhere in Texas, especially since I get paid more than what I probably would somewhere else (and actually I think it would be hard for me to move a lot of places in this country because I'd probably end up taking a pay cut for a similar job, and it would feel really silly to get paid less to live somewhere crappier).

Re: And a California news roundup... - Mick - 07-03-2014

(07-02-2014, 08:18 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:[quote author=CTcard link=topic=10167.msg91877#msg91877 date=1404357314]

The biggest surprise? [At least to me and apparently to the flow of this conversation]
The densest cities in the USA are #1 Los Angeles (world #90) and #2 San Francisco (world #104).

Yes -- that can be a bit deceptive. I think the problem here is that they're probably using MSAs rather than the city proper. According to that statistic NYC has double the land area of LA, which seems highly unlikely to me.
[/quote]

Perhaps they're including the state of Connecticutt


Re: And a California news roundup... - Papa John - 07-03-2014

My wife and I managed to escape from LA about 15 years ago and settle in Santa Barbara. The first thing we noticed was rental sticker shock. Rents were easily twice that in SB over comparable housing in LA. But our soon-to-be neighbors and coworkers were nonplussed. Their collective attitude was something along the lines of: "You're not just paying for the roof over your head." At the time, I thought it was among the dumbest things that I had ever heard, and it only increased my exasperation when we started looking to buy. Now I find myself repeating the same mantra to visitors who ask me how I can justify living in such an expensive locale.

Echoing what others have written: Everyone has their priorities and pet-peeves. California is not right for everyone, but neither is Kansas (my home state), Alabama or Texas. However--and maybe this is because I'm not a native Californian--if someone decides that California's not for them, I harbor no ill will toward them and wish them the best in their search for the "right" place.

Re: And a California news roundup... - stupac2 - 07-03-2014

(07-02-2014, 08:10 PM)ferrari link Wrote:Washington, I don't know why I am picking on you, I really don't, but these posts are so unlike what I have read of yours before.  Your second sentence sounds like you don't understand the "free" part of "free markets at all, which I doubt.  Earthquake or not, Palo Alto property owners are not going to allow, absent dictatorship, what you propose.  Neither are the oceanfront property owners in Malibu.  There was a lot of earthquake damage in the Marina District after the last major earthquake and I don't see a lot of high density housing there today, do you?  Century City in Los Angeles has soon, as does downtown San Diego.  $1,000,000+ condos aren't goong to change housing cost differentials much.

Come on!  You know there will always be places to live more desireable than others, and those places will always cost more, often a lot more, than less desireable places.  The only way to eliminate cost differtial is to make everywhere the same, and experiments in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, South America, and elsewhere have shown that the same tends to mean equally undesireable.  Eventually the elite class, regardless of the economic, moral or societal model, find a way to seperate.  Its just the way it is.  The biggest silverback in a gorilla band always ends up with the softest bed.  Moral outrage is not going to change it.

Now in fairness I want to admit I have taken this a bit afield from the original topic and I apologize.  It struck a chord in me And I let it run.  I mean no offense to anyone, and am not calling anyone names.  But please don't try to explain how zoning law changes would allow everyone to live in Paradise.  Even if it were possible, who would produce our food?  Think about it.

I really don't think you understand what WIM is saying. The point is that because of NIMBY changes to zoning laws it's actually illegal to build with any kind of reasonable density in a lot of places. The result of this is that all that gets built are big projects with the $1M+ condos, because that's what developers can actually afford to do. If SF decided that it wanted to, it could fit twice as many people just by becoming as dense as Brooklyn. Not Manhattan, Brooklyn. What would doubling the number of people living in the city do to prices? I'm not an economist, but I think they'd go down.

Sure, accomplishing that would actually take a while, so it wouldn't happen overnight, but you'd alleviate a lot of the pressure on prices just by alleviating zoning restrictions. This is why people flock to Texas, zoning is so liberal that you can actually do what you want with your land.

And that's what this comes down to: being able to do what you want with your land. Right now you can't, because of a whole host of pointless and counterproductive regulations. People like WIM and I want to deregulate, allow people to do what they want with their land (obviously within reason), and let the free market decide things like:

1) How dense to build.
2) How many parking spaces to provide.
3) How big to make units.
4) What amenities to include in units.
5) What rents to charge.

And on and on. Right now land use in most of the US is more Soviet-style than you'd think, and it's stupid and counterproductive.

Re: And a California news roundup... - CornFed - 07-03-2014

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2014/07/03/as_its_businesses_flee_is_there_hope_for_california_101155.html

Re: And a California news roundup... - fullmetal - 07-03-2014

(07-02-2014, 12:40 PM)martyup link Wrote:Ten years ago I saw the coming of everything he complains of, and I said adios to the Golden State.  I was a fifth generation Californian.  Our family moved to Southern Utah.  We still visit often, but we are happy in Utah where we are homeschooling our two daughters.

I just got back from a week-long tour through Southern Utah--flew into LAS, drove to Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Green River, Moab/Arches/Dead Horse Point, and then all the way back to LAS.  It was all beautiful country that I'd never thought would be in southern Utah.  (Some of those stretches looked incredibly water use-intensive though...!)

Re: And a California news roundup... - stupac2 - 07-03-2014

(07-03-2014, 11:20 AM)CornFed link Wrote:http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2014/07/03/as_its_businesses_flee_is_there_hope_for_california_101155.html

That's some hilarious begging the question. If CA's businesses are fleeing in droves and the state needs to be rescued, why is its economy doing so well?

[Image: Percent_Change_in_Real_GDP_by_State,_2012.png]

Re: And a California news roundup... - Leftcoast - 07-03-2014

While everyone might agree that useless expensive zoning laws should be phased out in GENERAL it's when SPECIFIC rules are discussed that reasonable people disagree.  Your NIMBY law may impact the reason someone wants to live in Palo Alto, Pasadena or, in my case, Los Gatos.

I've been to Houston, Texas to use one example and when I asked why the city layout made no sense I was told there were no zoning laws.  What I saw was sprawl, skyscrapers in the middle of residential areas, warehouses in the middle of suburbs, strip malls everywhere and no discernible master plan.  I'm not sure I'd use Texas as the poster child for minimal zoning and I can see why the Palo Alto planners aren't taking their cues from Houston.

Must be a middle ground somewhere ....


Re: And a California news roundup... - Leftcoast - 07-03-2014

Sprawl, hah!  Yeah, we do have that. 

Sprawl is a good discussion point though.  Limits on sprawl, late, ineffective and limited as they may be, are what drive Bay Area developers crazy. 

To use one example, in the Bay Area most of the surrounding hills are development free due to green space rules.  In that sense the landscape in the South Bay is VERY different from LA where the hills are a continuation of the city.  South Bay green space rules might be examples of NIMBY to some.  They certainly drive the developers and some of the property owners crazy since they look at the mountains and see lost opportunities - Billions and Billions of lost opportunities.  When I look at the same space I see the Santa Cruz Redwoods, the East Bay hill grasslands and the Sierra Azul open space and think preserving the same is essential.

Identifying useless NIMBY rules may be harder than many think.

Re: And a California news roundup... - 97fan - 07-03-2014

The main reason there's not more density on the Peninsula is that most of the people who make the zoning rules have a vested interest in restricting the supply of housing, while most of the people who would benefit from more dense development don't have a say in the zoning rules.

If you're a Palo Alto homeowner, more housing in your community not only changes the character of the place, and probably not in ways that you favor, it also exerts downward pressure on the value of your own property.

If you're a Facebook employee who lives in an overpriced rental in San Bruno, and you'd rather live in Palo Alto, but it would be even more expensive to rent there, you'd likely favor the construction of more housing in Palo Alto. But you also don't have a say in electing the public officials in Palo Alto who write the zoning rules.

Re: And a California news roundup... - CornFed - 07-03-2014

(07-03-2014, 11:37 AM)stupac2 link Wrote:[quote author=CornFed link=topic=10167.msg91900#msg91900 date=1404411640]
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2014/07/03/as_its_businesses_flee_is_there_hope_for_california_101155.html

That's some hilarious begging the question. If CA's businesses are fleeing in droves and the state needs to be rescued, why is its economy doing so well?

[Image: Percent_Change_in_Real_GDP_by_State,_2012.png]
[/quote]


Begging the Question is a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true. This sort of "reasoning" typically has the following form.

Premises in which the truth of the conclusion is claimed or the truth of the conclusion is assumed (either directly or indirectly).
Claim C (the conclusion) is true.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because simply assuming that the conclusion is true (directly or indirectly) in the premises does not constitute evidence for that conclusion. Obviously, simply assuming a claim is true does not serve as evidence for that claim. This is especially clear in particularly blatant cases: "X is true. The evidence for this claim is that X is true."

Some cases of question begging are fairly blatant, while others can be extremely subtle.

Not sure the article was making any point that the economy is currently doing badly.  It was citing data indicating the state's ranking in a variety of rankings regarding the attractiveness of doing business there.  I would think that continued underperformance in these areas compared to other states will ultimately affect the performance of California's economy



Re: And a California news roundup... - stupac2 - 07-03-2014

Right, I'm saying it was begging the question because it kept asserting that doing business in CA is terrible, but yet the CA economy is doing fine. Is CA thriving despite the horrible business climate, or are those various surveys wrong? If you're not even going to address the fact that CA is one of the fastest growing states despite all the various business indicators putting in the toilet, then you're begging the question.


Also, Lefty, what WIM and I are talking about isn't stuff like greenbelt laws, where the government usually owns the land. It's the regulations that place restrictions on what people can do with the land they already own. Things like parking minimums or height restrictions have clear negative effects on a city in a way that something like greenbelt laws don't (since greenbelts do provide tangible benefits, whereas the other things don't).

Re: And a California news roundup... - 81alum - 07-03-2014

Interesting points, but when you look at the numbers you will find that most people leaving California are poor and middle class, and they mostly leave over housing, not over jobs or taxes.  Rich people overwhelmingly stay despite the taxes.  Very few jobs have left, although you can always argue that new jobs might have arrived in greater numbers if policies were different.

But it is really mainly about housing, and it has been since before Prop 13.

One of the critical reasons there is a shortage of housing is in fact zoning.  Although environmental regulations play a role, they are not the main reason for the problem.  Since Prop 13 (1978) put limits on local property taxes, cities often discover that new real estate development does not pay for itself--from a city government point-of-view.    The additional property taxes that new residential development generates is often less than the costs of providing services to the new development.  Furthermore, each time the state has a budget crisis it seizes local property tax dollars for state purposes, leaving local governments in the lurch.  Naturally, local governments looked for ways to mitigate their dependence on property taxes.

New commercial/retail has a potential to generate sales tax and not only property tax, and so it became far more attractive to a city planner.  And on the expense side, a strip mall does not generate the need for schools and the heavy requirements for spread out streets, sewers, and police and fire that a sprawling residential neighborhood does require.  When municipal governments gained the ability to keep increments of sales taxes for local use, all the incentives were to zone commercial rather than residential.  Many cities grossly overbuilt commercial and under built residential as a result.  Before the 2008 housing collapse, we had dozens of abandoned and semi-used strip malls spread out amidst an overheated housing market. 

All that said, it varies a lot inside the state.  One would hardly say that zoning laws have unduly inhibited housing development in Modesto or Tracy or Stockton.  Stockton grossly overbuilt housing and became the foreclosure capital of America--surpassing even Florida.  In some neighborhoods every third house was empty--heck, there were a couple of new developments that were entirely empty.  Stockton became the largest American city after Detroit to go bankrupt.  The more housing it zoned the worse its budget became.  It now has less than half the police force it once had--with the expected increases in crime and a continuing vicious circle downward as crime further depresses property values. 

All these issues reflect failures of the California political system to anticipate the consequences of a shift from a property-tax system to a sales-tax system for funding.  In any case, I do recommend Larry Gerston's book, which traces many of our current problems to political failures in both parties.


Re: And a California news roundup... - 82 Card - 07-03-2014

(07-03-2014, 02:44 PM)ferrari link Wrote:One very effective way cities have alleviated the cost of providing services to new residential developement is the the creation of so-called Mello Roos districts, which add fees to property tax bills.  These fees are collected with prop taxes and passed directly to various departments, like water, sewer, streets, etc.  Used extensively in SoCal (not sure about NorCal) these fees can approach prop taxes, particularly in newer developements.

Theoretically, the Mello-Roose districts and other fees are supposed to cover the incremental cost of the development. That's not what I see. These charges tend to exceed the cost of the development's impacts. In our town, the big development that was fought over for decades ended up providing the city with five community ball field, community park, public clubhouse, public art and garden center, a network of walking, bicycle and equestrian trails and over 1,300 acres of open space. This was in addition to exorbitant bedroom taxes and other facilities fees. For acceding to the city's demands, they got the right to 245 building sites.

Forcing new development to pay for the pipe dreams of the local city councils drives up housing prices by driving up the marginal cost of housing. All buyers end up paying that extra cost regardless of whether they are buying one of the shiny new houses or one of the WWII sheds.

Re: And a California news roundup... - 82 Card - 07-03-2014

(07-03-2014, 10:30 AM)stupac2 link Wrote:I really don't think you understand what WIM is saying. The point is that because of NIMBY changes to zoning laws it's actually illegal to build with any kind of reasonable density in a lot of places. The result of this is that all that gets built are big projects with the $1M+ condos, because that's what developers can actually afford to do. If SF decided that it wanted to, it could fit twice as many people just by becoming as dense as Brooklyn. Not Manhattan, Brooklyn. What would doubling the number of people living in the city do to prices? I'm not an economist, but I think they'd go down.

Sure, accomplishing that would actually take a while, so it wouldn't happen overnight, but you'd alleviate a lot of the pressure on prices just by alleviating zoning restrictions. This is why people flock to Texas, zoning is so liberal that you can actually do what you want with your land.

And that's what this comes down to: being able to do what you want with your land. Right now you can't, because of a whole host of pointless and counterproductive regulations. People like WIM and I want to deregulate, allow people to do what they want with their land (obviously within reason), and let the free market decide things like:

1) How dense to build.
2) How many parking spaces to provide.
3) How big to make units.
4) What amenities to include in units.
5) What rents to charge.

And on and on. Right now land use in most of the US is more Soviet-style than you'd think, and it's stupid and counterproductive.

It's not quite that simple. I agree that current land use regulation is a large part of the problem, but just turning it over to the free market will not achieve more efficient land use. Reasonable planning and regulation is necessary for higher densities to work.

The incentive for each individual property owner is to pack as much as they can into their property. But if each owner does that, there will be gridlock. The infrastructure needs to be designed and built to handle the load. Each owner cannot do that on their own. The land uses have to be kept in line with infrastructure.

The driving force behind a lot of the ridiculous zoning is refusal to invest money for infrastructure. We have crumbling roads, sewers and transit systems. Nobody wants to pay to bring them up to date and expand them. Instead of rebuilding or expanding systems that are beyond their useful life, we try to get the new people to pay for it all, as if it's all their fault. A more rational approach would be to plan out the infrastructure needed for higher density, get funding mechanisms for it in place and raise the allowed densities. But this can't be done because it would require tax money and tax money would cause blown gaskets. Instead, we choke off supply and end up paying higher costs anyway.

Re: And a California news roundup... - 81alum - 07-03-2014

(07-03-2014, 03:47 PM)82 Card link Wrote:[quote author=ferrari link=topic=10167.msg91912#msg91912 date=1404423843]
One very effective way cities have alleviated the cost of providing services to new residential developement is the the creation of so-called Mello Roos districts, which add fees to property tax bills.  These fees are collected with prop taxes and passed directly to various departments, like water, sewer, streets, etc.  Used extensively in SoCal (not sure about NorCal) these fees can approach prop taxes, particularly in newer developements.

Theoretically, the Mello-Roose districts and other fees are supposed to cover the incremental cost of the development. That's not what I see. These charges tend to exceed the cost of the development's impacts. In our town, the big development that was fought over for decades ended up providing the city with five community ball field, community park, public clubhouse, public art and garden center, a network of walking, bicycle and equestrian trails and over 1,300 acres of open space. This was in addition to exorbitant bedroom taxes and other facilities fees. For acceding to the city's demands, they got the right to 245 building sites.

Forcing new development to pay for the pipe dreams of the local city councils drives up housing prices by driving up the marginal cost of housing. All buyers end up paying that extra cost regardless of whether they are buying one of the shiny new houses or one of the WWII sheds.
[/quote]
All the up-front stuff that developers are forced to create in return for favorable zoning and approvals for their developments actually add to the long-term costs and contribute nothing to paying for them over time.  It is not that I dislike the schools, parks, and affordable housing that they often are required to provide.  But what is really needed is a long term tax base that can be used to keep up the schools, parks, affordable housing as well as provide the extra police and fire and sewage etc. for the development itself.  The current situation is a win-win for both developers and local politicians, since the developers get their projects and the politicians get credit for driving a hard bargain and getting public amenities for the rest of the citizens.  But it is a disaster for the future as services decline and amenities deteriorate.  It is the Stockton model.  Everything that is built needs to be built with a plan to pay for its future service and upkeep, and we are doing a poor job.