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Comment by tomjakubowski | Hacker News Reader

What are the state zoning laws? As far as I know, the state constitution leaves zoning as an issue for the cities/counties to handle. Is that your beef or are there laws on the books I'm ignorant of?

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The issue is that regional concerns (there is not enough housing in the region) do not mesh well with local control. Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult.

If all the localities in a region, or even most of them, act this way, the end result is a housing shortage even when the economy is barely chugging along.

Personally I wouldn't mind the Bay Area looking like Shenzhen, but I don't understand why people think that anything is going to change. Housing and education are prime assets in the new information based society and economy. People aren't going to share that anymore than natural resources, stocks, bitcoins or domains. Regardless of the larger consequences.

Also, Shenzhen isn’t much cheaper either (at least to buy, rents are much more reasonable of course).

> People aren't going to share ...

It's more complicated than just sharing.

It's not about whether you have to let people come and live on your own property. It's about whether your neighbour may subdivide her own property for a profit. Collectively, owners have an incentive to stop her; but individual incentives are mixed.

We can see how the politics of that tension is working out right now. But how can anyone tell how it will play out in the future?

> Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult.

The localities have a point. Why should existing residents pay for new infrastructure, to accommodate housing for 10,000 new residents (All because large tech firms keep building offices in the valley?)

In a proper world, either the tech giant, or those new employees should pay for those infrastructure improvements.

Traditionally, this has been done through high re-zoning and subdivision fees.

Aren't local tech companies offices paying taxes that should take care of that? Unless you mean that tech companies should build private roads and infrastructure which sounds very bad... The way you get money from private parties and use it to build public infrastructure is through taxes :)

Because tax rates are the same for old, and new residents/employers, they aren't paying enough to offset the costs they are adding to the system.

If you and your 4 roommates rent a 5-bedroom house... And then a sixth person moves in, and demands that everyone spends $20,000 each, to construct a sixth bedroom... The old residents are getting a pretty bad deal. The new resident paid $20,000 to get a room... But the rest of the house paid $100,000, for no benefit to themselves.

Cities have zoning/subdivision fees to deal with this exact problem. If you're adding X new units to the city, you have to pay for the infrastructure to support these X units.

The reason you're getting downvoted is because your facts are wrong, property tax is lower for older residents because Prop 13 limits increases in assessed value. Further new projects are saddled with a wide variety of impact fees. Overall new residents wind up subsdising old residents.

  property tax is lower for older residents

That's incorrect as written. Perhaps you meant to say that "for otherwise equal properties, tax is lower for owners with longer tenure in that property." It has nothing to do with owner age.

Tech company office taxes incentivize local municipalities to open offices, not to build houses. And in fact that's exactly what happens - offices go up, but the people to work there have to commute in from outside the municipality.

Seems the solution is to have mixed use high rises.

Are you serious?! If your area gets more desirable and built up your property value will more than make up for any perceived tax unfairness. If you end up blocking a lot in Manhattan with your single family home you are a made man!

  CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult

The vast majority of local tax increase attempts (sales tax add-ons, parcel taxes) over the past few decades passed, and on the first try.

Yes, the problematic zoning laws exist mainly at the city level. The problem is that the decisions about key areas are being made by people who are incentivized to make housing prices go up (because they own property), which they do by severely restricting construction of dense housing.

Even that seems super short sighed though isn't it? If an area turns into the next Manhattan all land owners win big time. I'd love it if it became economically desirable to build a 100 story skyscraper next to my house and someone went ahead and did it!

This idea is entirely alien to majority of American high class suburbians.

My sorries to people insulted by this statement.

See this AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar...

Where in that AMA is there a reference to zoning being defined at the state level? I did not see it in the long starting post.

ohazi never talked about zoning laws being defined at the State level. Just that zoning laws in CA are asinine.

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