The California housing crisis is a result of restrictive local policy preventing housing starts, not a shortage of materials.
I keep hearing this criticism but I think it’s less about home values and more about how many people - wealthy and not wealthy - simply value their quality of life and don’t want that to be damaged by forced rezoning.
It's utterly absurd looking from the outside that officials are claiming the permits are being "fast tracked" even now.
I don't think those people exist... State/City budgets have already been cut lean on this stuff and most places that aren't in the middle of a disaster are many months behind as it is.
The duplex I'm in took... 4-5 years of permitting? Something like that.
Totally insane waits, I agree.
Many (most) have not yet had permits issued for rebuilding, most commonly because the owners can not meet, or are unwilling to meet, the standards for septic systems.
There have been decades of higher standards for all sorts of code. Nothing nearly as stringent for multifsmlt housing, a code which makes housing six times safer than single family housing. But still strict enough that four decades of no-growth policy left most people completely unaware of how hard it is to build housing.
It may be that the septic regulations are excessive, but oddly I've never heard anybody argue that the regulations are unnecessary, they just argue that they don't want to follow them because they didn't have to in the past. I'd be a bit more sympathetic to the mountain folks if they had an argument that the regulations were incorrect.
The real property seizure is what's happening to the public land so that people can live for cheap and not cover their own pollution. People still have the land. Though if they want to try to overturn Euclid v. Amber and make zoning illegal, I'm there to help them! Necessary environmental regulations are not something I want to overturn, however.
however, it is undeniable that there was a change in regulation and restriction, even if that is going from a river quality is optional to the priority.
Beneficiaries are happy to benefit, and if that takes away powers and property from others, so be it.
This is the dynamic that I am highlighting.
https://recovery.lacounty.gov/rebuilding/permitting-progress...
2162 permit applications received; 1916 applications have full plans submitted. 534 permits issued so far.
You cannot add ~60 million foreign national people to the US population in the last 25 years without severely impacting the housing situation when the USA has only built 1.1 million housing units on average over that period; most of those being locked into high prices due to the massive inflation over that time.
What makes it even worse is this obsession with both concentrating populations and jobs in urban centers, while at the same time being concerned with climate change and environmental protection. They are mutually exclusive things. This is an iron triangle issue, you can only have two of three things: affordable housing, immigration, climate/environment protection.
Higher density housing -- and a lot of it -- solves for all three, right? If not, why not?
Source: You made it up.
Being closer to where the things are so you can walk significantly drops the amount of fuel needed for transportation and opens up public transportation as a workable option.
> USA has only built 1.1 million housing units on average over that period;
That's a government issue, not a practical one. How many housing units did China build in that same amount of time?
Relative to the rest of the area, for that specific pollutant, yes. Relative to a city dwelling of the same distance, no. Volume (ie Traffic) matters when comparing health impacts.
A suburbanite driving on their river of pollution for 50 miles every day is a much bigger impact than somebody taking the bus and train in the city. And even city streets do not see the level of pollution caused by freeways that snake through suburbs throughout the Bay Area and LA.
But honestly the gas stoves in most California kitchens are the true killer, yet nobody seems to even bother talking about that.
In any case: environmental metrics I had always thought about things that impact the environment: reduction of ecosystem, death of a particular types of animals (especially the ones we like), unhealthy water ways, etc. On all these, suburban life is absolutely horrific, urban and very rural life is pretty good. If you can drive to the Costco, you are probably living in the least environmentally friendly way possible.
As far as health metrics, whether from environmental effects or crime or the actual real killers: obesity, smoking, blood pressure, and heat disease, cities do better than rural areas:
https://schaeffer.usc.edu/research/rural-americans-dont-live...
Our cars are killing us in every way yet we refuse to acknowledge the massive health effects.
> A suburbanite driving on their river of pollution for 50 miles every day is a much bigger impact than somebody taking the bus and train in the city.
This is moving the goalpost. Now it's distance plus traffic to reach for a pre-decided conclusion.
> As far as health metrics, whether from environmental effects or crime or the actual real killers: obesity, smoking, blood pressure, and heat disease, cities do better than rural areas:
Rural is not the same as suburb and not rural. A suburb is generally still a city, albeit smaller...depending on how one wants to define "city", I guess.
I have health conditions, originating from congenital defect. I have an electric stove. I moved out of a SoCal city, as I was raised next to a major (5) interchange. I live in the largest city of my state, which would be called a suburb somewhere else and my medical care is EXCELLENT for reasons that are particular to my area.
There's an argument to be made that cars provide economic and financial mobility, leveraged by the upper classes, which is why cars are not properly demonized. That's a separate topic from health.
I hope this helps you make stronger arguments in your next exchange, because I share some of these views as well.
What goalpost was moved? The freeway is the major producer of pollution, the major concentration of it. This is well documented in the literature on PM2.5: being close to a freeway is a major risk factor but urban areas are not a major risk factor.
If there's a freeway, it's not an urban area, it's a suburban area.
> I hope this helps you make stronger arguments in your next exchange,
I have no idea how you think you poked any holes at all in my argument, but this statement clearly thinks you have! Could you clarify what you think I said was wrong and how?
Living next to a major interchange is definitely living a huuuuge health risk, but again it's mostly a suburban risk.
> There's an argument to be made that cars provide economic and financial mobility, leveraged by the upper classes, which is why cars are not properly demonized. That's a separate topic from health.
If there's an argument, it's very weak. Cars are very expensive, draining the bank accounts of those on the lower end of the economic scale. Yet because we have capped density, those same people on the lower end of the economic scale must travel long distances from farther away, instead of being allowed a place in a city. Density plus transit offer a cheaper alternative without the burden of large car payments, the huge repair bills of cheap used cars, the monthly car insurance payments, and the debt trap of having to buy a car to even get a job.
I benefit immensely financially from "immigrants", but that does not mean it is just and I have the integrity to be honest about that. You clearly do not. Stealing by abstraction and supporting it makes you a bad person, not at all the good person you think you are by supporting "immigration", regardless of whether I get richer today than you make in one year or not because of immigrants.