SB 51: the California politics thread

it's not that multi-family residential is illegal near transit. it's that multi-family residential is illegal (i.e. forbidden by local zoning) almost everywhere.

the argument for 827 goes like this afaict.

1. california is not building enough homes. in raw numbers (population growth vs new homes, affordability of housing relative to cost of living, number of homeless people) the problem is worse here than anywhere else in the US. i think this is pretty uncontroversial.

2. it's important to build homes! 827 argues that it's so important that, in the same way the state regulates education at the city level, it should regulate housing at the city level to provide some baseline level of service.

3. the social, economic and environmental cost of long car commutes is enormous. for this reason, we need to build houses not out in the desert, but near jobs and, failing that, near transit.

827 is kind of a blunt instrument though: i'm sketchy on the details, but the version they tried last year would immediately upzone everywhere within 1/4 mile(ish?) of transit (light rail and express bus, not local bus) to require cities to permit somewhere between 4 and 8 story residential (depending on details of transit, etc.), subject to other zoning restrictions (e.g. the various insane requirements about parking etc. still apply).

i'm very sympathetic to the view that the effect of 827 would have had on south LA (which would pretty much all have been upzoned by this), in combination with the 2028 olympics, would have been catastrophic. these are the poorest people in the city of LA.

i am totally unsympathetic to the protests of cities like berkeley, which refuses to build apartment buildings near their three bar stations, at the same time as building 8 story parking lots https://sf.curbed.com/2018/11/5/18065382/berkeley-new-parking-garage-housing-nimby-cars-homes.

i'm interested to see what carve outs and changes and pork the 2019 attempt has.

three *bart stations

i added this sentence to paul koretz's wikipedia page in a fit of pique btw:

"In 2018 he campaigned successfully against SB 827 with a goal of preventing new development. He stated that the bill would "have a neighborhood with little 1920s, '30s and '40s single-family homes look like Dubai 10 years later".[14] He later revealed that he had not actually read the bill, which sought to place 45-85 feet limits on building height.[15]"

i've linked this before, but it's worth reading

https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/

Yeah, although SB827 upzones almost all of San Francisco (inckuding my little single-family-house neighborhood), I am massively for it. Also my family rarely drives, so I know it can be done.

The California GOP’s collapse in Orange County wasn’t limited to House races. Right now Gavin Newsom is losing the county by 1.2 points, and may end up winning it. Jerry Brown lost it by 11 points. https://t.co/YlrxaMjB1S

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) November 17, 2018

It overrules that, but not the California Coastal Commission, which limits residential structures to a height of something like 50 feet within the "coastal zone," the boundary of which can vary anywhere up to something like 2 miles from the actual coast, depending on how the zone is defined by local municipalities' Local Coastal Programs (which of course have to be approved by the Coastal Commission). But the intent of Wiener's bill would be to leave it up to the state to decide, and limit local control over density in these state-defined high-density areas.

― del griffith, Friday, November 16, 2018 6:45 PM (yesterday)

I would think that if the party in power/interests of gov't leadership are pro-density, that they will appoint people to the Coastal Commission that share those interests. my grandfather was on the CA Coastal Commission in the 80s/early 90s -- initially a lot of their work/policy (iirc) was about things like preventing offshore oil drilling and corporate luxury hotels and things like preserving public access to the coast (rather than selling it to private interests/investors). At some point their meetings became almost 90% about rich person A wanting a ruling against rich person B adding a story onto their mansion that would reduce rich person A's view of the beach. Then he got unappointed by Willie Brown because he refused to support some corrupt douchebag's re-election campaign in his district.

it's not that multi-family residential is illegal near transit. it's that multi-family residential is illegal (i.e. forbidden by local zoning) almost everywhere.

is your definition of "almost everywhere" based on square footage or ...? because that seems a bit of an exaggeration, but I could, uh, research that.

And zoning in CA isn't that black or white, in practice. There are things that aren't permitted, but you can apply for conditional use permits, which are then subcategorized as minor and major. You can also go for variances, again minor and major. Though, these present a lot of time-consuming and expensive hoops to jump through (time and price vary, obv).

i mean based on sq ft in the state of california, sure MFH is not permitted almost everywhere.

but presumably you mean in urban california.

here's a map of MFH zoning in SF. 26.5%. https://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/ this is as good as it gets in CA. in LA:

Just under two thirds of land in the city of Los Angeles is now zoned to allow residential construction, according to the Department of City Planning. Of that total, more than 75 percent is reserved for single-family homes or duplexes.

so that's 16.5% of the city of LA zoned for MFH.

the rest of the the bay area, LA county and SD are worse even than this.

so not permitted "almost everywhere" is maybe a bit strong, but not very, given the magnitude of the housing crisis.

as you say though, local variances complicate the picture. but they don't generally complicate that picture in a way that makes it *easier* to build. e.g. SF has hundreds of vacant parcels that are, in principle, zoned for MFH and nothing is getting built on them. clearly simply upzoning is not sufficient. but it's a start.

the reason I brought up variances is that Capital can find a way -- enough political and financial capital, most regulations can be worked around. Of course, that reinforces inequality big time. And SF is great example of using political and financial capital to block construction.

One of the big political issues here, is the conflict between those that support pretty much all housing, and those who want mainly affordable housing. In practice, you get affordable housing advocates siding with the anti-growth people to block high-density market rate projects.

So yeah, I think we agree that it "is not sufficient, but it's a start"

"i am totally unsympathetic to the protests of cities like berkeley, which refuses to build apartment buildings near their three bar stations, at the same time as building 8 story parking lots https://sf.curbed.com/2018/11/5/18065382/berkeley-new-parking-garage-housing-nimby-cars-homes.";

Berkeley is fucking nuts about this shit and I've lived here for over 20 years. I really gets on my fucking nerves. I keep hoping the worst of the people who are like this are going to die off soon but they seem to keep hanging on andmoving slowly through the fucking grocery store with their carts and annoying me.

lol u at Berkeley Bowl?

! Dem hold on CA grows, with potentially big policy effects. GOP ended Dem supermajority in June by recalling a senator over a gas tax hike. But in Nov., voters refused to repeal that hike, and Dems regained all-important supermajority.

It now looks like a 29-11 (+3 Dem) Senate. https://t.co/Y9XrBKBYTt

— Taniel (@Taniel) November 20, 2018

And Dems' majority will likely be even larger in CA's Assembly; it stands at 60-20 (+5 Dem) based on the current leads in each district. (In fact, Dems already picked-up a seat in June when the GOP was shut out of the Top 2 in a GOP-held district.)

— Taniel (@Taniel) November 20, 2018

cautiously excited about this with newsom as gov tbqh

those supermajorities are not even thaaat close, which hopefully minimizes the amount of bullshit/pork/timewasting necessary

we'll see how well Newsom navigates the legislature. Jerry Brown he is not.

That’s what makes me optimistic: he seems like a blank slate. Although admittedly I don’t know whether Sacramento’s equivalent of Chuck Schumer is worth much.

Also one of the reasons the supermajority is a big deal is because the leg can now overrule the gov’s veto. They didn’t do that for brown but newsom just gives off this “overrule me” vibe.

he also gives off this "i will feed a cat into an ATM and stab someone over a business card with superior minimalist design" vibe

heh

Nobody will remember this but Umberg lost to Nguyen about 10 years ago for the OC BoS special election that turned really nasty & toxic. Nice little bit of karma.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/29/california-gov-elect-gavin-newsom-faces-pressure-to-cut-77b-rail-plan.html

"There's no way there's going to be a profit on this thing, so there's not going to be private interest in it," said Baruch Feigenbaum, an assistant director of transportation Policy at Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank. He believes the project was designed to go through the Central Valley for political reasons and won't be competitive with air travel.

What are the "political reasons" this dude is referring to?

I really want to like this project, but all the fiscal conservatives in my life have left me feeling fairly terrified about it. Should a Californian feel terrified about it?

i mean why would you need to go from SF to LA in one jag in the first place? i feel like HSR from SD->LA or SAC->SF would be more useful? Hell, even Vegas->LA

...and I loves me a train

xp
The "political reason" is that Central Valley people would be pissed if their tax money went to a system that more or less ignores them.

My take: the Central Valley (up until the most recent elections) has leaned right for decades. Part of the reason for high speed rail is to repopulate the Central Valley with silicon valley employees who have been priced out of the Bay Area. By incenting non-aggie voters to recolate to Fresno/Modesto/Bakersfield this could be seen as a gerrymander-ish move by the CA GOP.

(The problem with that take is that silicon valley workers have priced everyone else out of the Bay Area).

trying to picture what silicon valley types would want to live in fresno or a dying town like bakersfield

i mean i understand it takes investment to improve these cities but they have a long way to go before they can attract any of these guys

I am 100% for this project and hate having to travel from SF to LA (and further down to SD) on the regular, like several times a year. The GHG emissions from flying really don't sit well with me, so that means driving is the only option and driving that stretch is just fucking lame, even if you take the 101 over the fairly apocalyptic 5.

certainly there are *tons* of businesses that have offices in both the Bay Area and LA, simple and more efficient travel options are def warranted

my company has people flying back and forth all the time

yeah i feel like the companies with multiple offices would just fly people out back and forth (i know a few companies and people, myself included, where this is the case), and not just sf<>la but all along the west coast

definitely a thing ime

shakey what are the GHG numbers on driving vs flying? i do this from burbank to san jose maybe every 2 months.

depends what kind of car you have obviously but generally flying is many times worse than driving a regular old gasoline-powered car

i have a 2010 civic. it is blue.

is that just raw output or are you taking into account mobilizing hundreds/thousands of people at a time vs hundreds/thousands of (at times stalled) cars on the road

rough calc based on some general assumptions I've seen elsewhere is that the emissions/miles travelled ratio is about twice for airplanes (0.61333) vs what it is for cars (0.646667). Going by that, 330 miles from San Jose to Burbank is 114.4 kg of CO2 in a car, and 202.4 kg in a plane.

and of course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation

unlike with cars, idk how you build an all-electric airplane, or one that runs on, say, hydrogen

most of the current prototypes are built around batteries:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/this-startup-is-building-an-electric-airplane

huh interesting. no idea how that works from an engineering perspective, but hey go get em guys

a blue civic is far worse for the environment than any other color. who the fuck buys a blue car?

one of my old drummers once said about someone, derisively: "he drives a car like an Australian drives a blue car". I have no idea what that meant and it's still funny to me. Said drummer now lives in Australia.

Am with Shakey: I'm really excited about California High Speed Rail.

Also connecting communities that have been left behind in other ways (eg Stockton / Fresno / Bakersfield) is a "political reason" I can get behind.

Real question is whether we can find a way to do these types of projects with appropriate environmental/local checks without letting NIMBY's and the like obstruct them. Getting this line through Atherton, for example, is going to be a battle.

emissions/miles travelled ratio is about twice for airplanes (0.61333) vs what it is for cars (0.646667)

dunno what I did here but I obviously misentered a digit, the ratio should've been 0.346667 for cars

just for you math nerds out there

Isn’t part of the problem with air travel that emissions/mile is not linear because of the relative expense of take off? Like a 1000 mile flight does not release twice the emissions of a 500 mile flight.

that would make sense, tbh I haven't dug into it too much

There is the same factor in cars, in that starting and running a cold engine pollutes much more than cruising with a hot engine.

right but energy per person to get to "cruising" (e.g. 30 mph or 30,000ft) is much larger for the plane than the car because of gravity. i guess i should look into this.

I'm not sure on the precise models, but search "carbon travel calculator" is one resource.

And I don't think there's any non-hydrocarbon aircraft that can plausibly fly this route at scale on any roadmap today.

Trains are pretty efficient. That's why they're still in use.

Central Valley is flat as can be. That is exactly what works best for trains.