Lemme see if I get this right: You want to take me out of the driver's seat and have me riding a bus; you want me to forget about having my own house (with a yard) and get me stacked and packed in an apartment -- and then you have the nerve to try passing that off as "abundance"?
A(n electric) car in every garage! THAT's abundance!
There was a survey on SB PM, and I have to say I feel like this is the kind of article that SB shouldn't be doing.
It's in the "view from nowhere" or "teach the controversy" tradition of journalism. From Yglesias brands such as Vox or SB, we expect articles to show perspective and insight.
As SB readers well know, most of the arguments against YIMBY bills just don't hold up. If this bill is the exception or if Matt has changed his view on this, that should definitely be it's own article. If he hasn't, why is SB pointlessly withholding meaningful context from it's readers? If the article is about the intellectual traditions or coalitional differences, then spend more time on that than the arguments they offer.
Other outlets can do view from nowhere. Doing it in SB feels bad.
How about this concept to increase housing stock in Calif? -- remove, cut, erase, kill, jettison, expunge, delete about 99 percent of the myriad zoning rules and building regs that impede or delay the building process or make it more expensive. And don't talk to, consult or confer with anyone in the disgraced field of transit until the Bullet Train to nowhere is torched.
To me that's not an argument *against* this legislation. That's it's biggest selling point. Local control (aka NIMBYism) desperately needs undermining!
Home buying question - did everyone who was out house hunting ever walk into a place and laugh and walk out? In a lot of these discussions it seems like some people think landlords and sellers can just demand any price. I guess you might think that if your realtor only took you to places you loved. Is that common or do most people have a few cases where they are like - good luck getting that price you greedy fucktard?
If it's a good seller's market lots of people throw their house up just to see if they get lucky.
Housing is a peculiar market. Different folks can have very different ideas about what is or is not valuable or price worthy in a property. Part of what you pay a realtor for is some knowledge about standardization of value. Did your realtor think the price was way off?
I am now on house ownership number six. l never laughed at the asking price, although there were a few that I knew were not going to get what they wanted if the market was rational. The harder thing to not laugh at is the decor some people have. My all time favorite was a full wall mural of DaVinci's Last Supper. One house I looked at on my last go round had been, as near as the realtor and I could figure, rented out as a porn shoot and/or swinger party event venue. I kind of laughed, but mostly it was just creepy.
Of course one of the important things to do when house hunting is ignore the existing decor when deciding whether you like a place. Assume you're going to repaint every room, and pay much more attention to room and floor layout and how you will use the space.
"3. It could strain infrastructure and harm the environment.
There are questions about the adequacy of infrastructure, including concerns about school capacity, emergency services, traffic congestion, and risks associated with locating new developments in environmentally sensitive areas such as floodplains or fire zones."
Pardon my ignorance but how much of CA is already in a fire zone or a flood plain?
Steyer says very early on that almost half of San Francisco office space is vacant. What is the bottleneck to re-zoning the 30+ million square feet of centrally located SF office space to residential? Is it more expensive to re-zone existing commercial real estate sitting empty than to build new apartment blocks from scratch for some reason?
"San Francisco in recent months had its largest decline in office vacancy since the first quarter of 2015 as artificial-intelligence companies occupied more space, according to preliminary second-quarter data from real-estate company CBRE.
The office-vacancy rate fell for a third consecutive quarter, declining to 35.1% from 35.8% in the first quarter, the CBRE data show."
It has a ways to go but it's pretty clear that remote work for adults works about as well as remote school worked for kids.
But if blocking transit becomes the only way to block housing, they’ll focus all their efforts on it.
I still support the bill, because public opinion is clearly moving towards YIMBYism, but it feels a bit like whack a mole. Eliminate one way for them to obstruct and they’ll find another.
Some people are just pathologically resistant to change. I think it's valuable for him to make these arguments if only to show that any objection isn't being made in good faith - they all serve a pathologies resistance to change.
1. That's the idea. Local control of housing has done nothing but aid NIMBYs. It should go the way of the dodo bird.
2. That's letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The alternative to passing SB79 isn't to pass a perfect bill, it's to pass nothing and blow an opportunity to make things much better.
3. Those can be addressed mostly by individuals and builders. If there isn't demand for living in area, housing won't be built. Schools and other infrastructure will be fine just like they are here in Texas where housing gets built all the time. Yes, red states have schools and infrastructure, too, and we manage to get by alright. If you have congestion issues, a certain city in New York just showed a great way to deal with it.
4. That's the idea. Public oversight is a joke. Very few people take part in any of it. Those that do are wildly unrepresentative of the communities they live in and are usually NIMBYs who don't want anything built near where they live. See the ProPublica story about one woman single-handedly filing lawsuits to block wind power in Oregon. That's who community input empowers.
5. Who decides what constitutes "community interests"? In practice, it's NIMBYs. I'm more than happy to override them and take away their ability to block things. As mentioned in addressing objection 4, community input is nothing but a tool for a small number of people opposed to anything changing to use it to get their way. Anything to take away their ability to do that is good in my book.
Lemme see if I get this right: You want to take me out of the driver's seat and have me riding a bus; you want me to forget about having my own house (with a yard) and get me stacked and packed in an apartment -- and then you have the nerve to try passing that off as "abundance"?
A(n electric) car in every garage! THAT's abundance!
There was a survey on SB PM, and I have to say I feel like this is the kind of article that SB shouldn't be doing.
It's in the "view from nowhere" or "teach the controversy" tradition of journalism. From Yglesias brands such as Vox or SB, we expect articles to show perspective and insight.
As SB readers well know, most of the arguments against YIMBY bills just don't hold up. If this bill is the exception or if Matt has changed his view on this, that should definitely be it's own article. If he hasn't, why is SB pointlessly withholding meaningful context from it's readers? If the article is about the intellectual traditions or coalitional differences, then spend more time on that than the arguments they offer.
Other outlets can do view from nowhere. Doing it in SB feels bad.
We need more housing. The current set-up ain't working at all. Any Dem who votes against this needs to be primaried.
How about this concept to increase housing stock in Calif? -- remove, cut, erase, kill, jettison, expunge, delete about 99 percent of the myriad zoning rules and building regs that impede or delay the building process or make it more expensive. And don't talk to, consult or confer with anyone in the disgraced field of transit until the Bullet Train to nowhere is torched.
Honestly my biggest concern with sb79 is that Tom Stryker supports it. The man is a reliable barometer of terrible ideas.
Is it just me, or are half the "cons" things that look more like pros?
"It undermines local control." Yes! It does! That's the whole point!
>It would undermine local control.<
To me that's not an argument *against* this legislation. That's it's biggest selling point. Local control (aka NIMBYism) desperately needs undermining!
I hate articles that provide arguments in favor and against something without actually describing neutrally what it does…
Home buying question - did everyone who was out house hunting ever walk into a place and laugh and walk out? In a lot of these discussions it seems like some people think landlords and sellers can just demand any price. I guess you might think that if your realtor only took you to places you loved. Is that common or do most people have a few cases where they are like - good luck getting that price you greedy fucktard?
If it's a good seller's market lots of people throw their house up just to see if they get lucky.
Housing is a peculiar market. Different folks can have very different ideas about what is or is not valuable or price worthy in a property. Part of what you pay a realtor for is some knowledge about standardization of value. Did your realtor think the price was way off?
I am now on house ownership number six. l never laughed at the asking price, although there were a few that I knew were not going to get what they wanted if the market was rational. The harder thing to not laugh at is the decor some people have. My all time favorite was a full wall mural of DaVinci's Last Supper. One house I looked at on my last go round had been, as near as the realtor and I could figure, rented out as a porn shoot and/or swinger party event venue. I kind of laughed, but mostly it was just creepy.
Of course one of the important things to do when house hunting is ignore the existing decor when deciding whether you like a place. Assume you're going to repaint every room, and pay much more attention to room and floor layout and how you will use the space.
I went to one where my realtor threatened to call my family if I said yes because I would clearly be insane
"3. It could strain infrastructure and harm the environment.
There are questions about the adequacy of infrastructure, including concerns about school capacity, emergency services, traffic congestion, and risks associated with locating new developments in environmentally sensitive areas such as floodplains or fire zones."
Pardon my ignorance but how much of CA is already in a fire zone or a flood plain?
Do they not know that the people already live in CA? It's not like this is going to trigger some influx of Texans remigrating back to CA.
NIMBY's will be receiving this tweet from me and nothing else. No follow-ups.
https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1958009056431354293
Steyer says very early on that almost half of San Francisco office space is vacant. What is the bottleneck to re-zoning the 30+ million square feet of centrally located SF office space to residential? Is it more expensive to re-zone existing commercial real estate sitting empty than to build new apartment blocks from scratch for some reason?
Matt has written a bit before about the office-to-residential conversions and some of the challenges:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/to-save-downtowns-we-need-to-embrace
https://www.slowboring.com/p/legalize-housing-not-tent-encampments
"San Francisco in recent months had its largest decline in office vacancy since the first quarter of 2015 as artificial-intelligence companies occupied more space, according to preliminary second-quarter data from real-estate company CBRE.
The office-vacancy rate fell for a third consecutive quarter, declining to 35.1% from 35.8% in the first quarter, the CBRE data show."
It has a ways to go but it's pretty clear that remote work for adults works about as well as remote school worked for kids.
The Panopticon is real...
I find the arguments against unconvincing.
1. It would undermine local control.
They have been in control a long time and are part of the problem.
2. It doesn’t do enough on affordability
Supply and demand. More supply drives down prices. What is “enough”?
3. It could strain infrastructure
It can and will. All change does. This is an argument for the status quo
4. It would reduce public oversight.
We have too much public oversight. Matt has convincingly chronicled that in this space for years. On the Right, we’ve thought so for decades.
5. It expands transit agencies’ authority too far.
I can’t comment on this one, but if that’s all they’ve got let’s address it as best we can and move forward.
Is it possibly this could backfire by motivating NIMBYs to block transit?
They already block transit, and even if they do block more transit than they would have, the SB 79 regime will still be better than the status quo.
But if blocking transit becomes the only way to block housing, they’ll focus all their efforts on it.
I still support the bill, because public opinion is clearly moving towards YIMBYism, but it feels a bit like whack a mole. Eliminate one way for them to obstruct and they’ll find another.
The LA City Attorney sent an utterly unhinged opposition letter that was effectively an argument against allowing anyone to build anything or change anything in Los Angeles. It was the purest essence of NIMBYism that I've ever seen. https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/1279066b-c01e-4ab1-bed7-1eadc18fc0b5/downloads/a5e964f3-a006-4c73-840a-a940cde19e6f/05.23.2025%20SB%2079%20Opposition%20Letter%20.pdf?ver=1748056431352
I love how its argument is more housing ==> more people ==> more infrastructure ==> more costs for the city.
A great argument for taking the city's population down to zero.
Some people are just pathologically resistant to change. I think it's valuable for him to make these arguments if only to show that any objection isn't being made in good faith - they all serve a pathologies resistance to change.
My responses to each of those objections:
1. That's the idea. Local control of housing has done nothing but aid NIMBYs. It should go the way of the dodo bird.
2. That's letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The alternative to passing SB79 isn't to pass a perfect bill, it's to pass nothing and blow an opportunity to make things much better.
3. Those can be addressed mostly by individuals and builders. If there isn't demand for living in area, housing won't be built. Schools and other infrastructure will be fine just like they are here in Texas where housing gets built all the time. Yes, red states have schools and infrastructure, too, and we manage to get by alright. If you have congestion issues, a certain city in New York just showed a great way to deal with it.
4. That's the idea. Public oversight is a joke. Very few people take part in any of it. Those that do are wildly unrepresentative of the communities they live in and are usually NIMBYs who don't want anything built near where they live. See the ProPublica story about one woman single-handedly filing lawsuits to block wind power in Oregon. That's who community input empowers.
5. Who decides what constitutes "community interests"? In practice, it's NIMBYs. I'm more than happy to override them and take away their ability to block things. As mentioned in addressing objection 4, community input is nothing but a tool for a small number of people opposed to anything changing to use it to get their way. Anything to take away their ability to do that is good in my book.