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NIMBY Laws and California Housing Prices
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2005 Jul 27, 5:12am 20,625 views 126 comments
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Urban Boundary Limits are a great thing that have kept the Bay Area from being as spread out and smog ridden as LA or Houston or Atlanta. They also allow us to keep open space near our cities, making them much more livable.
The flip side, is that the shortage of developable land pushes up prices. I think that the increased standard of living pushes up prices, too though, because it is definitely much nicer to live in an area with good planning than someplace like Houston, where they have no planning whatsover.
Yes, I agree we need higher density. It is coming, slowly but surely.
I know it is fashionable to complain about how hard it is to do infill development here, but I have seen three large (20+ units) condo development within six blocks of my house, since I moved in three years ago.
Now granted, all of them are on the Mission border or in the Mission, where the neighbors won't complain. It could not happen around the corner. But even on my block, I am seeing single family homes torn down and replaced with larger, two unit buildings.
So it is happening. Just not fast enough to keep up with demand.
Urban Boundary Limits are a great thing that have kept the Bay Area from being as spread out and smog ridden as LA or Houston or Atlanta. They also allow us to keep open space near our cities, making them much more livable.
Jimbo, While I don't think ALL forms of urban planning is necessarily bad --quite the contrary-- I don't see how UBLs have produced the benefits you describe. Ultimately (ignoring the current speculative bubble) I see one big long-term driver of housing demand in CA: population growth, nearly all of which is immigration driven.
Any attempts at trying to limit/"manage" this population growth through NIMBY UBL laws, merely avoids dealing with the root cause, and quickly produces supply shortages and higher prices. It also shifts the burden of housing the additional population onto neighboring communities who don't have UBLs, makes longer commutes, etc. If anything it INCREASES urban sprawl, not reduces it. Increasing housing density/building condos is a good start, but keep in mind that such things are *not* popular among people who support UBL type laws.
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This topic is a little off-the-Bubble theme in that it addresses long-term legal/structural changes in California's RE market that have artifically limited housing supply and driven RE prices here higher for a very long time. Even when we ignore the effects of the current speculative RE bubble (since 2000), CA housing costs are much higher on average than anywhere else --rents included.
Can we blame this on ourselves for approving NIMBY laws, such as Urban Boundary Limits and Prop. 13? Are these laws a form of generational economic warfare --Boomers vs. their children & grandchildren ("I've got mine so screw you") ? Or, are they just bad public policy spawned by ecological and tax-revolt activism run amok?
Poll after poll shows a strong majority of the public is still in favor of these laws --they appear to believe these laws are “helping". Why do you think this is? Are most people really that selfish/short-sighted, or is there a general misunderstanding about the long-term economic impact of these laws? Are voters being deliberately misled by powerful special interest groups/lobbies who wish to preserve the structural imbalances (and profits) that these laws create?
What can be done about it? Should we all help organize a “repeal Prop. 13 & UBL laws" petition drive? Is there a better strategy?
HARM
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