Thursday, August 24, 2017

Housing crisis: Will California force its cities to OK more building?

State lawmakers are desperate to address a statewide problem that has been decades in the making.

 By | kmurphy@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group


Amid a housing crisis that is displacing the poor and forcing millennials and countless others to look outside the Bay Area to live, all eyes turned this week to the tiny Peninsula town of Brisbane where a developer wants to build thousands of homes on a 684-acre swath of wasteland.

Powerful tech companies, state lawmakers and pro-growth activists from around the region implored the City Council on Monday to allow housing on land once used as a rail yard and a landfill ​— an idea many residents oppose. But after hearing passionate arguments from both sides, the City Council shelved the decision, prolonging a land-use debate that has dragged on since 2005.

 “There is a paralysis when it comes to decisions about housing, and the Brisbane project is the poster child for that,” said Matt Regan of the Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored public policy group.

The standstill in Brisbane crystallizes a challenge for state lawmakers desperate to address a statewide problem that has been decades in the making: Local governments wield tremendous power in decisions about whether and what kind of new housing to build, and they are not building enough. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates California is so behind that it needs as many as 100,000 more housing units a year — on top of what it typically constructs — just to stabilize prices.

In the nine-county Bay Area, the median price for a single-family home has topped $800,000. And nearly one-third of renters statewide — 1.5 million households — spend more than half their income on rent, according to state estimates.

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Posted by Steve Sinai

5 comments:

Sharon said...

NIMBYS are the beneficiaries of any housing crisis. When renters compete for a small supply of housing, NIMBY property values increase by hundreds of thousands. It might be beneficial for our local NIMBY'S camp followers, who are not homeowners, to wake up to this fact. While they are at it, it might also be interesting to reflect on how NIMBYISM preserves CLASSISM.

Anonymous said...

The selfish Pacifica NIMBY's are only after one thing, their own interests!
These "I got mine's" will use any trick in the book to further their cause. They create faux environmental causes, bully neighbors, pervert the election process to get their puppets on council, feign social concerns about the less fortunate and hire phony/biased experts to support their lies.
What they won't do is reject the huge appreciation they have gained on their hovels. They will not sacrifice one dime of their ill-gotten riches to provide housing for the poor.
They are phonies, hypocrites, bullies and liars.
Shameful.

Medici said...

So while all these people who are advocating rent control and no new building, along with managed retreat, they are driving the cost of the existing housing stock through the ceiling with rents right behind it. So them with (old NIMBY homeowners) get richer while those without are pushed farther out of the opportunity to buy a starter home. So Machiavellian!

Anonymous said...

Sick, mean, bastards!

Anonymous said...

Let's be real. If you can't afford to live here then go somewhere else.