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grendel-khan

i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that

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joined 2022 September 04 22:05:51 UTC

Housing Poster. Series index here.

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grendel-khan


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that

				
				
				

				

					2 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 04 22:05:51 UTC
				


				
					

					
Housing Poster. Series index here.



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There is a classic industrial accident involving a storage tank.




You may appreciate USCSB's "Hazards of Nitrogen Asphyxiation" video as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think this proves too much.


Consider bariatric surgery on an obese patient. It's elective, and it has risks and benefits. It's shown to cut the risk of cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes in half. If your doctors tells you, look, we can't tell you that you will die of a heart attack, but people who don't get this surgery die of heart attacks all the time, so no pressure, it's your decision whether you want to have a heart attack, we have no idea if that'll happen, at least we can't tell you whether it'll happen or not because the regulators won't let us, so you can choose anything you like, and please sign here that we totally didn't pressure you about anything like telling you that you'd have a heart attack.


If you think that puberty blockers don't actually reduce the risk of suicide, then that's a real objection, a matter of fact, and someone is right and someone is wrong.


But in the world where puberty blockers do significantly reduce the risk of suicide in teenagers with gender dysphoria, what's the right thing to do? Not tell their parents about it? Informed consent is complicated, but communicating the risks and benefits of an elective procedure has to be part of it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it's worth trying to empathize with these people. Consider this previous discussion on some comments by Matthew Cortland, where he vociferously argues against the concept of QALYs, because as a disabled person, QALYs value his life less than that of someone who isn't disabled.


On the one hand, it is devastating to be told that you're not an entire person, even in an accounting sense.


On the other, when you're doing a utilitarianism, either you're going to count disabled people less than non-disabled ones, or you're going to see nothing wrong with deafening someone, or blinding them, and so on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The dirty secret is one of the ways France, Spain, Germany, etc. can cheaply build trains, metros, and even housing at times is simple - the federal government has immense powers to step in and say, "sorry, we're doing this, giving you market value for your land, and you have no recourse in the law at all to stop us."




"Moses tore down America's great old cities, Jacobs ensured you could never build great new ones."


I want to emphasize that this is indeed how things used to work in the United States, most notably in postwar New York City, where Robert Moses legendarily used eminent domain to raze neighborhoods to build his projects. (If you have plenty of time, the Henry George Program had an excellent discussion about Moses.) The environmental movement of the sixties and seventies was in large part a backlash to Moses; the edifice of law and regulation they erected made it harder to build bad things by making it harder to build anything.


The tradition that separates us from better-functioning countries dates back seventy years at most.


You see this in our transit projects, where things simply get bogged down because it's much easier to say no or be cautious or add requirements than it is to say yes. You see this in our environmental laws like CEQA and NEPA (the federal version of CEQA), where they're used to delay obviously environmentally-friendly projects (congestion pricing, solar panels, offshore wind) in favor of an environmentally-unfriendly status quo. You see it in the way that these processes provide a foothold, so, for example, labor unions fight against CEQA reform because their process involves threatening obstruction to get labor benefits. And you see it in the infuriating "precautionary principle" which acts as a fully-general excuse for inaction, because you're comparing the worst case of "Life Continues" if you don't do something and "Extreme Catastrophe" if you do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In a sense, this is sad, but in another sense, it's probably good for me.


If I had to predict which service was going to become a walled garden, I wouldn't have picked Twitter. Is this enshittification?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
According to this veto message:




In March, I announced the state's partnership with Civica
to create our own line of CalRx biosimilar insulins that will cost no more than
$30 per 10ml vial or $55 for five 3ml cartridges. This is a fraction of the current
price for most insulins, and CalRx biosimilar insulins will be available to insured
and uninsured patients nationwide. With CalRx, we are getting at the underlying
cost, which is the true sustainable solution to high-cost pharmaceuticals. With
copay caps however, the long-term costs are still passed down to consumers
through higher premiums from health plans. As a state, we have led the nation
in our efforts and investments to address the true underlying costs of insulin
prescription affordability.




Here's the site on CalRx. They plan to start manufacturing next year.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Great question! The movement in California has tended to focus on more immediate reforms, which is one of the things that sets them apart from the After the Revolution types. But Prop 13 produces a sort of anti-Georgism, where more valuable land is cheaper to sit on. The YIMBYs were very keen on enacting "split roll", which would have repealed Prop 13 for large commercial (non-agricultural) landowners. (Prop 13 itself benefits from stunningly durable popularity.)


You can see Laura Foote (Executive Director for YIMBY Action) regularly mentioning LVT; there's a Stanford-based podcast/radio show not exactly aligned with the YIMBY movement called The Henry George Program; they've interviewed Lars Doucet (author of this ACX review-contest entry) as well as Sonja Trauss (Executive Director of YIMBY Law).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for September 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hey, cool! I'm flattered; thanks, everyone. A few updates on this year's housing bills, as a thank-you.


    

  • 

    AB 2097 (Parking reform) was signed by the Governor, and will take effect at the beginning of 2023. Governor's statement here.
    

      

    • I attended some developer conferences, and was surprised that financiers will now be requiring parking, though at a considerably lower ratio than cities have been. (0.75-1.2 stalls per unit for market-rate developers; 0.5-0.75 for subsidized; contrast with 2.5-4.5 for cities' requirements.)
      • 

    

    • 

  • 

    AB 2011 (Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act), SB 6 (Middle Class Housing Act), SB 886 (CEQA exemption for student housing) were all signed on Housing Bill Day; around forty bills in total. Every California YIMBY priority bill that made it through policy committees was signed by the Governor.
    

      

    • SB 922 (CEQA exemptions for non-car transportation), on the subject of CEQA reform, extended and expanded CEQA exemptions for pedestrian, bike, and transit infrastructure.
      • 

    

    • 



Here's Alfred Twu's annual infographic. It's definitely the biggest year so far for the YIMBYs in California.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
See also, previous discussion about more/better police. (This was mid-2020, when the issue was particularly salient.) Another thing that came up was Jill Leovy's Ghettoside (review/summary here), which argues that black Americans are particularly subject to simultaneous over- and under-policing, where the cops hassle and intimidate them for minor infractions but allow murders to go unsolved.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 16, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I found some magnificent explorables; I don't remember where I got the link from, but this is a breakdown of a how a mechanical watch works, and it is amazing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
NBC Bay Area, "Protests continue as large walls surround People's Park in Berkeley". (Part of an ongoing series on housing, mostly in California. Also at theschism.)


(Notes on browsing: some of these links are soft-paywalled; prepend archive.today or 12ft.io to circumvent if you run into trouble. Nitter is dead and Twitter doesn't allow logged-out browsing; replace twitter.com with twiiit.com and try repeatedly to see entire threads, but anonymous browsing of Twitter is gradually going away, alas.)


I've covered historic laundromats and sacred parking lots, but what about a historic homeless encampment?


In 1969, some Berkeley locals attempted to make a vacant University-owned lot into a "power to the people" park. The University decided to make it into a soccer field and evicted them a month later. Later that day, at a rally on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Berkeley student President suggested that the thousands of people there either "take the park" or "go down to the park" (accounts differ), later saying that he'd never intended to precipitate a riot. The crowd grew to about six thousand people and fought police, who killed one student and blinded another.


The park has stayed as it was since then. UC Berkeley has attempted to develop it, first into a soccer field, then in the 1990s into a volleyball court (made unusable by protests), then in the 2010s in an unclear way which involved a protester falling out of a tree they were sleeping in, and most recently starting in 2018, into student housing with a historical monument and permanent supportive housing for currently homeless people.


The status quo involves police being called to the park roughly every six hours on average as of 2018, colorful incidents like a woman force-feeding meth to a two year old, and three people dying there within a six-month span. (There are forty to fifty residents at a given time.) The general vibe from students matches up.


The 2018 plan started having public meetings in 2020; when construction fencing was built in 2021, protesters tore it down; a group calling itself "Defend People's Park" occupied it and posted letters about how an attempt to develop the site is "gentrification", the university could develop "other existing properties", the proposed nonprofit developer for the supportive housing has donors which include "the Home Depot Foundation, a company that profits off construction", and so on.


Legal struggles are related to the 2022 lawsuit to use CEQA to cap enrollment at Berkeley and a lawsuit
using CEQA to claim that student noise is an environmental impact. In the summer of 2022, SB 886 exempted student housing (with caveats and tradeoffs) from CEQA, and AB 1307 explicitly exempted unamplified voices from CEQA consideration. The site has been one of about 350 locally-designated "Berkeley Landmarks" (one for every three hundred and forty Berkeleyans) since 1984, but was added to the National Register of Historic Places that summer as well in an effort to dissuade development. (The National Trust sent a letter in support of that student-noise lawsuit.) Amid all this, RCD, the nonprofit developer attached for the supportive housing, left the project, citing delays and uncertainty. The State Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in the summer of 2023, but the case may be moot in light of AB 1307. The university says yes, and "Make UC a Good Neighbor" says no. Search here for S279242 for updates.


And that brings us to this January. On the night of the fourth, police cleared the park in preparation for construction, putting up a wall of shipping containers which they covered in barbed wire the next week to prevent people from climbing them.


Local opponents of the project take the position that "Building housing should not require a militarized police state", which seems to indicate support for a kind of heckler's veto. And, of course, it should be built "somewhere else". (This meme, basically.) Kian Goh, professor of urban planning at UCLA: "So, do places of historical and present political struggle not matter at all to yimbys? Or do they just not matter as much as new housing?".


Construction appears to be proceeding, after more than fifty years of stasis. Noah Smith attempts to steelman the NIMBYs, but I don't find it convincing. I'm sure the people who cheered burning down subsidized housing in Minneapolis saw themselves as heroes, but that doesn't make them any less wrong.


As a postscript, the City Council member representing the district of Berkeley including People's Park is Rigel Robinson, who entered office at 22 as the youngest ever councilmember, and was generally expected to be the next mayor. He abruptly resigned on the ninth, ending what had been a promising political career, likely due to death threats stuck to his front door. The Mayor of Berkeley wrote a supportive opinion piece; a fellow councilmember wrote a similar letter. On the other hand, a sitting councilmember in neighboring Emeryville retweeted "Sure sounds like going YIMBY ruined it for him. Here's to running more real estate vultures out in 2024 🥂". People are polarized about this. It's made the news.


I'm going to nutpick one of the comments from an article on his resignation, as a treat.




The Park People could care less about council members, the next one will be equally clueless about the Park's existence; the Park is beyond municipal dictatorship, it is a world-level political symbol that has now been "awakened" again. The Big Surprise will be the decision by the State Supreme Court to find AB 1307 unconstitutional.




If only people could live inside a world-level political symbol. Current plans for construction at the site are here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's Morning in California. Rather, it's Morning in the legislative season, a time when big ideas seem possible, before they disappear into a swamp of obscure pitfalls and shenaniganry. Here's my understanding of the current roster of big housing bills this year, and the threats and potential involved. See also Alfred Twu's very detailed writeup (PDF).


(Part of an ongoing series on housing, mostly in California, also at theschism.)


Some common themes:


    

  • CEQA, the California version of NEPA, is a problem, and though it's right up there with Prop 13 as a Third Rail in California politics, many of the housing bills this year center around exempting projects from CEQA, especially after a particularly egregious use to block student housing because the students themselves would constitute an environmental impact. (I'm reminded of SourceWatch's very cursed Precautionary Principle chart.)
    • 

  • Last year's AB 2011 was a particularly big deal, not because of its contents, but because Assemblymember Wicks (previously seen here) managed to get the carpenters' union on board. The Building Trades have been adamant in their demands (basically, require that workers on streamlined projects attended a particular union training program), which the YIMBYs consider a dealbreaker. The compromise in AB 2011 was to provide various benefits to any worker on those projects, and to give preferences to graduates of union apprenticeship programs. There's a huge difference in California politics between "the unions oppose" and "the unions are divided". This mainly applies to SB 423, but the model will likely be tried in plenty of other bills.
    • 



The major bills:


    

  • AB 68 (CA YIMBY), the Housing and Climate Solutions Act. (Not to be confused with 2019's AB 68, part of the push to legalize ADUs). This will likely be a two-year bill, but it's a mass upzoning in the vein of SB 827 and SB 50. Those bills failed, so the YIMBYs are taking a different tack: this is a collaboration between California YIMBY and the Nature Conservancy, as it would not only make it easier to build in cities, it would make it harder to build in the wilderness, under the Gain/Maintain/Sustain rubric outlined here. Details are still in flux, but Livable California is furious. Much of how this goes will depend on how labor gets on board.
    • 

  • SB 423 (CA YIMBY), an extension of 2017's SB 35 (previously seen here). The original SB 35 streamlined approvals (including CEQA exemptions) for general plan-compliant projects in cities behind on their housing goals. It was a compromise, which got the Building Trades on board: all-subsidized projects could pay prevailing wage, but market-rate projects had to use "Skilled and Trained" labor, which is extremely scarce. As a result, the only SB 35 projects completed as of this point are subsidized. SB 423 would apply AB 2011-style labor standards to all projects and indefinitely extend the streamlining. The intra-labor fight has been intense. The carpenters are supporting in droves; the remaining trades are stopping just shy of calling them scabs.
    • 

  • SB 4, a revival of 2020's SB 899, which would allow churches and nonprofit schools to build housing on their land. This is enormously popular, and was killed for unclear reasons last time. There's been some remarkable cross-pollination with SB 423 at the Capitol, with religious leaders supporting SB 423 and the carpenters supporting SB 4.
    • 

  • AB 309 (CA YIMBY), a revival of AB 2053, which would take the first steps in establishing a statewide social housing agency.
    • 

  • AB 1630 would exempt student housing within a thousand feet of a school from CEQA, as well as from a variety of building standards such as floor-area ratios, parking minimums, density limits, and height limits under forty feet. This is a direct response to the Berkeley ruling earlier this year.
    • 



These bills will of course change going forward, and some will certainly fail to advance, but this is the state of things at the top of the year.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide." Or at least, the turn of the legislative season. Some life changes have led to Less Posting, as I've had to focus on more meatspace matters. But the legislative roundup is worth doing. Here's my understanding and my take on the 2022-2023 California legislative season as it relates to housing. (See also Alfred Twu's very detailed writeup (PDF).)


(Part of an ongoing series on housing, mostly in California. Also at /r/theschism.)


This has largely been a successful year. While the YIMBYs didn't get everything they wanted, they got a lot of it, and they are very happy. The major wins:



The major losses:



Note that while the Governor's veto can theoretically be overriden by a two-thirds vote, that hasn't happened since 1980. Also vetoed despite passing the Legislature: SB 58, psychedelics decriminalization (veto message) and SB 403, banning caste discrimination (veto message).


There's some speculation that Governor Newsom is trying to avoid signing anything that would look bad during a Presidential run. Hot take: "Californians suffering so their governor can finish 4th in New Hampshire, they have more in common with Florida than they think".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Darrell Owens in The Discourse Lounge, "YIMBYs Triumph In California". (Part of a migratory series on housing, mostly in California, also at theschism.)


This wasn't supposed to be a big year in the Legislature. It's an election year, which means excuses and cowardice and small-c conservatism. It's why there was no SB 827 or SB 50, no mass-upzoning bill. But it was a surprisingly successful year in the Legislature for the YIMBYs, maybe even more so than last year. The governor has yet to sign these, but he's expected to. California has no pocket veto, so if he takes no action, they become law at the end of September.


First, the bills that didn't make it.


    

  • 

    AB 2053 (California Social Housing Act) would have established a state agency to "produce and preserve mixed-income homes that are union built, sustainable, collectively owned, affordable for all income levels, and are financially self-sustaining". It would also have provided a mechanism for the state to engage in counter-cyclical construction when it's cheap and jobs are scarce. It made it through the Assembly, but failed to advance from Senate Governance and Finance by one vote. More here from Alex Lee, the author.
    

    • 

  • 

    AB 2656, which isn't exactly major, but would have outlawed CEQA shenanigans as seen in the 469 Stevenson case in San Francisco by interpreting them as a denial under the Housing Accountability Act. It passed its committees and the Assembly, but disappeared in the Senate Appropriations black hole. This indicates just how much of a third-rail any sort of CEQA reform is.
    

    • 

  • 

    SB 917 (Seamless Transit Transformation Act) passed its votes with near unanimity, but Assembly Appropriations spiked it for unclear reasons. It would have placed a timeline on the harmonization of the more than twenty transit agencies in the Bay Area, covering wayfinding and real-time transit data, establishing free transfers, multi-agency passes, and planning a unified regional network. Streetsblog opines that it will still have a significant impact.
    

    • 



And the major bills that did.


    

  • 

    AB 2011 (Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act) allows residential development on commercial sites; as a compromise, it doesn't require union labor, but it does require preference be given to apprenticeship programs. This got the Carpenters' Union on board, though not the broader Trades Union. It requires a certain proportion of subsidized units, and comes with minsterial approval, which means its projects are exempt from CEQA. It could make 1.6-2.4 million more units feasible statewide.
    

    • 

  • 

    SB 6 (Middle Class Housing Act), similar to AB 2011, also allows housing in commercial zones without specific subsidized percentages, but requires union labor and does not provide ministerial approval. Here's a comparison of the two bills.
    

    • 

  • 

    AB 2097 (Parking reform), a reboot of last year's AB 1401, which was lost in Appropriations. There have been some amendments; cities can argue (using a "preponderance of evidence") that they really need parking, unless twenty percent of the housing is set aside for low-income, elderly, or disabled people, or students, or the project is twenty units or smaller.
    

    • 

  • 

    SB 886 (CEQA exemption for student housing) is a CEQA reform that actually did pass; it exempts (certain) student housing projects. This doesn't directly address the UC Berkeley enrollment mess, but it does address one of the underlying causes, which was the city of Berkeley's blocking of student housing.
    

    • 



Matt Yglesias is very excited:




I think it’s possible that California is going to substantially improve its housing situation over the next decade / The key isn’t any one of the bills that’s passed or any specific action taken by the governor or the AG, it’s that they now seem to have a durable political coalition in place that wants to see more homes built and keeps taking new swings at it.




This is something that Owens covers as well. Until now, the Trades have blocked any housing reform which didn't require union labor. But AB 2011 passed without the Trades' approval; the Carpenters' unions (along with public employee unions, teacher unions, and the SEIU) showed up and advocated for the bill. There is now a path to major reform that doesn't require the Trades. Much is possible that previously wasn't.