grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
Housing Poster. Series index here.
User ID: 197
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
I don't understand; do you think that the existence of people with bad ideas who voted blue means that we shouldn't point out when someone is reasoning badly? Do you think that I'm backing that particular conspiracy theory? (I'm not; I only faintly remember hearing it years ago.) Aren't we supposed to sharpen each other, as iron sharpens iron?
"Someone who you remind me of reasoned badly, so you shouldn't complain about me reasoning badly" is a poor approach.
grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
2yr ago
Okay, but why do you think that "poll watchers were removed", since the only claims to that effect came from incompetent Trump followers who then recanted?
grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
2yr ago
Generally speaking, it would be a strange coincidence if the Biden campaign's malfeasance matched up so impressively well with the media's red-mirage predictions, and had the opposite effect you'd expect on the eventual results, which were much better for Trump than pre-election polling would indicate.
More specifically, this doesn't appear to have happened; the Trump campaign fundraised on that idea, but didn't appear willing to make the same bold claims in actual court.
grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
2yr ago
Even in 2020 we can see how the election became very close at one point during the night, until Biden's mysterious surge.
This is not, and was not, mysterious. It was heavily predicted before the election (Reuters, CNN, NBC, Fox), the explanation (Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, mail-in ballots are counted later) was straightforward, and the only reason this is even a thing is that it was one in a series of Trump's attempts to avoid facing up to his loss.
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).
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