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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   29863 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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Houston, TX is about 25% foreign born and has way cheaper housing than any major city in CA. There's plenty of space in CA to house everyone even if the population doubled or tripled. The problem is regulations that restrict supply.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Forever

https://protectcoyotevalley.org/

In east Alameda countythere's enormous amounts of empty space. Much of the prime real estate in Santa Clara county is warehouses or other industrial areas, and much of the bay area is really shitty SFHes built on shoestring budgets in the sixties.

That's off the top of my head.

If California Forever alone (lol) was developed to Barcelona's density (note we are not even talking high rises here) it could fit 3.4M people.

And it wouldn’t be enough.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Look at the NYC and Jersey area.

We're talking about adding one-third of an NYC worth of housing in a single development to the Bay area, increasing housing stock by 40%.

I simply don't believe you. Bring a model that doesn't rely on eternal population growth which has already reversed in the bay area for years now and show your work.

Houston also has the loosest zoning rules anywhere in the country.

The space is above the map. Open up Google maps and plop yourself down to street view just about any residential area of San Francisco: the buildings are three stories tall at the highest with the vast majority being two stories. Plenty of space if you go vertical.

If builders are confident they'll actually be allowed to build, the market price will be high enough that most people will want to sell. Those that don't won't, but many will for the right price.

No, you simply have to allow people to develop their own property.

There are plenty of people who want to sell, the problem is that their neighbors have made it illegal to build higher density on their own land.

There is plenty of undeveloped land on the edges of SF and LA. Between SF and Petaluma, for example, there's a ton of empty land. But more importantly "open land" is not a prerequisite for building housing, since you can build vertically. SF would have way more housing if it wasn't preventing people from tearing down "historic laundromats." Housing is affordable even in the densest parts of downtown Houston where there is no "open land" to develop. Conversely, the area of rural Northern California where I grew up has tons of open land, yet housing costs are much higher per square foot than downtown Houston.

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