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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44897 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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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.

Have the California YIMBYs ever expressed interest in Land Value Tax or Georgism?

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).

Its great to see progress towards more affordable housing. Its crazy how practically every major city in the US has artificially inflated housing prices due to excessive local regulations.

Very happy to see you here. This series is one of my favorite fixtures of this space.

Agreed, and it's good to see California improving a bit on housing policy! (even if only to keep more Californians in California and not dragging their policies to me)

Thanks! I'm glad folks are interested.

(even if only to keep more Californians in California and not dragging their policies to me)

Now I'm going to be a humorless scold about this; the problems that California has are due to a combination of its policies and its luck. The housing crisis that came to California was a slow burn caused by gradually-applied restrictions on growth which made it so when boom times came, the market couldn't respond. The boom time, in scale and duration, is unique to California, but the policies aren't, which is why Austin is going through the same thing that various California cities do where the rent rises, homelessness surges, and the main response of the city is to obey the very angry citizens and chase homeless people from place to place, trashing their belongings as they go.

The policies are already there. To the extent that California is responsible, it's by displacing people out of the state. Just as in California, the homeless are demonized as outsiders, when they're mostly just people who used to be housed there, but can no longer afford the rent.

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