California Needs a Housing Revolution

Opposition to new housing in Eldorado county is huge. They are probably building more housing in Folsom and Eldorado hills than anywhere in Northern California… 15k homes planned… old timers don’t like it. I used to go deer hunting in Eldorado hills. Now suburban tracts are less the ten minutes from my farm, up the hill. The big issues will be traffic water sewer treatment facilities and the of course schools and services.

In the 70s the state subsidies for mortgages helped low income buyers. CHFA gave out discounts for loans. I got one for 8%. A bargain on 1978. Time to try it again. The state and local bureaucrats have loaded up fees and BS requirements to the tune of 100k per unit. Let alone all the building code upgrades since 1970 that have doubled the cost of construction. Everyone loads their pet upgrades to satisfy the greed of the suppliers, environmentalists nimbyies and everyone that cares nothing about affordable housing. Fire sprinklers earthquake standards energy requirements drainage and soils engineering solar panels and tind of other goodies were not required before 1970. And yet most of us live in those older homes safely and happily. All this extra cost has only created more housing instability anxiety and homelessness. The direct opposite of its intent. Forget tiny homes ADUs and BMRs… how about bringing back the 1960 building code and 1960 houses. Better than the mess we have now. Besides people love Eichlers and 20 century modern design…I own a bunch of 50+ older homes. Good enough for me and my tenants. Older homes are the only solution for the housing crisis. Most could not be built for 3 times what I paid for them.

Same story different shiit… Nimbyies are a powerful anti housing force. I have literally seen them burn down houses under construction.

Housing is to expensive in California. I say that as a person who has made a lot of money of housing in the past 12 years but I don’t know what the solution is. The mayor of San Diego is touting affordable housing but even that is affordable only to upper middle class people.

The solution to housing cannot be found in any brute force proposals. So long there are desirable areas, people would want to congregate there causing house prices to go up till the point of breaking affordability.

Over one third of the entire land mass of the SF Bay Area is parkland or open space. And that doesn’t even account for the possibility of floating small houses on the bay. There’s plenty of room to build enough housing if that’s what people actually want. But they don’t. I remember when people joked about the marijuana leaf trucks. Those were Mid Peninsula Open Space vehicles; the five lobes on the leaves stood for the 5 Open Space Preserves. Now, if one includes all the “open space” they’ve bought which is actually closed space because it was never opened to the public there are more than 30. And that’s just MidPen, there are several other open space districts.

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What are we doing?

Tenderloin Neighborhood Development wins final appeal for SF homes

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Would love to see a cost breakdown. The lawsuit only added $1M to the cost so it was already high to begin with.

Too many reports, fancy consultants, and generous union labor?

Instead of 1.14, the government can pay me 250k to build an adu in my backyard. I am not greedy. You get 4 or 5 times the housing production for the same cost.

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:art:

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:open_mouth:

ADUs could be sold separately from homes under bill passed by California Legislature

Most states allow splitting land into multiple parcels. There are restrictions on minimum size, but it’s normal. Property rights are a thing most places. People who own property have the most rights not the tenants.