Looks like it will pass.
Looks like commercial RE, retail stores and businesses in general will be destroyed by ignorant liberals… as usual. Pretty stupid since businesses across the state are already in major distress from covid19 government shutdowns.
2 Likes
This has been happening for years due to excessive regulation and fees. Prop 15 will only accelerate it. Look for a mushrooming of “spend easies” - word of mouth businesses run out of residential properties. There were already a number of them in the Bay Area when I left.
I have been in an over regulated industry my whole life. Anything government goes after it destroys.
Housing faked up by government
Assuming we have a massive housing crisis that needs solving. Not arguing this assumption for a moment. If that is the case, existing zoning allows for plenty of high rise housing already without the need to infringe on the single family neighborhoods. Why the existing city housing allowance is not being consummated and we are not flooded with much needed housing? Because after I pay an affordable housing fee, a park and recreation fee, a public facilities fee, a sewage capacity impact fee, a recycled water system fee (that the city has no plans to connect, btw), a water district impact fee, an elementary school district impact fee, a high school district impact fees, go past 3 architectural commission hearings, one historical commission hearing, a couple of planning commission hearings, a state recycled water board approval, an environmental report approval, an endangered species report approval, a migratory bird report for my arborist report approval, a city council hearing and state condo process approval, buy a bunch of construction bonds, and bunch of city-required insurance polices, do some water testing , and having paid over $400,00 in fees and expenses per each unit…You get the picture. And that is before the shovel hits the ground. This process takes 3-4 years for a team of developers who are working on it full time. The bureaucracy is so tedious and pre-consrtuction costs so high that we end up building much less housing and much more expensively than we could have. So, this new CA law that abolishes single family zoning aims to do a short sighted band-aid measure: get people to build ADUs (accessory dwelling units) in their houses by suspending all those highly important building requirements. Wait, I thought they were so essential for our health and safety? Turns out not really. Still, ADUs are great, but they are not enough and turn the whole idea of permits on its head. If these rules are not so vital afterall, why not get rid of them altogether? And also, why put a patch on the pants that are bursting at the seams instead of focusing at the seams? Streamline permits, make them affordable (ours are three times the cost of those in NY, and that is saying a lot) and people will build housing where the right zoning already exists without overcrowding single family lots. Instead, CA basically suspended their unworkable laws to build their band-aid of choice, ADU, yet supress multi-family construction in places zoned for it by regulating it to death. Do not kill single family housing, but work along the original idea of zoning and just remove the ridiculous barriers that CA has put in the way…If CA gov’t did it and had building laws like Texas, Illinois, Arizona, Nevada, CA would have been flooded with housing in one year. Crisis solved.