He won’t sign before the recall election
SB478 is pretty interesting. It sets a uniform floor area ratio of 1.5 for 2-10 plexes and lower the min lot area requirement across the state.
It is vague. But 1.5 times the lot size is more than 4 times the .35 the average FAR. I predict blood on the streets.
It’s official now.
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from the comments,
I am going to misquote Shakespeare. «First kill all the bureaucrats.” Otherwise this legislation “will be much ado about nothing”
Good, but will have minimal impact because cost of construction is too high.
CA is taking baby steps towards making denser, third world-like, urban centers
I can hear the bureaucrats and nimbyies yelling … where’s the extra water, sewer capacity, road and school expansion. Extra Roads and parks.
The lawyers are lining up at the trough already.
Weiner is thinking London. We are probably more likely headed towards Mexico City or Caracas.
PGE already has a third world power grid. Randomly turns off power. Wait till they try to double the capacity with duplex’s. Are the duplex’s required to have solar and garages for EV. Fugetaboutit…
Sometime I feel California is heading to zombie status. An undead - someone alive but not fully functional and full of pain. Depending upon who you will talk too. Some one will see it alive and satisfied that it is not dead., Others will see it dead and hardly alive. This to stay, I would say, at least for a generation, till the time the true realization sinks in.
“Third world urban centers” like NYC, London, Hong Kong and Singapore?
It would be good if Bay Area goes the way of NYC, London, etc by densifying the urban cores of previously suburban towns. For example, I see that Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are rapidly densifying with many newly constructed apartment buildings, TH etc on El Camino and other main roads. SB 9&10 may allow that densification to start occurring in the SFH neighborhoods, which are still having the same character as they had in the 1980s. I think this is the more likely and good outcome.
But if the densification is allowed to run amuck, eg., by building 8-10 apartment units on each residential parcel of 6000 sq ft which currently has a SFH, then Bay Area may go the way of Bombay, Dhaka or Lagos
GDP per capita of
Pakistan: $1,300
India: $2,100
Bangladesh: $1,900
USA: $65,000
I am willing to bet $1M Bay Area won’t turn into any of those towns.
Yes, that’s an extreme outcome and unlikely to happen. Bay Area is a wonderful place to live and work, one among the most desirable places in the world. While there are people here who complain and diss Bay Area and CA, around the world many people would jump at the chance to live here. Indeed we are fortunate to live here.
While some densification is necessary and good (as championed by the Yimbies), too much would be bad and can become a runaway train (here, we should heed the warnings of the Nimbies). Hence a good balance between the YIMBY and NIMBY camps will benefit CA and Bay Area by regulating the inevitable densification.
Even a deprecated product has some buyers. And there are people who make living by selling scrap. The deprecated homes (1/4 or 1/10 homes) will sure attract buyers who will see some value in that because probably that is what they can appreciate.
We are nowhere near overbuilding. True, we need a balance, but decades of underbuilding means we have a long way to go before we are near saturation. Any incremental small step helps.
The new law, just like the ADU law before it, will only make an incremental difference. The cost of construction is too high - it costs $250k to put up a small ADU. The cost of building a fourplex will be well over $1M - very few homeowners will be in a position to demolish their SFH and replace with a fourplex. A few lots may be bought by developers and turned into fourplexes, but won’t be too many. Developers prefer bigger projects - 50+ units on a couple of acres are more profitable.
You can’t just tear down your SFH and build a fourplex. I think the law requires the owner to stay for 3 years. I don’t know how people can stay after their SFH got torn down but before the new building is finished? It could take years. Camping on the lawn?
Anyway you are right. It’s likely a small incremental step. But we need all the small steps we can make.
The more likely scenario would be to convert existing larger homes by adding kitchens and bedrooms. More likely into duplex’s or triplexes. This happened a lot in the last century. But with rent control and tenants rights I don’t think it is a sane move. The critical shortage is of sfhs not apartments. Not much high end demand, little benefit and huge costs. And when you are done you have hostile entitled tenants. No wonder very few ADUs have been built.
The smart move is rezone commercial and industrial areas into multi family. Turn shopping centers and industrial parks into large mid rise multi family complexes with a bit of retail mixed in.
The problem is the vast majority of homeless and underserved tenants can’t afford new construction
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AGREED! rezone all that empty commercial and industrial areas to multi family! YES!
that is harder to do as Nimbies are more active at local level. The nice thing is YIMBY lawyers are getting more organized and suing the cities for not complying, and hopefully things change.
Doesn’t matter. NIMBYs will reject any and all developments. Don’t make peace with NIMBYs. Destroy them.
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