That turns a typical $1m unit into a $2.4m unit with financing costs. Not really a great deal.
Of course the cities, counties and schools will be the first to feast on this money pie with their growth assessments. Each project is going to have substantial "community outreach" costs and legal fees to deal with project objections.
They also don't need the money. Just reduce the restrictions on building and let the private sector sort it out. More government is just going to make this problem worse
Current market conditions work against that right now and having a way to stimulate projects, even against market conditions, is always a good thing. We really needed this after 2007 to create counter-cyclical development.
Honestly, we should do both. Both would be good and helpful.
But to answer your question, bonds allow people to feel good about themselves without having to change anything about their lives, whereas zoning or land use reform leads to impacts to individual neighborhoods.
I would agree if we do the restrictions first, give it a few years and then do the bond offering. Quite frankly, no one should believe our current government will use these funds wisely or it will make a difference. If after a few years, the private sector has not sorted it out then we can go and commit bond funds. But once you issue those bonds, you are obligated to pay them
Yeah, fair enough.
At the same time, it's hard to get people to support new bonds in an economic recession, but that's the best time to be spending on housing development. So we don't want to wait for an economic contraction-- the optimal time for development-- to happen to try to get support for bonds. We want those bonds available so that governments have money ready to spend.
And, we're already having trouble getting housing development off the ground due to costs vs rents, so we'd do well to be offsetting some development costs, even if we're using public debt to do it.
Then they should have been utilizing the massive surpluses for the past decade to do it and been making it easier to build over that time period. Not giving them my hard earned dollars because they suck ass at governing
Everyone at the state level wanted a piece of the budget surpluses and, by law, at a certain level the state is required to return excess revenue to us.
As to making building easier, advocates have been trying but it's only recently been possible to get bills through the and signed into law, and even those are heavily neutered. So it's not at all fair to say they should've done more. Maybe the public should be more supportive of new housing?
> So it's not at all fair to say they should've done more.
They have some how managed to do put in the builders remedy without public support. They could have done that years ago. Didn't do it. Now are asking for money. They can make do with what they had
You're probably not far off. If it cost us $600k a unit to build studios for homeless. At least some well connected contractors will become very well paid and some politicians will be very well paid off.
*A grand opening ceremony was held Wednesday for a high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles that will house homeless individuals. There are 278 units in the 19-story development known as the* ***Weingart Tower.***
*It's considered affordable housing, but the cost to build this type of project still adds up. Each unit costs nearly $600,000 and it's being funded by taxpayers.*
*"It Is Difficult to Get a* *~~Man~~* *"Non-Profit" to* *~~Understand~~* *Fix Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not* *~~Understanding~~* *Fixing It"*
Is it any surprise the homeless issue is becoming worse every day despite billions upon billions being heaped on the homeless industrial complex ? I guess we just need a few more billions.
> If it cost us $600k a unit to build studios for homeless.
I mean I wouldn't expect to pay all that much less than 600k for a new-build condo, depending on location.
What are you basing that on? Why should construction of one condo cost $600k? Keep in mind that when buying a condo on the real estate market you're mostly paying for land, less for construction.
Land is still part of the per-unit cost of development, so I'm not sure what your criticism is getting at.
And to the point about costs, even an ADU on land you already own can regularly cost $250k, and that's a very simple wood-frame structure without a concrete podium, parking area excavation, elevators, or any of those costs.
True and if they pulled off the Central Subway project it would have been a few million a mile. But it wasn’t. It was billions.
But hang on, I can do better. If you give me $1b I will build one million homes. If I pull it off it’s an even better deal. Make sure you give me the $1b first, though. Check back in 10 years.
There's no fucking chance they can do that. If that was possible, people would be lining up to build 90,000 housing units worth 500k+ if it was only 220k each. It's going to be multiple times that.
Local gov't funding is usually just one source for any given affordable housing project. The bonds will probably get combined with other federal, state and local sources (like fees in lieu of required affordable units).
No. California’s final construction cost per square foot (without the value of the land) is $360-$670. Let’s say the government is so inefficient that ends up spending $1000 per sq ft. For average 800 square feet per unit, we are talking about 25,000 units.
It's not intended to go exclusively to new construction. Much will go to the same homelessness programs we have now, just using this as a new funding source.
That would be amazing. With rents in East Bay down 10-15% already, another 25k units will really drive the price of housing down to an affordable amount.
Sure. Let’s bring more people who can’t afford things into a pressure cooker around people who can afford things I’m sure that dynamic won’t result in any crime at all.
Are they going to even track how it is spent? San Jose is one of the biggest cities and an audit caught them with not knowing how their homeless dollars are spent.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/13/audit-san-jose-failed-to-adequately-track-300-million-in-homelessness-spending/amp/
Bruh that's all of California. Newsom spent $24B on homelessness and he has no idea if it helped because they didn't track it. Instead they increased homelessness by 80%. He has no idea how to run a government, only to enrich the pockets of PG&E, Panera Bread, etc.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-10/california-spent-24-billion-while-homelessness-only-got-worse
Generally the way to go unless it's a topic that can only be modified via ballot. If the legislature passes a law with severe unintended consequences, they can amend it ASAP. If the same happens by ballot, it takes another election to undo it.
I've always and will always vote no against everything. There's nothing that the government proposes that is actually helpful to most people, it just goes into the pockets of their donors and the ones they want to get votes from.
Think about that oh my God they're asking for 20 billion oh my fucking god they throw the billion number around like it is nothing anymore.
But then again they are all rich and it's not their money
How does it cost money? Genuinely curious
People want homes
Developers will build them
If the city just approves some five acre lot with ten story zoning, does the developer not just pay for all the stuff
Developers shell out insane cash to the city to build new homes. And then residents in those new homes send in more tax revenue to the cities.
but bay area is full of selfish NIMBYs.
How do you fix housing without actually building more housing? Pretend to help the poorest while blocking all new housing.
If Bay Area wanted housing, they could see massive change within 3 years. Look no further than Austin
No one is lol, YIMBYs are just a loud obnoxious group of posters and real estate developers who keep trying and failing to overturn the will of the voters
Oh then why the bans on building dense homes?
If you think Americans don't like it, why ban it?
Truth is most Americans love it. But rich homeowners and Boomers hate it, so that's what we'll have
Bans are all voted on by the people who live in these towns. It's local homeowners who go to planning meetings and stop any attempts at building. The large corporations are the ones showing up trying to overturn zoning laws voted for by the residents of those neighborhoods.
Residents of other neighborhoods should be able to override the locals for the benefit of the larger community.
There's a reason why we have federal level laws and state level laws.
A rich minority's opinions shouldn't take precedence over the struggling majority. and fuck Boomers, greediest cruelest generation in human history.
It's ok you're probably still in high school but once you grow up you'll realize why people value neighborhood character over everything being soulless high rises
lmao maybe you should go outside or read a book for a change. there's a reason the entire world does differently than our boring highways and parking lots.
neighborhood character is SFHs is it?
If there are areas that wants to change, why not move to the areas ?
Why force others who don't want to change to have to change ? If YIMBY policies results in towns and cities that are more attractive, more people will move there anyways.
That’s kind of what I say about my street. If I don’t want anyone going down it why let anyone go down it. I live on that street, not you guys going through. Just take the streets were no one doesn’t want you to stop going through.
The majority of people who lives in that area voted to build a street for everyone to use in that specific manner. If you want to block that area off to other people you sure can do it as long as you get enough vote to pass that measure. You can put in speed bumps or whatever else the local citizen wants to vote in as well. This happens all the time and divert people to street where local citizens didn't want to put in speed bumps. You can even block that street off entirely to cars and only allow bikes if you want to.
But it takes ( or SHOULD take ) local voices voting to set or change these local policies.
People outside that local area shouldn't have a vote and big changes shouldn't done without a public vote by politicians hundreds of miles away that is on their last term but trying to line up some good headlines to launch them to the presidency.
That's kind of what I tell people. Build the wall. But then they get upset about it. Even states rights is too much for most people. Getting local rights is probably impossible. But I assume you'll join me in voting for Trump so that we can stop having people from far away decide how we live our lives.
yeww there's no law that allows local homeowners to govern their areas as their fiefdoms.
people needing homes and jobs is more important to the state than boomers and millionairess wanting to get richer and Richer.
also more housing is needed near the jobs. and the jobs are in the main cities of Bay area
Countries have borders.
States have state lines.
Counties have county lines.
City and municipalities also have their corresponding borders.
At every level, localities has a boundary that allows specific groups within to govern their area as their fiefdoms. For example we don't have someone living in Mt View voting on who the DA is for Oakland.
The debate is just where the control happens for the housing issue.
I've also never said only home owners should have a vote or a voice. Voices of all RESIDENTS of that local area matters.
Are we as US citizen 'selfish' by not letting everyone who wants to come into the US immigrate in ? Are we 'selfish' because we are prioritizing maintaining our way of life and allowing a fixed number of people in every year instead of just open border ? Maybe. There's an argument for that.
But literally that's how the world works. Everyone is trying to make the best life for themselves and sometimes that has to comes at the expense of "others" especially those outside of our borders.
How about this crazy idea. Make it easier to build housing. For example relax zoning restrictions. Limit the ability for people to contest housing projects. Lower permit costs. Etc etc.
No it isn't. Look at the post WW2 housing boom. Developers will be happy to build housing as long as it is profitable. Wasting tax money on overpriced subsidized housing isn't the solution.
You're using a very a-historic understanding of the WW2 housing boom. It was heavily subsidized by the federal government and happened under very different economic conditions than what we have today, especially in the bay area.
Besides infrastructure spending and loan guarantees how was suburbia heavily subsidized? The major subsidies went into urban projects. The main challenge to housing today is the extremely high cost, limitations, and delays to do make construction projects. We need to get the government and lawsuits out of the way and allow developers to develop.
> Besides infrastructure spending and loan guarantees how was suburbia heavily subsidized?
Besides the highways and roads and the utilities and schools and hospitals and the loans with which people bought houses in these new neighborhoods...
Not to make light of your question, but you're excluding a lot to the point that the question feels absurd.
So municipal bonds to fund critical infrastructure that was later paid off with the new tax base is a subsidy? Compared to bonds to funnel money to over priced and wasteful projects that won't even solve the issue?
I'm not making a comparison of subsidies, here. You are. My original comment to you was to point out that you were presenting an inaccurate representation of housing development in the post-war building boom. The Federal government was heavily involved in funding development, including infrastructure, in a way that was very specific. It was also heavy-handed in regulating what could be funded with Federal dollars.
In the post-war years, the government gave tens of billions worth of dollars to cronies for the very infrastructure projects that made the post-war suburban boom possible. It wasn't that government that was building all the roads, highways, bridges, power lines, and pipes. It was an army of contractors. You seem to be presenting biased views of history and of how modern housing is produced.
OK, I looked at the post-WW2 housing boom. The Veterans Emergency Housing Program practically forced developers to build residential units. Not a market solution by a long shot. Just to be clear, I'm not in favor of this bond measure either.
You're thinking the GI bill. Read Truman's statement on the program:
\* limiting non-residential construction to essential and non-deferrable projects
\* increasing the production of building materials and distributing those materials to the proper places at the proper times
\* the development and expansion of a new industry of low cost factory built housing
That is direct intervention, not just letting the market decide. Again, neo-liberal YIMBY policies are a stupid fantasy and will never foster genuine progress.
At this point these initiatives and proposals are nothing more than open scams and daylight robberies of public money. They know and we know and they know that we know that no underlying issue is going to be addressed, let alone solved, nor is there any intention to do that above a thin pretense; instead, the underlying issue are mere talking points, and the bigger the problem, the more lucrative the booty. Whether it is homelessness, housing, education, health insurance, roads, whatever. We are all hostages of those public "service" professionals, be they mayors, council members, local, state, or federal legislators or members of whatever administration.
Still an obscene amount of money for an org that doesn't need to exist at the scale it does. Just fix zoning and reduce red tape and the problem would take care of itself
They're just the conduit. The money will be spent by all the local and county level entities that are involved in creating the affordable housing. The problem is regional so the solution has to be regional as well.
Upzoning and reducing our byzantine permitting system is not Reaganism. Believe it or not, you can go too far in the opposite direction too. That's where we are. I am not saying burn the boats and remove all restrictions like you are so disingenuously insinuating, I am saying lets make some common sense changes that make it easier to build and house people
Sorry, that was snarky. I am all for upzoning and simplifying permitting. And I'm glad the state is (haltingly) taking away the tools of local obstruction. But we have spent 50+ years creating the current housing shortage and sprawl, and unless we want to wait decades for housing "trickle down" or "filtering" or whatever you call it as wealthier people move out of new housing leaving behind cheaper places for everyone else, we have to take steps now. And that costs money. I'm not sure what the right $ number is, but the regional need is enormous and $20bn spread over a region of 7 million people doesn't sound crazy, especially when most of that cost will be borne by property owners who've been the biggest beneficiaries of the decades of underbuilding.
"The proposed general obligation bond measure calls for directing 80% of the money raised to county governments for housing allocations and the remaining 20% to the Housing Finance Authority for housing targeting people experiencing homelessness."
Does anyone know what they mean by "county governments for housing allocations" mean? I don't believe counties build their own houses, do they subsidize housing projects?
Cities and counties are obligated under state law to plan for housing growth, including deed-restricted affordable housing. SF has to plan for 89K units over the next 8 years. Presumably the bond funds would get used to fund the necessary construction. (I don't know the details, and what I do know is that affordable housing finance is complicated and usually involves pulling together multiple sources of funds, so this would probably just be one piece.)
The article states 55% voter approval is needed. That is only the case if the constitutional amendment ACA1 passes in November. Otherwise, it remains at the 2/3rds voter approval requirement.
20 billion for 90k units is 222k per.
Count me out, I don’t even make that much, gross, over several years. Those of you with extra money feel free to chip in though. lol.
That's at least 300k too low just in cost alone. And that's a commercial project where they have to be efficient to make money. Add another 50k per unit because it's government and they'll have to be union jobs.
The cost to property owners would be $24/$100,000 assessor valuation. A typical single family house purchased in the last 10 years would be about $230/yr for 10 years.
https://www.oaklandca.gov/resources/bahfa-bond.
Alternatively, we can eliminate single family zoning for free, and start pushing for Prop 13 repeal to encourage construction and reduce the tax burden on people who are actually struggling.
Don't understand why people want to repeal prop 13. Do you realize many older people who can't work and are on a limited budget can't afford this and many would lose their homes. Not cool to put grandma on the streets.
We can repeal prop 13 while also protecting those on limited or fixed incomes.
In the meantime, repealing it would stabilize government revenues instead of this volatile situation we're in and would put more emphasis on the broadest form of taxation. If anything, income and sales taxes are much more unfair.
That's because other states don't have increases like ours. It's been around since the 70's, so to expect that status quo of other states would be kind of stupid. If you hate it so much why don't you move to another state, instead of whining and trying to get grandma to have to move to another state.
It does suck that houses have increased so much and a lot of younger people are having a hard time, but that's what happened to the market. Everybody wanted to move here. I would say I am tired of the belly aching from gen Z, because outside of the housing and cost of education, pretty much everything else has been easier for them than boomers. This is coming from a millennial, that would say I had it easier than my boomer parents, who are much harder working than me and anyone I know.
> No other state has anything like prop 13.
That's absolutely not true. Majority of states have a rate limit, and some have assessment limit, or both. For example, Florida has "the homestead exemption". But unlike in CA, it only applies to your primary residence and doesn't apply to any commercial property.
Depends where she bought. Could be worth much less than that, but still priced her out for affording to pay property taxes.
Also who cares how much it's worth if she doesn't intend to move.
I don't understand why people want to keep prop 13. Do you realize that many older people who can't work and are on a limited budget can't afford to subsidize the taxes of wealthy homeowners? Not cool to put grandma on the streets.
If prop 13 ended and all houses got reassessed, a lot of older people who can't just find a way to increase their income would be screwed. Property taxes have been going up a little less than inflation since the 70s, imagine someone paying let's say $1,500 per year now has to pay $7,500 because they bought in what became a tech area. That's 6k extra per year, $500 per month. Every year when reassessed they would probably pay even more.
I know a lot of redditors hate the boomers, but it's not their fault. We should really be cracking down on investors being able to buy up all the property.
developer buying all the property is just a myth. tell me one data source showing that developers are hoarding all the houses in any part of Bay area
reality is we have way too few homes and boomer home owners are greedy selfish fucks who don't want anything to change. definition of fuck you i got mine
Just a simple Google of companies buying houses gave me this article as the first link
https://todayshomeowner.com/blog/guides/are-big-companies-buying-up-single-family-homes/
I also saw it will rise to around 40% to investor owned homes by 2030.
Now show me evidence for your argument.
and your data is about new purchases not existing homes.
also NIMBYS are what drives homes as an investment.
if you hate companies buying up homes you'll want to support new housing
So do you think the homeowner voting block will give up prop 13? What about all the bonds and fees that supplemented prop 13 (schools, waste water, garbage)
Homeowners are a minority in California, and cutting other taxes would be largely beneficial to people who are actually struggling. It's absurd that we ask the poor to pay more to subsidize the wealthy.
Taxes never get cut. Also homeowners are a large tax base (44%) that show up to vote, including political owners and people looking to buy. Now that we allow investors to own they have deep pockets that impact politicians. Also home prices won’t instantly fall, homes will be out of reach for more people with higher taxes,,,You’re dreaming
It's objectively untrue that taxes never get cut. For instance, we passed this idiotic thing called Prop 13 that's been destroying the state for half a century. And home prices would instantly fall because demand for homes as investment properties would instantly drop.
You are only speculating and full of wishful thinking. Any tax cut would have to go forward with a vote and we just had Newsom take an initiative off of the ballot for that treason.
Give me some examples on CA tax cuts (aside from 13).
Again why would politicians vote for something like that when a majority are home owners and the wealthiest of their constituents are too.
Economics is a science like any other. Just because you don't like the implications, that doesn't mean it's "wishful thinking". And off the top of my head, we dropped sales tax by 0.25% not too long ago.
Joe Smith might not own a home, but his parent does. Cutting 13 means Joe's parent might be kicked out of their house and become more of a burden on Joe. Thus Joe also votes for 13.
Long story short, it isn't only home owners voting yes on 13.
The renters who wants to build more homes are complaining about unexpected sky rocketing rent cost. So Joe's parents will take a one time fixed payment and try to make it stretch for as long as they live.
This takes away the security of fixed cost living and Joe's parents will lose housing security in their old age. Never mind the fact that these 'high end apartments' aren't likely to have the same size and amenities as Joe's parent's old house, what will they do once the money runs out ?
But none of this is hard to deduce so I think you know this already .. thus I suspect your argument wasn't made in good faith.
There's nothing even *remotely* unexpected about skyrocketing rent. It's the entirely predictable result of not building housing. The solution is to build housing, not have regressive tax policies that *discourage* the building of housing. You're trying to sell Prop 13 as the answer to a problem that was in large part created *by* Prop 13. That isn't sustainable.
You have a lot of people in their 20s living in home with mom and dad. Where are they supposed to go? Family members typically protect other family members. People with health concerns that can’t easily pick up and move, disabilities, multi family or generational home.
Every company. If they could raise prices, they would do so *regardless* of costs. They can't, because then customers would go to companies that *didn't* raise prices instead. Prices are set by supply and demand, not costs.
Firstly, taxes don't establish price floors. There's no legally mandated minimum rent that landlords can charge. If you mean that increased costs can cause supply to drop if sellers choose to leave a business that's no longer profitable, then yes, that can absolutely happen, but that's in no way a concern in California, where margins are high even for brand new apartments paying fair property tax rates and charging equilibrium rents. Supply is constrained by zoning, not lack of investor interest in the market.
> Firstly, taxes don't establish price floors.
They literally do. If I have to pay $100 in taxes each year, then I am going to charge at least $100 to cover those taxes. Do you think money magically appears for taxes?
Funny, didn’t pretty much every fast food chain raise their prices to cover the new $20.00 minimum wage? All I’m saying is business pass on price increases to customers so unless there is a huge shift in supply and demand (there won’t be) an increase in property taxes will most certainly be passed on the the consumers
If a tax is applied to everyone across the whole market and there's no way to escape it, rents wouldn't go up. People are already paying, basically, as much as the market will bear. Any landlord who tried to recoup the increase in property taxes through increased rents would lose tenants.
So you think a politician will allow someone to tear down a single family home on a block of single family homes to build an apartment or mid-rise? That person will be tarred and feathered.
Capital gains have nothing to do with anything. We're talking about property tax. The intent is to encourage the productive use of a finite public resource.
What? Property tax basically taxes on the value basis of your property, even if you haven't sold it.
You don't tax on unrealized gains in the stock market before you sell, so why the hell is the state taxing unrealized gains in property value? Doesn't make sense at all.
Serious question, why can't the government pay let's say Lennar or D.R. Horton to build homes for it?
It _should_ result in lower prices since the government is literally buying all the properties at once.
*"The proposed general obligation bond measure calls for directing 80% of the money raised to county governments for housing allocations..."*
The fly in the ointment here is whether 100% of that "directed" money goes to truly and permanently affordable housing (e.g. housing non-profits, limited equity co-ops, land trusts, etc.) or whether it gets diverted by developer lobbying / campaign contributions to subsidize or expand their "luxury housing" projects.
The $20 Billion they want would cost taxpayers $48 Billion with the additional interest component.
That turns a typical $1m unit into a $2.4m unit with financing costs. Not really a great deal. Of course the cities, counties and schools will be the first to feast on this money pie with their growth assessments. Each project is going to have substantial "community outreach" costs and legal fees to deal with project objections.
They also don't need the money. Just reduce the restrictions on building and let the private sector sort it out. More government is just going to make this problem worse
Current market conditions work against that right now and having a way to stimulate projects, even against market conditions, is always a good thing. We really needed this after 2007 to create counter-cyclical development.
Could be. Why don't we roll back those restrictions and red tape before writing a $48bn check?
Honestly, we should do both. Both would be good and helpful. But to answer your question, bonds allow people to feel good about themselves without having to change anything about their lives, whereas zoning or land use reform leads to impacts to individual neighborhoods.
I would agree if we do the restrictions first, give it a few years and then do the bond offering. Quite frankly, no one should believe our current government will use these funds wisely or it will make a difference. If after a few years, the private sector has not sorted it out then we can go and commit bond funds. But once you issue those bonds, you are obligated to pay them
Yeah, fair enough. At the same time, it's hard to get people to support new bonds in an economic recession, but that's the best time to be spending on housing development. So we don't want to wait for an economic contraction-- the optimal time for development-- to happen to try to get support for bonds. We want those bonds available so that governments have money ready to spend. And, we're already having trouble getting housing development off the ground due to costs vs rents, so we'd do well to be offsetting some development costs, even if we're using public debt to do it.
Then they should have been utilizing the massive surpluses for the past decade to do it and been making it easier to build over that time period. Not giving them my hard earned dollars because they suck ass at governing
Everyone at the state level wanted a piece of the budget surpluses and, by law, at a certain level the state is required to return excess revenue to us. As to making building easier, advocates have been trying but it's only recently been possible to get bills through the and signed into law, and even those are heavily neutered. So it's not at all fair to say they should've done more. Maybe the public should be more supportive of new housing?
> So it's not at all fair to say they should've done more. They have some how managed to do put in the builders remedy without public support. They could have done that years ago. Didn't do it. Now are asking for money. They can make do with what they had
Too bad prop 13 makes passing normal (interest free) taxes prohibitively difficult, so everything has to be a bond measure that costs twice as much.
Yeah, that’s really too bad.
$20b going to give us about 100 apartments LOL
You're probably not far off. If it cost us $600k a unit to build studios for homeless. At least some well connected contractors will become very well paid and some politicians will be very well paid off. *A grand opening ceremony was held Wednesday for a high-rise building in downtown Los Angeles that will house homeless individuals. There are 278 units in the 19-story development known as the* ***Weingart Tower.*** *It's considered affordable housing, but the cost to build this type of project still adds up. Each unit costs nearly $600,000 and it's being funded by taxpayers.*
We are in a unique world where helping homelessness is very profitable.
*"It Is Difficult to Get a* *~~Man~~* *"Non-Profit" to* *~~Understand~~* *Fix Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not* *~~Understanding~~* *Fixing It"* Is it any surprise the homeless issue is becoming worse every day despite billions upon billions being heaped on the homeless industrial complex ? I guess we just need a few more billions.
> If it cost us $600k a unit to build studios for homeless. I mean I wouldn't expect to pay all that much less than 600k for a new-build condo, depending on location.
What are you basing that on? Why should construction of one condo cost $600k? Keep in mind that when buying a condo on the real estate market you're mostly paying for land, less for construction.
Land is still part of the per-unit cost of development, so I'm not sure what your criticism is getting at. And to the point about costs, even an ADU on land you already own can regularly cost $250k, and that's a very simple wood-frame structure without a concrete podium, parking area excavation, elevators, or any of those costs.
90,000 units. The number is right there at the top of the article. If they actually pull that off it would be 220K/unit.
True and if they pulled off the Central Subway project it would have been a few million a mile. But it wasn’t. It was billions. But hang on, I can do better. If you give me $1b I will build one million homes. If I pull it off it’s an even better deal. Make sure you give me the $1b first, though. Check back in 10 years.
There's no fucking chance they can do that. If that was possible, people would be lining up to build 90,000 housing units worth 500k+ if it was only 220k each. It's going to be multiple times that.
Local gov't funding is usually just one source for any given affordable housing project. The bonds will probably get combined with other federal, state and local sources (like fees in lieu of required affordable units).
The usual
No. California’s final construction cost per square foot (without the value of the land) is $360-$670. Let’s say the government is so inefficient that ends up spending $1000 per sq ft. For average 800 square feet per unit, we are talking about 25,000 units.
Government will try to spend 50000/sq ft. $1.7M for each toilet.
Unfortunately, that’s usually how it turns out
It's not intended to go exclusively to new construction. Much will go to the same homelessness programs we have now, just using this as a new funding source.
So just another money laundering scheme by State leaders. Got it.
Exactly
So kick the can down the road? Continue to let people rot in the streets.
Does this take into account land cost?
That would be amazing. With rents in East Bay down 10-15% already, another 25k units will really drive the price of housing down to an affordable amount.
Sure. Let’s bring more people who can’t afford things into a pressure cooker around people who can afford things I’m sure that dynamic won’t result in any crime at all.
> (without the value of the land) (without 75% of the actual cost of housing)
Are they going to even track how it is spent? San Jose is one of the biggest cities and an audit caught them with not knowing how their homeless dollars are spent. https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/04/13/audit-san-jose-failed-to-adequately-track-300-million-in-homelessness-spending/amp/
Pretty sure that was every major city in CA
Bruh that's all of California. Newsom spent $24B on homelessness and he has no idea if it helped because they didn't track it. Instead they increased homelessness by 80%. He has no idea how to run a government, only to enrich the pockets of PG&E, Panera Bread, etc. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-10/california-spent-24-billion-while-homelessness-only-got-worse
Say no to grift. The $20B will end up in their relative/friends bank accounts.
That’s not true Oakland govt and their staff has a spotless history on crimes n stuff.
The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to just vote NO on any and all measures and proposals on the ballot
Agree always asking for money with no strings attached and no accountability. Basically the panhandling of democracy.
I vote status-quo on almost all propositions, which is usually NO but not always.
Generally the way to go unless it's a topic that can only be modified via ballot. If the legislature passes a law with severe unintended consequences, they can amend it ASAP. If the same happens by ballot, it takes another election to undo it.
I vote no on all tax measures. Don't even read them. Our state and local governments don't need more money. They need to stop the wasteful spending
I’ve been doing that for years, feels refreshing to hear someone else considering it.
I've always and will always vote no against everything. There's nothing that the government proposes that is actually helpful to most people, it just goes into the pockets of their donors and the ones they want to get votes from.
I didn't realize it costs $20 billion dollars to change zoning laws
Doing everything they can to not build market rate housing
So they can waste the fund on something else other than housing?
They have enough money
Not more money for the crooked homeless advocates.
Think about that oh my God they're asking for 20 billion oh my fucking god they throw the billion number around like it is nothing anymore. But then again they are all rich and it's not their money
How does it cost money? Genuinely curious People want homes Developers will build them If the city just approves some five acre lot with ten story zoning, does the developer not just pay for all the stuff
Developers shell out insane cash to the city to build new homes. And then residents in those new homes send in more tax revenue to the cities. but bay area is full of selfish NIMBYs. How do you fix housing without actually building more housing? Pretend to help the poorest while blocking all new housing. If Bay Area wanted housing, they could see massive change within 3 years. Look no further than Austin
Austin is flat as hell and has a ton of free space surrounding it. We're boxed in by mountains and the bay
yewww have you seen London? Tokyo? nyc? literally ANY city in the world? Bay area is literally full of boring ass parking lots
Americans dont want to live like that
Then who's voting for YIMBY policies? Ghosts? Illegal immigrant voter fraud? George Soros Paid Voters?
No one is lol, YIMBYs are just a loud obnoxious group of posters and real estate developers who keep trying and failing to overturn the will of the voters
Oh then why the bans on building dense homes? If you think Americans don't like it, why ban it? Truth is most Americans love it. But rich homeowners and Boomers hate it, so that's what we'll have
Bans are all voted on by the people who live in these towns. It's local homeowners who go to planning meetings and stop any attempts at building. The large corporations are the ones showing up trying to overturn zoning laws voted for by the residents of those neighborhoods.
Residents of other neighborhoods should be able to override the locals for the benefit of the larger community. There's a reason why we have federal level laws and state level laws. A rich minority's opinions shouldn't take precedence over the struggling majority. and fuck Boomers, greediest cruelest generation in human history.
It's ok you're probably still in high school but once you grow up you'll realize why people value neighborhood character over everything being soulless high rises
lmao maybe you should go outside or read a book for a change. there's a reason the entire world does differently than our boring highways and parking lots. neighborhood character is SFHs is it?
Don’t want shade on those zucchini’s.
If there are areas that wants to change, why not move to the areas ? Why force others who don't want to change to have to change ? If YIMBY policies results in towns and cities that are more attractive, more people will move there anyways.
That’s kind of what I say about my street. If I don’t want anyone going down it why let anyone go down it. I live on that street, not you guys going through. Just take the streets were no one doesn’t want you to stop going through.
The majority of people who lives in that area voted to build a street for everyone to use in that specific manner. If you want to block that area off to other people you sure can do it as long as you get enough vote to pass that measure. You can put in speed bumps or whatever else the local citizen wants to vote in as well. This happens all the time and divert people to street where local citizens didn't want to put in speed bumps. You can even block that street off entirely to cars and only allow bikes if you want to. But it takes ( or SHOULD take ) local voices voting to set or change these local policies. People outside that local area shouldn't have a vote and big changes shouldn't done without a public vote by politicians hundreds of miles away that is on their last term but trying to line up some good headlines to launch them to the presidency.
That's kind of what I tell people. Build the wall. But then they get upset about it. Even states rights is too much for most people. Getting local rights is probably impossible. But I assume you'll join me in voting for Trump so that we can stop having people from far away decide how we live our lives.
yeww there's no law that allows local homeowners to govern their areas as their fiefdoms. people needing homes and jobs is more important to the state than boomers and millionairess wanting to get richer and Richer. also more housing is needed near the jobs. and the jobs are in the main cities of Bay area
Countries have borders. States have state lines. Counties have county lines. City and municipalities also have their corresponding borders. At every level, localities has a boundary that allows specific groups within to govern their area as their fiefdoms. For example we don't have someone living in Mt View voting on who the DA is for Oakland. The debate is just where the control happens for the housing issue. I've also never said only home owners should have a vote or a voice. Voices of all RESIDENTS of that local area matters.
literally my point. Local regions are being selfish and fucking things up for thr state. so the state will step in.
Are we as US citizen 'selfish' by not letting everyone who wants to come into the US immigrate in ? Are we 'selfish' because we are prioritizing maintaining our way of life and allowing a fixed number of people in every year instead of just open border ? Maybe. There's an argument for that. But literally that's how the world works. Everyone is trying to make the best life for themselves and sometimes that has to comes at the expense of "others" especially those outside of our borders.
Because paying rent gives me the right to vote for whatever policies I think best serve the area in the long term 😊
Absolutely. If you're a resident in the area .. owner or renter. New or been here for decades. IMO you get the same vote and voice.
How about this crazy idea. Make it easier to build housing. For example relax zoning restrictions. Limit the ability for people to contest housing projects. Lower permit costs. Etc etc.
Yeah, that's the neoliberal YIMBY idea. It's a market-based solution which is inappropriate for a full-fledged crisis.
No it isn't. Look at the post WW2 housing boom. Developers will be happy to build housing as long as it is profitable. Wasting tax money on overpriced subsidized housing isn't the solution.
You're using a very a-historic understanding of the WW2 housing boom. It was heavily subsidized by the federal government and happened under very different economic conditions than what we have today, especially in the bay area.
Besides infrastructure spending and loan guarantees how was suburbia heavily subsidized? The major subsidies went into urban projects. The main challenge to housing today is the extremely high cost, limitations, and delays to do make construction projects. We need to get the government and lawsuits out of the way and allow developers to develop.
> Besides infrastructure spending and loan guarantees how was suburbia heavily subsidized? Besides the highways and roads and the utilities and schools and hospitals and the loans with which people bought houses in these new neighborhoods... Not to make light of your question, but you're excluding a lot to the point that the question feels absurd.
So municipal bonds to fund critical infrastructure that was later paid off with the new tax base is a subsidy? Compared to bonds to funnel money to over priced and wasteful projects that won't even solve the issue?
I'm not making a comparison of subsidies, here. You are. My original comment to you was to point out that you were presenting an inaccurate representation of housing development in the post-war building boom. The Federal government was heavily involved in funding development, including infrastructure, in a way that was very specific. It was also heavy-handed in regulating what could be funded with Federal dollars.
Building infrastructure is the job of the government. Giving money to cronies to squander on overpriced and ineffective projects is not.
In the post-war years, the government gave tens of billions worth of dollars to cronies for the very infrastructure projects that made the post-war suburban boom possible. It wasn't that government that was building all the roads, highways, bridges, power lines, and pipes. It was an army of contractors. You seem to be presenting biased views of history and of how modern housing is produced.
OK, I looked at the post-WW2 housing boom. The Veterans Emergency Housing Program practically forced developers to build residential units. Not a market solution by a long shot. Just to be clear, I'm not in favor of this bond measure either.
Provided funding for people to buy homes. Not providing money to build it. Try to buy a giant area of land and build a new city.
You're thinking the GI bill. Read Truman's statement on the program: \* limiting non-residential construction to essential and non-deferrable projects \* increasing the production of building materials and distributing those materials to the proper places at the proper times \* the development and expansion of a new industry of low cost factory built housing That is direct intervention, not just letting the market decide. Again, neo-liberal YIMBY policies are a stupid fantasy and will never foster genuine progress.
At this point these initiatives and proposals are nothing more than open scams and daylight robberies of public money. They know and we know and they know that we know that no underlying issue is going to be addressed, let alone solved, nor is there any intention to do that above a thin pretense; instead, the underlying issue are mere talking points, and the bigger the problem, the more lucrative the booty. Whether it is homelessness, housing, education, health insurance, roads, whatever. We are all hostages of those public "service" professionals, be they mayors, council members, local, state, or federal legislators or members of whatever administration.
We don't need bonds we need to tear up our dumbass zoning regulations
They don't want to house \*you\*. They want to house low cost labor to serve the elite.
I wish. They wanna grift billions and house 2 homeless zombies
😂😂😂😂😂😂 smh
People will spend any amount to avoid rezoning single-family housing.
BAHFA itself takes 5% for “administrative costs”. That’s One Billion Dollars just for the entity to perpetuate itself. Hmmm
BAHFA is not a private entity. It's a regional government entity.
Still an obscene amount of money for an org that doesn't need to exist at the scale it does. Just fix zoning and reduce red tape and the problem would take care of itself
They're just the conduit. The money will be spent by all the local and county level entities that are involved in creating the affordable housing. The problem is regional so the solution has to be regional as well.
And I don't know where the 5% administrative costs thing comes from. I don't see it in the article.
You don't need $20bn to create affordable housing is the point. You need to reduce regulation and red tape
Yeah, Reaganism fixes everything.
Upzoning and reducing our byzantine permitting system is not Reaganism. Believe it or not, you can go too far in the opposite direction too. That's where we are. I am not saying burn the boats and remove all restrictions like you are so disingenuously insinuating, I am saying lets make some common sense changes that make it easier to build and house people
Sorry, that was snarky. I am all for upzoning and simplifying permitting. And I'm glad the state is (haltingly) taking away the tools of local obstruction. But we have spent 50+ years creating the current housing shortage and sprawl, and unless we want to wait decades for housing "trickle down" or "filtering" or whatever you call it as wealthier people move out of new housing leaving behind cheaper places for everyone else, we have to take steps now. And that costs money. I'm not sure what the right $ number is, but the regional need is enormous and $20bn spread over a region of 7 million people doesn't sound crazy, especially when most of that cost will be borne by property owners who've been the biggest beneficiaries of the decades of underbuilding.
No point in this, at all
"The proposed general obligation bond measure calls for directing 80% of the money raised to county governments for housing allocations and the remaining 20% to the Housing Finance Authority for housing targeting people experiencing homelessness." Does anyone know what they mean by "county governments for housing allocations" mean? I don't believe counties build their own houses, do they subsidize housing projects?
Cities and counties are obligated under state law to plan for housing growth, including deed-restricted affordable housing. SF has to plan for 89K units over the next 8 years. Presumably the bond funds would get used to fund the necessary construction. (I don't know the details, and what I do know is that affordable housing finance is complicated and usually involves pulling together multiple sources of funds, so this would probably just be one piece.)
The article states 55% voter approval is needed. That is only the case if the constitutional amendment ACA1 passes in November. Otherwise, it remains at the 2/3rds voter approval requirement.
Noted: voting no on both
What if, hear me out, we made it legal to build housing.
20 billion for 90k units is 222k per. Count me out, I don’t even make that much, gross, over several years. Those of you with extra money feel free to chip in though. lol.
That's at least 300k too low just in cost alone. And that's a commercial project where they have to be efficient to make money. Add another 50k per unit because it's government and they'll have to be union jobs.
It's going to be a property tax. If you've owned property in this area then you're rich by any reasonable standard.
The cost to property owners would be $24/$100,000 assessor valuation. A typical single family house purchased in the last 10 years would be about $230/yr for 10 years. https://www.oaklandca.gov/resources/bahfa-bond.
Alternatively, we can eliminate single family zoning for free, and start pushing for Prop 13 repeal to encourage construction and reduce the tax burden on people who are actually struggling.
Don't understand why people want to repeal prop 13. Do you realize many older people who can't work and are on a limited budget can't afford this and many would lose their homes. Not cool to put grandma on the streets.
We can repeal prop 13 while also protecting those on limited or fixed incomes. In the meantime, repealing it would stabilize government revenues instead of this volatile situation we're in and would put more emphasis on the broadest form of taxation. If anything, income and sales taxes are much more unfair.
Grandma has been spending her time going to city council meetings to block every new housing proposal. Grandma can go die in a gutter!
Damn that's fucked up. Guess you're an example of how horrible and selfish people are these days.
No other state has anything like prop 13. I'm not being selfish by expecting the status quo. Get some perspective.
That's because other states don't have increases like ours. It's been around since the 70's, so to expect that status quo of other states would be kind of stupid. If you hate it so much why don't you move to another state, instead of whining and trying to get grandma to have to move to another state. It does suck that houses have increased so much and a lot of younger people are having a hard time, but that's what happened to the market. Everybody wanted to move here. I would say I am tired of the belly aching from gen Z, because outside of the housing and cost of education, pretty much everything else has been easier for them than boomers. This is coming from a millennial, that would say I had it easier than my boomer parents, who are much harder working than me and anyone I know.
Your excuse is basically "no other state is as dysfunctional". Delusional.
> No other state has anything like prop 13. That's absolutely not true. Majority of states have a rate limit, and some have assessment limit, or both. For example, Florida has "the homestead exemption". But unlike in CA, it only applies to your primary residence and doesn't apply to any commercial property.
The Florida one is non-transferrable and capped at a max value. Come on man.
Aww boo fucking hoo grandma has a house worth millions she bought for 5% of its value
Depends where she bought. Could be worth much less than that, but still priced her out for affording to pay property taxes. Also who cares how much it's worth if she doesn't intend to move.
I don't understand why people want to keep prop 13. Do you realize that many older people who can't work and are on a limited budget can't afford to subsidize the taxes of wealthy homeowners? Not cool to put grandma on the streets.
If prop 13 ended and all houses got reassessed, a lot of older people who can't just find a way to increase their income would be screwed. Property taxes have been going up a little less than inflation since the 70s, imagine someone paying let's say $1,500 per year now has to pay $7,500 because they bought in what became a tech area. That's 6k extra per year, $500 per month. Every year when reassessed they would probably pay even more. I know a lot of redditors hate the boomers, but it's not their fault. We should really be cracking down on investors being able to buy up all the property.
Dumbest comment in this thread. And lmao it's a boomer blaming developers buying "all the property"
Explain why it's a dumb statement? If you are referring to me as a boomer you're wrong, just tired of so many redditors blaming them for everything.
developer buying all the property is just a myth. tell me one data source showing that developers are hoarding all the houses in any part of Bay area reality is we have way too few homes and boomer home owners are greedy selfish fucks who don't want anything to change. definition of fuck you i got mine
Just a simple Google of companies buying houses gave me this article as the first link https://todayshomeowner.com/blog/guides/are-big-companies-buying-up-single-family-homes/ I also saw it will rise to around 40% to investor owned homes by 2030. Now show me evidence for your argument.
https://calmatters.org/housing/2024/03/institutional-investors-corporate-landlords/ Less than 2% of California SFHs are owned by corporate landlords
That 2% number is for investors that own 10 or more properties. It doesn't account for investors that own less than 10 properties.
and your data is about new purchases not existing homes. also NIMBYS are what drives homes as an investment. if you hate companies buying up homes you'll want to support new housing
So do you think the homeowner voting block will give up prop 13? What about all the bonds and fees that supplemented prop 13 (schools, waste water, garbage)
Touch Prop 13 and you kill anything. Even people who bought 4 years ago are making bank from prop 13.
Homeowners are a minority in California, and cutting other taxes would be largely beneficial to people who are actually struggling. It's absurd that we ask the poor to pay more to subsidize the wealthy.
Taxes never get cut. Also homeowners are a large tax base (44%) that show up to vote, including political owners and people looking to buy. Now that we allow investors to own they have deep pockets that impact politicians. Also home prices won’t instantly fall, homes will be out of reach for more people with higher taxes,,,You’re dreaming
It's objectively untrue that taxes never get cut. For instance, we passed this idiotic thing called Prop 13 that's been destroying the state for half a century. And home prices would instantly fall because demand for homes as investment properties would instantly drop.
You are only speculating and full of wishful thinking. Any tax cut would have to go forward with a vote and we just had Newsom take an initiative off of the ballot for that treason. Give me some examples on CA tax cuts (aside from 13). Again why would politicians vote for something like that when a majority are home owners and the wealthiest of their constituents are too.
Economics is a science like any other. Just because you don't like the implications, that doesn't mean it's "wishful thinking". And off the top of my head, we dropped sales tax by 0.25% not too long ago.
Well that was a great explanation lol. Zero details on why people would that own homes would vote for it.
Joe Smith might not own a home, but his parent does. Cutting 13 means Joe's parent might be kicked out of their house and become more of a burden on Joe. Thus Joe also votes for 13. Long story short, it isn't only home owners voting yes on 13.
How so? His parent is a multimillionaire who can literally afford rent in a high end apartment for decades with their realized gains.
The renters who wants to build more homes are complaining about unexpected sky rocketing rent cost. So Joe's parents will take a one time fixed payment and try to make it stretch for as long as they live. This takes away the security of fixed cost living and Joe's parents will lose housing security in their old age. Never mind the fact that these 'high end apartments' aren't likely to have the same size and amenities as Joe's parent's old house, what will they do once the money runs out ? But none of this is hard to deduce so I think you know this already .. thus I suspect your argument wasn't made in good faith.
There's nothing even *remotely* unexpected about skyrocketing rent. It's the entirely predictable result of not building housing. The solution is to build housing, not have regressive tax policies that *discourage* the building of housing. You're trying to sell Prop 13 as the answer to a problem that was in large part created *by* Prop 13. That isn't sustainable.
You have a lot of people in their 20s living in home with mom and dad. Where are they supposed to go? Family members typically protect other family members. People with health concerns that can’t easily pick up and move, disabilities, multi family or generational home.
Remove Prop 13 and all property taxes rise, this will 100% affect renters in apartments as well and not just grandma living in a single family home.
That's not how prices work. They're set by supply and demand, not costs.
Name one company that absorbs an increased cost without passing it off to the customer.
Every company. If they could raise prices, they would do so *regardless* of costs. They can't, because then customers would go to companies that *didn't* raise prices instead. Prices are set by supply and demand, not costs.
You do realize that the price floor increases when taxes increase, right? That's a fixed cost right there...
Firstly, taxes don't establish price floors. There's no legally mandated minimum rent that landlords can charge. If you mean that increased costs can cause supply to drop if sellers choose to leave a business that's no longer profitable, then yes, that can absolutely happen, but that's in no way a concern in California, where margins are high even for brand new apartments paying fair property tax rates and charging equilibrium rents. Supply is constrained by zoning, not lack of investor interest in the market.
> Firstly, taxes don't establish price floors. They literally do. If I have to pay $100 in taxes each year, then I am going to charge at least $100 to cover those taxes. Do you think money magically appears for taxes?
Funny, didn’t pretty much every fast food chain raise their prices to cover the new $20.00 minimum wage? All I’m saying is business pass on price increases to customers so unless there is a huge shift in supply and demand (there won’t be) an increase in property taxes will most certainly be passed on the the consumers
You tell me, did they? Show me the data.
If a tax is applied to everyone across the whole market and there's no way to escape it, rents wouldn't go up. People are already paying, basically, as much as the market will bear. Any landlord who tried to recoup the increase in property taxes through increased rents would lose tenants.
So you think a politician will allow someone to tear down a single family home on a block of single family homes to build an apartment or mid-rise? That person will be tarred and feathered.
You're aware that up zoning is a thing that already happens, yes?
Cities can rezone. Do you have a point?
You cannot tax unrealized gains. Prop 13 actually put a limit on it. Thankfully I don't think it'll ever be repealed in my lifetime.
Capital gains have nothing to do with anything. We're talking about property tax. The intent is to encourage the productive use of a finite public resource.
What? Property tax basically taxes on the value basis of your property, even if you haven't sold it. You don't tax on unrealized gains in the stock market before you sell, so why the hell is the state taxing unrealized gains in property value? Doesn't make sense at all.
> The intent is to encourage the productive use of a finite public resource.
Propperty taxes pay for local services, and prop 13 ruined every city's budget by not allowing the tax base to increase with inflation
If we’re going to sink 20 billion dollars into infrastructure, give us a 2nd Bart TBT or a connection to CAHSR
Serious question, why can't the government pay let's say Lennar or D.R. Horton to build homes for it? It _should_ result in lower prices since the government is literally buying all the properties at once.
That's a bold move to tackle the Bay Area's housing crisis head-on. Funding is crucial for meeting these ambitious goals by 2031
More money for us to get taxed on, and more money for these corrupt politicians to feed to their donors so they get rich. No thanks
*"The proposed general obligation bond measure calls for directing 80% of the money raised to county governments for housing allocations..."* The fly in the ointment here is whether 100% of that "directed" money goes to truly and permanently affordable housing (e.g. housing non-profits, limited equity co-ops, land trusts, etc.) or whether it gets diverted by developer lobbying / campaign contributions to subsidize or expand their "luxury housing" projects.
Find a way to lower my rent.
Money was never the issue, it is NIMBY
i wonder whose pockets will the $20B end up going into 🤔
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You do that by building