Berkeley’s Attack on Housing

http://www.beyondchron.org/berkeleys-attack-housing/

by jseliger • 9 years ago

60 96 9 years ago

aphextron2• 9 years ago

Can anyone seriously use the term "Affordable housing" in Berkeley with a straight face? The median home value has just crossed 1 million dollars, which buys you a single floor 2 bedroom bungalow. It is very clear that the current homeowners of Berkeley are just fine with the way things are.

osdiab• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, the young people who are subject to the rental market are also very politically inactive when it comes to local politics. Berkeley residents - how about next time you protest, focus not only on national politics but also on your own city's issues!!

jstalin• 9 years ago

It's a lot more fun to dress in all black, scream at people, and riot.

aphextron2• 9 years ago

And thus we are left to renting out a baby boomer's garden shack for the cost of a mortgage.

Mz• 9 years ago

But then when they fail, they would have to feel incompetent. It is generally more gratifying to rage against the machine in a way that is unlikely to accomplish something so you don't have to take it personally when it doesn't work, because no one expected it to anyway.

mjevans2• 9 years ago

How are you supposed to gain representation within an area that you literally cannot live within (even though you work / receive education there) due to a lack of (affordable) housing?

jedberg4• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, the young people who are subject to the rental market are also very politically inactive when it comes to local politics.

Quite true. Also, they don't actually care all that much, because most of them have their housing subsidized by federal loans or their wealthy parents or both.

Decade2• 9 years ago

There's affordable housing, and then there's Affordable Housing. Some of the restricted Affordable Housing actually is pretty expensive, while still being too scarce for the demand. https://medium.com/@Scott_Wiener/market-rate-housing-isnt-a-...

inostia3• 9 years ago

Another example of how "progressives" in Berkeley are all for progressive policies (and driving a Prius) until they conflict with their NIMBY attitude towards their home values. Holdovers from the 60's and 70's who have seen their home values skyrocket and now want to prevent building of newer rental units (the "Missing Middle", 3-8 unit, smaller apartment buildings).

davidw3• 9 years ago

Very relevant: http://marketurbanism.com/2017/01/27/the-disconnect-between-...

inostia3• 9 years ago

Thanks for this. Also relevant, recent article about this issue in Oakland: http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/May-2017/The-Real-Cause-of-Ge...

closeparen4• 9 years ago

A reasonable person could argue that the people who move to cities for high-paying jobs do not need government assistance with access to opportunity: with our college degrees and in-demand skills, we have more than almost anyone else.

Similarly, we have little in common with immigrants from poor countries fleeing extreme poverty and dysfunctional violence. In the immigration analogy, we are more like the plutocrats buying access through investor visas. Even the most pro-immigration liberals don't think immigration should be for sale to the rich.

So why should cities be forced to remake themselves for our benefit?

The simple answer is, it's not for our benefit. The highly skilled, well educated, and well employed will happily take over every existing housing unit, no matter how poor its previous occupant. We might even prefer to live in beautiful, low-rise cities with only fellow elites for neighbors.

Increasing scale until there's enough for everyone is the alternative to just replacing existing residents in existing homes.

orblivion2• 9 years ago

My favorite was seeing a "Bernie Sanders: breaking the class ceiling" sign in front of someone's house in the damn hills.

zhemao• 9 years ago

During the primary season, I saw a Bernie Sanders sign in a window (I think it was their local campaign HQ) and a homeless man sleeping in front of it.

unclesaamm• 9 years ago

There is a broad coalition of people who are excited about socialist ideas. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Spooky233• 9 years ago

Nobody in their right mind would support 3-8 unit apartments going up next door.

Those type of buildings are not very profitable to build now with modern building requirements like ADA. Once the economy goes south, the rent and quality of tenant will plunge.

Real estate is always boom-bust. Having a conservative outlook about building is pragmatic.

api• 9 years ago

I've always seen this kind of unhinged NIMBYism as a backdoor passive aggressive way to implement housing discrimination, though more based on class than race. It's a way of making sure the "wrong people" (poor people, usually minorities) can't live there.

I almost have more respect for all the neo-fascists who are just openly racist and elitist. At least they're being honest about how they feel.

lstyls2• 9 years ago

Class is often backdoor racism too. Structural racism is a huge driver of class division in the US.

SomeStupidPoint• 9 years ago

Is there a good place to read more about that?

I haven't seen a good study on teasing apart cultural, class, and racial discrimination in terms of contribution to outcomes.

exclusiv2• 9 years ago

This hidden racism is rampant among the leftists. They start their policy-making by assuming that minorities can't do certain things. They make themselves feel better by telling themselves they are helping out the disadvantaged. But they really have a disdain for minorities. They don't see them as capable citizens, even when those things are basic.

Example: they think Voter ID laws are racist because they think black people and other minorities can't find or get to a DMV or don't have internet [1]

They want artisanal-everything, Whole Foods and similar which is also a way to push out those that can't afford those things. I hear them talk about moving to these hipster places that are "up and coming". I know what they really mean. A gentrifying place where they can be surrounded by people just like them, with the same views, the same interests, similar occupations and similar social status.

[1] https://pjmedia.com/video/what-berkeley-liberals-think-of-vo...

TulliusCicero3• 9 years ago

Being anti-housing in urban areas doesn't just hurt the poor and middle class. It's also definitively anti-environment.

The people who would've ended up in new housing don't just disappear into the ether; they end up living in some further out suburb, where they contribute to encroaching on nature, and where they have longer, more energy-intensive commutes.

To be an environmentalist and a NIMBY is a contradiction in terms. The bay area, unfortunately, is chock full of hypocrites of this sort.

santaclaus2• 9 years ago

The bay area, unfortunately, is chock full of hypocrites of this sort.

Cough San Francisco Sierra Club Cough

davidw3• 9 years ago

Relevant links about SF Sierra Club:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2017/05/31/san-franc...

They're fighting to preserve a.... car garage. http://thebaycitybeacon.com/32740/282282/a/the-sierra-club-f...

kevinburke• 9 years ago

If fixing this interests you, please consider signing up for a membership and voting for better executives in the local elections, or writing the national chapter and asking them to decertify the local group; I have several friends doing both.

ScottBurson2• 9 years ago

Someone else posted this link in response to another comment, but I think it's more relevant to yours: http://marketurbanism.com/2017/01/27/the-disconnect-between-...

Here's a quote: In many metro areas, household emissions in the suburbs are roughly double those of city households.

e_hup• 9 years ago

Here is a summary of basically exactly what you're talking about, happening just a few miles away from Berkeley:

http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/June-2017/Dealing-with-the-Sp...

exclusiv2• 9 years ago

I've never thought of it that way but it definitely makes sense.

Apart from the anti-housing issues that you outlined, the city loses out on new property tax revenue that would be levied at the current market rate.

Staying in office is always the #1 goal.

maxsilver3• 9 years ago

I wish urbanists / "urban planners" would learn that same lesson too.

They seem to think gentrification / "YIMBYism" is "good" because it "invests in" or "cleans up" the neighborhood, not realizing that all the poorer people they "cleaned up" don't disappear -- they too end up living in some further out area, with all the same problems that causes.

Edit: This isn't an anti-construction argument. This is a pro-appropriate-construction argument. Not just any new building works towards a solution. Not just any units actually help the supply side of this problem.

closeparen4• 9 years ago

Where do you think existing residents go when migrants take over the existing housing stock?

Like many in this debate, you seem to think that preventing housing construction prevents population change. But it only preserves the size of the population, not the composition

There is more than enough demand already to unseat every long-time renter by outbidding them at lease renewal time, and this is happening. No developer intervention required.

TulliusCicero3• 9 years ago

Displacement is definitely an issue, but it doesn't go away if you stop development. SF has been notoriously anti-development for some time, and that didn't stop the poor and working class from getting displaced (except for those with rent control or subsidized housing, of course).

The real progressive solution here would be to use taxation for the government to build its own more affordable housing, housing that is mixed-income, mixed-use, etc. But, that can easily happen in parallel with private development.

mikepavone• 9 years ago

Limiting the supply of urban housing makes the displacement problem worse, not better. As long as the demand for housing far outstrips the supply, only the affluent will be able to afford to live in desirable places like Berkeley. We need more market rate and below market rate housing. While below market rate housing has the greatest impact, both help reduce displacement [1]. Realistically though, there's no way Berkeley can produce enough BMR to fix this problem with existing funding sources. According to the 2015 Nexus study, a household of 3 making 100% of AMI (area median income) can't afford market rate rents and the situation is far worse for families looking to buy a modest house or condo.

Local YIMBY groups like East Bay Forward, YIMBY Action and SF BARF support the construction of both market rate and below market rate. They have on occasion opposed increases in the BMR requirements for new housing, but that was out of concern that the new requirements were so high that substantially less housing would be built and the absolute number of BMR numbers would in fact be lower. While not conclusive, some early indications suggest this concern was warranted [2].

[1] http://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345 [2] https://medium.com/@LocalPolitics/the-25-inclusionary-rate-i...

jedberg4• 9 years ago

As a previous student and renter, and a current landlord in Berkeley, I can tell you exactly why this happens.

Students don't vote in city elections for the most part.

The city council represents the homeowners and long time residents. The homeowners want their property values to go up, so most of them oppose more housing. The long time residents inexplicably hate students and "what the students do to this city" despite the fact that the University was there before every single person who live there now.

So the city council does everything it can to keep those property values high, since the students are a captive audience and will rent no matter what, and for the most part don't care what the cost is because their upper middle class parents and/or the federal government is picking up the bill until they graduate.

I personally do my small part by keeping the rent on our place below market, as close to our actual costs as possible. The appreciation on the property value is nice, but the steady income is really what Berkeley property is good for. In 19 years I've had three months of vacancy, and two of those were because I was renovating and one was because my tenants left in a odd month.

TheSpiceIsLife• 9 years ago

I'm confused by these two statements:

"as close to our actual costs as possible."

"but the steady income is really what Berkeley property is good for"

Wouldn't 'as close to costs as possible' be exactly what it costs to maintain the property (insurance, maintenance / upgradtes, rates, etc) thereby eating all the steady income.

maxsilver3• 9 years ago

There's a big difference between self-imposing a 15% profit margin, or taking the "market rate" 150%+ profit margin.

jedberg4• 9 years ago

Wouldn't 'as close to costs as possible' be exactly what it costs to maintain the property (insurance, maintenance / upgradtes, rates, etc) thereby eating all the steady income.

Yes. We basically break even, including the cost of the mortgage. The idea is to own the property outright in 30 years, and then slowly ramping up the profits but still staying below market rate. Or simply sell the property.

But the point is it's a long term investment and savings account, that doesn't depend on the value to go up. If I wanted to be more rational I would add in a small return on capital as a cost, which would still have me be below market, just less so.

SimbaOnSteroids• 9 years ago

"What students do to this city"

How short sighted, without the school the whole Silicon Valley thing might have happened somewhere else and property values wouldn't be nearly as high.

ng12• 9 years ago

But once you have yours the rest don't matter. Nobody's founding much of anything in Palo Alto garages these days.

sanderjd• 9 years ago

As a longtime resident of a college town, I have no trouble both appreciating the value of having a University (which I went to) in town, and finding the students themselves to often be an irritance. I'm sure I was loud, obnoxious, and generally disrespectful of other people when I was a student too, but that doesn't make it "inexplicable" to dislike such behavior now.

I don't think we should punish them through housing policy though :-).

gvd• 9 years ago

Thanks for telling it like it is. This is pretty much what has happend all over the Bay Area. Goodluck to the homeowners in getting to see their grand-children grow up when their kids can't afford to live here anymore.

fiter3• 9 years ago

I hope "Ecocity Berkeley"[0] (written 1987!) can become a reality. It's exactly the idea that many have commented about: increase density, increase parks, and reduce sprawl.

This is a vision to strive for instead of just preserving whatever state we're currently in.

[0] https://books.google.com/books/about/Ecocity_Berkeley.html?i...

natrius• 9 years ago

You're going to read a page full of comments that agree with this, which is great. But you need to change it. You need to join an organization that will show you how to fight for policies that make our cities open to all. Find your local pro-housing organization and join it. Let people live where they want.

dredmorbius• 9 years ago

I'm coming to suspect a common trait of goods whose primary or significant function is as an asset that there are built-in incentives to seek the value inflation of those assets.

This happens across asset classes, but there are at least two significant distinctions:

* Purely financial assets: money, stocks, bonds, etc.

* Productive assets, most especially Maslovian assets: those which provide necessities of life.

Purely financial assets can absorb inflation without inherently creating dislocations in the productive economy. This isn't to say that they don't risk bubbles or other issues, only that there's no inherent need for a person to have, say, a specific quantity of stock or money (excepting ongoing expenses for the latter).

Pricing up productive assets is another story -- two roles, wealth preservation, and productive use, are in conflict.

The problem is, from a rational perspective, it makes sense for the owners of such goods to seek value appreciation. This doesn't translate to an increase in real economic growth, but it does increase the owner's claims to such growth.

Through leverage, debt, and lending collateral, there are knock-on effects to other agents as well: a bank whose core asset (and lending reserve) is the market value of its real-estate portfolio benefits by increased valuation of that portfolio.

I'm not entirely sure what if any solutions might exist, though I'm partial to the concept of a land tax (or more generally: a held-asset tax), which increases ongoing carrying costs, and encourges more intensive utilisation of high-value property.

I'm also interested in what areas don't have this problem, and what policies or other conditions tend away from it.

berkeleyguy5• 9 years ago

I've lived in downtown berkeley for five years and pay 1100 per month for a studio apartment.

For those arguing that the city could zone and facilitate building affordable non subsidized housing, where exactly would it be built?

There isn't an abundance of empty lots AFAIK and it seems enormous highrises would have to be built in large numbers to make any dent in having prices come down.

I would love more options but without even mildly specific suggestions articles like these seem to lack any pragmatism.

inostia3• 9 years ago

Why not relaxing rules for property owners to build units in their own backyards? See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/california-today-housi...

berkeleyguy5• 9 years ago

Coach house airbnbs and one off rentals could be great or terrible. In either case I think its hard to argue this would get rents to go down.

My personal bet is the proliferation of these cute backyard dwellings would actually make rents go higher because these would go for a premium over 50 year old crummy spots.

taysic6• 9 years ago

"She spent about $100,000 to add a cottage in her backyard in Berkeley in 2011, and has been renting it out for between $1,500 and $2,000 a month. It paid for itself in under five years, she said."

Why do they need to be relaxed if its already profitable to build one?

I wonder what about building such a unit requires too much red tape. Too bad they don't go into it in the article.

santaclaus2• 9 years ago

There isn't an abundance of empty lots AFAIK

Huge swaths of south and southwest Berkeley (especially near the Emeryville and Oakland border) seem to be fallow, formerly industrial spaces when I drive through. Lots of opportunity for infill there.

berkeleyguy5• 9 years ago

Are you genuinely suggesting these are the areas of Berkeley that are the subject of the article and general sentiment?

Emeryville is a veritable utopia at first glance and has tax incentives for businesses out the wazoo.

I'm open to the idea that these areas could be developed, but most mission hipsters consider these areas ikealand at best.

I tend to think the valid critique of high prices in berkeley surrounds the existing popular areas.

fiter3• 9 years ago

There are a fair number of "open air" parking lots that I see when just taking a look at satellite imagery.

The second step would be increasing density on Shattuck (lots of single story buildings on or near) or increasing density over the single family homes/duplexes that are very close to downtown.

ThrustVectoring5• 9 years ago

The options aren't just single family houses and high-rises. You relax the zoning requirements that raise the lot size required per resident. Lot size minimums, boundary minimums between houses, number of floors, parking minimums, and minimum unit size. Re-legalize single-room occupancy units, so that people who can only afford the bare minimum (room with a lock) can buy that and not be homeless.

Or if those technical requirements that make cheap housing illegal aren't palatable, then just add in much more mixed frame construction. It's already fairly popular, I've seen a bunch of buildings under construction like this. It's basically 1-2 floors of steel or concrete frame for commercial use, along with 3-5 floors of residential wood framed units on top of that. Replace low-density commercial with that mid-density mixed-use, add in mid-rise townhouses, and you've got plenty of room to have five times as many folks in Berkeley.

Of course, the real problem is that housing is too regional for this to make a big difference. It's a huge cost to Berkeley, and what it does is relieve pressure in the greater metropolitan area as people shift their commutes to take advantage of this.

berkeleyguy5• 9 years ago

Actual UC Berkeley dorm prices.

http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/rates

I'm not sure if these are at/over capacity, but how do non students feel about these prices?

fiter3• 9 years ago

Note that this includes 10 meals per week. Maybe that's worth $200/mo.

berkeleyguy5• 9 years ago

It definitely is if you were to use it. In either case, as a public institution there may be a cap on the cost of these spots, and should be required reading for any critique/support of the Berkeley student impact on housing prices in Berkeley.

Typically these articles paint a picture of students rolling in as if they were forced into a 3000/mo condo.

csharpminor• 9 years ago

I think it's worth actually reading the piece of legislation for the housing fee: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Clerk/City_Council/2017/06_June...

From what I've gathered, the additional fee is designed to incentivize developers to include at least 20% affordable housing units in new projects. If you're building less than 20% affordable housing, you pay a sliding-scale fee. That money goes to supporting staff in the city that monitor and enforce affordable housing regulations.

I can definitely see the opposing policy argument here: just remove incentives on developers and let the market figure it out. However, I don't think Item #53 is some kind of scheme to keep housing unaffordable on the part of home owners.

I wasn't able to find the de-zoning item in the agenda, if anyone knows which one it is I'd definitely give it a read. Full agenda here: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Clerk/City_Council/2017/06_June...

Upvoter33• 9 years ago

There is an answer here: move slowly. Add a little bit of dense housing and show home owners that the price of their housing isn't affected. Continue to do so over many years to allow people who spent a lot of $$$ to get into the housing market to get out w/o losing a lot of investment. Rapid change is the big enemy and what people fear here -- and why liberals end up voting against very progressive policies...

Berkeley’s Attack on Housing

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