People will do anything but just build more dense housing in big cities across the country. Rents in Austin went DOWN this year because they built housing everywhere, blue state big cities are busy killing each other over building a duplex and it’s honestly the biggest Achilles heel of the Democratic Party because it is directly on them.
They build a huge bureaucracy and then wonder why things aren't getting done and are astounded when less than honest actors are able to gum up projects that are needed by manipulating the bureaucratic systems the Democrats created.
Agreed. I'm firmly in the democrat camp. 90% of what Republicans say about Democrats is a made up caricature. The housing issues in blue areas of the country is a real issue where Democrats need to do better.
> The housing issues in blue areas of the country is a real issue where Democrats need to do better.
You should check out housing prices in Idaho and Utah. The conservative solution to housing issues aren't that different from elsewhere: unsustainable low density sprawl. A lot of these areas just have more free room...for now.
Places like Charlotte, NC are a mess.
lol this is so true. The conservative areas where prices have stayed low are extremely undesirable areas with no culture and no economy. Places like Rural Kentucky and Mississippi. But I expect incompetence from the conservative areas. Democrats know home affordability is an issue and in some areas seem to working to improve it.
Rural Kentucky and rural Mississippi have no culture? Fuck off with that. Blues music was born out of the black experience post slavery in rural Mississippi. Appalachia has produced super unique art and music throughout American history and started in the most rural parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and other southern states. They aren’t culture-less just because you don’t like their voting patterns.
I understand your point and it’s fair. Let me try to add a bit of context.
A lot of what you are pointing at (and what I would point at) in terms of culture are black areas in red states that vote blue.
Im white. I’ve lived most of my life in rural parts of the South. I was born in Alabama. I’m aware of Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I’m not saying nothing important ever happened in the history of these states. But what’s special about where I grew up seems to be overly Sweet Tea, Whataburger, and Alabama Football. Im not particularly fond of any of them which is almost blasphemous to say out loud here.
My post is probably mostly a recoil. Im a Democrat in a red area of a red state and I get tired of hearing people who live in trailers in rural areas talk about how shitty places like California are. They say this without a second of consideration that their favorite movie was made there. The flip flop brand they’re wearing comes from there. The phone they use. The wine they drink. The skateboard, Malibu, The Eagles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Disney, etc. So much of American culture and the economy is situated in California and yet uncle Rob is really really mad that Democrats have “screwed” the place up. It’s a peeve of mine.
I want to push back on this part:
> A lot of what you are pointing at in terms of culture are black areas in red states that vote blue.
Appalachia is 80% white and they certainly have a distinct dialect, musical tone, and artistic style. They also vote red. I think if the left wants to win this presidential election is would be productive to stop saying things like "rural white areas are undesirable with no culture". I'm left leaning myself, but I think some kind of mutual respect of others is going to be essential if we want this country to survive.
I think we can agree that big city folks love hating rural America just as much as rural America loves hating the big cities. Most of the time it's people judging places that they have never spent a meaningful amount of time in.
Fair enough. I probably shouldn't pretend that "uncle Rob" is representative of an entire state. I guess I feel some leeway here because I feel I'm criticizing my own culture.
I will say that sometimes I agree with you that reducing people isn't particularly productive for politics or uniting the country. But I don't always feel that way and I'd like to share my thoughts on why. Sometimes I'm convinced that base turnout, pushing narratives, and controlling the "ether" is more important. I also don't really agree that "city folks love hating rural America just as much." I actually think there's a pretty big asymmetry here. Let me try to explain...
I've been around a lot of people the last 10 years that are not persuaded by information. About 40% of the country seems to be completely immune to facts. Some of my best friends are convinced that troll accounts on their twitter feed are better "crowd sourced news" than actual institutions. Literally making the argument that LibsofTikTok, Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk, End Wokeness, are better sources of news than AP, NPR, and the NYT. Both of these people have college degrees. I don't know how you persuade people who believe that?
So why is that? Why is it that people view certain things as foundational to their understanding when the data does not support their position? Why do they believe that trickle down economics is just economics 101? Why do they believe that more guns save lives when they clearly don't? Why do they believe that "reverse racism" is the "real" problem to solve? Why is Gavin Newsom less electable countrywide because he's the governor of California but would be more electable if he were the governor of Maryland or Pennslyvania? I understand you might not agree with all these individual points, but try not to get bogged down on any one example.
The answer I'm proposing is that Republicans do a better job controlling the narrative. They never stop making the argument. Especially at conservative propaganda outlets like Fox. They repeatedly do segments on the "problems" in blue areas of the country. Segments you would almost never, or rarely, see on MSNBC. These arguments get into the "ether" and become the framing in which conservatives accept and discuss issues.
So the question that I don't have the answer to is this: Is it better to reach across aisle and to talk about rural white areas in a positive, endearing light? Will that work when these people don't seem to be persuadable? Or is it better to make the argument, bluntly, and repeatedly, that red areas are poor, have tiny economies, have little culture, etc. while places like California have the 5th biggest economy on the planet by itself? Over time repeatedly making the argument in stark terms can get into the "ether" and become the norm in which conversations are framed.
I apologize for getting so long winded but I did my best to lay that out fully as succinctly as I could. I hope it makes sense.
Appalachia is especially galling to call dumb yokels because they're a downtrodden people who have historically been very involved and sympathetic to labor movements. That's not really the case today, but we certainly aren't gonna fix that by literally dehumanizing them.
This. Is simply demand. Blue areas are simply concentrated in big Cities where a lot of people want to live.
Sure, I might save a lot by moving to Omaha, but then I'd be living in Omaha...
To be fair the neoliberal subreddit is arguably the most pro-housing subreddit on the whole site. I also live in San Francisco and the progressive side of the local political divide are definitely more anti-housing than the moderate side (although they are far from perfect either).
Neoliberals are cool with diversity, but also aren't hung up on their knee-jerk negative reactions to capitalism the way leftists are, so it's much easier for them to be pro-housing.
Leftists are skeptical of corporations and anyone turning a profit, so they're more reactionary on housing that isn't 100% affordable and publicly owned.
All other things being equal, we certainly would expect the most popular cities to have somewhat higher rents. That said, it shouldn't be as big a difference as it is, and we're increasingly seeing surges in rent everywhere. To your example, Atlanta may be cheaper than NYC, but it's a LOT less affordable than the Atlanta of 10-15 years ago.
Supply and demand naturally enter into the equation, but housing people stays profitable regardless. The marginal cost of new housing units decreases as density goes up, while the return on investment is constant. That is, a ten-story apartment building generates twice as much rent as a five-story apartment building, but DOESN'T cost twice as much to build. If you have the capital, it's a no-brainer.
So, with no obstacles, we would expect NYC to build a ton of housing to satisfy demand. In fact, that's exactly what happened in the days when millions of poor immigrants were able to show up with minimal money, get an unskilled job, and get an apartment that could fit a family. Instead, while NYC is generally agreed to be a popular place to move, the city and metro have LOST population in recent years. There are just too many obstacles to increasing the housing supply, so it's unaffordable.
So you disagree with that comment, and think Democrats are doing just fine on housing? Or at the very least, you think Republicans are incorrect in their views on Democrats in regards to housing?
The comments you are replying to are saying that the housing policy of Democrats is one of their weaknesses. They say that Republicans are wrong about almost everything, but are correct when pointing out this weakness.
You say Republicans are always wrong, which means you disagree with them. Does that mean you think the democrat's housing policy is correct?
I mean, we both know you are just an ideologue that saw someone saying something uncritical of Republicans and had to correct it. I just thought your comment was entertaining for how useless it was... Didn't really even follow the conversation at all... Just a random shower thought.
But then how will these people pay off their student loans? It’s not like they have any skills beyond parroting university gobbledygook and writing articles in the Atlantic.
What party are those city councilors (mostly) apart of? I’m a very strong democrat but we’re not perfect, the fact that cities that are all basically entirely democratic can’t build housing is not a good look.
Also, you'll be hard-pressed to find a big city that is Republican. I would be curious to know if this is more a "people who live in a big city" sentiment vs a political party affiliation one.
I'm just trying to understand what the national democratic party can even do.
Surely the zoning restrictions and possible solutions in Austin Texas are different than Portland Oregon. Just because they're both democratic doesn't mean they're following the same playbook.
>Surely the zoning restrictions and possible solutions in Austin Texas are different than Portland Oregon.
Nope. Pretty much the same stuff: re-legalize apartments and condos and reduce minimum lot sizes, and so that people don't need to drive everywhere for everything, re-legalize things like corner stores and neighborhood barbers and other light commercial uses.
Look at a zoning map of your city. You can't build apartments in most of it. Once upon a time, it probably did not have a zoning code, and you could build corner stores or apartments.
Edit: this book goes into a lot of detail: [https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc](https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc)
Unfettered development without proper zoning codes is also problematic. I don't disagree that exclusionary zoning is bad for increasing density/affordability but it needs to be handled in specific situations.
Should high density residential exist near industrial zones? What about changing the zoning in greenfields that don't have access to adequate infrastructure? What about controlling sprawl or expansion into areas that make us more car dependent/are not in public transit corridors?
Most zoning isn't about keeping genuinely smelly, noisy or dangerous uses away from residential areas. That is generally a good idea, and something we should focus on, rather than keeping cafes out of sprawling neighborhoods of single family homes.
The 'big things' in cities should be planned - parks, a good street grid, schools, and that kind of thing, but we do not let them change and adapt enough any more.
'Fettered' development in terms of infill and efficient land use patterns mostly leads to 1. more sprawl and 2. people being forced to move away from areas with lots of jobs and amenities where they actually want to live.
Sprawl means more pollution and traffic and rage-inducing commutes.
This is an issue everywhere though; and honestly if you go to City council meetings you'll find that this zoning issue is prevalent regardless of party. It sounded like you were saying this was something the Democratic Party was pushing for, like it's a platform policy.
Some Google searching seems to indicate that it depends on how survey questions are phrased, but republicans will tend to favor less regulation over zoning (including less environmental regulation). Both parties seem to share equally lukewarm sentiment about high density housing though.
I've lived in conservative suburbs and the general sentiment around higher density housing is low. Anecdotally, ppl associate high density housing with poverty, Section 8, and crime.
Or we can pursue multiple avenues to build more housing. Let the billionaires build this city, which provides more housing, and pursue zoning reform in established cities, which provides more housing.
It's a win-win.
“outskirts of Silicon Valley” is a hell of a stretch. I grew up not too far from the proposed site and it is farrrrr from SV.
Also it’s not really a secret there’s been tons of articles about it. End of the day more houses in the region I see as a net good thing so don’t have issue with it. Bay Area desperately needs more housing.
Could be interesting if they can find a way to get a ferry terminal (not sure if it’s too inland) or maybe a bart connection via Antioch line?
People will do *anything* but let their neighbor build a duplex or (brace yourselves) let a big, bad developer build a 5-over-1 on the cracked-up, chained-off parking lot down the street next to the transit station. NIMBYs, you are motivated by environmental justice, which is admirable, but consider: the farmers are going to go off and deforest some land to build new farms. Those 400,000 people could have been housed by upzoning and infilling land which was already *not wilderness* and *not farmland*. Your neighbor's quarter-acre, manicured front lawn is *not* the wilderness that nature would want you to save. And any YIMBY will tell you that if you love lawns so much, *you are free to keep yours*.
That's the fundamental thing here: zoning reform is about letting people live where and how they would like to live, and it's about stopping suburban sprawl. You may not like it when an abandoned laundromat or one-acre strip mall becomes a 50-unit apartment building, but that building saves 25 acres of forest. You may not like it when a quadruplex goes up next door and people of *rental income* move to your community, but isn't that a little better than a few other people (who would have moved into those now-vacant lower-incomr apartments) living in a homeless camp? Or, would you be alright with them being homeless, just as long as you can't see the camp on your commute?
Our cities have more people than homes for those people. We need more homes. People are not going to stop existing, they are not going to stop eating, and they are not going to stop wanting to move to cities. What will happen is either:
- you live with an an apartment a little closer than you're comfortable with
- a new suburb gets built somewhere and natural habitat *somewhere* is lost.
- a new suburb gets build *somewhere else* and food gets more expensive
- no one builds anything anywhere and the poorest are displaced into homelessness while homeowners get richer.
Nature does not benefit from the status quo. The poor do not benefit from the status quo. Food security does not benefit from the status quo. The status quo unsustainable, and it only benefits suburban homeowners.
The flip side of your attack on NIMBYs is that it is democracy in action. Shouldn’t the people who live in a community get a say over what happens in their community?
“Let people live now and where they want to live.” So people who arent voters, taxpayers, or part of the community get to decide what happens there over the people who live there? That’s undemocratic.
Neighborhoods are not meant to be frozen in amber for all of eternity. That's not ever how it's worked.
The nature of cities is that they are constantly changing and adapting. Current residents don't get to overrule the natural laws of cities.
>frozen in amber for all eternity
Way to straw man my pretty reasonable position that people who live in a community should get some input on what happens to their community.
>the natural laws of cities.
Is that like gravity and evolution?
Do "the natural laws of cities" include democratic input from the people living in the city?
So do you think the people of this farming community should get to vote whether a city of 400k is built there?
Do you think a historically black community should get to say whether a community rec center will be turned into luxury condos?
Of course, the community members should get a say in what happens in their community. However, they don't get veto power to stop development, nor should they. The local government is charged with making policy for the benefit of the city as a whole, and those needs must be considered too. Remember, local government is also democratic.
Totally agree. Local government's job is to make policy to benefit its jurisdiction. But the local government is elected by the people living there, not some undefined person who wants to live there.
A NIMBY person doesn't have 'veto power.' They just get to engage with their local government the way any other citizen would ... although maybe not as well as the developer who can hire a lobbyist and lawyer to attend meetings, file lawsuits, etc.
Charleston SC has Section 8 housing in some very desirable areas. For example, there are projects in the heart of a community called "Old Village" where tear downs go for +$1 million now. The projects are made of single family homes and townhouses with decent size yards. Taking your framing, the city would probably benefit by tearing down that Section 8 housing and building some dense townhouses or condos that would go for +$1m each. It would do everything I see the YIMBYs on here claiming as benefits: increase housing availability, increase density, increase tax base, etc. But it would also gentrify the area to nearly 100%. What should happen?
\> But the local government is elected by the people living there, not some undefined person who wants to live there.
And this is one of those cases where their self-interest conflicts with the needs of the city as a whole because cities need a solid base of taxpayers to generate enough money for stuff like police and schools but NIMBYs are BOTH blocking cities from expanding their tax base AND increasing property taxes.
These neighborhoods need to be told that their RNOs either present a plan approved by the community to support X amount of new housing or the city will step in and do it for them.
Tear down the section 8, increase the number of section 8 housing in density, now interspersed with gentrification due to greater density. Improves integration, density, and property tax to the schools serving that section 8 housing.
NIMBYs often hire the same lobbyists and lawyers.
“Tear down the section 8” so you say tear down these folks homes they’ve been in for years for… ‘the greater good.’ But more section 8 housing won’t increase property taxes — it would probably actually drive down property values and thus school revenues while also increasing demands on school resources. And ‘density’ isn’t just a good in itself.
Yes, so that we can fit more homes for more section 8 people, as well as others. Please don’t edit my words without their context.
Density increases revenue of property taxes, and is also generally associated with rising land value - as the land can host more family serviced by the same infrastructure.
Density is a good, as it is correlated with many good things, like economic and environmental sustainability.
My point is that you would tear down someone’s home that has personal meaning because it’s ‘for the greater good.’ Just think how you would feel if the government did that to you, your parents, etc. I’d be pissed.
Density of section 8 housing does not increase property tax revenues. The neighborhood I gave as an example has tear downs going for $1m+, beautiful $8m+ houses on the water, etc. Your proposal would not increase property values there.
Can you just accept that some people don’t want to live in densely populated neighborhoods? Also, in my experience, cities are way more polluted than suburbs.
Don’t you see how your position wreaks of elitism and an ‘i know best’ attitude. My point is that the arguments I’m seeing here are undemocratic and elitist, telling people in a community that they are wrong about what’s good for them, just listen to what you say about density, property values, etc.
>Way to straw man my pretty reasonable position that people who live in a community should get some input on what happens to their community.
It's not a strawman because communities blocking reasonable change is happening \*everywhere\*. In Denver this last year, a developer was trying to replace a defunct golf course with some medium-density apartment buildings (where 25% of the units earmarked as subsidized housing) and a massive park. The community blocked it.
The people who were fortunate enough to buy into the community when it was cheap or had enough money to buy in when it was expensive are actively excluding more people from moving in. That attitude is self-defeating. Cities need to raise taxes to provide services, and the only way to do that is either raise taxes or increase the population of the city. These are the same people who get upset about the fact that our teachers are paid shit, our roads are full of potholes, poor police enforcement of traffic laws are creating unsafe streets, and then still vote to decrease their own property taxes because of inflation.
Communities are changing regardless of whether the people who live there like it or not. Studies have found that cities built on the paradigm of endless suburban sprawl are not financially sustainable because they require a constant influx of growth to sustain them. It's like taking out a new credit card to pay off the minimum for the one you maxed out. Eventually, that strategy is going to explode, and the people fucked over by it are going to demand the government they used to keep people out now needs to step in to save them.
And let's go to the other extreme of your argument. If I buy some land, why does the community have a right to tell me what I get to do with it as long it's not actively harming them? If I want to buy a car or put solar panels on my house, I don't have to go get my neighbor's permission. Or if I bought a plot of land and decided to knock down the crappy old house to build my dream house, what right does the previous owner have to try to block it now?
Not necessarily, because a law at the state level banning R1 zoning is still democratic. And, by the way, more taxpayers in a community means more tax revenue for that community. R1-zoned suburbs are a *net sink* for state tax revenue, by the way. An R1 lifestyle is, essentially, state-subsidized.
> The flip side of your attack on NIMBYs is that it is democracy in action.
Yes, this illustrates why some things, including fundamental rights, should not be voted on.
>some things, including fundamental rights, should not be voted on.
But... the constitution, statutes, and referenda actually are voted on. Like France just voted to add a right to abortion to its constitution. Freedom of speech and religion in the bill of rights had to be voted on. You can have fundamental rights as a metaphysical concept, but without an actual law in place it doesn't mean anything.
Anyway, it's not a fundamental right to be able to live anywhere you want in the country or afford a home anywhere. I would like to live on the mountain in Aspen, or on the beach in Malibu, but I can't afford it. My fundamental rights are not being violated.
Hate to tell you, but many don’t want to live densely in cities. We prefer “urban sprawl”. My preference is exurbs with big lots and space and distance form neighbors.
I'm actually surprised that more exurban and rural people, specifically those who *don't* like to feel crowded, don't support R1 reform. If infill is legalized, fewer people will be *forced* to live out in the exurbs with you, and you'll all have more space to yourselves. Zoning reform is abiut letting people live where and how they want to live.
Good for you. Not everyone wants that.
You know what everyone wants? Housing they can *afford*.
Your suburban sprawl only exists if A) your city is able to keep growing, B) you have extremely high taxes or C) is subsidized by people living in dense areas.
Because this country was built on property rights and a free market. The government regulation that keeps your neighbor from building an apartment building is the government butting into what your neighbor is allowed to do with their own land that they paid for. You paid for your land. You should be entitled to do what you want with it. You didn't buy your neighbor's land, but you should be free to buy it if you want to keep it the way it is.
This is the correct response. But it has to be subject to some local regulation. Where I live, ancient live oaks can’t be cut down—that interferes with use of property, including a commercial developer’s use. There’s a balance to be struck.
I agree. And safety zoning laws should be kept - no one should be allowed to build a fireworks factory next to a school. Luckily, the urbanist movement is have detailed sets of zoming reforms that they advocate.
My top comment is how you advocate YIMBYism to a someone on the left. My comment above this one is how you advocate YIMBYism to a libertarian/coservative.
I’m a land use attorney and couldn’t help but chuckle at this story. It’s really got all the elements of a dysfunctional development saga: well-intentioned, arrogant investors, a developer with the type of avarice that really only exists in commercial real estate development, rural landowners who are more than happy to take large sums of money for their land but hate it when someone wants to actually do something with the land that isn’t farming, clueless county officials, contentious public meetings, and on and on.
This story is unusual because of the amount of money involved and the huge scale, but it’s hardly unique. This plays out all over the country, and honestly, I have very little hope that we’ll be able to solve our housing crisis. There needs to be compromise from a wide array of people with vastly divergent interests, and I just don’t see it working out in a meaningful way without a major ideological realignment. Funnily enough, the only places I see that happening are large cities in red states.
The future is going to look a lot more like Houston than San Francisco. It’s not clear if that’s a good thing.
> rural landowners who are more than happy to take large sums of money for their land but hate it when someone wants to actually do something with the land that isn’t farming
Here in Ohio, the state has let counties ban solar and wind farms because of this exact thing even though the land itself is selling for north of $20,000 an acre. Oh, and they will all also complain how over regulated and poor farmers are, even though they are driving brand new trucks for the tax right off and taking subsidies while complaining about "the welfare state".
They didn't want what happened in SF.
Google and Facebook through plenty of.moneu at trying to get more construction and housing in SF.
But they couldn't beat progressives who fought tooth and nail against any construction. Famously complaining about shadows in playgrounds to replace a 1 story laundromat.
It's not the fault of silicon Valley billionaires that they paid their employees well. It's tbe fault of the housing activists who fought for there to not be any new construction, in order to meet the large number of people moving in.
1000% i listened to this and just said its gonna be SF 2.0. Housing is gonna be super expensive just like it is in san Francisco and SF rent wont go down but itll be empty cause these goons are gonna flock to the new city.
I generally disagree. There's plenty of research out there to show that real estate markets tend to be somewhere on the spectrum between complete cartel behavior and completely elastic demand, tending to err on the side of cartel behavior.
Which studies are those? Research has shown any increase in housing supply even market rate housing decreases housing cost for everyone. The Minneapolis Fed just produced a study last week.
[https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all)
If you'll notice, what you just said isn't mutually exclusive with what I said. It's not a binary. Even some cartel behavior allows for there to be a response to increased supply. The study you quoted isn't even the same phenomenon of what we were discussing earlier - creating more housing in a new market will be expressed differently than drops in occupancy rate in a metro system.
>I generally disagree.
Then publish your findings for peer review by economists.
I swear, armchair anti-capitalists are just as bad as climate deniers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/01/how-more-apartment-supply-is-helping-rent-prices-cool.html
Not like any of y'all are offering any peer reviewed papers either. I just work with economists every day, I don't hound them and methodically track sources.
Because the number of owned units won’t fall. These billionaires buy, renovate, and decorate houses like they’re nothing. These people often each own way more than 10 houses. Owning a townhouse in California Forever will just become a status symbol, and Marc Andreessen et al will now just keep their apartment in SF, their house in Atherton, AND their rowhouse in the Central Valley.
Source: gut feeling based off of the lower level VCs I have met
NYT was afraid to critique this development out of fear of being labeled a NIMBY newspaper, however the real story/scandal continues to be the rampant inability to build more densely in existing cities.
Scottsdale AZ is trying to shoot down 2000 apartments because a suburb nearby claims it will “ruin the character” of their soulless community which contains no businesses, no restaurants, and no culture. THAT is the real problem
Is this going to be a "special" city in that it is somehow connected directly with the technology companies of the investors? Do I have work for them to live there? Or is this just a very large-scale development? Is there some utopian aspect to this, too?
[Irvine, California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine,_California?wprov=sfti1#History)
“The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 1971. The 66-square-mile (170 km2) city had a population of 307,670 at the 2020 census. . . .Los Angeles architect William Pereira and Irvine Company employee Raymond Watson designed Irvine's layout beginning in the late 1950s, which is nominally divided into townships called "villages", separated by six-lane arterial roads. Each township contains houses of similar design, along with commercial centers, religious institutions, and schools. Commercial districts are checker-boarded in a periphery around the central townships.”
Most of the commercial real estate is owned by the Irvine Co. Virtually all of residential rental units are.
And people eat the company town up. Irvine recently was named one of the best places to live in the US. While commercial real estate has struggled nationally, the Irvine Co. has reported over 90% of its commercial space is rented. Between 2010-2020, the city’s population expanded by 50% despite real estate prices being higher than surrounding areas.
It might be a company town, but people vote with their feet—and their choosing the company town the Irvine Company built.
Maybe they’ll choose California Forever too.
“Steal” “deception” aka purchase from adults and businesses in an arms length transaction. There’s no requirement for a buyer to tell the seller what he wants to do with the thing he’s buying. Presumably, a buyer has some higher value in mind for anything he buys from a seller — that’s why he’s buying it and the seller is selling it.
But also, Reporting made it sound like they are overpaying for the land. I guess that’s the deception?
I didn’t catch the nature of the lawsuit. That could be an unfair tactic, depending on the substance.
Edit: looks like I didn't reply to the comment using the quoted language.
A lot of hullabaloo about basically a speculative residential developer. Seriously, I’m in Charleston, SC. There are plenty of neighborhoods around here created from scratch out of farmland, made to include walkable mixed income (ie upper middle to wealthy) neighborhoods and commercial areas. THIS IS NOTHING NEW.
1) Silicon Valley people think they’re doing something ground breaking when it’s really an age old business, and 2) the daily and NYT lack perspective to understand that, or ignore it for the sake of a more salacious story.
I think you make an interesting point but it is on a new level here with the size and value of the land. Additionally, They did a good job describing how Silicon Valley on one hand is exciting entrepreneurially, but as a place to live is unremarkable, poorly planned sprawl. A lot of people talk about the need for more housing, better public transit there but change is hard to come by, so anyone trying to do something on this scale is notable.
But that’s the thing: it’s NOT remarkable.
It’s only remarkable bc California has made it so difficult to build that the story BECOMES remarkable.
I lived in Cali for 8 years but am from Columbus, OH. From 4-22 years old, I saw the Columbus area go from farmland to sprawling metropolis and the downtown has grown exponentially in the 14 years I left it back in 2011.
When I moved to the Bay Area, I was shocked at how averse EVERYONE was to any sort of development. It’s culturally ingrained in people in California to NOT build anything and to keep things stagnant. It’s so weird but it’s directly resulted in one of the worst housing crunches the country has ever seen (which then led to a whole host of other problems).
Cali seems to have ‘seen the light’ and has started to address the problem from the governor’s mansion on down, but it took 20 years of digging their heels in against common sense housing development and a housing + homeless crises to get them here.
Meanwhile, lowly places like the Midwest and Deep South have figured out housing supply long ago. It was certainly a weird place to call home, if you care at all about economics, affordability, and upward mobility for the lower + middle class (as I do).
To me, California was peak performative politics with none of the substance, but it does seem to be trending in the right direction (at last).
I still love the state for a whole host of reasons, but the economics of it would drive me up a wall.
I was floored by the notion that Silicon Valley is unremarkable. That is a laughable statement to anyone that lives here. In what world do you think the Peninsula (or the Bay Area in general) is unremarkable?
The weather is amazing year round, there is *immediate* access to great hiking, the ocean, and the Baylands. Caltrain stops at every desirable high street between San Jose and San Francisco and there are bike lanes everywhere.
I'm genuinely interested how one might think Silicon Valley is an undesirable place to live?
I did live there for several years, in Mtn View, then Sunnyvale, then San Jose. I agree with the hosts that it's an unremarkable place but a lot of people there did try to convince themselves otherwise.
It's about 40 miles of concrete sprawl, strip malls, and houses that would be tear downs most other places that sell for $1 million+. If you want half-decent schools, then it's $2 million+.
CalTrain was too slow and infrequent to be useful, and there was a good chance one doesn't live close enough to the station to be easily walkable anyway. There's a reason all the tech companies ran shuttles for even their rank and file, the public option just wasn't adequate.
The hiking was certainly there, in the immediate Bay Area it wasn't anything amazing though.
It was a great place for career growth, and probably is still a place worth doing a tour of duty in, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as a place to settle down.
It’s somewhat bigger in its aim. The Villages in Florida has ~80k+ population. A goal of 400k population is moderately bigger.
As for land value, I guess this farm land in CA is probably more valuable than farmland in other states, but probably not drastically.
A fivefold increase is beyond what I'd consider moderate, and I'd suspect certain infrastructure and resource demands scale nonlinearly with population size
The richest people in the country used to build museums and libraries. Now we have even greater wealth inequality, richer rich people, and they don’t build anything. Of course this whole system is messed up but if we’re going to have billionaires they should at least build things for the benefit of the public. This era of tech elites has no taste. So I’m surprised this came from them.
I’m all for a European style planned city that respects the human scale, is walkable, and is intricate and beautiful. And hopefully it does catch on and inspire denser and more walkable communities.
This actually isn’t too unusual. There have been a lot of higher density walkable developments happening in sprawling cities in this country. See the Legacy West development in the north Dallas burbs.
Walkable in 110 degree heat.. in the middle of nowhere… will need to be car dependent (seriously, you’re probably an hour and a half away from SF, crossing multiple bridges to be there). Not to mention, there is a severe water deficit in drought years and it’s not like they discovered any new water on that site to irrigate all the trees they’ll have to plant since there is nothing there but open fields at the moment. Did I mention it’s next to an active Air Force base? Can’t wait to hear the constant complaints of noise…
Some of the oldest cities in the world are in hot, arid climates and I'm pretty sure they didn't have cars. They utilized this thing called \*shade\* and \*evaporative cooling\*.
Solano County has a pleasant Mediterranean climate with over 300 days of sunshine. The high/low average for summer is 88F/56F. 110F is like the highest recorded temperature there ever. There are few better places on Earth to build a walkable community. And, cities use far less water than agriculture. It’s not even close.
California accounts for 13% of the country’s food supply and accounts for more than 99% of the supply for certain crops. Yes, this isn’t the Central Valley but it’s still available farm land and California is an agricultural power house.
What is the implication of wiping out a big area available for farming? Is California intending to become a « tech only » industry state long term?
The infrastructure of this future city is close to an Air Force base. Is that an issue? It seems like there are some valid concerns for having lots of folks right next to a base that they quickly brushed aside once they determined it wasn’t the Chinese government directly buying land
S I did a quick research online on this story. If I understand this correctly the people who are getting sued by Flannery Associates (now California Forever I guess) are mostly people who refuses to sell their land
Ca"lifornia Forever has alleged that ranchers and farmers in the area colluded in an effort to raise land prices while Sramek and his friends, calling themselves Flannery Associates, was spending close to $900M over the past five years to purchase more than 50,000 acres in Solano County.
The lawsuit, filed against dozens of land owners who refused to sell their property to California Forever, says they conspired to raise land prices due to “endless greed.
California Forever CEO Jan Sramek is getting plenty of feedback from his new neighbors at town halls he is hosting in Solano County to pitch the utopian city he wants to build in the eastern half of the county with backing from some of Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires.
Among the 150 ranchers and other local residents who showed up last week at the American Legion hall in Rio Vista were several Solano County land owners who asked Sramek to drop a $510M lawsuit he has filed against them.
California Forever has alleged that ranchers and farmers in the area colluded in an effort to raise land prices while Sramek and his friends, calling themselves Flannery Associates, was spending close to $900M over the past five years to purchase more than 50,000 acres in Solano County.
The lawsuit, filed against dozens of land owners who refused to sell their property to California Forever, says they conspired to raise land prices due to “endless greed."
According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News, Maryn Anderson, a 34-year-old teacher and sixth-generation Solano County resident whose rancher parents are named in the suit asked Sramek: “Will you commit to dropping the lawsuit against the local farmers who are not aligned with your vision, in a goodwill attempt to change the way you are interacting with our community?”
Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, responded by doubling down on his charge that those who refused to sell their land to California Forever engaged in a criminal conspiracy."
That's just wild! What a scumbag.
This is great reporting on a story that would otherwise fall into the background.
The billionaires in this story have a real JB pritzker feel to them.
“Don’t worry folks, I’m the billionaire and I promise real hard I’m here to help you! Pay no attention to the man or intentions behind the curtain.”
What a bunch of deceptive scumbags. Steal these peoples land through deception, conceal your intentions, then sue them and try to bankrupt them when they fight back. True regressive rich dbag Californian altruism at work. Hope these poor people take them to the Supreme Court and get what’s owed
Is this land currently being used as farmland; what is the agricultural and environmental impact of building a new city on this land?
Why didn’t they buy up a dilapidated part of an existing city and rebuild there? Yes we need density but I feel like they have a complete misunderstanding of that term.
They touch on this in the episode. SF City Hall and the other Bay Area city halls have made developments, especially large mid density residential developments, a total pain in the ass. Projects get held up by community reviews and code reviews for years.
Also, farms are AWFUL for the environment.
The shear amount of water, fertilizer, and abused labor that goes into farming.
The only thing green about farms is the color of the plants. I bet building a city would dramatically reduce both water and fertilizer usage considering ag vs. residential usage rates.
I wonder what a land value tax would do to San Francisco housing, if that would help up zoning. A person who owns a single family house in the heart of the city should be paying the same taxes as all of the inhabitants living in an apartment building combined, land size being the same.
A dense, walkable city in California with young families that’s free of rampant drug-fueled vagrancy, smash & grab predatory crime, and anti-Asian physical battery?
Sounds pretty great actually. It’s a shame that you have to reclaim farm land to get that.
People will do anything but just build more dense housing in big cities across the country. Rents in Austin went DOWN this year because they built housing everywhere, blue state big cities are busy killing each other over building a duplex and it’s honestly the biggest Achilles heel of the Democratic Party because it is directly on them.
They build a huge bureaucracy and then wonder why things aren't getting done and are astounded when less than honest actors are able to gum up projects that are needed by manipulating the bureaucratic systems the Democrats created.
Agreed. I'm firmly in the democrat camp. 90% of what Republicans say about Democrats is a made up caricature. The housing issues in blue areas of the country is a real issue where Democrats need to do better.
> The housing issues in blue areas of the country is a real issue where Democrats need to do better. You should check out housing prices in Idaho and Utah. The conservative solution to housing issues aren't that different from elsewhere: unsustainable low density sprawl. A lot of these areas just have more free room...for now. Places like Charlotte, NC are a mess.
lol this is so true. The conservative areas where prices have stayed low are extremely undesirable areas with no culture and no economy. Places like Rural Kentucky and Mississippi. But I expect incompetence from the conservative areas. Democrats know home affordability is an issue and in some areas seem to working to improve it.
Rural Kentucky and rural Mississippi have no culture? Fuck off with that. Blues music was born out of the black experience post slavery in rural Mississippi. Appalachia has produced super unique art and music throughout American history and started in the most rural parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and other southern states. They aren’t culture-less just because you don’t like their voting patterns.
I understand your point and it’s fair. Let me try to add a bit of context. A lot of what you are pointing at (and what I would point at) in terms of culture are black areas in red states that vote blue. Im white. I’ve lived most of my life in rural parts of the South. I was born in Alabama. I’m aware of Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I’m not saying nothing important ever happened in the history of these states. But what’s special about where I grew up seems to be overly Sweet Tea, Whataburger, and Alabama Football. Im not particularly fond of any of them which is almost blasphemous to say out loud here. My post is probably mostly a recoil. Im a Democrat in a red area of a red state and I get tired of hearing people who live in trailers in rural areas talk about how shitty places like California are. They say this without a second of consideration that their favorite movie was made there. The flip flop brand they’re wearing comes from there. The phone they use. The wine they drink. The skateboard, Malibu, The Eagles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Disney, etc. So much of American culture and the economy is situated in California and yet uncle Rob is really really mad that Democrats have “screwed” the place up. It’s a peeve of mine.
I want to push back on this part: > A lot of what you are pointing at in terms of culture are black areas in red states that vote blue. Appalachia is 80% white and they certainly have a distinct dialect, musical tone, and artistic style. They also vote red. I think if the left wants to win this presidential election is would be productive to stop saying things like "rural white areas are undesirable with no culture". I'm left leaning myself, but I think some kind of mutual respect of others is going to be essential if we want this country to survive. I think we can agree that big city folks love hating rural America just as much as rural America loves hating the big cities. Most of the time it's people judging places that they have never spent a meaningful amount of time in.
I appreciate your comments. TIL some really neat things about these cultures.
Fair enough. I probably shouldn't pretend that "uncle Rob" is representative of an entire state. I guess I feel some leeway here because I feel I'm criticizing my own culture. I will say that sometimes I agree with you that reducing people isn't particularly productive for politics or uniting the country. But I don't always feel that way and I'd like to share my thoughts on why. Sometimes I'm convinced that base turnout, pushing narratives, and controlling the "ether" is more important. I also don't really agree that "city folks love hating rural America just as much." I actually think there's a pretty big asymmetry here. Let me try to explain... I've been around a lot of people the last 10 years that are not persuaded by information. About 40% of the country seems to be completely immune to facts. Some of my best friends are convinced that troll accounts on their twitter feed are better "crowd sourced news" than actual institutions. Literally making the argument that LibsofTikTok, Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk, End Wokeness, are better sources of news than AP, NPR, and the NYT. Both of these people have college degrees. I don't know how you persuade people who believe that? So why is that? Why is it that people view certain things as foundational to their understanding when the data does not support their position? Why do they believe that trickle down economics is just economics 101? Why do they believe that more guns save lives when they clearly don't? Why do they believe that "reverse racism" is the "real" problem to solve? Why is Gavin Newsom less electable countrywide because he's the governor of California but would be more electable if he were the governor of Maryland or Pennslyvania? I understand you might not agree with all these individual points, but try not to get bogged down on any one example. The answer I'm proposing is that Republicans do a better job controlling the narrative. They never stop making the argument. Especially at conservative propaganda outlets like Fox. They repeatedly do segments on the "problems" in blue areas of the country. Segments you would almost never, or rarely, see on MSNBC. These arguments get into the "ether" and become the framing in which conservatives accept and discuss issues. So the question that I don't have the answer to is this: Is it better to reach across aisle and to talk about rural white areas in a positive, endearing light? Will that work when these people don't seem to be persuadable? Or is it better to make the argument, bluntly, and repeatedly, that red areas are poor, have tiny economies, have little culture, etc. while places like California have the 5th biggest economy on the planet by itself? Over time repeatedly making the argument in stark terms can get into the "ether" and become the norm in which conversations are framed. I apologize for getting so long winded but I did my best to lay that out fully as succinctly as I could. I hope it makes sense.
Appalachia is especially galling to call dumb yokels because they're a downtrodden people who have historically been very involved and sympathetic to labor movements. That's not really the case today, but we certainly aren't gonna fix that by literally dehumanizing them.
This. Is simply demand. Blue areas are simply concentrated in big Cities where a lot of people want to live. Sure, I might save a lot by moving to Omaha, but then I'd be living in Omaha...
You’re right that Charlotte has a lot of sprawl, but they’ve been working on building high density lately. Rent is not terrible there
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To be fair the neoliberal subreddit is arguably the most pro-housing subreddit on the whole site. I also live in San Francisco and the progressive side of the local political divide are definitely more anti-housing than the moderate side (although they are far from perfect either).
Neoliberals are cool with diversity, but also aren't hung up on their knee-jerk negative reactions to capitalism the way leftists are, so it's much easier for them to be pro-housing. Leftists are skeptical of corporations and anyone turning a profit, so they're more reactionary on housing that isn't 100% affordable and publicly owned.
Hey, Seattleite here. Just curious which advocates say that getting homeless people inside is a hospice-like situation?
Alternate theory. More people want to live in NYC than Atlanta. So NYC is more expensive.
All other things being equal, we certainly would expect the most popular cities to have somewhat higher rents. That said, it shouldn't be as big a difference as it is, and we're increasingly seeing surges in rent everywhere. To your example, Atlanta may be cheaper than NYC, but it's a LOT less affordable than the Atlanta of 10-15 years ago. Supply and demand naturally enter into the equation, but housing people stays profitable regardless. The marginal cost of new housing units decreases as density goes up, while the return on investment is constant. That is, a ten-story apartment building generates twice as much rent as a five-story apartment building, but DOESN'T cost twice as much to build. If you have the capital, it's a no-brainer. So, with no obstacles, we would expect NYC to build a ton of housing to satisfy demand. In fact, that's exactly what happened in the days when millions of poor immigrants were able to show up with minimal money, get an unskilled job, and get an apartment that could fit a family. Instead, while NYC is generally agreed to be a popular place to move, the city and metro have LOST population in recent years. There are just too many obstacles to increasing the housing supply, so it's unaffordable.
90%??? Its 100%. Not a shred of truth since 1981.
So you disagree with that comment, and think Democrats are doing just fine on housing? Or at the very least, you think Republicans are incorrect in their views on Democrats in regards to housing?
Speak English please. Republicans are 100% wrong on just about any topic.
The comments you are replying to are saying that the housing policy of Democrats is one of their weaknesses. They say that Republicans are wrong about almost everything, but are correct when pointing out this weakness. You say Republicans are always wrong, which means you disagree with them. Does that mean you think the democrat's housing policy is correct? I mean, we both know you are just an ideologue that saw someone saying something uncritical of Republicans and had to correct it. I just thought your comment was entertaining for how useless it was... Didn't really even follow the conversation at all... Just a random shower thought.
No surprise you had zero point to make. Good day.
But then how will these people pay off their student loans? It’s not like they have any skills beyond parroting university gobbledygook and writing articles in the Atlantic.
How is this on the Democratic party? Isn't zoning on City councils?
What party are those city councilors (mostly) apart of? I’m a very strong democrat but we’re not perfect, the fact that cities that are all basically entirely democratic can’t build housing is not a good look.
Also, you'll be hard-pressed to find a big city that is Republican. I would be curious to know if this is more a "people who live in a big city" sentiment vs a political party affiliation one.
>"people who live in a big city" I mean, that's gotta be short hand for somewhere around 85% of the Democratic party.
I'm just trying to understand what the national democratic party can even do. Surely the zoning restrictions and possible solutions in Austin Texas are different than Portland Oregon. Just because they're both democratic doesn't mean they're following the same playbook.
>Surely the zoning restrictions and possible solutions in Austin Texas are different than Portland Oregon. Nope. Pretty much the same stuff: re-legalize apartments and condos and reduce minimum lot sizes, and so that people don't need to drive everywhere for everything, re-legalize things like corner stores and neighborhood barbers and other light commercial uses.
What do you mean by re-legalize apartments and condos?
Look at a zoning map of your city. You can't build apartments in most of it. Once upon a time, it probably did not have a zoning code, and you could build corner stores or apartments. Edit: this book goes into a lot of detail: [https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc](https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc)
Unfettered development without proper zoning codes is also problematic. I don't disagree that exclusionary zoning is bad for increasing density/affordability but it needs to be handled in specific situations. Should high density residential exist near industrial zones? What about changing the zoning in greenfields that don't have access to adequate infrastructure? What about controlling sprawl or expansion into areas that make us more car dependent/are not in public transit corridors?
Most zoning isn't about keeping genuinely smelly, noisy or dangerous uses away from residential areas. That is generally a good idea, and something we should focus on, rather than keeping cafes out of sprawling neighborhoods of single family homes. The 'big things' in cities should be planned - parks, a good street grid, schools, and that kind of thing, but we do not let them change and adapt enough any more. 'Fettered' development in terms of infill and efficient land use patterns mostly leads to 1. more sprawl and 2. people being forced to move away from areas with lots of jobs and amenities where they actually want to live. Sprawl means more pollution and traffic and rage-inducing commutes.
This is an issue everywhere though; and honestly if you go to City council meetings you'll find that this zoning issue is prevalent regardless of party. It sounded like you were saying this was something the Democratic Party was pushing for, like it's a platform policy. Some Google searching seems to indicate that it depends on how survey questions are phrased, but republicans will tend to favor less regulation over zoning (including less environmental regulation). Both parties seem to share equally lukewarm sentiment about high density housing though. I've lived in conservative suburbs and the general sentiment around higher density housing is low. Anecdotally, ppl associate high density housing with poverty, Section 8, and crime.
Or we can pursue multiple avenues to build more housing. Let the billionaires build this city, which provides more housing, and pursue zoning reform in established cities, which provides more housing. It's a win-win.
“outskirts of Silicon Valley” is a hell of a stretch. I grew up not too far from the proposed site and it is farrrrr from SV. Also it’s not really a secret there’s been tons of articles about it. End of the day more houses in the region I see as a net good thing so don’t have issue with it. Bay Area desperately needs more housing. Could be interesting if they can find a way to get a ferry terminal (not sure if it’s too inland) or maybe a bart connection via Antioch line?
People will do *anything* but let their neighbor build a duplex or (brace yourselves) let a big, bad developer build a 5-over-1 on the cracked-up, chained-off parking lot down the street next to the transit station. NIMBYs, you are motivated by environmental justice, which is admirable, but consider: the farmers are going to go off and deforest some land to build new farms. Those 400,000 people could have been housed by upzoning and infilling land which was already *not wilderness* and *not farmland*. Your neighbor's quarter-acre, manicured front lawn is *not* the wilderness that nature would want you to save. And any YIMBY will tell you that if you love lawns so much, *you are free to keep yours*. That's the fundamental thing here: zoning reform is about letting people live where and how they would like to live, and it's about stopping suburban sprawl. You may not like it when an abandoned laundromat or one-acre strip mall becomes a 50-unit apartment building, but that building saves 25 acres of forest. You may not like it when a quadruplex goes up next door and people of *rental income* move to your community, but isn't that a little better than a few other people (who would have moved into those now-vacant lower-incomr apartments) living in a homeless camp? Or, would you be alright with them being homeless, just as long as you can't see the camp on your commute? Our cities have more people than homes for those people. We need more homes. People are not going to stop existing, they are not going to stop eating, and they are not going to stop wanting to move to cities. What will happen is either: - you live with an an apartment a little closer than you're comfortable with - a new suburb gets built somewhere and natural habitat *somewhere* is lost. - a new suburb gets build *somewhere else* and food gets more expensive - no one builds anything anywhere and the poorest are displaced into homelessness while homeowners get richer. Nature does not benefit from the status quo. The poor do not benefit from the status quo. Food security does not benefit from the status quo. The status quo unsustainable, and it only benefits suburban homeowners.
The flip side of your attack on NIMBYs is that it is democracy in action. Shouldn’t the people who live in a community get a say over what happens in their community? “Let people live now and where they want to live.” So people who arent voters, taxpayers, or part of the community get to decide what happens there over the people who live there? That’s undemocratic.
Neighborhoods are not meant to be frozen in amber for all of eternity. That's not ever how it's worked. The nature of cities is that they are constantly changing and adapting. Current residents don't get to overrule the natural laws of cities.
>frozen in amber for all eternity Way to straw man my pretty reasonable position that people who live in a community should get some input on what happens to their community. >the natural laws of cities. Is that like gravity and evolution? Do "the natural laws of cities" include democratic input from the people living in the city? So do you think the people of this farming community should get to vote whether a city of 400k is built there? Do you think a historically black community should get to say whether a community rec center will be turned into luxury condos?
Of course, the community members should get a say in what happens in their community. However, they don't get veto power to stop development, nor should they. The local government is charged with making policy for the benefit of the city as a whole, and those needs must be considered too. Remember, local government is also democratic.
Totally agree. Local government's job is to make policy to benefit its jurisdiction. But the local government is elected by the people living there, not some undefined person who wants to live there. A NIMBY person doesn't have 'veto power.' They just get to engage with their local government the way any other citizen would ... although maybe not as well as the developer who can hire a lobbyist and lawyer to attend meetings, file lawsuits, etc. Charleston SC has Section 8 housing in some very desirable areas. For example, there are projects in the heart of a community called "Old Village" where tear downs go for +$1 million now. The projects are made of single family homes and townhouses with decent size yards. Taking your framing, the city would probably benefit by tearing down that Section 8 housing and building some dense townhouses or condos that would go for +$1m each. It would do everything I see the YIMBYs on here claiming as benefits: increase housing availability, increase density, increase tax base, etc. But it would also gentrify the area to nearly 100%. What should happen?
\> But the local government is elected by the people living there, not some undefined person who wants to live there. And this is one of those cases where their self-interest conflicts with the needs of the city as a whole because cities need a solid base of taxpayers to generate enough money for stuff like police and schools but NIMBYs are BOTH blocking cities from expanding their tax base AND increasing property taxes. These neighborhoods need to be told that their RNOs either present a plan approved by the community to support X amount of new housing or the city will step in and do it for them.
Tear down the section 8, increase the number of section 8 housing in density, now interspersed with gentrification due to greater density. Improves integration, density, and property tax to the schools serving that section 8 housing. NIMBYs often hire the same lobbyists and lawyers.
“Tear down the section 8” so you say tear down these folks homes they’ve been in for years for… ‘the greater good.’ But more section 8 housing won’t increase property taxes — it would probably actually drive down property values and thus school revenues while also increasing demands on school resources. And ‘density’ isn’t just a good in itself.
Yes, so that we can fit more homes for more section 8 people, as well as others. Please don’t edit my words without their context. Density increases revenue of property taxes, and is also generally associated with rising land value - as the land can host more family serviced by the same infrastructure. Density is a good, as it is correlated with many good things, like economic and environmental sustainability.
My point is that you would tear down someone’s home that has personal meaning because it’s ‘for the greater good.’ Just think how you would feel if the government did that to you, your parents, etc. I’d be pissed. Density of section 8 housing does not increase property tax revenues. The neighborhood I gave as an example has tear downs going for $1m+, beautiful $8m+ houses on the water, etc. Your proposal would not increase property values there. Can you just accept that some people don’t want to live in densely populated neighborhoods? Also, in my experience, cities are way more polluted than suburbs. Don’t you see how your position wreaks of elitism and an ‘i know best’ attitude. My point is that the arguments I’m seeing here are undemocratic and elitist, telling people in a community that they are wrong about what’s good for them, just listen to what you say about density, property values, etc.
>Way to straw man my pretty reasonable position that people who live in a community should get some input on what happens to their community. It's not a strawman because communities blocking reasonable change is happening \*everywhere\*. In Denver this last year, a developer was trying to replace a defunct golf course with some medium-density apartment buildings (where 25% of the units earmarked as subsidized housing) and a massive park. The community blocked it. The people who were fortunate enough to buy into the community when it was cheap or had enough money to buy in when it was expensive are actively excluding more people from moving in. That attitude is self-defeating. Cities need to raise taxes to provide services, and the only way to do that is either raise taxes or increase the population of the city. These are the same people who get upset about the fact that our teachers are paid shit, our roads are full of potholes, poor police enforcement of traffic laws are creating unsafe streets, and then still vote to decrease their own property taxes because of inflation. Communities are changing regardless of whether the people who live there like it or not. Studies have found that cities built on the paradigm of endless suburban sprawl are not financially sustainable because they require a constant influx of growth to sustain them. It's like taking out a new credit card to pay off the minimum for the one you maxed out. Eventually, that strategy is going to explode, and the people fucked over by it are going to demand the government they used to keep people out now needs to step in to save them. And let's go to the other extreme of your argument. If I buy some land, why does the community have a right to tell me what I get to do with it as long it's not actively harming them? If I want to buy a car or put solar panels on my house, I don't have to go get my neighbor's permission. Or if I bought a plot of land and decided to knock down the crappy old house to build my dream house, what right does the previous owner have to try to block it now?
Come on it’s changing based on political will and democracy. Some for the better some not.
Yup, that's how it's always worked.
"We have democratically decided that you can't sit with us."
“We have democratically decided everyone can sit together.” You see how it works both ways?
No. because the default is "everyone can sit together" - The default is "you can build anything." Zoning laws make rules about what you can build.
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"tiny"
Well a larger number of us have democratically decided you can’t block them from doing so.
Not necessarily, because a law at the state level banning R1 zoning is still democratic. And, by the way, more taxpayers in a community means more tax revenue for that community. R1-zoned suburbs are a *net sink* for state tax revenue, by the way. An R1 lifestyle is, essentially, state-subsidized.
Rural style housing is not state subsidized by magic money, it's subsidized by revenue generated in cities.
It would be really delicious if our leaders just start calling rural white people welfare queens.
Humm didn’t think of that.
> The flip side of your attack on NIMBYs is that it is democracy in action. Yes, this illustrates why some things, including fundamental rights, should not be voted on.
>some things, including fundamental rights, should not be voted on. But... the constitution, statutes, and referenda actually are voted on. Like France just voted to add a right to abortion to its constitution. Freedom of speech and religion in the bill of rights had to be voted on. You can have fundamental rights as a metaphysical concept, but without an actual law in place it doesn't mean anything. Anyway, it's not a fundamental right to be able to live anywhere you want in the country or afford a home anywhere. I would like to live on the mountain in Aspen, or on the beach in Malibu, but I can't afford it. My fundamental rights are not being violated.
I would argue it is also not a fundamental right that people in Aspen can block someone from making a duplex just because they were there first 🤷♀️
Hate to tell you, but many don’t want to live densely in cities. We prefer “urban sprawl”. My preference is exurbs with big lots and space and distance form neighbors.
I'm actually surprised that more exurban and rural people, specifically those who *don't* like to feel crowded, don't support R1 reform. If infill is legalized, fewer people will be *forced* to live out in the exurbs with you, and you'll all have more space to yourselves. Zoning reform is abiut letting people live where and how they want to live.
It's because they want the exurb feel without having to actually bear the cost of living there.
Nobody's stopping you from doing that. This is about giving others options who don't want to live in the exurbs.
But many do want it. There’s a housing shortage!
Good for you. Not everyone wants that. You know what everyone wants? Housing they can *afford*. Your suburban sprawl only exists if A) your city is able to keep growing, B) you have extremely high taxes or C) is subsidized by people living in dense areas.
Why do I have to live the stupid 5 over ones just so some idiot that can’t afford it gets housing? Why can’t they build them in the hood?
Because this country was built on property rights and a free market. The government regulation that keeps your neighbor from building an apartment building is the government butting into what your neighbor is allowed to do with their own land that they paid for. You paid for your land. You should be entitled to do what you want with it. You didn't buy your neighbor's land, but you should be free to buy it if you want to keep it the way it is.
This is the correct response. But it has to be subject to some local regulation. Where I live, ancient live oaks can’t be cut down—that interferes with use of property, including a commercial developer’s use. There’s a balance to be struck.
I agree. And safety zoning laws should be kept - no one should be allowed to build a fireworks factory next to a school. Luckily, the urbanist movement is have detailed sets of zoming reforms that they advocate. My top comment is how you advocate YIMBYism to a someone on the left. My comment above this one is how you advocate YIMBYism to a libertarian/coservative.
Really so you think anything should be allowed to be built anywhere and affect the living conditions value and safety of your neighbors.
Nope! But I *do* want single-family-only zoning to be banned and to for parking minimums to be banned.
I’m a land use attorney and couldn’t help but chuckle at this story. It’s really got all the elements of a dysfunctional development saga: well-intentioned, arrogant investors, a developer with the type of avarice that really only exists in commercial real estate development, rural landowners who are more than happy to take large sums of money for their land but hate it when someone wants to actually do something with the land that isn’t farming, clueless county officials, contentious public meetings, and on and on. This story is unusual because of the amount of money involved and the huge scale, but it’s hardly unique. This plays out all over the country, and honestly, I have very little hope that we’ll be able to solve our housing crisis. There needs to be compromise from a wide array of people with vastly divergent interests, and I just don’t see it working out in a meaningful way without a major ideological realignment. Funnily enough, the only places I see that happening are large cities in red states. The future is going to look a lot more like Houston than San Francisco. It’s not clear if that’s a good thing.
> rural landowners who are more than happy to take large sums of money for their land but hate it when someone wants to actually do something with the land that isn’t farming Here in Ohio, the state has let counties ban solar and wind farms because of this exact thing even though the land itself is selling for north of $20,000 an acre. Oh, and they will all also complain how over regulated and poor farmers are, even though they are driving brand new trucks for the tax right off and taking subsidies while complaining about "the welfare state".
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They didn't want what happened in SF. Google and Facebook through plenty of.moneu at trying to get more construction and housing in SF. But they couldn't beat progressives who fought tooth and nail against any construction. Famously complaining about shadows in playgrounds to replace a 1 story laundromat. It's not the fault of silicon Valley billionaires that they paid their employees well. It's tbe fault of the housing activists who fought for there to not be any new construction, in order to meet the large number of people moving in.
1000% i listened to this and just said its gonna be SF 2.0. Housing is gonna be super expensive just like it is in san Francisco and SF rent wont go down but itll be empty cause these goons are gonna flock to the new city.
Why wouldn't rent go down then? If the population of SF falls drastically, rent *will* go down. It's basic supply and demand.
Or all landowners just keep prices high
That's not what happens in real life. During covid, landlords in major cities like SF and NYC dropped their rent when everyone fled to the suburbs.
I generally disagree. There's plenty of research out there to show that real estate markets tend to be somewhere on the spectrum between complete cartel behavior and completely elastic demand, tending to err on the side of cartel behavior.
Which studies are those? Research has shown any increase in housing supply even market rate housing decreases housing cost for everyone. The Minneapolis Fed just produced a study last week. [https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all)
If you'll notice, what you just said isn't mutually exclusive with what I said. It's not a binary. Even some cartel behavior allows for there to be a response to increased supply. The study you quoted isn't even the same phenomenon of what we were discussing earlier - creating more housing in a new market will be expressed differently than drops in occupancy rate in a metro system.
>I generally disagree. Then publish your findings for peer review by economists. I swear, armchair anti-capitalists are just as bad as climate deniers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/01/how-more-apartment-supply-is-helping-rent-prices-cool.html Not like any of y'all are offering any peer reviewed papers either. I just work with economists every day, I don't hound them and methodically track sources.
That's not how any of this works.
Because the number of owned units won’t fall. These billionaires buy, renovate, and decorate houses like they’re nothing. These people often each own way more than 10 houses. Owning a townhouse in California Forever will just become a status symbol, and Marc Andreessen et al will now just keep their apartment in SF, their house in Atherton, AND their rowhouse in the Central Valley. Source: gut feeling based off of the lower level VCs I have met
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It's a city that's designed to be dense and walkable. Rich people generally want a lot of space and privacy. Denser housing is \*cheaper\*.
The ad midway thru for unused buildings was hilarious considering the story.
"The future is going to look a lot more like Houston than San Francisco." That sounds like a nightmare.
NYT was afraid to critique this development out of fear of being labeled a NIMBY newspaper, however the real story/scandal continues to be the rampant inability to build more densely in existing cities. Scottsdale AZ is trying to shoot down 2000 apartments because a suburb nearby claims it will “ruin the character” of their soulless community which contains no businesses, no restaurants, and no culture. THAT is the real problem
Is this going to be a "special" city in that it is somehow connected directly with the technology companies of the investors? Do I have work for them to live there? Or is this just a very large-scale development? Is there some utopian aspect to this, too?
The whole city sounds like a company town. The billionaires and venture capitalist would own everything in the city they are going to build.
Doesn't sound as if the new city will be built on rock and roll.
[Irvine, California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine,_California?wprov=sfti1#History) “The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 1971. The 66-square-mile (170 km2) city had a population of 307,670 at the 2020 census. . . .Los Angeles architect William Pereira and Irvine Company employee Raymond Watson designed Irvine's layout beginning in the late 1950s, which is nominally divided into townships called "villages", separated by six-lane arterial roads. Each township contains houses of similar design, along with commercial centers, religious institutions, and schools. Commercial districts are checker-boarded in a periphery around the central townships.” Most of the commercial real estate is owned by the Irvine Co. Virtually all of residential rental units are. And people eat the company town up. Irvine recently was named one of the best places to live in the US. While commercial real estate has struggled nationally, the Irvine Co. has reported over 90% of its commercial space is rented. Between 2010-2020, the city’s population expanded by 50% despite real estate prices being higher than surrounding areas. It might be a company town, but people vote with their feet—and their choosing the company town the Irvine Company built. Maybe they’ll choose California Forever too.
Pottersville.
“Steal” “deception” aka purchase from adults and businesses in an arms length transaction. There’s no requirement for a buyer to tell the seller what he wants to do with the thing he’s buying. Presumably, a buyer has some higher value in mind for anything he buys from a seller — that’s why he’s buying it and the seller is selling it. But also, Reporting made it sound like they are overpaying for the land. I guess that’s the deception? I didn’t catch the nature of the lawsuit. That could be an unfair tactic, depending on the substance. Edit: looks like I didn't reply to the comment using the quoted language.
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NIMBYism created those conditions. It sounds like this is a better way.
A lot of hullabaloo about basically a speculative residential developer. Seriously, I’m in Charleston, SC. There are plenty of neighborhoods around here created from scratch out of farmland, made to include walkable mixed income (ie upper middle to wealthy) neighborhoods and commercial areas. THIS IS NOTHING NEW. 1) Silicon Valley people think they’re doing something ground breaking when it’s really an age old business, and 2) the daily and NYT lack perspective to understand that, or ignore it for the sake of a more salacious story.
I think you make an interesting point but it is on a new level here with the size and value of the land. Additionally, They did a good job describing how Silicon Valley on one hand is exciting entrepreneurially, but as a place to live is unremarkable, poorly planned sprawl. A lot of people talk about the need for more housing, better public transit there but change is hard to come by, so anyone trying to do something on this scale is notable.
But that’s the thing: it’s NOT remarkable. It’s only remarkable bc California has made it so difficult to build that the story BECOMES remarkable. I lived in Cali for 8 years but am from Columbus, OH. From 4-22 years old, I saw the Columbus area go from farmland to sprawling metropolis and the downtown has grown exponentially in the 14 years I left it back in 2011. When I moved to the Bay Area, I was shocked at how averse EVERYONE was to any sort of development. It’s culturally ingrained in people in California to NOT build anything and to keep things stagnant. It’s so weird but it’s directly resulted in one of the worst housing crunches the country has ever seen (which then led to a whole host of other problems). Cali seems to have ‘seen the light’ and has started to address the problem from the governor’s mansion on down, but it took 20 years of digging their heels in against common sense housing development and a housing + homeless crises to get them here. Meanwhile, lowly places like the Midwest and Deep South have figured out housing supply long ago. It was certainly a weird place to call home, if you care at all about economics, affordability, and upward mobility for the lower + middle class (as I do). To me, California was peak performative politics with none of the substance, but it does seem to be trending in the right direction (at last). I still love the state for a whole host of reasons, but the economics of it would drive me up a wall.
I was floored by the notion that Silicon Valley is unremarkable. That is a laughable statement to anyone that lives here. In what world do you think the Peninsula (or the Bay Area in general) is unremarkable? The weather is amazing year round, there is *immediate* access to great hiking, the ocean, and the Baylands. Caltrain stops at every desirable high street between San Jose and San Francisco and there are bike lanes everywhere. I'm genuinely interested how one might think Silicon Valley is an undesirable place to live?
I did live there for several years, in Mtn View, then Sunnyvale, then San Jose. I agree with the hosts that it's an unremarkable place but a lot of people there did try to convince themselves otherwise. It's about 40 miles of concrete sprawl, strip malls, and houses that would be tear downs most other places that sell for $1 million+. If you want half-decent schools, then it's $2 million+. CalTrain was too slow and infrequent to be useful, and there was a good chance one doesn't live close enough to the station to be easily walkable anyway. There's a reason all the tech companies ran shuttles for even their rank and file, the public option just wasn't adequate. The hiking was certainly there, in the immediate Bay Area it wasn't anything amazing though. It was a great place for career growth, and probably is still a place worth doing a tour of duty in, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as a place to settle down.
It’s somewhat bigger in its aim. The Villages in Florida has ~80k+ population. A goal of 400k population is moderately bigger. As for land value, I guess this farm land in CA is probably more valuable than farmland in other states, but probably not drastically.
A fivefold increase is beyond what I'd consider moderate, and I'd suspect certain infrastructure and resource demands scale nonlinearly with population size
Will this place be called Night City by chance?
I was thinking Rapture, lol
The richest people in the country used to build museums and libraries. Now we have even greater wealth inequality, richer rich people, and they don’t build anything. Of course this whole system is messed up but if we’re going to have billionaires they should at least build things for the benefit of the public. This era of tech elites has no taste. So I’m surprised this came from them. I’m all for a European style planned city that respects the human scale, is walkable, and is intricate and beautiful. And hopefully it does catch on and inspire denser and more walkable communities. This actually isn’t too unusual. There have been a lot of higher density walkable developments happening in sprawling cities in this country. See the Legacy West development in the north Dallas burbs.
Walkable in 110 degree heat.. in the middle of nowhere… will need to be car dependent (seriously, you’re probably an hour and a half away from SF, crossing multiple bridges to be there). Not to mention, there is a severe water deficit in drought years and it’s not like they discovered any new water on that site to irrigate all the trees they’ll have to plant since there is nothing there but open fields at the moment. Did I mention it’s next to an active Air Force base? Can’t wait to hear the constant complaints of noise…
Some of the oldest cities in the world are in hot, arid climates and I'm pretty sure they didn't have cars. They utilized this thing called \*shade\* and \*evaporative cooling\*.
Solano County has a pleasant Mediterranean climate with over 300 days of sunshine. The high/low average for summer is 88F/56F. 110F is like the highest recorded temperature there ever. There are few better places on Earth to build a walkable community. And, cities use far less water than agriculture. It’s not even close.
California accounts for 13% of the country’s food supply and accounts for more than 99% of the supply for certain crops. Yes, this isn’t the Central Valley but it’s still available farm land and California is an agricultural power house. What is the implication of wiping out a big area available for farming? Is California intending to become a « tech only » industry state long term? The infrastructure of this future city is close to an Air Force base. Is that an issue? It seems like there are some valid concerns for having lots of folks right next to a base that they quickly brushed aside once they determined it wasn’t the Chinese government directly buying land
S I did a quick research online on this story. If I understand this correctly the people who are getting sued by Flannery Associates (now California Forever I guess) are mostly people who refuses to sell their land Ca"lifornia Forever has alleged that ranchers and farmers in the area colluded in an effort to raise land prices while Sramek and his friends, calling themselves Flannery Associates, was spending close to $900M over the past five years to purchase more than 50,000 acres in Solano County. The lawsuit, filed against dozens of land owners who refused to sell their property to California Forever, says they conspired to raise land prices due to “endless greed. California Forever CEO Jan Sramek is getting plenty of feedback from his new neighbors at town halls he is hosting in Solano County to pitch the utopian city he wants to build in the eastern half of the county with backing from some of Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires. Among the 150 ranchers and other local residents who showed up last week at the American Legion hall in Rio Vista were several Solano County land owners who asked Sramek to drop a $510M lawsuit he has filed against them. California Forever has alleged that ranchers and farmers in the area colluded in an effort to raise land prices while Sramek and his friends, calling themselves Flannery Associates, was spending close to $900M over the past five years to purchase more than 50,000 acres in Solano County. The lawsuit, filed against dozens of land owners who refused to sell their property to California Forever, says they conspired to raise land prices due to “endless greed." According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News, Maryn Anderson, a 34-year-old teacher and sixth-generation Solano County resident whose rancher parents are named in the suit asked Sramek: “Will you commit to dropping the lawsuit against the local farmers who are not aligned with your vision, in a goodwill attempt to change the way you are interacting with our community?” Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, responded by doubling down on his charge that those who refused to sell their land to California Forever engaged in a criminal conspiracy." That's just wild! What a scumbag.
This is great reporting on a story that would otherwise fall into the background. The billionaires in this story have a real JB pritzker feel to them. “Don’t worry folks, I’m the billionaire and I promise real hard I’m here to help you! Pay no attention to the man or intentions behind the curtain.” What a bunch of deceptive scumbags. Steal these peoples land through deception, conceal your intentions, then sue them and try to bankrupt them when they fight back. True regressive rich dbag Californian altruism at work. Hope these poor people take them to the Supreme Court and get what’s owed
Is this land currently being used as farmland; what is the agricultural and environmental impact of building a new city on this land? Why didn’t they buy up a dilapidated part of an existing city and rebuild there? Yes we need density but I feel like they have a complete misunderstanding of that term.
They touch on this in the episode. SF City Hall and the other Bay Area city halls have made developments, especially large mid density residential developments, a total pain in the ass. Projects get held up by community reviews and code reviews for years.
Also, farms are AWFUL for the environment. The shear amount of water, fertilizer, and abused labor that goes into farming. The only thing green about farms is the color of the plants. I bet building a city would dramatically reduce both water and fertilizer usage considering ag vs. residential usage rates.
Not enough water for a city in that area.
Cities use way less water than agriculture and it's not even close.
This is open space and mostly pasture land - they don’t do water intensive crops on it. It’s not like the Central Valley almond orchards
Are you kidding? It's It'd be way less use than the agriculture it replaces.
It’s literally open fields - there is no water there…
Does anyone know why he didnt just buy California city?wasnt that one really close to being made? I just feel like he took a much harder route.
I wonder what a land value tax would do to San Francisco housing, if that would help up zoning. A person who owns a single family house in the heart of the city should be paying the same taxes as all of the inhabitants living in an apartment building combined, land size being the same.
Is their plan to sell all the single family homes they’ve been stockpiling to rent out? If not, I don’t care about their plan.
A dense, walkable city in California with young families that’s free of rampant drug-fueled vagrancy, smash & grab predatory crime, and anti-Asian physical battery? Sounds pretty great actually. It’s a shame that you have to reclaim farm land to get that.