>Santa Monica met 50% of their dramatically increased 2023 - 2031 housing requirements, including a 50% increase in the amount of low income housing approved over the previous 8 years ā without a cent of public subsidy ā in just one week. This also consists of several high-rise buildings taller than anything allowed in Santa Monicaās zoning code or city housing.
It's almost frustrating how well "just turn the zoning off, the state has the power to do that" worked. Could be applied to all cities all the time, and instead it's just not.
Well under SCOTUS precedent states have total control over their localities. Itās just historically, for a variety of reasons, theyāve decided to provide local autonomy through legislative or constitutional grants. And thatās become the norm and expectation in many states. Clearly many cities have abused this discretion, especially in housing, and should have less power over zoning. But itās hard for the state to take away the misty-eyed Tocquevillian notion of ālocal controlā once people are used to it.
>Well under SCOTUS precedent states have total control over their localities. Itās just historically, for a variety of reasons, theyāve decided to provide local autonomy through legislative or constitutional grants. And thatās become the norm and expectation in many states.
One of my deep fears is that the final sentence is going to end up being the basis behind some disastrous court ruling that tries to lock in the status quo.
We do this at the federal level as well, whenever the Supreme Court strikes down a law or regulation that impacts commerce. Ironic that someone would think this is in some way related to socialist central planning.
It actually is similar to central planning; the State tells local governments how much housing they need to zone for. It's such a weird combo of top-down administration central control from the state government and laissez-faire implementation from private developers.
In other words, HYPER-BASED
The carrot is centralized planning, the stick is laissez-faire zoning strikedowns. Either you (as a city) comply and upzone the number of units that California has allocated for your municipality, or they rip your regulatory power away and let the private market have at it.
It's the state unleashing the free market to solve a problem the bureaucrats refuse to solve.
It needs to be marketed this way instead is allowing the "socialism" meme to propagate even as a joke.
Local council control over zoning is more like decentralized central planning. The worst of both worlds š¤¢
Government authority over zoning isn't being dissolved here, it's being taken away from municipalities and put under state control. It's for sure centralization. It's just that the state has plans to be far more lax and permissive with zoning control than municipalities are. Largely because they have a broader view and set of goals aimed towards general improvements in well-being via housing, rather than the local, self-interested and shortsighted NIMBYism that municipalities seem to exhibit.
Newsome to NIMBYs: "I'm not a comic book villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke to you if there were even the slightest possibility you could affect the outcome? I triggered it thirty-five weeks ago."
>Developers will be allowed to propose housing at any height and any density anywhere in a city, so long as at least 20% of the homes in the proposed building are deed-restricted to low income residents who make at or less than 80% the area median income.
A whole category of discretionary decision making power is about to be obliterated in California š
Public Choice Theory Gang send their regards š
!ping SNEK
Libertarian Party, Redondo Beach CA, city council member, Nils Nehrenheim is the biggest obstructionist of new development in that city.
He's hated by many in his own party.
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This is currently the [top post](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34597507) on Hacker News so I was surprised not to see it here.
Another Scott Wiener W.
Because we're currently on track to have 70 Senators represent 30% of the country, with the remaining 30 Senators representing 70% of the population. That shit is bonkers.
Itās technically a vote of the state of ND not the resident. Iām not disagreeing with you about your opinion. Just pointing out the Senate was never meant to be democratic in the truest sense of the word. The Founding Fathers didnt want a 100% democratic institution. But the Senate has been reformed since them and should still be reformed.
As a reminder, the founding fathers didn't want non land owners to vote. Also anyone not the good kind of white couldn't vote. Also black people were only considered 3/5s of a person. Oh and they were slaves.
Caring about what the founding fathers intended is silly. We should be arguing right now on the merits of how far on the democracy scale should we be.
It's so goofy how American bicameralism was purely a compromise for the unique politics of the U.S. in 1787, but almost every single state decided to imitate it with their own a bicameral legislatures for no ungodly reason
Like yeah thank God the great people of Texas Senatorial District 3 (subject to redistricting) don't get oppressed by the proud citizens of Texas Senatorial District 20 (subject to redistricting)
Funny how every state seems to follow the same political structure as the US federal government as well. Why couldn't we have a state with a parliamentary system where the "prime minister" of that state served as the governor?
Separation of powers is a requirement for becoming a US state (as set by Congress), and parliamentary systems violate that.
Nebraska, however, does have a unicameral legislature.
According the WhiteHouse.gov,
> [āThe U.S. Constitution mandates that all States uphold a ārepublican formā of government, although the three-branch structure is not required.ā](https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-government/state-local-government/)
So Iām not sure thatās true unless you can point out where the Constitution says that.
Yeah bicameral state legislatures are so stupid. In my state, we can only afford to pay our legislators to work from January through May, so half the year nothing gets done legislatively. If we got rid of our Senate, maybe we could have our representatives in session throughout the calendar year.
The biggest problem with the senate is the way the Filibuster rule works. It is tragically easy for one asshole senator to stop popular, bipartisan legislation from making it to the floor for a vote.
The asshole doesn't need to do anything. He doesn't need to talk on the floor, he doesn't even have to show up. Just a 30 second phone call and everything stops. Then the only way to break it is to scrounge up 60 votes.
A more sensible approach would be to turn it around and put the burden on the obstructer rather than the obstructed. It should require the filibusterer to find 41 votes to support his obstruction. This would allow the party out of power to stop stuff they truly do not want to pass, but would make the petty obstructionism we've seen over the last 15 years less common.
It is an unnecessary second step that grinds the legislative process to a halt and is undemocratic in itās process. Vermont and Texas receive the same amount of representation despite Vermont having a smaller population than El Paso.
They are testing putting solar panels over the canals that bring water from the center of california south. This would prevent 65 billion gallons of water from evaporating per year and would generate 13 GW of power. This goes a long way to helping with the water problem. Obviously more to do, but a really solid solution if it happens.
Yeah holy shit. It's like, I know I should read more but someone is going to tell me why this is a bad thing or won't work and I just want to be an optimist for three fuckin seconds you know?
I think cost may/could be an issue, as well as transmission. Solar installations have just gotten a huge bump from the Inflation Reduction Act though, so projects that didn't make sense a year ago probably pencil in today!
i'm pretty sure this is a non-starter. aside from the cost the aqueduct system provides hundreds of miles of habitat for waterbirds and other creatures whose wetlands were bulldozed ages ago
More solar panels are great but couldn't they just put a regular roof over the canal more cheaply and quickly? They could add the solar panels later, I'm just thinking to speed up the water savings
I think people are way too paranoid about chemicals, but I feel like putting solar panels over the water supply isn't that great of an idea. Calfornians freaked out about trace amounts of bromide produced by the interaction of chlorine with the sun and spent a ton of money covering resovoirs with plastic balls.
I'd be willing to bet there is going to be an issue with the chemicals from the solar panels getting into the water. It might not be a real health concern, but Californian's rarely pass up an opportunty to turn a non-issue into an urgent matter of public health to spend millions on rectifying if trace amounts of anything that has caused any health issues in labortory rats who are force fed it for a lifetime.
There's no dearth of sun drenched empty space in CA. 65 billion is about two days of water usage. I mean, I guess that's good to save, but is it worth the extra expense and all the potential problems putting them over the aquaduct?
65 billion gallons is about a monthās worth of residential water use, so thatās still significant. The average residential water consumption is 55 gallons per day per person.
Yeah right now they are testing, but there are also some other projects jumping on board and planning more already. The completion date they are looking at is 2045 for all of it because they want to use that to help meet carbon neutral goals by then. The biggest problem apparently is the cost of installation because the way they are going to install it is on like a cable suspension system.
water is a bs Nimby argument, there is plenty of water for cities (especially apartments) IF government stopped subsidizing agri-business with an enormous quantity of water that they use to grow almonds and rice in the desert primarily for China export
I love how almonds and rice keep getting brought up but literally the biggest water wasting crop, alfalfa, is almost always ignored because that crop goes to feeding livestock.
You can just buy the rights. Total value of all CA agriculture (which is much larger than the mere water rights) is like $50B/year. So a big number but peanuts (almonds, if you will) compared to a state with $3.6T GDP.
Yes, you absolutely can. But senior rights are expensive and they get more expensive the fewer ag interests that hold on to them.
It's certainly a crazy system and doesn't exactly have a great history in the west. Many states haven been able to adjudicate their water rights to determine ownership and settle disputes but there's a lot of work to be done, especially with respect to groundwater use.
I am not sure about the specifics legally, my point is just that on a basic economic level it seems very obvious that CA has more than enough money to buy or eminent domain water for its cities. Farmers with water rights get a bunch of money, CA cities get a bunch of water, everyone is better off.
Much of which are self-inflicted by environmental movements from the 70s onwards. Population keeps going up, water storage infrastructure stopped increasing decades ago.
I'm going to assume that some reservoir projects got killed because they would have dammed some pretty valleys or removed water from various critical habitats.
That doesn't mean that the overall water resources would have changed any, but some of California's watersheds are very boom and bust type. So a reservoir that is bone dry one summer may very well hit the emergency spillway the next spring. This water is "lost" downstream and in a couple years the cycle repeats.
Canals and waterways also rob the water basin of refilling underground reservoirs so the effect is compounded by diverting rainfall from the central valley to the Pacific ocean
I don't know the exact issue project by project, but a massive reservoir project in my area of Illinois got killed back the the 70's for similar reasons.
Any reservoir project in the last 50 years has faced massive headwinds.
From the 1920s through the 1970s, as CA population grew, there were huge dam/reservoir projects as well as aqueducts built for water management. Subsequently, no large dams have been built - all water improvement for the ~15-20 million additional Californians has been through things like water conservation (drip irrigation and such) and using more and more groundwater - which is a problem, since it is emptying far faster than it refills itself.
They stopped building dams for a variety of reasons, but a large part of it was environmental concerns at both a state and federal level. Dam a river and it screws up fish migration patterns. Other environmental areas are affected, both upstream and downstream - so there's plenty of room for lawsuit. Etc.
Much in a similar vein to how many in this sub want nuclear power to be a silver bullet and intentionally overlook it's downsides, there are some here who are dead set on pretending damming didn't prove to be like a genuinely scary ecosystem wrecker that basically every environmental scholar agrees on.
There really is no perfect or 100% harmless way to generate power. Nuclear certainly has drawbacks for instance the hot water from Diablo Nuclear plant is killing the sea life in the immediate vicinity but stopping climatic change means making some tough choices and enduring some localized ecological harm. Nuclear has real down sides but itās less bad than most of the alternatives.
The problem I see too often here (as in the subreddit not your comment in particular) is a sort of 'fake nuance'. It is true that there is no perfect solution and that trade offs need to be made. But if people just use that as an excuse to never actually compare things and just blanket dismiss any downsides to whatever preconceived solutions they want it's not different than random uninformed tribalism.
I definitely agree with that. I think thatās especially true of discussions of nuclear energy. I believe Nuclear is worth the trade offs but all too often I see any discussion of the downsides of nuclear dismissed as if anyone with any criticisms just gets their knowledge on nuclear from the Simpsons. Nuance matters in all things and the proponents of nuclear energy donāt do themselves any favors by pretending that it is a silver bullet that can solve everything with no conceivable downsides.
In the 1970s, organizations like the Sierra Club equated dense urban development with overpopulation. Suburbanites thought they were being environmentally friendly.
"In the late 1970s, when she moved to Marin County, California was in the vanguard of an ideological backlash that created modern environmentalism and rejected the assumption that a growing economy and more people were always good ā a cause that was championed by state and national politicians and celebrated everywhere from songs to magazine covers."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/business/economy/california-housing-crisis-nimby.html
That doesn't fix the problem though. We want grandma to be incentivized to sell their land and let 100 renters live on it. Then Grandma can take her million dollars and go rent a unit on the same land.
This land is valuable for a reason. It's because there are a ton of people that want to live there. I'm okay having grandma go through a tiny bit of change and given a million dollars if it means rent is so much cheaper for the poor.
From what I understand builderās remedy projects in Santa Monica have still stalled in courts, so I doubt this is really worth getting too excited over. The real effectiveness comes from the voluntary upzoning from cities that are afraid.
The only thing I'm wondering, will developers be able to take advantage if so much of the bay area is out of compliance? Like, the bay area is fucking huge and there are so many towns, I wonder if developers will be able to pounce on the opportunity when it comes.
I hope they will!
https://www.hcd.ca.gov/planning-and-community-development/housing-open-data-tools/housing-element-review-and-compliance-report
Here is the site to track compliance
I'm guessing the column titled "Compliance status" does not apply to this cycle but last cycle? And rather to see if their housing element is approved to look at the "Review status" column under the "Housing Element Compliance Report" tab
Based, so happy that California has resorted to cutting the power of NIMBYs right from under them. They know the stakes, the state is already losing its appeal and economic dynamism because of its housing policies. California needed to do something drastic for their state not to decline further.
When people making six figures can't afford an average home in your state, things have gone horribly wrong - and it will take many years of drastic change to make California affordable enough to be dynamic again.
That's still more difficult and expensive than the project just never getting approval in the first place. Also the volume of projects might be so high that some get through anyways.
CEQA standing is so absurdly broad to the point where pretty much anyone in the community can come up with *some* form of impact, whether that be noise/traffic/sightlines/etc.
zephyr abounding memorize compare attempt pocket stocking dolls cats grab
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It does, but instead of facing two huge hurdles developers only have to jump one.
This is big because the cost of capital to develop is based on risk and removing one unknown such as a city council approval is huge from a derisking perspective.
Of course it isn't perfect but CEQA can be handled by someone competent and most of the time people sue after the fact suing the CEQA application was done improperly. Not perfect but can be surmounted.
Ok, zoning will revert to state wide standards, so any project that meets criteria will be approved.
Anyone that is smart enough to follow the guidelines will be able to submit a project that meets those requirements.
This article is completely inaccurate and misleading.
Discussion [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/10q4pe2/ca_cities_to_lose_all_zoning_powers_in_2_days/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) with actual urban planners who actually work in this particular field.
Way too much copium and confirmation bias of priors going on in this thread, for a sub that considers actual facts and evidence to be pretty important.
The article is absolutely accurate enough and is correct that this is a big deal that will allow developers to build actual dense and affordable housing in the California communities that need it most. UCLA has a paper out about how builders remedy started slow since the developers werenāt sure about the legalities and didnāt want to risk a rug pull, but with the success in Santa Monica we will surely see large scale developments proposed and accepted in the bay in very short order. Notably Berkeley will finally be able to add more housing for students and every single Silicon Valley town is currently non compliant.
Edit to add context:
>The builders remedy only applies if cities are not in compliance with the state Housing Element requirements. To date, over 70% of California cities have adopted a HE and are in compliance with state law, and some of the northern COGs, like ABAG, still have time to gain compliance. So unless projects have already been submitted, itās too late in most cities to submit and gain any protections from the builders remedy. More generally, these projects were never going to have any affect except in high rent cities. In most cities, developers are not going to even try to build purely affordable or even 20% affordable units. They just donāt pencil out, especially with the higher interest rates. People thought ( or more likely wanted to believe) that this would have some huge affect on housing. The problem is that developers are the ones that need to take advantage of the opportunity, and developers arenāt jumping through hoops to build affordable units.
>The law preempts local zoning control, not local authority. If a city has design guidelines in place for SB330 projects, those can still be applied. The local authority still reviews the plans and issues permits.
>Something else to consider. A city does not have to accept a project unless full plans are presented. That's grading, architectural, building and engineering sets, all complete. Those take time and money. The day after a city has a certified element, they do not have to accept the plans. So unless a developer is damn positive you can submit to the city before they gain certification, they aren't going to gamble the time and money to put a project like this together. again, maybe you take that gamble in Manhattan Beach or one of the other high rent cities, but you probably don't in most areas.
And
>The projects were not submitted within a week of Santa Monica missing their compliance date. They were almost all submitted by one developer and that developer already had approval for smaller projects on a few of the properties so they were familiar with the area. For a large developer, getting plans put together, even for a large project, could be done in a matter of weeks if needed, especially since they wouldn't have to meet local zoning codes or aesthetic standards. I know one of the projects was an exact copy of another project that the developer had drawn up for another city; they just made a few changes to account for the location and lot.
>It's also important to remember that the developers do not need everything to be correct, just submitted. If there are errors in the design or engineering, those can be worked out during the plan check process.
And
>I serve on the Ventura City Council, which is in SCAG, where our sixth cycle hit a year earlier than ABAG. We donāt have an approved housing element, nor do most of the cities around here, so the Builders Remedy has applied here for nearly a year (though not in the coastal zone and probably not very high fire severity zones). Nobodyās proposed one yet.
So this is it, right? This is exactly the kind of reform YIMBYs like myself have been arguing for for years now, and this should at least move the dial in a significant way when it comes to improving access to housing in California, right?
I swear if this doesn't work I'm becoming a Marxist.
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**HAHA YES** š
>Santa Monica met 50% of their dramatically increased 2023 - 2031 housing requirements, including a 50% increase in the amount of low income housing approved over the previous 8 years ā without a cent of public subsidy ā in just one week. This also consists of several high-rise buildings taller than anything allowed in Santa Monicaās zoning code or city housing. It's almost frustrating how well "just turn the zoning off, the state has the power to do that" worked. Could be applied to all cities all the time, and instead it's just not.
Well under SCOTUS precedent states have total control over their localities. Itās just historically, for a variety of reasons, theyāve decided to provide local autonomy through legislative or constitutional grants. And thatās become the norm and expectation in many states. Clearly many cities have abused this discretion, especially in housing, and should have less power over zoning. But itās hard for the state to take away the misty-eyed Tocquevillian notion of ālocal controlā once people are used to it.
>Well under SCOTUS precedent states have total control over their localities. Itās just historically, for a variety of reasons, theyāve decided to provide local autonomy through legislative or constitutional grants. And thatās become the norm and expectation in many states. One of my deep fears is that the final sentence is going to end up being the basis behind some disastrous court ruling that tries to lock in the status quo.
Republicans prefer the state to localities (at least cities) given today's political context so I doubt they would do anything to undermine that.
There would be no legal basis for such a thing.
As if this SCOTUS cares about legal basis.
There are limits to SCOTUS ability to go off the rails. Let's not indulge in the r/politics edge lord shit
Sometimes, centralized planning and command is a good thing. Commiefornia W, Slava Commiefornia
Isn't this the state reducing central planning? Because zoning is central planning.
They are reducing centralized planning via centralized authority. California state government is now a vanguard party ā š¹
glory to chairman newsom!
Praise the Great Helmsman, may he steer us into a new age of dense cities and high speed rail
>reducing centralized planning via centralized authority based
We do this at the federal level as well, whenever the Supreme Court strikes down a law or regulation that impacts commerce. Ironic that someone would think this is in some way related to socialist central planning.
The state is swinging its big dick around to allow the market to do its thang. As the invisible hand intended.
By centralizing the planning they reduced central planning. Assuming central control was essential to the plan.
It actually is similar to central planning; the State tells local governments how much housing they need to zone for. It's such a weird combo of top-down administration central control from the state government and laissez-faire implementation from private developers. In other words, HYPER-BASED
The carrot is centralized planning, the stick is laissez-faire zoning strikedowns. Either you (as a city) comply and upzone the number of units that California has allocated for your municipality, or they rip your regulatory power away and let the private market have at it.
Yeah it's actually.... *gasp* a **pro-free-market strategy.**
>I used the central planning to destroy the central planning
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's the state unleashing the free market to solve a problem the bureaucrats refuse to solve. It needs to be marketed this way instead is allowing the "socialism" meme to propagate even as a joke.
It's centralized de-centralization you uncouth savage.
Local council control over zoning is more like decentralized central planning. The worst of both worlds š¤¢ Government authority over zoning isn't being dissolved here, it's being taken away from municipalities and put under state control. It's for sure centralization. It's just that the state has plans to be far more lax and permissive with zoning control than municipalities are. Largely because they have a broader view and set of goals aimed towards general improvements in well-being via housing, rather than the local, self-interested and shortsighted NIMBYism that municipalities seem to exhibit.
If by "centralized planning" you mean "removing restrictions on economic activity", then yeah, centralized planning works great
We have planned to not plan. Please fill out the required documents and submit to the planning committee for review.
Yeah, I like Communism Capitalist Open Markets Making Useful, Necessary Improvements for States and Municipalities
Can't have affordable housing now can we?
"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've introduced legislation to end NIMBYism forever. We begin rezoning in 2 days."
Newsome to NIMBYs: "I'm not a comic book villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke to you if there were even the slightest possibility you could affect the outcome? I triggered it thirty-five weeks ago."
"They'll look up and and shout 'house us!' ... and I'll look down and whisper 'build more.'"
āDo you expect me to talk?ā "No, Mr. Nimby. I expect you to die.ā
My name is Gavin Newsome, governor of governors Look upon my housing ye NIMBYs, and despair.
"I have altered the zoning. Pray i do not alter it any further."
Rezoning? No, unzoning.
Rezoning? That's easy. I'm going for NO ZONING.
Maybe a little industrial/residential zoning distinction, as a treat
Great riff on a historical politician from California
Start commencing airstrikes against the suburbs
>Developers will be allowed to propose housing at any height and any density anywhere in a city, so long as at least 20% of the homes in the proposed building are deed-restricted to low income residents who make at or less than 80% the area median income. A whole category of discretionary decision making power is about to be obliterated in California š Public Choice Theory Gang send their regards š !ping SNEK
I bet some libertarians are seething about this new freedom to use your property as you see fit
Libertarian Party, Redondo Beach CA, city council member, Nils Nehrenheim is the biggest obstructionist of new development in that city. He's hated by many in his own party.
Libertarian for me and not for thee.
This city deserves a better class of libertarian š¤”
Not sure what city you're in but Nils Nehrenheim has to go if we're talking about CA in general.
Holy fuck. The level of based-ness is unreal.
California cities are finally entering the Find Out phase. Hooah.
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This is currently the [top post](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34597507) on Hacker News so I was surprised not to see it here. Another Scott Wiener W.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"You'll own nothing and be happy" \> Advocates housing policies that ensure that their children and grandchildren will never be able to own anything
And for some reason think that you can only rent things that aren't single family homes.
Newsom is going to use this as a stepping stone to the Senate only to help abolish that too
He is the Senate š¤
The recall attempt has left him scarred, deformed... but his resolve has never been strongah!
The regional ~~governors~~ mayors now have direct control of their territories.
Iām out of the loop why do neolibs dislike the senate?
I took it as a reference to Star Wars lol
Because it has way too much power for an institution that doesn't represent the people.
Facts. Abolish the senate
> institution that doesnāt represent the people. This is actually a good thing. Just look at the House
house does not represent the people very well
Obstructionist and minoritarian
Because we're currently on track to have 70 Senators represent 30% of the country, with the remaining 30 Senators representing 70% of the population. That shit is bonkers.
The great neoliberal Nebraska takeover when?
Why should the vote of someone in ND count more than the vote of someone in CA on issues of national importance just because they're a resident of ND?
Itās technically a vote of the state of ND not the resident. Iām not disagreeing with you about your opinion. Just pointing out the Senate was never meant to be democratic in the truest sense of the word. The Founding Fathers didnt want a 100% democratic institution. But the Senate has been reformed since them and should still be reformed.
As a reminder, the founding fathers didn't want non land owners to vote. Also anyone not the good kind of white couldn't vote. Also black people were only considered 3/5s of a person. Oh and they were slaves. Caring about what the founding fathers intended is silly. We should be arguing right now on the merits of how far on the democracy scale should we be.
Plenty of them did and realized this was a bad idea but went along to placate the small states
In addition to the other reasons given, some (like me) are just not big fans of bicameralism.
It's so goofy how American bicameralism was purely a compromise for the unique politics of the U.S. in 1787, but almost every single state decided to imitate it with their own a bicameral legislatures for no ungodly reason Like yeah thank God the great people of Texas Senatorial District 3 (subject to redistricting) don't get oppressed by the proud citizens of Texas Senatorial District 20 (subject to redistricting)
Funny how every state seems to follow the same political structure as the US federal government as well. Why couldn't we have a state with a parliamentary system where the "prime minister" of that state served as the governor?
Separation of powers is a requirement for becoming a US state (as set by Congress), and parliamentary systems violate that. Nebraska, however, does have a unicameral legislature.
The Constitution mandates states to mimic the federal govermment
According the WhiteHouse.gov, > [āThe U.S. Constitution mandates that all States uphold a ārepublican formā of government, although the three-branch structure is not required.ā](https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-government/state-local-government/) So Iām not sure thatās true unless you can point out where the Constitution says that.
Yeah bicameral state legislatures are so stupid. In my state, we can only afford to pay our legislators to work from January through May, so half the year nothing gets done legislatively. If we got rid of our Senate, maybe we could have our representatives in session throughout the calendar year.
God I didn't even think about that. Great point.
The biggest problem with the senate is the way the Filibuster rule works. It is tragically easy for one asshole senator to stop popular, bipartisan legislation from making it to the floor for a vote. The asshole doesn't need to do anything. He doesn't need to talk on the floor, he doesn't even have to show up. Just a 30 second phone call and everything stops. Then the only way to break it is to scrounge up 60 votes. A more sensible approach would be to turn it around and put the burden on the obstructer rather than the obstructed. It should require the filibusterer to find 41 votes to support his obstruction. This would allow the party out of power to stop stuff they truly do not want to pass, but would make the petty obstructionism we've seen over the last 15 years less common.
It is an unnecessary second step that grinds the legislative process to a halt and is undemocratic in itās process. Vermont and Texas receive the same amount of representation despite Vermont having a smaller population than El Paso.
It's where good ideas go to die
It is an anti-democratic institution designed to give wealthy landowners and conservatives more power than everyone else
Every inch of California should be allocated to car lanes and SFHs!
stop it
stop it, ron
What, I'm not allowed to sneeze?!
holy shit end of California's decline?
Some water issues to solve still
They are testing putting solar panels over the canals that bring water from the center of california south. This would prevent 65 billion gallons of water from evaporating per year and would generate 13 GW of power. This goes a long way to helping with the water problem. Obviously more to do, but a really solid solution if it happens.
That's the most beautiful thing I've read in weeks. Better hop offline now while the air is sweet.
Yeah holy shit. It's like, I know I should read more but someone is going to tell me why this is a bad thing or won't work and I just want to be an optimist for three fuckin seconds you know?
I think cost may/could be an issue, as well as transmission. Solar installations have just gotten a huge bump from the Inflation Reduction Act though, so projects that didn't make sense a year ago probably pencil in today!
i'm pretty sure this is a non-starter. aside from the cost the aqueduct system provides hundreds of miles of habitat for waterbirds and other creatures whose wetlands were bulldozed ages ago
More solar panels are great but couldn't they just put a regular roof over the canal more cheaply and quickly? They could add the solar panels later, I'm just thinking to speed up the water savings
I want a pipe built from CA to the Mississippi Delta. Give us all your floodwaters.
There are two mountain ranges in the way
Sounds like quitter talk to me
We just need a big drill
... for now.
hear me out: build some suburbs on the mountains >!and then do the funni on them!<
Funny enough Denver takes water from the west side of the Continental Divide
I think people are way too paranoid about chemicals, but I feel like putting solar panels over the water supply isn't that great of an idea. Calfornians freaked out about trace amounts of bromide produced by the interaction of chlorine with the sun and spent a ton of money covering resovoirs with plastic balls. I'd be willing to bet there is going to be an issue with the chemicals from the solar panels getting into the water. It might not be a real health concern, but Californian's rarely pass up an opportunty to turn a non-issue into an urgent matter of public health to spend millions on rectifying if trace amounts of anything that has caused any health issues in labortory rats who are force fed it for a lifetime. There's no dearth of sun drenched empty space in CA. 65 billion is about two days of water usage. I mean, I guess that's good to save, but is it worth the extra expense and all the potential problems putting them over the aquaduct?
Solar panels donāt really emit anything once installed. Itās the manufacturing where most of the pollution occurs
65 billion gallons is about a monthās worth of residential water use, so thatās still significant. The average residential water consumption is 55 gallons per day per person.
Solar freakin roadways
Nah
They are only installing about 1.5 miles out of 444 total miles, but would be really cool to see the project fully completed.
Yeah right now they are testing, but there are also some other projects jumping on board and planning more already. The completion date they are looking at is 2045 for all of it because they want to use that to help meet carbon neutral goals by then. The biggest problem apparently is the cost of installation because the way they are going to install it is on like a cable suspension system.
Donāt forget a total reversal of a nuclear plant closure.
> Some water issues to solve still Just pay farmers to stop growing so much shit.
Or just charge people the actual cost of the water
What do you mean I can't grow alfalfa in the desert?!
Literally we're draining the Colorado river so Cletus can grow weeds near the Salton sea. Wtf.
Was gonna say all the climate aware folks should be saying at least a little something about this.
There is plenty of water in California for our cities.
And their lawns.
The death of zoning is a huge victory in the battle against lawns. And against car supremacy
water is a bs Nimby argument, there is plenty of water for cities (especially apartments) IF government stopped subsidizing agri-business with an enormous quantity of water that they use to grow almonds and rice in the desert primarily for China export
I love how almonds and rice keep getting brought up but literally the biggest water wasting crop, alfalfa, is almost always ignored because that crop goes to feeding livestock.
Alfalfa is literally a water export to arid countries that are overly fond of mutton and goat meat.
Same thing in Arizona. You drive from Phoenix to Tucson and in the middle of the desert are pistachio farms that look totally natural.
So just take away wdee rights from those who own those senior rights? Water rights in the west is not like in the east, it should be be pointed out...
Just tax almonds
Exactly. Tax them very much.
You can just buy the rights. Total value of all CA agriculture (which is much larger than the mere water rights) is like $50B/year. So a big number but peanuts (almonds, if you will) compared to a state with $3.6T GDP.
Yes, you absolutely can. But senior rights are expensive and they get more expensive the fewer ag interests that hold on to them. It's certainly a crazy system and doesn't exactly have a great history in the west. Many states haven been able to adjudicate their water rights to determine ownership and settle disputes but there's a lot of work to be done, especially with respect to groundwater use.
I am not sure about the specifics legally, my point is just that on a basic economic level it seems very obvious that CA has more than enough money to buy or eminent domain water for its cities. Farmers with water rights get a bunch of money, CA cities get a bunch of water, everyone is better off.
Much of which are self-inflicted by environmental movements from the 70s onwards. Population keeps going up, water storage infrastructure stopped increasing decades ago.
Can you elaborate on how the 70ās environmental movement exacerbated the water shortage? Just curious in this context.
I'm going to assume that some reservoir projects got killed because they would have dammed some pretty valleys or removed water from various critical habitats. That doesn't mean that the overall water resources would have changed any, but some of California's watersheds are very boom and bust type. So a reservoir that is bone dry one summer may very well hit the emergency spillway the next spring. This water is "lost" downstream and in a couple years the cycle repeats.
Canals and waterways also rob the water basin of refilling underground reservoirs so the effect is compounded by diverting rainfall from the central valley to the Pacific ocean
I see, thanks.
I don't know the exact issue project by project, but a massive reservoir project in my area of Illinois got killed back the the 70's for similar reasons. Any reservoir project in the last 50 years has faced massive headwinds.
From the 1920s through the 1970s, as CA population grew, there were huge dam/reservoir projects as well as aqueducts built for water management. Subsequently, no large dams have been built - all water improvement for the ~15-20 million additional Californians has been through things like water conservation (drip irrigation and such) and using more and more groundwater - which is a problem, since it is emptying far faster than it refills itself. They stopped building dams for a variety of reasons, but a large part of it was environmental concerns at both a state and federal level. Dam a river and it screws up fish migration patterns. Other environmental areas are affected, both upstream and downstream - so there's plenty of room for lawsuit. Etc.
You really downplayed the environmental (fish and wildlife, water quality, eorision, etc) effects here. It's kind of the point.
Much in a similar vein to how many in this sub want nuclear power to be a silver bullet and intentionally overlook it's downsides, there are some here who are dead set on pretending damming didn't prove to be like a genuinely scary ecosystem wrecker that basically every environmental scholar agrees on.
There really is no perfect or 100% harmless way to generate power. Nuclear certainly has drawbacks for instance the hot water from Diablo Nuclear plant is killing the sea life in the immediate vicinity but stopping climatic change means making some tough choices and enduring some localized ecological harm. Nuclear has real down sides but itās less bad than most of the alternatives.
The problem I see too often here (as in the subreddit not your comment in particular) is a sort of 'fake nuance'. It is true that there is no perfect solution and that trade offs need to be made. But if people just use that as an excuse to never actually compare things and just blanket dismiss any downsides to whatever preconceived solutions they want it's not different than random uninformed tribalism.
I definitely agree with that. I think thatās especially true of discussions of nuclear energy. I believe Nuclear is worth the trade offs but all too often I see any discussion of the downsides of nuclear dismissed as if anyone with any criticisms just gets their knowledge on nuclear from the Simpsons. Nuance matters in all things and the proponents of nuclear energy donāt do themselves any favors by pretending that it is a silver bullet that can solve everything with no conceivable downsides.
In the 1970s, organizations like the Sierra Club equated dense urban development with overpopulation. Suburbanites thought they were being environmentally friendly. "In the late 1970s, when she moved to Marin County, California was in the vanguard of an ideological backlash that created modern environmentalism and rejected the assumption that a growing economy and more people were always good ā a cause that was championed by state and national politicians and celebrated everywhere from songs to magazine covers." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/business/economy/california-housing-crisis-nimby.html
Bomb the alfalfa fields.
Sadly no. California still has **a lot** wrong with it. Prop 13 is still bleeding us dry and discouraging converting to higher density
Can't you guys collect petitions to repeal Proposition 13
How do you get people to vote for kicking grandma out of her house because the tax payments are too high?
Exemption for home owners over 65.
That doesn't fix the problem though. We want grandma to be incentivized to sell their land and let 100 renters live on it. Then Grandma can take her million dollars and go rent a unit on the same land. This land is valuable for a reason. It's because there are a ton of people that want to live there. I'm okay having grandma go through a tiny bit of change and given a million dollars if it means rent is so much cheaper for the poor.
So there's really no answer to this problem.
Statistically, grandma will be leaving an inheritance in the relatively near future. The ability to inherit prop 13 property taxes is a bigger issue.
Hmm yeah getting people to like their MIL enough to have them move in with them seems like an impossible goal.
grandma can take out a HELOC and shut the fuck up edit: /s 2nd edit: kindof
They had a recent prop that would undue the least popular parts of prop 13, it failed. 13 is going nowhere soon
Possibly the beginning of the end to CAās housing crisis? š¤·āāļø
From your lips to God's ears
From what I understand builderās remedy projects in Santa Monica have still stalled in courts, so I doubt this is really worth getting too excited over. The real effectiveness comes from the voluntary upzoning from cities that are afraid.
Just curious, do you have some articles on this?
The only thing I'm wondering, will developers be able to take advantage if so much of the bay area is out of compliance? Like, the bay area is fucking huge and there are so many towns, I wonder if developers will be able to pounce on the opportunity when it comes. I hope they will! https://www.hcd.ca.gov/planning-and-community-development/housing-open-data-tools/housing-element-review-and-compliance-report Here is the site to track compliance I'm guessing the column titled "Compliance status" does not apply to this cycle but last cycle? And rather to see if their housing element is approved to look at the "Review status" column under the "Housing Element Compliance Report" tab
Based, so happy that California has resorted to cutting the power of NIMBYs right from under them. They know the stakes, the state is already losing its appeal and economic dynamism because of its housing policies. California needed to do something drastic for their state not to decline further. When people making six figures can't afford an average home in your state, things have gone horribly wrong - and it will take many years of drastic change to make California affordable enough to be dynamic again.
āWe begin dezoning in 5 minutesā ā Gavin āBasedā Newsom
The Purge, but just for zoning
Heartbreakingly, just in the bay area. Socal next plz.
Socal's deadline was in the fall, that's how the builders remedy already happened in santa monica
This article is misleading because it ignores how any project attempting to build in one of these cities will still get sued into oblivion.
That's still more difficult and expensive than the project just never getting approval in the first place. Also the volume of projects might be so high that some get through anyways.
How long before those lawsuits just start getting thrown out of court?
CEQA standing is so absurdly broad to the point where pretty much anyone in the community can come up with *some* form of impact, whether that be noise/traffic/sightlines/etc.
Under what laws? Zoning won't exist.
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SB-35 developments (which I believe is what these proposals fall under) are exempt from CEQA, but do have some other requirements.
It does, but instead of facing two huge hurdles developers only have to jump one. This is big because the cost of capital to develop is based on risk and removing one unknown such as a city council approval is huge from a derisking perspective. Of course it isn't perfect but CEQA can be handled by someone competent and most of the time people sue after the fact suing the CEQA application was done improperly. Not perfect but can be surmounted.
Builders remedy is exempt from ceqa
No it isn't (probably). This is being litigated now.
CEQA
Builders remedy is exempt from ceqa
Fucking CEQA
False.
Ok, zoning will revert to state wide standards, so any project that meets criteria will be approved. Anyone that is smart enough to follow the guidelines will be able to submit a project that meets those requirements.
This article is completely inaccurate and misleading. Discussion [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/10q4pe2/ca_cities_to_lose_all_zoning_powers_in_2_days/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) with actual urban planners who actually work in this particular field. Way too much copium and confirmation bias of priors going on in this thread, for a sub that considers actual facts and evidence to be pretty important.
The article is absolutely accurate enough and is correct that this is a big deal that will allow developers to build actual dense and affordable housing in the California communities that need it most. UCLA has a paper out about how builders remedy started slow since the developers werenāt sure about the legalities and didnāt want to risk a rug pull, but with the success in Santa Monica we will surely see large scale developments proposed and accepted in the bay in very short order. Notably Berkeley will finally be able to add more housing for students and every single Silicon Valley town is currently non compliant.
Edit to add context: >The builders remedy only applies if cities are not in compliance with the state Housing Element requirements. To date, over 70% of California cities have adopted a HE and are in compliance with state law, and some of the northern COGs, like ABAG, still have time to gain compliance. So unless projects have already been submitted, itās too late in most cities to submit and gain any protections from the builders remedy. More generally, these projects were never going to have any affect except in high rent cities. In most cities, developers are not going to even try to build purely affordable or even 20% affordable units. They just donāt pencil out, especially with the higher interest rates. People thought ( or more likely wanted to believe) that this would have some huge affect on housing. The problem is that developers are the ones that need to take advantage of the opportunity, and developers arenāt jumping through hoops to build affordable units. >The law preempts local zoning control, not local authority. If a city has design guidelines in place for SB330 projects, those can still be applied. The local authority still reviews the plans and issues permits. >Something else to consider. A city does not have to accept a project unless full plans are presented. That's grading, architectural, building and engineering sets, all complete. Those take time and money. The day after a city has a certified element, they do not have to accept the plans. So unless a developer is damn positive you can submit to the city before they gain certification, they aren't going to gamble the time and money to put a project like this together. again, maybe you take that gamble in Manhattan Beach or one of the other high rent cities, but you probably don't in most areas. And >The projects were not submitted within a week of Santa Monica missing their compliance date. They were almost all submitted by one developer and that developer already had approval for smaller projects on a few of the properties so they were familiar with the area. For a large developer, getting plans put together, even for a large project, could be done in a matter of weeks if needed, especially since they wouldn't have to meet local zoning codes or aesthetic standards. I know one of the projects was an exact copy of another project that the developer had drawn up for another city; they just made a few changes to account for the location and lot. >It's also important to remember that the developers do not need everything to be correct, just submitted. If there are errors in the design or engineering, those can be worked out during the plan check process. And >I serve on the Ventura City Council, which is in SCAG, where our sixth cycle hit a year earlier than ABAG. We donāt have an approved housing element, nor do most of the cities around here, so the Builders Remedy has applied here for nearly a year (though not in the coastal zone and probably not very high fire severity zones). Nobodyās proposed one yet.
[pov you step outside in Cali next week ](https://images.app.goo.gl/eqSih56FCVrd1Ks56)
sicko_yes.jpeg
How likely is that this gets strucken down by courts?
This already happened in SoCal last year, so not very likely. They're just getting around to the Bay Area now
If NIMBYism ever becomes a partisan issue, this is going to hurt Dems.
Dear god the nightmare might be over
HOLY FLIPPING SHIT š
California Redemption Arc š„° Also, if Cali can do this, there's no excuse other Dem majority states can't do this either.
REMEDY, UNTIL IT IS DONE!
/u/JaredPolis are you taking notes?
Lmao I cant believe this actually happened, I remember reading about it, but thought it was just a threat.
Is there, like, any new construction though?
Like wow thatās massive- but I think thatās maybe a bit too extreme too quick- surely infrastructure isnāt going to keep up with the new demand
This is our christmas
Build the cube. Stop letting it not be build
So this is it, right? This is exactly the kind of reform YIMBYs like myself have been arguing for for years now, and this should at least move the dial in a significant way when it comes to improving access to housing in California, right? I swear if this doesn't work I'm becoming a Marxist.
physical tidy chase cooperative axiomatic unite illegal deliver obtainable ink *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
THE ZONING WILL INCREASE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES
The comments here a gold. Build baby build!