Daddy (at the state level) knows best when it comes to local housing policy

[FaC]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027747023

KamaAina (73,985 posts)

A Massachusetts state legislator has a big idea to ease the urban rent crisis

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/6/11370258/honan-zoning-reform-bill

Boston is one of several big coastal metropolitan areas suffering from a severe housing shortage driven by excessive limits on housing construction. A bill by Massachusetts General Assembly member Kevin Honan that's cleared the housing committee offers a glance at what a solution to the housing crisis gripping the United States is likely to look like.

Not action by the federal government, which is too remote from local land use issues to make a decisive difference. And not action by local governments, which are too tied up in picayune concerns and risk aversion to make the changes America needs.

What America needs is for states — particularly states like Massachusetts, California, and New York — to take the lead and recognize that housing policy is too important to be left up to a motley assortment of town councils and neighborhood committees. If the economies of America's highest-wage, best-educated metropolitan areas are going to grow, then they need to have places for people to live, and it's state governments that are going to have to make them do it.
The idea: force towns to zone for multifamily uses

Honan's bill does something pretty simple. As Clark Ziegler and Christopher Oddleifson of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership describe it:
The bill would require that every city and town plan for multifamily housing and designate areas where it is allowed as-of-right. It would also require every community to allow single-family homes clustered on modest lots in compact, walkable neighborhoods surrounded by open space. Cities and towns would be compensated for any net increases in school costs that result from their approval of multifamily and cluster developments.

Not much yet but I suspect that it could grow since it would be a way for the state to dictate who should be able to live where and override local zoning...

[Chris_]

It would also require every community to allow single-family homes clustered on modest lots in compact, walkable neighborhoods surrounded by open space.

Suburbs?

[J P Sousa]

As much as the DUmmies cry about long ago slavery, they are just too eager to be slaves to the state.   

[thundley4]

The bill would require that every city and town plan for multifamily housing and designate areas where it is allowed as-of-right. It would also require every community to allow single-family homes clustered on modest lots in compact, walkable neighborhoods surrounded by open space.

WTF?  Except for open areas "surrounding" clustered single family homes most cities already do this. A lot of cities have have neighborhood parks.

[SVPete]

There's half a kernel of truth in the diagnosis of the problem. Governments have caused a housing shortage, but not just the local cities.

* Federal environmental regs restrict building and are used by local activists to impede and stop building.

* State environmental regs do much the same, and many states' labor laws increase the costs of building.

* Cities use zoning to restrict building and tack on fees and take-aways, basically milking cash developers as if they were cows. "Use permits" are also used against developers, businesses, and churches (re churches, multiple cities have tried this to prevent any further building of churches in their city - they've been slapped down in court, but keep trying, forcing religious people to waste large amounts of $$ in litigation that should never have been necessary).

* Within states, but regionally, there are quasi-governmental and governmental creatures like "open space districts" that make large amounts of land off-limits for building or like CA's Coastal Commission that has such absolute power in "coastal" areas that they can refuse to permit a home owner to repair damage due to weather and age, unless the home owner gives up some part of their land or gives up some sort of "public access" easement.

[Carl]

Eminent Domain to create ghettos in rural communities.
Yeah,go for it retards.

[I_B_Perky]

There's half a kernel of truth in the diagnosis of the problem. Governments have caused a housing shortage, but not just the local cities.

* Federal environmental regs restrict building and are used by local activists to impede and stop building.

* State environmental regs do much the same, and many states' labor laws increase the costs of building.

* Cities use zoning to restrict building and tack on fees and take-aways, basically milking cash developers as if they were cows. "Use permits" are also used against developers, businesses, and churches (re churches, multiple cities have tried this to prevent any further building of churches in their city - they've been slapped down in court, but keep trying, forcing religious people to waste large amounts of $$ in litigation that should never have been necessary).

* Within states, but regionally, there are quasi-governmental and governmental creatures like "open space districts" that make large amounts of land off-limits for building or like CA's Coastal Commission that has such absolute power in "coastal" areas that they can refuse to permit a home owner to repair damage due to weather and age, unless the home owner gives up some part of their land or gives up some sort of "public access" easement.

Hit the nail on the head.  H5!

I'd like to see the oh so smart urban dummies be herded into micro apartments, all in the name of mother Earth and globull warming, and see how they like it.

[diesel driver]

Hit the nail on the head.  H5!

I'd like to see the oh so smart urban dummies be herded into micro apartments, all in the name of mother Earth and globull warming, and see how they like it.

I like to see them herded into shipping containers and dumped into the ocean, but that's just me.  (Feeling mean this morning.  Woke up to 2 inches of snow and a aching back.)

[SVPete]

Hit the nail on the head.  H5!

I'd like to see the oh so smart urban dummies be herded into micro apartments, all in the name of mother Earth and globull warming, and see how they like it.

The bizarre, perverse, and malignant part of that article's "reasoning" - besides ignoring the fact that state and Federal governments have contributed significantly to housing shortages - is that while it hit the nail head off-center, it's "solution" was to shift authority and power from the locals who would have to live with the "solution" and take the "what" decision power from the marketplace and give it to government planners. IOW, the "solution" for a problem partly caused by local government, over which locals can exert considerable control (through the ballot), is more centralized government, where the locals' control is diluted by the rest of the states' voters.

[SVPete]

I like to see them herded into shipping containers and dumped into the ocean, but that's just me.  (Feeling mean this morning.  Woke up to 2 inches of snow and a aching back.)

Your and I_B_P's visions aren't incompatible. Just put those micro-condo complexes on wheels and ...

In SF it could be mandated that the micro-condo complexes be built only on the bay or ocean sides of the hills, making it easier to ........ if we could just force the members of the SF Board of Stuporvisors to live in those mobile micro-condos ...

[J P Sousa]

The solution is here;

[Skul]

The solution is here;

That's for a family of four JP. Larger families can purchase a three foot extention provided they have the luxury 12x20 foot lot.
Isn't socialism wonderful?   

[Karin]

I like to see them herded into shipping containers and dumped into the ocean, but that's just me.  (Feeling mean this morning.  Woke up to 2 inches of snow and a aching back.)

Not just you, and we didn't get any snow.  Still cold though.  Where the hell is Spring?

SVPete, California apparently has an acute problem with this. 

[I_B_Perky]

I like to see them herded into shipping containers and dumped into the ocean, but that's just me.  (Feeling mean this morning.  Woke up to 2 inches of snow and a aching back.)

And contaminate the ocean?  That would ruin the beaches, DD. Would you like to sit on a beach where a bunch of dummies have been dumped offshore?  Me neither.   

Alright.... we need a new plan.  How about we put them on ships and send them to North Korea?  Let the dummies experience the return to nature that they advocate for everyone else.  They could spend their days living off the grid and getting back to mother nature in one of their nature camps.   

[SVPete]

Not just you, and we didn't get any snow.  Still cold though.  Where the hell is Spring?

SVPete, California apparently has an acute problem with this.

  Karin, SF Bay Area (I live in San Jose, about 50 miles and a galaxy away from SF) weather this past week has been schizo! Wednesday and Thursday temps were in the 80s and low 90s. Then Friday's high was in the low-mid 70s, and yesterday the high was in the 60s, with rain showers throughout the day. Saturday AMs are when I usually hit the trails for a ~2 hour walk. Not yesterday. I wasn't in the mood for a 2-hour soaking.

[Carl]

Wasn`t this thinking referred to as "the projects" back in the 70s?

How did that work out?

[SVPete]

Wasn`t this thinking referred to as "the projects" back in the 70s?

How did that work out?

I think the term, "The Projects," came into use in the 40s or 50s. But whether "The Projects" or "Urban Renewal" or the aptly named "Section 8 Housing" government-planning housing hasn't worked very well (Can you say, "Insta-Slum"? I knew you could.).

[CollectivismMustDie]

Alright.... we need a new plan. 

Anywhere where their political and economic beliefs are taken to their logical conclusions works for me, but they can't come back. Enough californians leaving CA to ruin other states as it is, no sense in making it national.


CMD

[samspade]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027747023


Not much yet but I suspect that it could grow since it would be a way for the state to dictate who should be able to live where and override local zoning...

Looks to me an attempt to allow the type of units  that illegals  have  so they can place twenty individuals in a house  without sufficient facilities and over burdening the sewer systems and electric grid. 

[SVPete]

Looks to me an attempt to allow the type of units  that illegals  have  so they can place twenty individuals in a house  without sufficient facilities and over burdening the sewer systems and electric grid.

More like the government-mandated isolated bubble-cities and government-mind-controlled society of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.

[diesel driver]

And contaminate the ocean?  That would ruin the beaches, DD. Would you like to sit on a beach where a bunch of dummies have been dumped offshore?  Me neither.   

Alright.... we need a new plan.  How about we put them on ships and send them to North Korea?  Let the dummies experience the return to nature that they advocate for everyone else.  They could spend their days living off the grid and getting back to mother nature in one of their nature camps.

Give Space X an appropriation, tell DUmmies they're going to Mars, launch them into the sun instead...  (Blame it on a "navigational calculation error")

NK is too risky, they COULD return home...

[SVPete]

Give Space X an appropriation, tell DUmmies they're going to Mars, launch them into the sun instead...  (Blame it on a "navigational calculation error")

And on further investigation, announce that the navigational calculation error was a Koch Brothers-Trump-Cruz-BFEE conspiracy.

[CollectivismMustDie]

Give Space X an appropriation, tell DUmmies they're going to Mars, launch them into the sun instead...  (Blame it on a "navigational calculation error")

I wouldn't trust them not to somehow **** up the sun.


CMD

[AprilRazz]

I like to see them herded into shipping containers and dumped into the ocean, but that's just me.  (Feeling mean this morning.  Woke up to 2 inches of snow and a aching back.)

Sure we could find a few hog lagoons to dump them in.

[BlueStateSaint]

I like to see them herded into shipping containers and dumped into the ocean, but that's just me.  (Feeling mean this morning.  Woke up to 2 inches of snow and a aching back.)

As long as it was the Marianas Trench.