#upzoning

"Stealth Density", "Disguised Density", "Gentle Density"

How Architects tactfully design and pitch infill housing that responds to context and the politics of upzoning.

March 6 at 12:10pm ·

Friends in California: If you haven't familiarized yourself with State Bill 827, now is the time to do so. Think of it as the anti-NIMBY bill.

It allows for housing to be built by-right (as long as it conforms to zoning) within 1/2 mile of mass transit. It's the closest thing to a silver bullet we have in making LA + SF affordable in the future and preventing future displacement. If you care about equality and mixed incomes in our cities, this is your bill. It's really important.

ACTION: PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION below in support of SB827. Happy to chat about this more with folks who are unsure.

Sign the petition - SB827 makes San Francisco a place for everyone - San Francisco Housing Action Coalition

In Sacramento, Senator Scott Wiener has introduced Senate Bill 827, designed to improve California’s…

SFHAC.ORG

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Nick Hardy Any articles that give a more detailed analysis of the bill?

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Phil Levin sound bite analysis from the Boston Globe: "The bill may be the biggest environmental boon, the best job creator, and the greatest strike against inequality that anyone’s proposed in the United States in decades."

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Phil Levin Anti-bill article:

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/.../2018.../article/46357Manage

SB 827 (Skinner, D-Berkeley) will destroy local land use control.…

BERKELEYDAILYPLANET.COM

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Phil Levin Scott Weiner's Q&A around objections: https://extranewsfeed.com/my-transit-density-bill-sb-827...Manage

My Transit Density Bill (SB 827): Answering Common Questions…

EXTRANEWSFEED.COM

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Phil Levin Visualization of what it would look like: https://transitrichhousing.org/Manage

Visualizing Transit-Rich Housing: What Would SB 827 Really Look…

TRANSITRICHHOUSING.ORG

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Jonathan Isaacs https://48hills.org/2018/02/wiener-war-planning/Manage

Scott Wiener's war on local planning - 48 hills

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Delia Younge interesting..not a scot wiener fan and also read up on some of the groups opposing this and why...doesn't seem as great as it may appear right away. we have to look for the consequences , intended and unintended on the most vulnerable

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Phil Levin Delia - could you share some of the analysis objecting?

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Delia Younge I'd rather not if I dont have time to share all the historical context etc. that goes along with it and I dont' have time to assemble all of that. Let me know though if there any gatherings of people discussing this in person.

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Delia Younge or maybe i can host something at my apartment...

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Phil Levin Please do!

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Chris Herring You can think of it as an anti-NIMBY bill yes, but we can also think of it in the context of SF especially as a pro-luxury development bill. Here is some analysis as to why this will not create affordable housing in the bay area anytime soon and increase inequality (though may eventually - like 50 years on - mitigate it): http://www.sfccho.org/.../Hack-the-Housing-Crisis-A...

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Chris Herring http://www.sfccho.org/.../Filtering-Fallacy-Infographic...Manage

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Phil Levin Agree. There's no scalable way to create affordable housing in SF anytime soon. That ship sailed with decisions (or indecision) 20 years ago. At this point, we are working for the next generation. I hope the next generation can live in California's cities without a high-paying job or pound of flesh.

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Phil Levin The "filtering fallacy" point sounds like "well, we can't fix something today, so let's not fix it tomorrow either"

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Chris Herring Phil Levin We can also learn from NYC, where upzoning plans like this went through. Homelessness has doubled, affordability decreased, but yes there's more housing. I think we can do better and that this bill could derail more equitable forms of massive development. Here's Amanda Burden of NYC regretting aspects of this policy: https://nextcity.org/.../new-york-chief-planner-surprised...Manage

NYC Chief Planner Overstates Development, Which Explains…

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Phil Levin Chris - do you think NYC would have been more affordable if they had built less housing? Looking at the (less prosperous, less urban-centric) past is not the right counterfactual.

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Chris Herring I think the real solution is much higher affordable housing requirements and upzoning for affordable housing and restricting luxury housing. I'm fine with developing massive luxury and affordable housing simultaneously in seriously NIMBY suburban areas like silicon valley, but city's like SF with diverse communities need an approach that won't lead to one class being further evicted from the city.

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Phil Levin Chris Herring is that bill on the table? Or is this (the politically impossible) perfect being enemy of the good?

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Chris Herring Phil Levin I actually think that NYC would be more affordable if it hadn't built so much luxury housing in upzoned areas. Don't have time now, but my friend Sam Stein (worth a google) and folks at Columbia have found some indications of this. So its no...See More

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Phil Levin Do you think NYC would have been more affordable if they had built no more housing st all? Because this is the default. Agree with you that affordable > market rate. But is no housing > market rate housing?

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Chris Herring Phil Levin In some contexts yes. Because no new housing = more affordable housing for those currently residing in areas that will be upzoned in markets like SF. When neighborhoods are upzoned to allow bigger buildings, rent-stabilized landlords will have every reason to sell their properties to speculative developers. The new buyers then evict all the tenants, knock down the existing properties, and build something bigger and more expensive. A percentage of the new building would be affordable, but the outcome would likely be a net loss in low-cost apartments and a major hit to the rent-regulated housing stock. Might not play out like this Fresno, but it will in SF. I also don't like the choice you pose. We can do better. The truth is there is TONS of money out there for development including the development of affordable housing and this deal benefits one class with giving absolutely nothing to another.

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Chris Herring To add another thing - I actually think the statewide bill would lead to more affordable housing (esp in the middle income range) across the state, but would increase inequality in housing in San Francisco and certain neighborhoods in wealthier cities. In short, I wish the bill was ammended with greater protections for those zones. Then go ahead and pass this, and we can move onto fight for more affordable housing through other bills and means. It might sound like a small point on the state level, but for SF this could have serious consequences for accelerating inequality than even sticking with the status quo, which is clearly horrible.

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Chris Herring And one final point - I'm willing to let this bill fail due to opposition of its critics in wealthy cities this year so that it might come back in future years with amendments specifically aimed at protecting affordable rents and developing more affordable housing. The grassroots progressive bills I've worked on in state legislatures often take 2-8 years to finally get through with compromises at each turn. Developers are salivating over this and I'd rather delay the building a few years to make sure that the benefits don't just flow to the top so quickly.

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Nick Hardy The current NIMBY policies this bill eliminates (maximum density requirements, parking requirements) seem to incentivise luxury housing exclusively. Combined with high demand for housing in LA and SF, property owners are already selling their buildings to developers who build exclusively luxury apartments, evicting any low-income residents they can to make way for the new building.

Thus, it seems that this bill would reduce the incentive gap between luxury and affordable housing development.

In other words, the criticism that this bill will lead evicting low-income residents near mass-transit appears to be a straw-man because in fact that is already happening before the bill is even passed.

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Chris Herring Yes already happening, but this would blunt community resistance and make it much easier and lucrative to do so.

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Kim-Mai Cutler Chris Herring

1) I take issue with SF CCHO's filtering chart for a slightly different reason than you might think. The question with filtering isn't: do you want it to eventually filter down to minimum-wage workers? I think that ship has sailed a long time ago and it's obvious that if you want to build housing in coastal California accessible to minimum wage workers you do need a subsidy mechanic there -- way above and beyond the BMR/inclusionary program.

The question about market-rate housing is: do you want it to be twice as bad/horribly expensive in 5-10 years -- which also implies displacement and increased costs/per unit in preservation/production for deed restricted housing going forward.

Because with limited supply, that's just what the Bay Area has done for the past 30 years. The value of Bay Area real estate per unit just doubles in value every single economic boom and every decade, it gets that much more difficult and problematic to fix because the base of construction labor winnows away every cycle, and because it gets that much harder and more expensive to catch someone who gets displaced out of a rent controlled unit as baseline rents and costs double or triple.Manage

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Kim-Mai Cutler *AND* even with building 2-3K units/year, the number of listings per year has gone *down* in an upmarket by 40% since 2012. SF used to see roughly 9K existing and new units turn over per year. Now it's going to be below 5,000 sales this year. The property tax system in CA plus the lack of inventory induces people to stay in place, even if they want to downsize. (This is true in the suburbs with many residents approaching or passing retirement age.)

In the South Bay, peninsula, it's much worse. Even at $2-3M+ prices, YOY gains have been *25 percent* or so in the last year. I think that's where SF is heading, frankly.

And then with the West Bay not building, it's just spilled over into the East Bay suburbs, which have to warehouse the workers but don't get to collect the tax revenue from the jobs/companies. That's exhausted the remnant supply of "naturally affordable housing" in pockets of the East Bay, which contributed to the 40% spike in PIT homeless counts this past year.

I don't think the Amanda Burden numbers are that great TBH, 20K units permitted on a 3.4M housing stock, is basically the same production % rate as us with 2K units on a 380K housing stock.Manage

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Kim-Mai Cutler Regarding this: "I think the real solution is much higher affordable housing requirements and upzoning for affordable housing and restricting luxury housing. I'm fine with developing massive luxury and affordable housing simultaneously in seriously NIMBY suburban areas like silicon valley, but city's like SF with diverse communities need an approach that won't lead to one class being further evicted from the city."

The higher affordable housing requirements... depend on luxury housing to cross-subsidize them. The Mission District can support higher % rates for specific projects *because* rents are so high and that those units can either be rented or sold on the basis of cashflows that can then subsidize the deed-restricted units. If you make the numbers high, the project won't pencil and then people just won't build until prevailing rents in the area get high enough to justify building. This is what happened w/ Prop. C crushing the number of new projects proposed. In many cases, inclusionary is just a way for the existing constituents to avoid any responsibility in directly paying for or subsidizing affordable housing by pushing it onto the next generation or newcomers via their rental/housing costs in the new market-rate housing units. And it also generally doesn't get above the teens in %s, so it's not sufficient and also just tacks on more to the cost of production market-rate units.

Voters have shown some more willingness to directly subsidize affordable housing through the $310M housing bond in SF, then $580M in Alameda County, and then a $4B bond that will be coming this year on the ballot for the entire state, which is promising, though still insufficient.

Units are "luxury-priced" because they actually cost that much to build. You can see it in the affordable housing production costs.

This South Van Ness project is coming in at $889,000 per unit. http://www.socketsite.com/.../budget-to-build-72...

This Mission Bay project is coming in at $427,000 per unit *excluding land costs* which are usually a few hundred thousand dollars per unit and using a cheaper modular construction type: http://www.socketsite.com/.../projected-timing-and-cost...

Per your concern about existing tenant-occupied buildings being torn down, Scott is adding in amendments that subordinate the law to local demolition controls and also add controls for rent-controlled housing: https://medium.com/.../sb-827-amendments-strengthening...

Projects that knock down rent-stabilized buildings basically don't get through a San Francisco process unless the developer offers right of return with multiple years of relocation costs covered. I think I've only 1-2 projects like that in the city's history too.

Then I'm also, also fine with your assessment that the bill can come through in future sessions as well. The fact that you're even open to that suggests that the Overton Window is moving, and that's a good thing.Manage

SocketSite™ | Budget To Build 72 Affordable Units In The Mission:…

SOCKETSITE.COM

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Phil Levin ... and that’s why you add Kim-Mai Cutler to all housing threads.

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Kim-Mai Cutler Chris Herring is pretty awesome on homelessness and sociology of poverty tho.

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Chris Herring Thanks Kim-Mai Cutler! I'm glad you agree with the CCHO filtering chart that this stuff will not trickle down to minimum wage workers or, I'd say folks making solidly working class job salaries - like teachers for instance :) - at least in hyper markets like SF, LA, or NYC. I still here this argument being made all the time. However, I wouldn't just leave the question at "do you want it to be twice as bad/horribly expensive in 5-10 years for market rate housing?" Is there not a case to be made that with the development of more market rate housing that this bill would produce may indeed reduce rents for those of us say making between 60 - 150% AMI. However in doing so, it may also increase rents in the areas that this more expensive housing is being developed that would raise rents on surrounding units thus destroying formerly deeply affordable units for those say making less than 50% AMI. This is what I saw a lot of in NYC where the upzoning occurred (and maybe this comparison isn't as tight as I'm drawing). In other words YES market prices don't double and increase as badly as they have in the past, BUT more deeply affordable units end up being taken off the market being more hastily converted. . . Or do you think that the changes from this legislation will not increase surrounding rents for poorer residents more than they would if not passed? I'm glad that Scott is including amendments to subordinate the law to local demolition controls and add controls for rent-controlled housing. I know the destruction of rent-stabilized buildings is rare in SF, as It is also in NYC, but it's a risk I and others worry about, b/c the numbers are tipping that far there. I guess I just worry about the "natural turn-over" of units in these areas going back on the market at even higher rents than they would have without the new development this bill may bring.

Another point on the NYC case - I agree with you the numbers of increased units in relation to total supply was simply not enough to make a dent. In short, it did little to help the supply issue and may have destroyed more affordable units than they created for those making less than 50% AMI. What are the projections for this bill in relation to total housing stock? Do you think they'll really be able to have an outsized impact in the Bay?

I think the regional perspective you bring is especially good. But I also wonder if we need to think globally. The thing is with luxury housing in global cities is supply often creates its own demand, where if you build housing costing over a certain amount it attracts wealthy people willing to speculate or wealthy people wanting to move and do business in the city, whereas if such a type of housing does not exist it works as a deterent thus preserving affordability. So I'm just not won over by the argument that increasing luxury housing trickles down even to the market-rate level in city's that hold such a high standing in global circuits of capital UNLESS we have a much much larger expansion of supply than what is included in this bill. I gess the argument here is that you have to start somewhere, but I do think there are cases where just adding just a little more luxury development not to scale could increase inequality in the long-term. But again this is an empirical question we'll only really be able to assess in decades.

I get your point that adding % on inclusionary drives up costs and further promotes super-luxury housing. I guess I would just like to see a class sensitive analysis around the "NIMBY" and "YIMBY" debate, and also would like to think about how changes in zoning incentives (rather than taxes, which as we know we both agree on is the real issue here) might increase higher density and greater units of truly affordable units in both poor and wealthy neighborhoods, while incentivizing the development of more and higher density development of luxury or simply market rate housing for those making over 100% AMI in areas of already existing luxury development and wealthy residents? I understand there are limits to the economics of construction, but if we made laws and zoning parameters that restricted and incentivized developments of properties with certain rent thresholds could we not lower the price of land (which is based off its potential ground rent) to develop more affordable housing in some spots, while reducing community resistance to increased development in wealthier areas and unlocking new potential ground rents by adding more density rights?

To just get the gist of what you are saying - would I be right to characterize your analysis as basically - This bill will reduce rents across the city and reduce sprawl, and will not contribute to the destruction of affordable housing units in the city (and by destruction I mainly mean evictions and rent increases on currently more deeply affordable units). Or do you think that it will actually help protect those making 50% or less of AMI continue to afford housing. Or might the bill hasten gentrification, price out some very poor people, but this is OK, and we need to look to other solutions to address the deep affordability issue separate from the general market.

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Chris Herring Also - if you haven't picked up from these threads - my main point of analysis is where this housing bill intersects with poverty and homelessness. I think this may very well be a good bill for basically everyone making more than 50% or at least 70% of the Area Media Income, I'm just not convinced that it won't hurt those at the bottom more than the status quo zoning/development already does. Most people would probably be willing to sign this bill and sacrifice the well-being at the end of the social ladder and I think its important to consider. The "Affordable" in "affordable housing" has a lot of different meanings - and the whole NIMBY, YIMBY debate is occurring largely outside a class analysis.

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Kim-Mai Cutler I don't think it's possible to address the global luxury demand problem until housing is not a highly government protected & highly financialized asset class that is structured to return more than median wages are increasing to support those prices. The houses in the peninsula already go for $3-25M and are protected under 1 house per 1 acre zoning codes in certain communities down there. Those aren't so-called condos but the land underneath them is going for ultra-luxury prices and sell on a global market. The same behavior is happening in either case, whether you build or not, just with different "housing/investment products." Single-family homes also hold and retain financial value better than condos do, since there is effectively an almost absolute limited supply of them in coastal California, while the supply of condos can always increase in subsequent cycles.

I'm not sure when the above problem gets addressed since.... our country is basically entirely based on a yeoman farmer/property-owning democracy concept and has never really been able to address this in its entire 250 year history or so.

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David Peters Chris Herring, I thought your 50/70% AMI point was interesting.

Back when I spent much of my time on the problem of creating “affordable”* housing, we did a lot of work looking at who subsidized it. Not who pays the subsidy (developers, taxpayers) bu...See More

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Chris Herring Thanks for this David. I agree with all of this. I guess the question is how do we translate this to policy? Modest density bonuses don't seem to provide the pay-off. Have you seen any conceptual plans/policies to promote such build out in the Bay area...See More

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Kim-Mai Cutler Chris Herring If voters want a large quantity of low-income or very low-income housing, they need to be willing to pay taxes to subsidize it.

Inclusionary zoning came into vogue in the early 2000s in part because politicians didn't feel like they coul...See More

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David Peters “And this is the dilemma of the progressive-moderate housing debate because it functionally pits middle-income folks against low-income folks. It's like -- how much of the middle-class are you willing to sacrifice because they can't keep up with escalating rents, in order to extract a small number of deed-restricted, income-targeted units.”

Exactly this. This, this, this.

The only way out of it is to encourage *responsible* (viz. transit-oriented) overbuilding, which means a complete rethinking of zoning laws and the permitting process — or exactly what the proposed law does!

I’d only argue it doesn’t go far enough. There are other, more extreme ways to encourage rapid overbuilding, but nobody is proposing them.

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Jonathan Isaacs A key problem in San Francisco, developers can pay a fee to avoid building affordable housing-this needs to stop.

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Phil Levin does this bill impact that in any way Jonathan?

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David Peters If done right (eg, where that fee goes) this is actually a much more effective solution than having them build affordable housing.

Requiring developers to build affordable housing fucks over the middle class, not the rich. It’s like need-based financial aid: the bottom 20% wins, the top 20% doesn’t care, the middle 60% gets screwed.

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Arielle Lasky Following

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Jonathan Isaacs Kim-Mai Have you read this bill, written any thoughts?

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Jessica Cole Let’s talk about this during our lunch dates - have some internal angles

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Nils Schulze-Halberg I'm no city planner or housing developer, but that seems to be the balancing factor to the insane house price bubble here in Toronto. Free standing houses have become unaffordable with the average price well above a million, but the city's active promo...See More

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Phil Levin @all - The exchange between Chris Herring and Kim-Mai Cutler above is very much worth a read.

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David Peters Also, for the record: there exists a relatively simple, economically straightforward, market-based (albeit theoretical) solution that’s pretty much guaranteed to create broad housing affordability — but nobody (neither developers, nor community groups, nor NIMBYs) like it.

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Chris Herring The Georgist 100% tax on land :)?

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