<p><pre><code> SB 827 creates density and height zoning minimums near transit.
Under SB 827, parcels within a half-mile of high-connectivity transit
hub — like BART, Muni, Caltrain, and LA Metro stations — will
be required to have no density maximums (such as single family
home mandates), no parking minimums, and a minimum height limit
of between 45 and 85 feet, depending on various factors, such
as whether the parcel is on a larger corridor and whether it is
immediately adjacent to the station. A local ordinance can increase
that height but not go below it. SB 827 allows for many more
smaller apartment buildings, described as the “missing middle”
between high-rise steel construction and single family homes.
</code></pre>
I think this is overstepping a lot and I hope it fails. Muni is very much within san francisco where there is high density housing, but does this mean all stops? There's a million muni stops and some of them are in areas that don't need such high density. BART can travel very far outside the city to less dense areas. Some caltrain stations are very suburban. This says all parcels within half mile of those station need to be higher density, that is a LOT of homes. You are telling those people who live there that they can never rebuild? If they want to rebuild their house they need to make it into an apartment complex? Is their parcel even big enough for that?<p>There's hundreds and hundreds of 5,000sqft lots within a half mile of caltrain. Your house burns down in a fire, you cant build it back? A 45 foot house would be at least 3 stories. It's one thing to say we need more dense homes in this area. But if the area was designed and laid our for single family homes with small single family lots, how is putting a 3 story house on those small lots going to help? It's also saying there's no minimum parking requirements. Not that you could really get any underground parking on some of these lots but street parking is going to be trashed as well? It's the suburbs! You do need a car out there! Caltrain/Bart is not the only form of transportation you use!<p>This seems really shortsighted and ignores the problem that each city and community is a little different. Some cities along the Bart/Caltrain lines could handle this. Others could not. A top down approach saying everything is the same and must follow these rules is not going to work
What precisely does "X% of people in an metropolitan statistical area cannot afford local rent?" mean?<p>Aren't all those people paying rent now? If not, in what sense are they "in" an area? If so, in what sense can they not "afford" it?<p>A large category of people not paying rent is homeowners. Retired homeowners might have small incomes that suggest they can't afford rent, but because they own their home they are fine. Are they part of X%?<p>What is "local rent"? Perhaps they mean an average of the area. If so, it's not surprising that a good fraction can't afford the average rent, so they live in below-average apartments. Any healthy housing market would have this.<p>What is "afford"? Is there some percentage of income they're assumed to be able to pay as rent? If some people decide to spend a higher percentage of their income on rent because they care about their neighborhood more than eating out or buying gadgets, do they belong in a statistic that seems designed to show how unaffordable housing is?<p>I imagine one could write definitions of the above terms to get X anywhere from 0% to 100%.
How does this compare with the dynamic height restrictions advocated by the Strong Towns blog?<p>For more about the problem:
<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/23/portland-housing-prices" rel="nofollow">https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/23/portland-hous...</a>
This is all tinkering around the edges. It may help some, but in general it's still not sufficient to address the problems with housing in this state, and especially in the hardest hit regions (e.g. Bay Area).<p>I really think that a policy of much denser housing in urban areas must be enacted, including liberal application of eminent domain to reduce the existing stock of low-density homes. Requiring minimum heights within a tiny area around transit hubs helps but just doesn't even come close to addressing the problem.<p>Applying additional taxes on individual owner dwellings (including single-family homes, condos and townhouses) that aren't primary residences would be a huge step also. It should be very expensive for someone to own these properties and not occupy them.<p>At the same time, significant tax discounts tied to passing on the savings to renters for multi-family, high-density dwellings ought to be considered.