News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Stripe to donate $1M to California Yimby by chrischen on Thursday May 03, 2018 @05:28PM (#16990137)
I find it hard to believe that "poor non-white people" have the political clout necessary to block SB 827 and housing in general, nor would it serve their interests. I think this is a false flag being proposed and the people against housing are mostly long term residents that don't want to see change because it will get rid of their current under-market pricing housing.
Re:Stripe to donate $1M to California Yimby by epistasis on Thursday May 03, 2018 @05:53PM (#16990333)
There were two constituencies that would most directly benefit from SB 827 that did not support it this year, that most likely will in the future:

* construction labor - no construction bill is going to get by without their approval

* tenant advocates - without their support it's quite unlikely that the bill will make it through all the way

Municipalities almost universally opposed SB 827, and state legislatures generally cede to them, but with the above two groups, SB 827 probably has fantastic chances.

Construction labor opposed it because currently the discretionary review process is where prevailing wages concessions can be extracted from a developer; construction labor doesn't want to miss out on that. Adding prevailing wages to SB 35 is what brought that group to the table. If labor can be brought on board for SB 827 like they were for SB 35, it's going to go far.

Tenant advocates are nervous about development in general, for very good reason, because that has been the primary way that low income neighborhoods have been destroyed. For SB 827 to come through, it has to be shown that it won't cause the same problems that past development focused on "blighted" areas caused. I think it's quite likely that this will happen because the non-profits that build affordable housing tend to like SB 827. Since SB 827 only hits current neighborhoods in a very few places, there are only a few neighborhoods to protect, so it seems possible to ensure proper protections directly in the bill or through other means.

It seems likely that SB 827 didn't have these groups included yet because the bill sponsors were surprised by the huge amount of press (including national!!) it received and momentum it gained. Given the very short amount of time to coordinate with these interest groups, I don't 100% blame the committee chair for killing it so soon. But with enough time some sort of transit-oriented development bill come through. It has to, both for California's housing crisis and for California's climate goals.

Re:Stripe to donate $1M to California Yimby by chrischen on Thursday May 03, 2018 @06:11PM (#16990472)
Based on my reading it seemed like SB 827 was doomed because there was no way municipalities were going to support it (it basically removed their power to decide on the matter), even if they believe in the policies it enforced.
Re:Stripe to donate $1M to California Yimby by epistasis on Thursday May 03, 2018 @06:16PM (#16990509)
Yes, I'm certain that municipalities will oppose almost anything that lessens local control. However that alone is not enough to stop legislation; the housing package of bills got through last year!

Also, it seems likely that "transit" oriented development will be weakened to just "rail" oriented development. In that case, the vast majority of municipalities won't be directly affected, and may actually have reason to support it. That's because it forces their neighbors who are slacking to actually allow people to build, and this should benefit all the municipalities that aren't affected. So it may be possible to split them.

Municipalities are a bit different from just NIMBYs though too, municipalities typically want office space and other business related development because it brings in tax revenue. Housing is seen as a negative to the city budgets, oddly, because of Prop 13.

NIMBY groups (which I am trying to use without an pejorative meaning, simply in reference to neighborhood groups), typically don't act at the state level, except through forcing their municipality to support or oppose specific measures. At least as far as I can tell. I'm still new to this landscape.