There's a bill like this every few years, and it always gets shot down. The latest is SB827, which was shot down, too.
https://slate.com/business/2018/01/california-bill-sb827-res...
In general, the problem isn't with people being unwilling to sell to developers; the problem is that even after the developers get the property, they are prevented from developing it in a high density manner.
Eminent domain is used daily in the US and around the world. It would literally be impossible to build and maintain a transportation network without it.
I have so many questions about what happens in that regional development council hypothetical with astronomically high housing prices and homelessness:
- Do you play benevolent city planner and let current residents in these low density zones stay, redevelop around them? This is already happening without much help needed from the city, hastening that seems to be a good way to add to the homeless population resulting from displaced families fleeing the inevitable raise in property value and therefore taxes, no?
- Do you play well meaning but forward marching city planner who has to watch families move out of their city acquired land and homes, sure probably with a check in hand and a pat on the back hoping they make it-when realistically the market probably, very likely (A) don't have room for them or (B) probably out of their financial range to even relocate to nearby neighborhoods?
I just don't see a path forward here for SF using eminent domain that doesn't come with some very painful outcomes that probably exacerbate the very problem it would intend to solve. An unforced error.
Perhaps I'm overthinking the conceit here, but it's an experience I've lived through, so maybe that explains why my eyebrow immediately shot up.
Who’s talking about that?
All you have to do, literally, is just stop actively preventing people from building apartment buildings. The market will have no trouble taking care of the rest.
Won't their checks be for fair market value of their expropriate property? So by definition, they should be able to relocate within the neighborhood?
As someone who's been on the short end of eminent domain for a freeway offramp in north LA, nope. The city tends to hire their own appraisers with their own way of looking at things. Considering that most eminent domain cases run through single family housing without existing homebuilder contracts with the city (at this point, we're talking homes before 1980), there are a litany of ways in which a city appraiser can devalue the house. Yes, of course you can hire an appraiser go to bat for you.
The short and sweet of it is that the city can use things like "you never applied for a permit to build this addition" or "your re-roofing was never replaced with high wind resistant (no joke) tar." At this point, we're talking multiple visits from an appraiser (assuming you can find one willing to deal with city bureaucracy), and lawyer fees to handle the entire case.
That doesn't even begin to address the emotional quagmire of the fact that they knocked on _your_ door. You'll probably need to need to talk to a counselor for that one.
The core problem is that SF property owners value their homes, communities, and property values over the inclusion of additional residents, and that won't change without stripping this constituency of their property and voting rights (which is of course untenable in a functioning democracy).