California’s zoning laws are cobbled together by the total opposite: ordinary local officials with a myopic focus on the interests of current property owners and a general hostility to anyone else.
Houston zoning really is a breath of fresh air.
As far as Texas goes, what about Austin? Housing is probably cheaper, but rising quickly because of tech interests. Houston, on the other hand, should be suffering from a downturn in the oil sector.
Houston: 63k / 230k Austin: 55k / 230k Dallas: 52k / 223k SF: 90k / 1,200k LA: 64k / 723k Sacramento: 67k / 350k
Based on a quick Google search.
It's also worth noting that the lack of regulations that Houstonians take pride in contributed to the devastation caused by Harvey in a big way.
[0]: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/...
[1]https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/urban-sprawl-worst-c...
And California cities are?
Did you look at the rankings in your source? Houston comes in at #9 in terms of worst air pollution.
#1-#8 are all California cities, with the exception of one in Arizona.
In fact, California cities rank the highest in air pollution across all the measures.
[1]https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/healthy-air/sota/city-r...
No, I did not say California cities are, for precisely the reasons you stated in fact!
You said Houston is "the worst counter-example" to San Francisco because the pollution is so high.
Yet, pollution is worse in in the bay area than Houston.
SF/Bay/North Cal is a very aspirational place, Houston is not.
And can you really say SF is aspirational if Houston is growing 4 times faster?
As globalization increases, there is ever more increasing demand for SF/Bay real estate, it's becoming ever more elite due to the fixed nature of housing.
'All things being equal' in terms of cost, SF would be the choice 8 times out of 10 for people as a destination. SF boundaries are fixed, housing is limited, Houston is large and has room for new housing; Houston's growth is due to affordability, not because it's aspirational.
'Tourism' isn't a perfect estimation of livable aspiration, I mean, Orlando gets massive numbers of visitors each year, but SF gets a huge number of visitors as well without 'Disneyland/Epcot' to draw them in, even with a relatively small population, it's a top tourist destination in the US. [1]. Houston doesn't get a lot of tourists.
Also, Houston's population growth has slowed dramatically, with new births accounting for more than the ingress population this year.
[1] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-visited-cities-...
With worker mobility ever increasing in this world, the demand for the 'nice spots' skyrockets.
It's cheaper in Houston because people don't want to live in Houston- at least not nearly to the same degree.
The number of households between 40k-90k is greater than the over 200k group.
I do agree anti building regulations are bad and somewhat at fault but it's not an apples to apples comparison by any means.
Rich people want to live on the west coast because it's beautiful and the weather is pretty nice. In fact I wish I could live on the west coast but could no longer afford to once the baby came along and my wife and I decided to go single income.
California makes money off of me being in it. Why is it good policy to drive an industry out?
I'm sorry you're unhappy with how zoning and local governance exists today, but that's the hand that has been dealt.
> California makes money off of me being in it. Why is it good policy to drive an industry out?
If you're happy with the quality of life available with the status quo (renting forever with rents continually increasing faster than inflation), feel free to stay. It's your income; if you want to rent forever, that's your choice.
Owning in a high cost of living geographic area is not a right, it is a luxury obtained mostly by luck (either through a purchase before property value increased or a present day windfall of some sort, whether that's an inheritance, the startup lottery, or a high single or dual income that can support servicing a large amount of mortgage debt).
A hand that has resulted in the ""housing crisis"" which is why we are here talking about why and how it should be changed.
You’d be asking existing and potential property owners to vote against their own interests. Progress isn’t impossible, but it’s going to take decades to make meaningful reforms.
Like anything else in politics, it's a turnout game. Development regulation is an obscure issue. There's a lot of room for people who would be okay with denser cities (and thus haven't paid attention) to learn about it and show up.
And then of course there's the movement we're already seeing in state legislatures.
Neither is a specific type of zoning. Your rights as a property owner are explicitly listed on your deed. Zoning is not one of them, and you have no basis to feel entitled to preservation of your neighborhood in the state it was when you bought it.
This is kind of a weird take. Whether someone can afford to fulfill as basic of a need as housing shouldn't be about luck, no matter the qualities of the area concerned. It's kind of like saying whether someone can afford to eat on a given day should be based on luck—we would think that's crazy, and for good reason. The housing crisis is currently ripping families and friendships apart, not to mention fraying the very fabric of civic and community life—all so a select few lucky folks can feel like they've made it. House prices in the Bay Area (and in other currently high-priced metros) will revert, sooner or later, but in the meantime, we're willing to cause a lot of pain and suffering in the name of picking winners and losers, if only momentarily. And speaking as someone who owns a home in a desirable part of the Bay Area and is 100% pro-housing, I don't really get it. It's really sad to see a lot of my neighbors supporting regressive anti-housing policy—it's almost like sociopathy on a massive scale.
I'm not so sure it's unnecessary. I (and my employer) find it very useful that I have so many colleagues within walking distance of my desk and that we have centralized meeting, event, and dining infrastructure.
I also find it very useful to have so many other employers nearby that I could work at if this job doesn't work out. My employer finds it very useful to have such a large local labor market for the kinds of roles they need to fill.
I'm not opposed to income and property taxes on these marginal increases in productivity that the tech industry gets in the Bay Area, but I strongly disagree that the industry's large presence is somehow inefficient. The tech industry actually uses the resources of the area more efficiently than other industries because of these network effects.
If you buy a $1MM home you are rich, no scare quotes required! I think this explains a lot of the dynamic: rich people do not believe they are rich.
Only in California would people complain "there are too many high paying jobs being created".
Las Vegas is basically Southern California relocated to the closest big city that's building houses.
My family transplanted from Santa Barbara.
And my wife is a transplant from San Diego.
Can this be quantified? When people complain about increased housing demand due to tech, clearly they're not talking about existing CA residents taking up tech jobs (since they already lived there), so we're talking about people immigrating to CA (from other states or countries) to work in tech. But how much does that actually contribute to housing demand?
Let's see some numbers. What percentage of California's population growth since 1978 (prop 13 year) was due to immigration (vs natural pop growth), and what percentage of those immigrants came to work in tech?
2) Tech companies unnecessarily demand butts in chairs in the Bay Area, foisting the externalities onto the commons (infrastructure and housing). Tax them more if they won't go remote/support remote work. Destroy demand for dense housing and the associated infrastructure.
3) It's documented that there's substantial Chinese money flowing into specific US markets (the US isn't alone of course; Canada, Australia, and the UK also have this problem). This pushes up the price of real estate, whether these properties are lived in or simply used as a store of value outside of the CCP's reach.
Due to property owner/voter and governance momentum, it is unlikely you will see the will to increase development inertia in any California market that requires it, ever. Your options are to complain and put up with it, find an economic path to leaping onto the ownership ladder ("startup lottery", inheritance, etc), or eventually abandoning hope and moving somewhere cheaper/more development friendly (such as Colorado, Texas, Utah, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, etc).
Disclaimer: Not a CA resident, too expensive!