Also, the developer who actually wrote that the developmentally disabled would provide "a source of loyal, entry-level employees."

Obviously hasn't met my stepdaughter.

I've been teaching people with Downs Syndrome to throw rocks at parked Land Rovers.

The $87,000 isn't low income. It's very low income. Low income might be more than the median household income in my own fancy neighborhood.

Never mind. $87k is over the median household income in my neighborhood.

And we have lots of people driving Land Rovers.

While it's stupid that they're freaked out less by low-income people as long as they're of limited capacity (check out the extreme racism: "they don't commit crimes, they don't bring drugs, they don't bring trouble"), that is a kind of housing there is a deep need for too. The bigger problem is if these particular NIMBYs had their way, they would just plan for the housing for the developmentally disabled and then the plan would mysteriously never come to fruition.

I think I explained the builder's remedy prospects in a previous thread, but basically, it is applying in all more places than it used to, and in a few (high-land-value) cities builders are starting to give it a try. But at the same item it's never actually been tested since it was passed in 1990 because it only takes effect if the housing element is out of compliance, and the state was in the process of becoming a rubber stamp for the housing elements. So we won't know the BR is actually productive until it goes through all the legal gamuts - in particular it doesn't get you around CEQA and there are a lot of shenanigans cities can play with that.

Even when it applies and is productive, it usually takes cities a couple of months at most to get into compliance and stop any more BR projects from coming in, and developers can only slip so much into that window. So it's most useful for getting cities into compliance, rather than for making housing printer go brrrrr. The BR didn't come into effect for San Francisco, but it did force the board of supervisors to approve something they never would have without the threat.

(The state can also decertify an element at any time in the eight-year cycle if a city doesn't follow through on the promises made in it, so it is an ongoing threat.)

Finally, it'll only work as long as the state enforces the housing element requirement well, which they're only sort of half-doing now compared to zero before. It depends a lot on which reviewer you pull, and shenanigans are still taking place.

One example I saw of untested legal interactions earlier this week is a developer trying to get 24 townhomes in Redondo Beach with the builder's remedy. The council was rejecting them because the proposal violated the city's Local Coastal Program. Turns out the LCP is some sort of obscure emanation of the California Coastal Act, which the BR also doesn't supersede, and the developer is not likely to prevail if they sue.

applying in all a lot more places than it used to

6: We have a new elderly and disabled complex going up that's party funded by the infrastructure bill. (A road had to be redesigned.). I guess it depends on what they mean by "segregated". I haven't read the article, but the language is not good and conjures up images of sheltered workshops, where individuals with disabilities can be paid less than minimum wages. It goes against the ADA's goal of integrating individuals with disabilities into mainstream life.

I do like the idea of the state saying "our population forecasts predict a need for this much housing over the next decade" and then passing responsibility for building that housing to a lower administrative unit (e.g., a county or district). The county or district could then decide how to allocate that housing within its administrative sub-components, which could then figure out how they were going to meet their obligations. Failure to satisfy reasonable obligations imposed by a higher level administrative unit would result in application of the builders remedy within the boundaries of the defaulting administrative unit (e.g., the county, if the county defaults; or the city or neighborhood, if the city or neighborhood defaults). That would seem to combine flexibility and accountability, while still ensuring a reasonable level of planning.

9: The attention the builder's remedy is getting in California seems to have influenced proposals for comparable systems in both Oregon and New York State this year. But I don't think it's that great a system to build on.

In theory, yes: "you have local control, but the obligation comes with it to plan, in your own way, for housing in the quantity your region needs." Very neat. In practice, the plans are extremely complicated and cities can pile up bullshit that reviewers do not have capacity to call them on, both in the details of the plans themselves and in how they are implemented. Also until recently the regional Councils of Government that determined the overall targets underestimated the need and underallocated to wealthy jurisdictions. So we have left-NIMBYs in SF saying "well, we OVERfulfilled our allocation for above-moderate housing last cycle, so clearly that's not actually a problem," when in fact that was overfulfilling a too-low number.

I would allow cities to skip their housing element entirely if they zone 40% of their residential land to a state-templated high-density standard that allows 8-story buildings on small lots, and at least fourplexes everywhere else. They can pick which land, and it has to meet a (numerical, objective) affirmatively-furthering-fair-housing standard, so it can't be the poor side of town.

@10 Forgive me for not understanding here:

If localities are malingering by submitting overly complex, unimplementable plans, then why would they ever agree to an alternative that is sufficiently transparent to prevent such malingering? Isn't the solution just allocating more resources to reviewing plans, so the localities cannot pile up bullshit that reviewers do not have capacity to call them on?

And it seems like the reviewers are calling bullshit, as most of the plans have not been approved, right?

If localities are malingering by submitting overly complex, unimplementable plans, then why would they ever agree to an alternative that is sufficiently transparent to prevent such malingering

By force of the legislature, which is doing a better job recently of representing the people and not the localities.

And it seems like the reviewers are calling bullshit, as most of the plans have not been approved, right?

Yes, but in many cases in ways the cities will be able to fix by changing only a few things - not necessarily enough to make the elements actually productive.

I agree giving cities a choice between an element and state-template zoning would probably not attract most of them if it were a completely free choice - it would probably also require even more muscular review and consequences.

We did discuss this recently. In addition to Minivet's many good points in this thread so far, Massachusetts and New Jersey have had builder's remedy processes in place for decades and their impact has been modest at best. I expect the same will be true in California. It's a fairly extreme measure meant primarily to force municipalities into compliance with the regular planning process as it's supposed to work. The reason the regular process doesn't work, though, is that local governments are generally NIMBY-dominated and have a lot of political pull at the state level. It's great to see the state legislature pushing back on that but the political incentives for the state to bend to the will of the local governments are still there so it's an open question how well this will be enforced.

The OP proposal reminds me of what some cities in NJ did to try to meet their housing obligations: allow only age-restricted developments for seniors so as not to increase costs for the school districts. Of course that meant that local elections became dominated by old people who didn't want to pay for the schools at all.

Old people are assholes like that.

The other problem is that even if the state succeeds in catching malingering localities, by the time it does so we'll have added another decade or two of insufficiently building. Because it's the US everything ends up in courts, doing anything will be very expensive and take forever.

Yeah, that's another good point. Every stage of this process is going to involve a ton of litigation that takes forever.

Presumably even if the plans aren't overly complicated, I'd expect localities can just "make a plan" and then just not do it. "Oh we had a plan, but then this project turned out to take 10 times longer than we thought for reasons outside of our control, and this other project we couldn't do at all because someone realized it was blocked by our historical preservation rules, and this third project ended up having to be half the planned size."

What you need is consequences that apply automatically based on the number of units actually built, rather than relying on the plan. "In the next 5 years you will open at least X new units satisfying these requirements, or else the new zoning rules will automatically come into effect. It doesn't matter if there were good reasons for delays, so if you want to be on the safe side plan for a lot more than X units."

This is kind of grim, but I think a lot of the problems with capitalism functioning poorly right now come down to wealth-holders not being afraid that an angry mob is going to take their wealth. (Or, on a broader scale, worrying about their country going communist and taking their wealth.) People who own land that's worth millions of dollars but only has two old people living there should be a little afraid that a mob is just going to come take their house.

This is kind of grim, but I think a lot of the problems with capitalism functioning poorly right now come down to wealth-holders not being afraid that an angry mob is going to take their wealth.

I was just reading some reviews of the book Gambling On Development (I haven't read the book). This is cynical, but completely believable, and perhaps applicable to US politics as well.

[T]here are times when the political elite of a country can coordinate to have growth seeking policies. If there's higher growth, there will be more resources for them to tax. There will be more to be gained from controlling a larger economy. They're more likely to win wars with a stronger economy. The country as a whole becomes more powerful. And you might be forgiven for thinking that elites would be in favour of policies to increase growth.

But you'd be wrong.

Usually, elites take a dim view of economic growth. They might be fans of the idea that they control a more powerful country, but they usually don't like the means it takes to get there. The problem from the elites' perspective is that the policies which are required for development are damaging to their interests. Typically, they have to give up their control over markets and open them up to competition. This reduces the amount of money they can extract in the short run and give to their supporters. They also have to allow new technology which might provide means for organising against the government. Both of these hurt elite power, and if they do adopt these measures, they're taking a huge risk.

But in some countries they do take the risk. They remove controls on the economy and give up the possibility of making more money for themselves and their cronies. If the new economic reforms lead to higher economic growth and they stay in power, it pays off. Otherwise, from the elites' perspective, it is a failure.

@19 that kind of feedback control makes sense. Also, the same law that creates the planning process can stipulate to grounds on which the plans can be challenged and the process of challenging them.

For example, the legislation can state that an administrative determination that a locality has failed to implement its plan is unappealable.

21 doesn't seem to fit Texas at all. The political elite is not interested in growth-seeking in order to have more to tax. The political elite is the business community, who just wants to run roughshod over everything. In zoning, this has turned out to avoid some of the NIMBY hoarding, because the class of land owners doesn't have as much power as the business owners.

Apparently, in Texas they don't even care if the electricity works in a house.

That seems to be our revealed preference, yes.

But if the alternative is not being able to buy housing in California, it makes sense. Probably easier to fix the Texas grid than California house prices.

Presumably even if the plans aren't overly complicated, I'd expect localities can just "make a plan" and then just not do it. "Oh we had a plan, but then this project turned out to take 10 times longer than we thought for reasons outside of our control, and this other project we couldn't do at all because someone realized it was blocked by our historical preservation rules, and this third project ended up having to be half the planned size."

That's not quite how it works, because localities aren't the ones tasked with literally building the housing. It's more like with discretionary approvals the city can say "Gee, we wanted to approve this apartment complex just like our plan said, but there were Very Serious Concerns about parking and view preservation, so we had to deny it. Not our fault the developer didn't make a good enough proposal."

And that doesn't work quite as well anymore because HCD requires more stuff to be zoned by-right, so the city can't deny something within zoning. Especially sites that have been singled out for future housing in previous plans and not developed; there's a law specifically requiring them to be zoned by-right given 20% affordability if the city wants to continue to be credited for them.

But layered complexity still helps them. San Francisco has a development code well above replacement byzantineness, so practically everything is discretionary in one way or another.

What you need is consequences that apply automatically based on the number of units actually built, rather than relying on the plan. "In the next 5 years you will open at least X new units satisfying these requirements, or else the new zoning rules will automatically come into effect. It doesn't matter if there were good reasons for delays, so if you want to be on the safe side plan for a lot more than X units."

This was sort of SB35, one of the first YIMBY victories back in 2017. But it didn't break zoning, it just made it significantly harder for cities not making progress on their housing allocations to deny zoning-compliant stuff.

I do think that "SB35, but the affordable projects that must be approved no longer have to comply with city zoning" would be a great next step. It would be quite the third rail, though. The big upzoning success last year that allowed apartments regardless of zoning succeeded partly because it was limited to commercial areas, leaving residential alone.

20: The UK passed laws requiring transparency in the ownership of real estate because a lot of the world's kleptocrats have been buying there, especially London, and hiding their ownership via shell companies, trusts, etc. Deadlines have come and gone, and the klepts are busy not complying.

At which point I think pretty much, fuck it, seize the properties. Deem them automatically forfeit to the Crown and have a ball.

I'd also say that tumbril is an under-utilized word these days, but they're not much of a remedy for absentee kleptocrats. Squatter's remedy, though, now you're talking.

OK, local policy question: When your municipalities accept asset forfeiture money that comes as a result of criminal investigations (drug money, basically), where does the money go? Police budget? General funds?

In our case, asset forfeiture money goes to general funds, but I would like to redirect it toward harm-reduction efforts. I'd be interested to know about examples of where that has been done.

interesting question. My assumption is that the PD keeps it, but I don't actually know.

30: this is apparently the situation in the UK:
In most cases, half of the money will go to the Home Office, with the other half going to the police. Where it's appropriate, the judge might deem it appropriate to give a part of the proceeds to the victim, as a form of compensation. It's also sometimes the case that the funds are allocated to specific community projects, potentially related to the crime that the forfeited money was associated with.

31: This is how civil forfeiture works, yeah. It's a hideous scandal -- or more accurately, it's hideous that it's not a scandal. The first time civil forfeiture was explained to me, my reaction was, "This is America. That's not possible."

American exceptionalism.

Yeah, I don't think there is any getting rid of it but to me it looks like a source of funding that could be appropriated to a better use. At which point, ironically, I'm sure it would be much easier to get rid of.

In my city we have a significant-to-us chunk sitting in that account, and there may be some interest in using it for a gun buyback program.

A gun buyback would be awesome but OMG it would not go over well in this state.

37: Nor here, local news notwithstanding.