We can elect people at the state level who will enact laws to promote more building of housing, and we have done so. But NIMBYs at the local level keep electing local officials who violate those laws. So to get your housing project through, you might have to spend money and years suing, and you will usually have to spend a lot of time fighting city hall.
This is true for big projects. In Cupertino, a developer is trying to take the defunct Vallco Mall and put in 2400 apartments. There could not possibly be a better place for a housing development, right at a freeway intersection half a mile from the huge new Apple headquarters. But NIMBYs will NIMBY. It’s in court now. NIMBY voters elected an entirely new town council so they could shoot down the project, which was already in the works.
And it’s true for tiny projects like ADUs that are the subject of this thread. Piedmont, like every city in California, is supposed to approve certain ADUs “ministerially,” without discretionary review or hearings*. Yet, last night the city held a hearing for the first person to propose an ADU under the current laws. Unfortunately for Piedmont, he was accompanied by CaRLA, a tenant organization that let the city know in no uncertain terms that a lawsuit was waiting for them if they didn’t approve the ADU. They backed down, but a homeowner shouldn’t have to go to a hearing and threaten to sue in order to get the approval he is entitled to get without any hearings.
*without any review except design review. This is the current, 2018 law, not the new law that will take effect January 2019.
If I read the law correctly, you cannot have a detached ADU and a Junior ADU (built inside existing sq footage) on same lot. I have a Junior ADU so I wouldn’t be able to permit for an ADU. My mind was actually spinning about building a small ADU on top of my detached garage. It would have a fantastic ocean view!! Alas, I could retire… as long as I found nice tenants.
@coralbrook, take another look at the law, especially section (e). It’s complicated, but you can indeed convert existing space to a 400 square foot junior ADU and also put up an 800 square foot detached new construction ADU.
Here’s a plain language explanation:https://carlaef.org/adus/
That group knows how to read and understand laws. They keep prevailing in court against cities that try to deny housing. You can believe them.
In your case, you would be able to put up a new detached ADU, but the law would not permit you to stick an ADU on top of your garage if you didn’t already have that right.
Also, @coralbrook, you could buy a new property, convert an attached or detached garage to a junior ADU, and put up another ADU in the backyard. Then you could keep the three units as an income property for a while, or sell the property to someone else who wanted an income property. For five years (not forever) cities can’t require the main house or the ADUs to be owner-occupied.
Prop 13 means that homeowners in CA benefit more from the shortage of housing than in other states, because their home value goes up but their property taxes don’t.
So the NIMBY lobby will always have a lot of self-interested backers amongst existing homeowners.
For those wondering about potential California state laws allowing the building of more dense housing in city centers, proposed legislation SB50, mentioned upthread, would allow just that. It did not pass this year, but proponents say they will try again. SB50 is extremely controversial.
While there is some truth to that statement, I really don’t believe ‘more home appreciation’ is a driving factor for most NIMBY’ism. I’d wager a big one is traffic/crowding and of course there are those that don’t want any lower-income housing approved nearby; then there is a solid core group of negative nellies who are against growth of any kind…SB50 was shot down by this latter group.
People do believe this, but it is nonsense. If you approve more jobs, the people who work at the jobs are going to come to your area. And they’re not going to be brought here by the fairies. They’ll drive.
The jobs are here. It should be obvious that if you put the housing next to the jobs, people will drive less, not more. There will be less traffic, not more.
^^except some cities are not approving more jobs. Palo Alto, for example, has not invited a big tech firm to plop down in town…and, PA was one of the big opponents of SB50. Sure, the Peninsula has booming pop growth, but PA does not. Just like PA, many other CA cities believe that they are built-out.
Don’t forget, a lot of NIMBY’s are renters, not homeowners. Thus, they have no appreciation gain.
kinda interesting what they’re doing with the Warm Springs BART station in Fremont with re: building housing by public transit. At the time the station was built, there was really nothing around except for the Tesla factory which wasn’t/isn’t that close since no human beings are birds. Now, there’s all this somewhat high-density housing being built there plus some incubator space for tech startups. At one time, the Oakland A’s was proposing to move to where all this housing is now being built.
Palo Alto doesn’t have to be approving more jobs to have more jobs than housing. They already had more jobs than housing, just like most of the cities that surround them, and they’re not building housing very fast.
“Don’t forget, a lot of NIMBY’s are renters, not homeowners.”
What is the evidence for this statement? Most renters want homes to get cheaper, so they can buy one (or at least rent one more cheaply), and that is only going to happen by more housing being built.
Around here ALL and I mean ALL people who show up at zoning board meetings to complain about infill housing are owners. They also tend to argue that one house, is going to increase traffic. I think they are convinced that their property values will go down, even though some of the snazziest neighborhoods in our county are actually quite dense.
Around here ALL people who show up to complain about any infill housing are owners too, but I googled it and in some areas some NIMBYs are renters or so the article claimed.
You all sure make me glad not to live in CA. Every time we go to CA for a visit, the traffic is enough to convince us that we don’t really want to move back to CA after 22 years. We love our suburban home in NJ, close to everything, jobs are plentiful, no shortage of high tech companies here. 3600 square feet single home, 4 beds, 3 baths, on 2 acres land for only $650K (Bought it 20 years ago for $450K). We don’t lock our cars when parked in the driveway. Property tax is a little high (14K/year). But really, what could we possibly buy for 650K in Berkeley? A run down 1 bedroom apartment in bad neighborhood?
People still complain about high property tax, though. Complaining seems to be our national pastime these days.
Housing is way too expensive in California. And that’s why I’m glad we made this small step toward lowering prices.
I’m not going to diss my home state of New Jersey though. I won’t move back there, but every fall I miss the crisp air and the beautiful leaves. (And then every winter, I’m glad I’m here in California where I can ride my bike year round.)