We Bought a Boat

Kathleen and I bought a 15 foot boat three days ago.  It was a bit of an adventure.  We drove to the Bass Pro Shop in Manteca to buy it but when we got there it had already been sold.  It was the last one they had in stock.  From there we drove to Sacramento to buy one Kathleen found on Craigslist.  When we go there we saw that it was not water worthy.  So we decided to head home without a boat.  As we were passing by Davis, Kathleen, using Craigslist again, found one in Stockton.  We pulled off the freeway in Davis so the dog could take a little walk. (It was my first time in Davis since 2011.  It was full of memories for me.)  After the dog did what it needed to do we drove to Stockton (Like all the towns in California's central valley it has a beautiful downtown area that is neglected as the suburban tract house developments expand n to the surrounding farmland.  It is very sad.) and bought the boat.  Then we had to strap it to the top of the Subaru.  Driving it over the Altamont Pass was a little scary; boats on car roofs are kind of like big sails. We got home just before midnight.

Yesterday I went and bought a 55 lb thrust Minn Kota trolling motor, battery charger, and marine battery.  Also, yesterday (but she is still working on it today) Kathleen has been trying to get it registered and pay all the taxes.  It is a headache because officially, the boat never entered California.  She has found records of it leaving  Canada but not entering California.  And the state offices are closed because of the Wuhan Bat Virus.

In other news...

Today was a day of repairs in the garden.  I had to rip out a row of radishes an throw them in the compost pile.  They should have been ready to pick last week but too much N in the soil caused big beautiful plants above the ground but at the expense of developing big yummy roots.  Thankfully it isn't even June yet so I can still plant something else.  Kathleen took out some volunteer potatoes that came up among the tomatoes.  We compost potato scraps from the kitchen so, it seems, the compost isn't getting hot enough.  Now I'm a little bit worried about other seeds that might be surviving the composting process.  I'll have to figure out what to do about that. The harvest today was a handful of small radishes, 3 zucchini, and a yellow straight-necked squash. And the boys came over last night and we played Risk!

The Summer So Far

Kathleen and tri-tip

Billy and I

Kathleen at Light House

I've taken three trips so far this summer.   The first trip was Paso Robles, Santa Maria, and Pismo Beach.  I think that was in early June.   In Paso Robles we visited my son Billy's grave and prayed for him.  Even saying his name hurts.  In Santa Maria we ate tri-tip at Shaw's.  in Pismo Beach we played in the ocean.  We drove down on Hwy 101.  The drive home through the Santa Lucia Mountains and Santa Cruz Mountains was much longer but beautiful.  But it was also sad to see gorgeous productive farmland in Monterey county being turned into tract houses.  Before actually heading into the Santa Clara Valley we spent one night with a Kathleen's friend who lives on on the overlook La Selva Beach.

The second trip I wrote about a few days ago.

The third trip was to San Mateo County where we drove through mountains, ate a molten chocolate bundt cak Alice's Restaurant, visited a goat farm, played at the tide pools where Kathleen gathered salt at an evaporated pool, ate amazing artichoke soup, and visited a light house.  This might be the best day I've had in a year.  It's hard to believe it was all done in one day.

At the goat farm

Oysters and Artichoke Soup

In other news, Anselm Samuel (AKA the little boy) got his CHSPE results and is now a high school graduate two years ahead of schedule.  He will start a welding or machining course in a few days when he gets back from the Boy Scouts Camp Hi-Sierra, where he has been working as a life guard for the past few weeks.  This is a big achievement.  But his life has been full of achievements.

A New Blog I've Been Enjoying

I know now, at 41 years, that I'll never be a city planner. But I still am interested in cities and land use. I recently have become a fan of this blog named Planning Commisioners Journal. Maybe you'll enjoy it, too.

Traffic Planning

This film was made during a cble car ride up Market Street toward the Ferry Bldg, in the days just before the 1906 earthquake.



Here is the same trip in 2005, but this time on an electric street car. There are no more cable cars on Market Street.



The 1906 film looks like a lot more fun with much more energy, doesn't it? It is too bad planners try to streamline the flow of traffic, as though getting from A to B is the most important thing. The wonderful thing about city life is what happens between those points.

A Building Design Company After My Own Heart

Anyone who has read this blog for very long knows I have strong New Urbanist tendencies, that I love the architecture of old buildings, especially the arts & crafts style used by a lot of depression-era builders in California. I especially like I'On, even though the City wouldn't let them do mixed use. Recently, I came across a link to the website of the designer of the little Orthodox temple in I'On. All I can say is WOW!!! I bet you'll say wow, too. You'll love the pictures, but make sure you read the two essays on their website, too.

Compromise

What I really wanted was to study at SVOTS. But to what end? Canonical barriers keep me from ordination. Then there is the expense and the hardship on my family. So, that isn't going to happen.

If not theology at SVOTS then the next best thing is a masters degree in city planning from Berkley. It would have placed me right in the middle of the policy debates swarming around land use, city shrinkage (as in Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, and Flint) and the New Urbanist movement. And as a pre-professional program it would have qualified me for a good paying job. But it was in Berkeley; far from where I live. Then I thought, if not the M.C.P from Berkeley why not the the technically equivalent M.U.P. degree from San Jose State, where the highly respected and vibrant Asha Argawal teaches. But, the idea of sitting in a classroom 4 hours each night, 4 nights per week, keeping me away from my family and managerial responsibilities prevented my attempting the M.U.P. program. (Though I did write a fun essay during the application process.)

So, no theology, and no residential programs. Were there any any distance City Planning programs? Yes. There is one. But WOW! What cost! It would have cost three times what the Berkeley degree would have cost. So, no master in city planning for me. I was very sad.

So, then I thought, why not just get an M.A.T. and teach social studies in public schools? So I looked into that. I found Western Governors University. I was all set to start, but California started laying off teachers. Thousands of them. And then there was the question of the teacher's unions, which I hate. But I was still going to go through with it, but they gave me grief over my foreign transcripts, AFTER I WAS ACCEPTED!!! Even though I have a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts which is ranked #45 in the WORLD by the Times (London) and enough American credit hours for 2 bachelors degrees, they wanted me to pay a third party to evaluate my 25 foreign credits. So, I thought to myself, "I don't think being a high school teacher is worth this hassle."

So what to do? Well, i don't know how I found it, but somehow I stumbled across American Military University. It was originally founded as a distance graduate school for military officers but has branched out since then. And guess what. They have a program in Ancient and Classical history. Now you might be wondering why I would want to study ancient history. Two reasons: I love the subject, and every college student in California has to take a course in it. What does that mean? It means when I finish the program I will be qualified to talk about Josephus, Herodotus, Livy, Plutarch, and Eusebius to my hearts content and get paid for it! Now get this, when I was a teenager I used to fantasize about studying western civilization and ancient history. I never thought I would have the opportunity or, if I did have the opportunity, that it would be practical.

I am astounded that at the end of a long line of academic compromises (even my undergraduate major was a compromise) I finally get to do something I really want to do. I start classes in August. God is really very kind to me.

A Long Walk

Today the boys and I walked a long way. We walked over to our little "down town" area of willow glen where I bought us two donut holes each. That was only 300 yards and 10 minutes, tops. Then we walked up Lincoln Ave toward San Carlos. And we saw some interesting things.

This area was once all farms. And for the most part there is no trace of that agricultural heritage left. But as we were walking we passed an abandoned warehouse, and next to that warehouse was a yard with a chain link fence wrapped around it. Inside the fence was rusting old farm equipment. Diskers, an old Fordson tractor, some mechanical fruit sorters, etc. But the neatest thing was an assortment of old nut and fruit crates. If you haven't seen them it is difficult to describe them, but I will try. They are about 4 feet cubed and made of sturdy plywood with metal fasteners along all the edges and corners. Nothing about them would make you thin they are disposable. When I was a boy, when there were still walnut orchards on McLaughlin Avenue, my cousin Bryan and I made forts out of these kinds of crates. The crates Anselm and Basil and I saw today still had the brand names on their sides where they were stenciled 40, 50, or 70 years ago: Libby, JackFrost, Dole, Heart's Delight, Mission, and others.

As we were walking up Lincoln we passed a building that houses a law firm. We've motored past this building hundreds of times but while walking today we saw that there was a historical marker burrieed in the shrubs in front of it. Then I looked at the building more closely and saw that it looked really old, though well maintained, and just barely visible from where I was standing on Lincoln, around the corner of the house, I saw a much older looking building. Then I moved some of the shrubs to read the marker. The building is one of the oldest remaining in the county; the Sunol-Roberto Adobe, built in 1836.

We kept walking north on Lincoln, cut through a corner of a fruit warehouse turned into a furniture store liquidator, and turned toward the east on Auzerais. We walked by what 10 years ago was the last fruit packing plant in San Jose, the big Del Monte plant #3. The location is now a condo development by KB Homes. It is really nice but, unfortunately, it is only residential. There are some other lots around this new development that look ripe for redevelopment. Let's hope they are mixed use with retail/office/light industrial on the first three floors and residential on the top 5 to 20 stories.

We crossed the Los Gatos Creek a couple of times and the Guadalupe River once. At each crossing Basil insisted that I pick him up so he could look over the concrete rail and down to the tree covered waters. I bought the boys ice cream from a man with a push cart. Anselm is still surprised when I talk to people in Spanish. Its funny to me.

We stopped at a taco stand on San Carlos Ave. and had pineapple drinks and flautas de pollo. While there I told some youthful campaign workers that they should be ashamed of themselves for trying to get Prop 8 overturned. They seemed shocked when I told them they were destroying civilization. It was like no one had ever told them that before. What are they teaching kids in school?

When we got into downtown San Jose the boys played in the fountain in front of the Performing Arts Centere. They played in the fountain in front of the Fairmont Hotel. Then we walked up Paseo de something or other to the Camera 12 Cinemas, where we saw "Up" and shared a large popcorn and Milk Duds and root beer. All together we walked about 2.5 miles in 4 hours. We took a cab home.

The boys just got out of the tub. Athanasia just walked in the door from her day at school. I'll end this post now.

What Our Fathers Built

I think anyone who's read this blog for a while knows how I feel about the architecture and design since the end of WWII. Pretty much it stinks.

Consider the Army Chapel. In the 1940s, during WWII the Army built "temporary" chapels made of hand fitted pine, cedar, and poplar. They are are beautiful little buildings, and are, many of them, still in service. And there is the the main post office of San Jose, built in the 1930s. It is beautiful. And consider train stations built in the past: Union Station in Washington D.C., Grand Central Terminal in New York, Penn Station in Newark (home of one of the most gorgeous men's lavatory I've ever seen: all granite, marble, and brass.) It used to be that even factories were works of art. Ghirardilli Square was a chocolate factory before it was turned into condominiums and an outdoor mall. Old factories are so beautiful and well made that they are being re-fitted as residential buildings all over America. But new buldings? Will anyone want them in 30 years? I've seen recently bulit train stains, post offices, and factories, I think the answer is probably "no".

Today, according to the a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, we have a 20% chance of slipping into another depression. Which means labor should be cheep enough to build like our fathers built. But will we do it? Will we build for our progeny? I don't think so.

The President's economic relief strategy seems to be focusing on income guarantees such as prolonging unemployment benefits, instead of building beautiful and useful things.

The L.A. times presents a video of some of the beautiful things that were built in the depression. I wish our current leaders had the foresight our fathers had.

The Ancient is the Future

One of the things that I find so exciting about the New Urbanist movement is the possibility of reviving the ancient norms of city life: Walkability, density, nearby agriculture. Tonight I came across a website that deals specifically with questions such as how to bring the lessons of ancient Byzantine city building into the modern world. And I think I might have found a new hero in one Besim S. Hakim. I think I need to write to him and see if he'll let me work for him when I finish grad school.

Pres. Hoover is, to a great degree, to blame for suburbs.

As Fortune would have it, just in time to help me alleviate some of the hurt feelings I caused in some of my frieneds, the Market Urbanism blog (where freedom meets the city) has a very informative post regarding the role Hoover and the meddling Progressives. It seems that Hoover and the Progressives (backed by the automobile companies) were responsible for suburban sprawl. The author tries to make the role played by banks sound Nefarious, but I amnot convinced by that aspect of the presentation. The Banks were just doing what they always have done, try to make ma profit by lending and borrowing. The real change was Hoover promoting national standards that favored Suburban development over the traditional Urban and Rural patterns.

Hoover was instrumental in starting the “Own Your Own Home” suburban advocacy movement, which lasted through the twenties. The government and business leaders of the “Own Your Own Home” movement described the single family home as a “symbol that could build consensus” and a “hallmark of the middle-class arrival in society.” To encourage home building, Hoover created the division of Building and Housing within the Commerce Department to coordinate the activity of builders, real estate developers, social workers, and homemakers as he worked closely with banks and savings and loans industry to promote long term mortgages (a new concept at the time - sound familiar?). Hoover’s promotion of home ownership as an investment of the 20’s remains a concept embedded in the American psyche, and may have helped contribute to our current financial mess. (Read the whole thing here.)

Who is to blame for suburbs

Well, that letter (see the post below this one) sure did get me in trouble. I received some messages from people were were very offended by it. I'd like to take a moment and reply to all of them at once.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I don't think you or the the vast majority of people alive today are to blame for the way land is being used. The decisions to rip up farms, neglect cities, and build car-dependent suburbs were made by people in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Most people alive today have no choice because single family detached houses in residential-only neighborhoods are all there is to buy. If you want to live in Silicon Valley, or in Dallas, or in Tampa, or in Sacramento, single family detached houses are virtually the only choice. Suburbs are what the developers in earlier times built, and we are stuck with them for at least the next 100 years. I don't at all fault the people who buy them. I fault the builders and planners of the past.

Why Urban Planning

As regular readers of this blog know, I have very strong opinions about concernnig land use. Well, I am finally doing something about it. I am trying to become a city planner. Part of the application is a letter stating why I want to study urban planning. Below is my first draft of that letter.


Why I Want to Study Urban Planning.

I grew up in Palo Alto and Mountain View, California, two suburban communities. Every house I saw was a single family detached house. Every house had a lawn. We drove every where we went. We barely knew the people who lived next door. But on television I saw Sesame Street. Every one knew everyone. The buildings were tall and right up against each other. Mr. Hooper's grocery was right across the street. Even as a child of 5 and 6 years old I could see that that way of living was better than the way I was living in the suburbs. The only thing I experienced that was close to what I had seen on Sesame Street was Castro Street in Mountain View. But Castro Street in the 1970s was neglected and it had boarded up buildings, the life having been sucked out of it by a shopping mall a mile away, and by more car friendly shopping destinations along El Camino Real.

But in 1979, when I was 10, we moved to Ukiah. And that meant we had to drive through San Francisco. It was my first time to see The City. Even though almost the whole drive through San Francisco was on an elevated freeway (Since destroyed by an earthquake and not replaced.) what I saw enthralled me. I saw skyscrapers! I saw town houses and factories and offices. And every where there were throngs of people. People on foot, on bikes, on buses. And I was fascinated.

After that first drive through San Francisco I memorized the map of San Francisco in the World Book Encyclopedia. I began watching the local news out of San Francisco (the cable system in Ukiah carried the San Francisco stations.), and I began to learn about cities. So by the time my 6th grade class went on a field trip to the San Francisco financial district to go on a tour of Chevron's world headquarters I was nearly inflamed with desire to actually stand on my own feet in The City. And when I finally got there, and ascended to the 28th floor of the Chevron building, and ate a hot dog in the plaza at the end of Market Street, under the roar of that now gone freeway, I was in love.

Later, when I was a seventeen year old private, stationed at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, I was given a 24 hour pass. I rode a bus to New York City. And I saw majesty! I walked up Broadway from the bowery to Canal Street, and then down an alley, and then down some stairs, and across an empty basement to a lighted glass door covered with a red curtain. Behind that door was an illegal Vietnamese restaurant where I had fried imperial rolls, pho, kung pao prawns, fried jelly fish, contraband Vietnamese beer, and the best coffee of my entire life. I walked and walked and walked. As evening approached my buddy and I wandered into an open air clothing market. There I bought a sweater, and had my first ever experience of haggling over a price. I had my first mixed drink near Times Square. I was yelled at by Dan Rather ("Hey, do you mind getting out of the shot?") while walking in Central Park.

Later when I was out of the Army and living in another Silicon Valley suburb - this time Sunnyvale, just next door to Mountain View- I passed by a computer store in a mall that happened to be demo-ing Sim City. I watched a guy play it for about fifteen minutes, and when he got up I sat down. And that was the first time it occurred to me that someone has to plan a City. They don't just happen. So I began thinking about what makes a good city.

I observed that both San Francisco and Manhattan had narrow streets, wide sidewalks, tall buildings, no lawns and no space between buildings. I also noticed that unlike the suburbs I lived in, a person didn't have to drive. Cars were not needed to get around. Everything was close at hand. It was possible for a person to find everything he needed to live within a few blocks of where he lived. And if one wanted to travel farther than legs could comfortably bear him, there were buses, taxis, cable cars, and subways.

And then I began to contrast The City with the suburbs I lived in. Cars were a necessity in Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and Mountain View. There was no way to shop, get to and from work, go to a restaurant, to the movies, or anything without a car. Even along the main commercial area of Mountain View, there were tremendous distances to cover. God help the person who wanted to get from a store on one side of El Camino to a store on the other side of El Camino. First there would be the walk from the store across the parking lot to the side walk. Then there would be the walk to a cross walk, but the blocks are very long and it could easily be a quarter mile to the nearest cross walk. Then there is the actual crossing of the road. Left and right turning lanes, three wide forward lanes, a planted median, three more wide forward lanes, and two more turning lanes. That is El Camino through Sunnyvale. Most people only have time to cross to the median before the light changes, then they have to wait for another green light. Then there is the quarter mile walk back to the store, and another long walk across a parking lot. But Market street, the main street in San Francisco, and Broadway in New York were different. Both of those streets carry 10 times the traffic of El Camino Real through Silicon Valley, yet they are much narrower. Along its busiest stretch, through the Union Square shopping district and the Financial District, Market street is merely 4 narrow lanes. If one wants to go from the Sheraton Palace Hotel to the shoe shine stand across the street one only has to take 35 steps.

For a couple of years, at the beginning of this decade, I had the sublime joy of living in San Francisco. I knew my baker. We actually ran into each other at the grocery store once in a while. I knew my dry cleaner's kids and he knew mine. I was friends with several of the bartenders on my block. The girls at the taqueria knew my name. The Sisters of Mercy walking their girls to school got to know me - we passed each other on the side walk every morning. I knew all the people in my building. Because I was on the sidewalk and not in a car, I met new people everyday. Some I liked. Some I didn't. But every day was an adventure. I was living on Sesame Street.

For 20 years I have been griping about suburbs, how ugly they are, how wasteful they are (what is the point of a lawn if there are no sheep?), how they poison the well of culture (San Jose, a suburban city has about a 20% larger population than San Francisco but only 1/5th the density. It has no culture to speak of.) and how they require ugly architecture (garages as the dominate feature on houses, Wal-Mart, Home Depot). I got tired of complaining. I want to help fix the problem. I want to be the bureaucrat who says "yes" to developers trying to build mixed-use, pedestrian friendly, high-density developments. I didn't get to live on Sesame Street but, maybe, I can make it so that other kids can live on Sesame Street.

Kunstler on Suburban Development

Wow! Someone who feels more strongly about this issue than I do.

Land Use

I am taking these classes from the university of Masachusetts in the hope of becomeing a city planner when the boys are older. The classes areall on-line. Part of what we do is have very long written discussions about the readings. It is fun to take classes in something I am interested i and will, Ihop, lead to making money. Below is my opening statement in the discussion. It is very informaland not in essay form.

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What measure(s) do you think need to be used to make housing more affordable for all? Is housing affordable in your community? Should all communities be responsible for making affordable housing?

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Some of the answers I give will might seem strange but I am trying to think about this problem while holding several not always compatible ideas in my head at once.

Affordability: The San Francisco Bay area is extremely expensive. If you buy a house here you should expect to lay out a considerable amount of money. If you want to buy on the Peninsula or in San Francisco you are going to spend a huge amount of money. But does expensive mean unaffordable? Well, for some people, yes. But for others, no.

As you all know, I live at the southern end of the Peninsula, in the North East corner of Santa Clara County. The county is a huge area encompassing Silicon Valley, the mansions and wineries along the Santa Cruz mountains, the lowland slums of east San Jose, the hyper-rich tech millionaires of Los Gatos, Palo Alto and Monte Sereno, the great expanses of tract houses in Sunnyvale, and the ranches and farms of Gilroy and Morgan Hill. The Median HHI in Santa Clara County is $78,000. But what does that mean for house prices?

In most of the country, houses cost about 5 or 6 times the median income*. That means that in the Bay area house prices “should” be about $450,000. But the Bay area is an extremely desirable place to live. There is great demand for housing here and even though other California metropolitan areas are seeing their housing prices collapse (In sacramento, out Capitol there are one or two houses for sale on every block, and half of those are in foreclosure) ours are holding steady, with a median well above that theoretical $450,000. The median price is about $700,000. And in some extremely desirable parts of the Bay Area (e.g. Cupertino, Palo Alto, the Oakland hills, Tiburon, Marin, the northern half of San Francisco) there are still bidding wars where houses/condos have lines of buyers waiting with cash in hand. So, obviously, someone is able to afford these prices. Just not me.

Liberty: It bugs me to no end when governments tell people what they can and can’t do with their property. Especially, when the owner of the property wants to build housing. I lived in Cupertino for a couple of years and was driven nuts by the people there. Aside from the fact that they wouldn’t let me grow corn in my front yard or build an indoor firing range in my back yard, they were what I think of as Housing Nazis. They actually had more code enforement officers than police officers. On the street where I lived were four undeveloped lots that were owned by the same peson who owned one of the adjoining properties. He wanted to build 12 2-bedroom condominiums on those four lots, and was willing to pay for the necessary sewer and water upgrades for the hole street. But some of the neighbors freaked out. They were worried about the condos not fitting in with the ranch houses. There were petitions, law suits, angry zoning commission and city council meetings. You would have thought it was a proposal to build a crack house. They wanted ranch houses or nothing. Now here is the problem with ranch houses. They sit sideways on the lots and I do mean “lots”. That’s right. Each ranch house takes up two lots. So instead of housing for 12 families, only housing for 2 families was approved.

Single-Family Detached Houses: I hate them. I think they (along with television, automobiles, and air conditioning) have ruined communities in our country. The Central Valley of California (where most of the fruits and nuts you eat come from) is being paved over as single family detached houses spread like a rash over the countries most productive farm land. Won’t we all be sick with regret when we can’t find an almond, or a fig, or a raisin, or a plum or a kiwi? Or when a jug of Carlo Rossi wine costs $12 instead of $4 because the vineyards have been buried under asphalt, swimming pools, and lawns? Or think about this scenario: When we run out of oil and all of the farms that used to surround our cities have been turned into tract-house sprawl how are we going to get food to where we live?

Street design: I have lived in San Jose and in San Francisco. San Jose (the more populous of the two cities) talks a lot about revitalizing its downtown. This is something San Francisco never talks about. I think a major reason for the difference is that the streets of san Francisco were planned and build before the automobile was a major social influence. That means the streets are more narrow, the side walks are wider, and the blocks are shorter than are typically built. Its difficult for cars, but it seems to be great for the city: People actually enjoy walking around. Which means you don’t have to have cars, which means you can build more housing since you don’t have to worry about where to put cars. San Jose has wide streets, narrow (in comparison to SF) sidewalks, and long blocks. It is easy to drive around in San Jose. But it is difficult to walk around SJ. You have to have a car. Which means you have to have someplace to put a car. Which means there is less space for housing.


So to answer the questions:
1. What measure(s) do you think need to be used to make housing more affordable for all?
I agree with some of what Euchner recommended.
- Allow development on government owned land. I agree with that whole heartedly. What I don’t agree with is “fits the historic character of the community”. That means no skyscraper condos, it means, in almost all of the Bay area nothing higher than 1 story. Even in the denser areas it means nothing higher than 3 stories. What’s the point of going through the hassle of development f its just to build another single family detached house?
- Experiment with split-rate tax system. Such a plan isn’t possible in California. Since 1979 our Constitution requires that property taxes are based on the last purchase price. We do not trust assessors to value our houses. That is for the market to decide. Also, all tax increases have to be approved by the voters and that isn’t going to happen.
- I do not understand “as-of-right” zoning. I would only have 4 zones: Not developable (wetland or earthquake hazard), agricultural, high-density mixed use (residential/commercial/light industrial), heavy industrial.

In addition to Euchner’s recommendation I would do the following:
- Abolish public housing. Instead I would turn every housing project into condominiums and give them to the current residents. This would have two benefits: It takes someone off of the government teat (always a morally dubious place to be) and creates a whole host of property owners, who if they are smart can parley that property into changed lives. It also will encourage builders to build in the neighborhood since they will be able to get high prices that they otherwise would have. In San Francisco it was estimated that being within 2 block s of a housing project took 15% - 25% off the value of a property. For example, my wife and I were thinking about buying a 10 unit Edwardian but the reason we didn’t was its proximity to a notorious project, where even police feared to go. Also, I know of three large vacant lots near housing projects where no one is willing to build.
- Repeal Rent Control Laws. Some rent control is worse than others. San Francisco is bad (for the reasons mentioned in the Consumers’ Research Magazine article) but Berkeley on the east side of the Bay is worse. The number of rental units in that city has actually declined since they passed their rent control ordinance.
- Declare vacant buildings a nuisance and condemn them after 90 days of vacancy. According to anecdotal evidence (the word of a postman) ¼ of the buildings in San Francisco’s most blighted neighborhood (BayView/Hunter’s Point) are unoccupied. They are owned by speculators waiting for the market to raise the price (a new light rail line is going in) before they sell. The speculators are not willing to rent to people because the rent control ordinance also makes it almost impossible to evict a tenant.

2. Is housing affordable in my community: I already answered this. It is very expensive but because people are paying for it, it is by definition, affordable..

3. Should all communities be responsible for making affordable housing? I’m not sure I understand this question. If it means should all governments build housing for people, or subsidize rents, or something like that, then no. No communities should be responsible for making affordable housing. But if the question means should government remove unnecessary obstacles such as setbacks, height limits, 2 to 3 bathroom to bedroom ratios, minimum lot sizes, and garages (as long as one man is homeless it is immoral for the government to require housing for cars.) then yes.


*This doesn’t mean that the people with median incomes are buying median priced houses. Only the top 60% can realistically qualify for a mortgage. That bottom 40%, unless they do a TIC on a duplex, or some other “non-traditional” arrangement should get used to being renters.