Quote:
Originally Posted by suburbanite
I doubt homeless camps are the primary indicator of a housing shortage. I think it's more people working in the Bay Area making $130k+ living with 4 roommates. California may be a massive state, but the most desirable areas are still geographically constrained. If tech companies wanted to locate in Fresno or Bakersfield instead of Palo Alto, housing affordability would likely be far less of an issue. As it stands, there is a long-time contingent of wealthy and powerful homeowners that have little to gain from supporting intensification of their neighbourhoods with mixed-use, medium/high-density projects.
I don't know Los Angeles as well, but I know BART has done a pretty good job of incentivising private investment into exurban transit stations that bring a drastic uplift in value to the surrounding land. I've used a couple of examples there as case studies for similarly structured deals here in the GTA. Unless the State is going to implement some sort of mechanism to overrule local zoning disputes, I see developments like this one in West Dublin/Pleasanton being the primary method of adding large numbers of units.
There are over 1,500 units in this photo and it's about a 45-minute train ride to Downtown (according to Google Maps, never done the route myself). There's no existing layer of low-density residential full of NIMBY homeowners. Also, upzoning from medium-density like this to high-density in the future should be far less of a battle than going from SFH to 4-5 storey blocks. |
LA suburbs are late to the party, but I'm starting to see more big projects next to light rail/commuter train stations. Even places like Compton have plans to redevelop industrial sites with dense housing near it's stops.
It's going to be interesting going froward but they still need to do more.