Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedestrian
I disagree with most of the premise and the usual analyses of the CA housing situation.
If you look at topographical maps, you'll see that the readily developable land in close proximity to CA's economic centers is really pretty fully developed in the sense the land is covered with constructions of one sort or another.
Yes, we could build UP. We could replace the 1 and 2 floor homes with 4-12 floor apartments and condos and, in cities, where there may already be midrises we could build high rises (except some of Silicon Valley which has FAA restrictions on height).
But who says Californians want to live in apartments or anything other than single family homes. Frankly, that's NOT the "California dream". But maybe the dream is changing. Or maybe not. Maybe it'll have to, but maybe there'll be an awful lot of resistance with an awful lot of people preferring a single family home in the exurbs out in the Central Valley or Inland Empire at whatever price they have to pay to an apartment in the economic center.
I'm just not at all sure if CA removed all the restrictions to dense development in center cities and close-in suburbs that developers would find willing renters for all the apartments they could build and the price of single family homes would decline much. And since many of the construction workers for those apartment projects may be among those wanting a single family home somewhere (seems like a majority of such workers commute from the CV now) and may need to continue making high wages to pay for those homes, the cost of building even apartments in low demand could remain high--high enough to curtail their development.
I guess the point here is that it's all very complicated.
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Topographical maps is one thing, but just because there's construction on the land doesn't mean it can't be redeveloped. You could leave the SFH neighborhoods alone and just develop the low-rise shopping centers and you'll solve many of the issues. The problem is the residents near these areas block everything. You do this enough and maybe the rented rowhome or older apartment units are opened up because the higher income earners move into the shiny new complexes. They can also do this in the SV, and maybe some of the houses being rented out to multiple yuppies instead are rented (or bought) by a family.
Apartments and condos in the inner Bay Area are definitely in high demand. Just check the current vacancy numbers.