1. “LVT is a burden.” No, it’s the collection of the land title’s rental value. Of course, LVT would be unnecessary if we had never made the mistake of allowing land titles to be freeheld in the first place; and LV”T” wouldn’t have to exist if we were smart enough to operate a leasehold land tenure system with land titles bid on and held at market rental value from a public entity. But we’ve dug a disastrous hole — freehold land ownership — and getting to an actual free market in land will require a transition. This transition period of LVT — charging the title’s rental value from title owners who already paid capitalized rent in the form of an up-front price — is the perceived “burden” of LVT. If people wanted to effect a politically amicable change to a free land market, this “burden” could be mitigated or altogether avoided through various concessions, although it would amount to society buying its way out of slavery.
2. “LVT isn’t a silver bullet.” LVT is one way to publicly collect land rent. Public land rent collection, in place of taxation, pretty much is the silver bullet. It would end sprawl as we know it, render eminent domain obsolete and zoning changes uncontroversial (no huge unearned windfalls or losses to title holders); it would end poverty and disincentivize exclusionary violence; it would add back the trillions of dollars of economic activity destroyed by the deadweight loss of production taxes … I could go on … Most of the positive effects would result even with stupid and restrictive land use regulations, which I agree should be abolished.
3. “Prop 13 is not all bad.” It entrenches freehold land ownership (a monopoly on life) into the California Constitution. It therefore guarantees a perpetual struggle to exist for anyone who doesn’t freehold valuable land, including the public body of California itself. It is as bad as any piece of legislation can possibly be without outright being titled “Proposition for the Destruction of Civilization.”
I applaud this article for talking about land tenure. It is impossible to have “market urbanism” or anything market-related at all without first having a free market in land titles — that is, titles that are leaseheld from the commons. Thanks.
]]>There is an article about housing in SF and Bay Area:
]]>They wouldn’t effect local architecture because they would be built on the water and would reflect a new era of San Francisco culture built on the periphery of San Francisco itself.
If you are worried by Global Warming, well they float. 😉
]]>I suggest that when a majority of voters understands the nature
of the crisis that our Board of Supervisors, or at least six of them will take
a first step and declare that there is a Crisis. The second step, which has
actually started, is to pursue the use of all City owned surplus sites for new affordable
housing. This would include: all of the MTA
owned parking lots; the BART parking lot near the Glen Park Station, the air
space above BART and the West Portal Metro stations, and others spaces; but never for our open
space parks because as we have more people we will need as much park space as
possible. Private parking lots, such as Stonestown
and the lot behind Davies Symphony Hall are also good sites for high rise
buildings. Most these sites would require some structural steel or reinforced
concrete to support the buildings above but that is much cheaper than buying
land. We should also encourage East Bay communities to build dense housing over
their BART and other parking lots.
There are two kinds of affordable, earthquake proven, construction
systems being used today in San Francisco. Either can be used at the above
sites. One is: four or five stories of wooden construction over a reinforced
concrete podium. The podium is used for commercial space and parking. The other system is the thirteen story
reinforced concrete structure which was used in the older Park Merced buildings
and which will be used again for an expanded Park Merced, starting construction
soon. I prefer the Park Merced system because this will accommodate many more
new housing units while destroying fewer existing houses and the taller
buildings will provide ample space for market rate units to help subsidize the
affordable units below.
Building on the above publicly owned sites can be started
quickly, because the land is essentially free. Developers can be selected based
on the number of affordable units that will be provided without additional
subsidy. Spot zoned can be used to allow for more dense housing if certain
conditions are met. On these sites a mix of market rate and affordable housing
units will help subsidize the affordable units and the total number of
additional units provided will increase the supply and could slow down future
increases in housing prices.
The third step is implementing a City policy that says that we will
build 40,000 or more housing units in
the approximately twenty square miles of the low density portion of our City.
These units should be in addition to the 30,000 units currently being planned
for in the more dense parts of the City.
Spot zoning can be used again for more dense housing as a conditional
use. To visualize this additional housing consider that the units will be in apartment
houses similar to those now in Park Merced, that is, thirteen stories tall with about 100 units
per building. This means that there will be: about 400 new tall buildings: or twenty
tall building per square mile and each building will on average be about 1,200 feet from the
nearest other tall building. However, it will be better to concentrate up to
four tall buildings at the intersections near BART stations and major Muni
transfer points and allow buildings to be as close as 500 feet apart close to
transit and on commercial streets. This
means that, every day the people in these neighborhoods will see one or more of
these buildings, along with few more people on the sidewalk as they walk to
their Muni stop or shopping. Those neighbors who drive a ways will see more
buildings and more traffic unless the amount of parking in the new buildings is
severely restricted. I suggest that these point increases in density surrounded
by existing low density housing will preserve most of San Francisco as it is
now while still increasing the supply of housing enough to make housing more
affordable.
Because the objective is not only about increasing density but
also improving affordability we should mandate that a high percentage of units
be affordable. We can also reduce the cost of the new units by not mandating a
minimum parking supply and actually set a low maximum supply of parking so that
people will be encouraged to reduce their cost of living by not owning a car.
The reduced parking will be acceptable to the existing neighbors if the people
in the new buildings are excluded from ever obtaining a residential parking
permit. The ground floor of the buildings on commercial streets should be mandated
to be mostly commercial to maintain and enhance our commercial streets. The
reasonable spaces between buildings will prevent the construction of a
continuous wall and shading. Even though
density is necessary some open space should remain at ground level to partially
maintain the continuity of our back yard open space areas and most of the current
front yard setbacks, with street trees will be necessary to preserve a
reasonable amount of neighborhood ambiance.
Acquiring the number of lots required for a tall 100 unit building will not be too difficult because sites always come up for sale and a
developer should be able convince adjacent owners to exchange their lots for
one or two units near the top of the building. Mandating a high percentage of affordable
housing in the new housing combined with spot zoning after sites are acquired,
rather than broad up zoning, will tend to keep the price of the sites reasonable.
Making a payment to the adjacent property owners could be a partial solution to
the political problem.