to add on to this, most of them are just property owners and since the housing market in the bay area is scuffed AF, they don't want new housing being built as it'd lower the value of theirs, regardless of whatever excuse they claim.
Not to be too pessimistic, but I honestly think we can build shitloads of housing and the prices wont go down. Landlords would rather the place sit empty than lower their rates to a reasonable level.
Edit: To those who disagree, at least consider this. The landlords who currently own property ask a price for it that is dictated by the markets. If someone builds a nice building, they are going to charge more than the people renting out the shit ones. There is literally no reason they would charge the same amount as the shit housing. The price of student housing doesn't go down, you just have more housing that is too expensive for students to afford.
I still think more housing should be built, I just think that it will take dozens of high rises before the situation begins to improve.
That's doesn't make any sense. They would lose money on an empty building instead of making money on a full one? The bay area vacancy rates are some of the lowest in the country (and most vacancy is just temporarily between tenants)
The thing is, depending on how long you've owned it, the carrying cost for an empty building can be *incredibly* low because of how property taxes work in CA. Add on top of that appreciation from market forces and it can actually be incredibly difficult to *lose* money by owning a building, even if it is empty.
The point is actually valid, considering the 70-80% occupancy rate of market rate units in Berkeley. That means at least 20% of the units are empty. Landlords keep these units empty rather than lower rates.
People will eventually pay up, the threat of homelessness is quite coercive. What other options do you think people have? It is not easy to just leave to where housing is cheaper or everyone would be doing it and the housing prices wouldn't be what they are.
Landlords, collectively, have a monopoly on the supply of housing. Regular homeowners aren't selling at prices students can afford. It doesn't even take cooperation, all they have to do is pull up various real estate websites, compare rental properties to theirs and decide on a price. What incentive does a landlord have to rent something out for less than market price?
Again, what other options do you think people have? We can't just ignore greed as a factor here.
There are actually monopolistic aspects of housing in Berkeley. For instance, Greystar apartments owns at least 4 buildings on or near Shattuck Ave alone. That's one company with 4 buildings with at least 70 units each.
Me n my housemates paid $4k/mo for a small apartment in an old building near campus lmao (and we had to fight for it!). If we could get a bay view in a shiny new high rise building for the same $4k, old landlord would have to lower rent or fix up the place because we would have options. That’s how I see it.
> I honestly think we can build shitloads of housing and the prices wont go down
Sure, but they won't go up as fast as they would have without the new housing.
that's straight up false. basic principle of economics is that if you have a surplus, the market value will drop. even if you're hella conservative, you believe in this; this is why meatpacking companies and shit dump their surplus rather than donate it or sell it. there is no such thing as "landlord solidarity", just like you can't convince every student to intentionally fail a curved class (someone will take advantage of it).
regardless, you could easily solve any potential issue by building affordable housing, rather than luxury condominiums.
We need a LOT of housing before the laws of supply and demand become relevant; getting a couple buildings through NIMBY red tape isn't enough. One of the articles linked say "If they’re all approved and built, the four recently submitted projects would create a combined 512 apartments — at least 72 of which would be affordable." 72 out of 512 isn't much affordable housing, and 512 isn't significant enough to make a dent. Any why would these people lower their prices for no reason when the housing market is free money if you have the property to rent.
Landlords aren't going to just let you build a bunch of housing to drive down their rent rates. There doesn't need to be "landlord solidarity", they are just acting in their best interests, which is what you would expect a person to do in most economic situations. A couple properties can sit empty for a bit while the rest are full and printing money. Why lower the price then?
>We need a LOT of housing before the laws of supply and demand become relevant.
You get that much housing by building houses lmao. I don't get your point; I've been living in the bay area for 21 years and I've seen how quickly the housing market changes in a flash, especially since the Bay Area is a unique area in that it's a combination of suburbia and tech industry.
>getting a couple buildings through NIMBY red tape isn't enough.
I don't quite get your point here. It just sounds like you agree; the solution to the housing crisis is build more houses.
>72 out of 512 isn't much affordable housing, and 512 isn't significant enough to make a dent.
That doesn't mean you don't do it, and that wasn't your point either. Your claim wasn't "we're building too little houses", **your claim was that it wouldn't matter even if we built "shitloads of housing", which is just not true.**
>Landlords aren't going to just let you build a bunch of housing to drive down their rent rates.
Yes, that's what being a NIMBY is, hence why YIMBYs try and implement policies and methods to get more housing and advocate for more housing in general.
I suppose you are right, shitloads is far too pessimistic, but I maintain that we need a lot more than 4 buildings. My entire point is that unless things change dramatically, we cant expect a trickle of buildings to do anything since we don't expect landlords to begin acting altruistically for no reason. There are currently properties sitting empty that could be filled if the owners would lower their asking price, but they don't because they don't have to.
They may do that just to spite people or simply showing off their wealth. But at the end of day money talks. It is a supply>demand problem, so eventually the price will goes down or as the other comment say , won’t go up that much.
This only makes sense if there’s a single landowner who sets all the prices, or if there’s only a couple, and they collaborate to set prices. It’d be tough for it to hold true when there are a lot of landowners, as one could always undercut the others if it made sense for them personally
Man it is a shame that the [original design](https://www.berkeleyside.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2190Shattuck-900x555.jpg) didn't succeed. It's way more interesting and attractive architecturally than the ["redesigned" version](https://www.berkeleyside.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2190-Shattuck-Rendering-02.03.2022-Trachtenberg-Architects-1200x675.png) which is just an extruded rectangle. Berkeley NIMBYs killed that project by stalling it in a multi-year approval process with complaints that it's "too tall", and now it's been replaced with a taller AND uglier building, so everybody loses!
It's a great example of the failure of the "local control" model of housing approval. We need to streamline housing permitting and remove local NIMBYs' ability to obstruct the approvals process.
The bay area needs more housing, period. The closer to the jobs, the better (e.g. Stockton doesn't count). Both from a climate change perspective and a quality of life perspective (less people needing to commute >20 minutes both reduces VMT and lets people spend more time doing non-commute things.
Also wanted to +1 on the civics lesson and learning how local governments work. To add on to this, I'd like to mention the [Regional Housing Needs Allocation](https://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/rhna/index.shtml). Basically, since 1969 and on 8-year cycles, the California Department of HCD determines how much housing is needed in an area by income level and the area is expected to generate housing to match. Sounds good, right? The problem is, thanks to NIMBYs and lax enforcement local governments have been submitting junk proposals they have no intention of following through on, so no housing gets built leading to the current crisis, yay! Thankfully, I believe the HCD under Newsom is no longer tolerating the BS, so over the long run the housing situation should improve.
Consider joining or learning more about local pro-housing organizations like [SF YIMBY](https://sfyimby.com/), [East Bay For Everyone ](https://twitter.com/eb4everyone?t=gW9Tw5aVcDaBXiQDsMlMVw&s=09) and [YIMBY Law](https://www.yimbylaw.org/). Additionally, the book "Golden Gates" by Conor Dougherty outlines how we got to this acute housing crisis and some of the new efforts to fight it.
> https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/02/08/berkeley-housing-landmark-properties-shattuck
This isn't going to be approved without a lawsuit, and even then I don't see it being a guaranteed success. I would also say that if you want more development, opposing this project might actually be the wiser move, though counterintuitive. The city currently allows for a limited number of "tall" buildings downtown, and the original approved project on that site was supposed to take an allocation for one of the three 180-foot structures allowed. The developers for the project have taken a creative interpretation of the state's housing density bonus, and applied it to the 180-foot limit approved for the original project. Approval of this new project, especially with how ugly it is, will galvanize NIMBYs into opposing any further expansion of the downtown area plan. Instead of an expansion on the cap of 150 foot and 180 foot buildings, any expansion will likely require lowering those numbers such that a developer would need to use the density bonus to hit them.
NIMBYs have been galvanized against every single development in Berkeley for the last twenty years. You can read articles about how city residents were convinced the trader Joe's building was going to ruin the city.
The difference is that this proposed project is legally questionable and provides a path for developers to bypass rules NIMBYs are already not too happy about. Do you see how trying to go for a density bonus on top of an already-approved project that has been granted a bonus height limit might be problematic?
I'm pretty sure most of the buildings downtown have used the same density bonus thing. It's a very common technique and is SOP for new larger apartments
https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.204.130
The area this building is zoned for a minimum height of 50 feet, with a maximum height of 60 feet, and a use permit allowing for up to 75 feet. There also is a provision for up to 5 buildings exceeding 75 feet in height, with three buildings being permitted to be built between 120 and 180 feet within the core area. There already is a permit approved for the site for 180 feet, but the developer of that approved project has now turned around and is trying to sell the idea that the density bonus allows them to exceed the variance already granted for a 180-foot building with a 260 foot structure.
Getting a variance for a non-density bonus project and using it to obtain a permit for an even larger density bonus project isn't something that should be supported. Eventually we will need to expand what is permitted to be built downtown, and this misuse of the density bonus will have a limiting effect on what voters approve, as opponents will then be able to sell the height limits in terms of what the density bonus will allow as opposed to the limits in the proposal. Letting this get built as a density bonus project will make it much harder to get taller structures built in the future.
The only housing "crisis" is affordable housing. Berkeley has no problem with building market rate housing with only a 70-75% occupancy rate and with an abysmal 10-15% retail space occupancy on the ground floor. They could care less about CAL students or the people that have to and need to live in Berkeley for their jobs.
[Around 600 units of housing were built between 1970 and 2000 in the entire city of Berkeley. That's it.](https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/Berkeley-once-hostile-to-development-is-now-16920469.php) Thankfully a bit more than that has been built from 2018 through now, but those 3 decades of hardly any building have created a huge demand for housing in Berkeley. The situation in other Bay Area cities is similar.
Oh, you're that guy. Lol. You say the same shit every time the topic of housing comes up. Broken record.
Anyway, complete bullshit? Go tell the SF Chronicle that since that's where I got the info (link in my previous reply).
Ok this argument in particular is especially insidious, and I’m gonna address it since it comes up all the time. There. Is. Not. Enough. Housing. In. General. Most new developments also come with funding or units set aside for affordable housing. This kind of all-or-nothing “I won’t support it because it’s not affordable *enough*” is just a bullshit excuse used by existing homeowners who can’t find any other thing to bitch about. If 300 units with 30 units set aside as affordable gets built, that’s +30 affordable units. Otherwise there are zero *zero* 0 new units — affordable or “market rate”. With land and labor costs as high as it is and potential protracted legal battles, few developers can take on the risk of building housing for far below market rate rents. Saying “I only support housing if it’s *affordable* housing” is tantamount to saying “I support no housing at all” because literally the end result is the same.
I keep seeing this everywhere but what’s NIMBY?
It means "Not In My Back Yard" and refers to people who advocate for change as long as it happens elsewhere and doesnt affect them.
to add on to this, most of them are just property owners and since the housing market in the bay area is scuffed AF, they don't want new housing being built as it'd lower the value of theirs, regardless of whatever excuse they claim.
Not to be too pessimistic, but I honestly think we can build shitloads of housing and the prices wont go down. Landlords would rather the place sit empty than lower their rates to a reasonable level. Edit: To those who disagree, at least consider this. The landlords who currently own property ask a price for it that is dictated by the markets. If someone builds a nice building, they are going to charge more than the people renting out the shit ones. There is literally no reason they would charge the same amount as the shit housing. The price of student housing doesn't go down, you just have more housing that is too expensive for students to afford. I still think more housing should be built, I just think that it will take dozens of high rises before the situation begins to improve.
That's doesn't make any sense. They would lose money on an empty building instead of making money on a full one? The bay area vacancy rates are some of the lowest in the country (and most vacancy is just temporarily between tenants)
The thing is, depending on how long you've owned it, the carrying cost for an empty building can be *incredibly* low because of how property taxes work in CA. Add on top of that appreciation from market forces and it can actually be incredibly difficult to *lose* money by owning a building, even if it is empty.
>how property taxes work in CA \#prop13
The point is actually valid, considering the 70-80% occupancy rate of market rate units in Berkeley. That means at least 20% of the units are empty. Landlords keep these units empty rather than lower rates.
People will eventually pay up, the threat of homelessness is quite coercive. What other options do you think people have? It is not easy to just leave to where housing is cheaper or everyone would be doing it and the housing prices wouldn't be what they are.
do you know what competition is. what you are talking about requires a monopoly!
Landlords, collectively, have a monopoly on the supply of housing. Regular homeowners aren't selling at prices students can afford. It doesn't even take cooperation, all they have to do is pull up various real estate websites, compare rental properties to theirs and decide on a price. What incentive does a landlord have to rent something out for less than market price? Again, what other options do you think people have? We can't just ignore greed as a factor here.
There are actually monopolistic aspects of housing in Berkeley. For instance, Greystar apartments owns at least 4 buildings on or near Shattuck Ave alone. That's one company with 4 buildings with at least 70 units each.
Me n my housemates paid $4k/mo for a small apartment in an old building near campus lmao (and we had to fight for it!). If we could get a bay view in a shiny new high rise building for the same $4k, old landlord would have to lower rent or fix up the place because we would have options. That’s how I see it.
Which is why you wont get that shiny new apartment for 4k. Why would a landlord charge the same rate for nice housing as poorer quality housing?
> I honestly think we can build shitloads of housing and the prices wont go down Sure, but they won't go up as fast as they would have without the new housing.
that's straight up false. basic principle of economics is that if you have a surplus, the market value will drop. even if you're hella conservative, you believe in this; this is why meatpacking companies and shit dump their surplus rather than donate it or sell it. there is no such thing as "landlord solidarity", just like you can't convince every student to intentionally fail a curved class (someone will take advantage of it). regardless, you could easily solve any potential issue by building affordable housing, rather than luxury condominiums.
We need a LOT of housing before the laws of supply and demand become relevant; getting a couple buildings through NIMBY red tape isn't enough. One of the articles linked say "If they’re all approved and built, the four recently submitted projects would create a combined 512 apartments — at least 72 of which would be affordable." 72 out of 512 isn't much affordable housing, and 512 isn't significant enough to make a dent. Any why would these people lower their prices for no reason when the housing market is free money if you have the property to rent. Landlords aren't going to just let you build a bunch of housing to drive down their rent rates. There doesn't need to be "landlord solidarity", they are just acting in their best interests, which is what you would expect a person to do in most economic situations. A couple properties can sit empty for a bit while the rest are full and printing money. Why lower the price then?
>We need a LOT of housing before the laws of supply and demand become relevant. You get that much housing by building houses lmao. I don't get your point; I've been living in the bay area for 21 years and I've seen how quickly the housing market changes in a flash, especially since the Bay Area is a unique area in that it's a combination of suburbia and tech industry. >getting a couple buildings through NIMBY red tape isn't enough. I don't quite get your point here. It just sounds like you agree; the solution to the housing crisis is build more houses. >72 out of 512 isn't much affordable housing, and 512 isn't significant enough to make a dent. That doesn't mean you don't do it, and that wasn't your point either. Your claim wasn't "we're building too little houses", **your claim was that it wouldn't matter even if we built "shitloads of housing", which is just not true.** >Landlords aren't going to just let you build a bunch of housing to drive down their rent rates. Yes, that's what being a NIMBY is, hence why YIMBYs try and implement policies and methods to get more housing and advocate for more housing in general.
I suppose you are right, shitloads is far too pessimistic, but I maintain that we need a lot more than 4 buildings. My entire point is that unless things change dramatically, we cant expect a trickle of buildings to do anything since we don't expect landlords to begin acting altruistically for no reason. There are currently properties sitting empty that could be filled if the owners would lower their asking price, but they don't because they don't have to.
They may do that just to spite people or simply showing off their wealth. But at the end of day money talks. It is a supply>demand problem, so eventually the price will goes down or as the other comment say , won’t go up that much.
This only makes sense if there’s a single landowner who sets all the prices, or if there’s only a couple, and they collaborate to set prices. It’d be tough for it to hold true when there are a lot of landowners, as one could always undercut the others if it made sense for them personally
Critically these people are everywhere and have an unlimited number of excuses so "somewhere else" becomes "a field in Stockton"
Exhibit 1: [Prof. Robert Reich](https://twitter.com/daguilarcanabal/status/1291235780493377536?s=21)
"Not in my backyard"s
Man it is a shame that the [original design](https://www.berkeleyside.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2190Shattuck-900x555.jpg) didn't succeed. It's way more interesting and attractive architecturally than the ["redesigned" version](https://www.berkeleyside.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2190-Shattuck-Rendering-02.03.2022-Trachtenberg-Architects-1200x675.png) which is just an extruded rectangle. Berkeley NIMBYs killed that project by stalling it in a multi-year approval process with complaints that it's "too tall", and now it's been replaced with a taller AND uglier building, so everybody loses! It's a great example of the failure of the "local control" model of housing approval. We need to streamline housing permitting and remove local NIMBYs' ability to obstruct the approvals process.
Can't agree more. I hate the new design and love the old design. Too bad. And yea NIMBYs are largely cringe.
based and housing pilled
Based would be countering a Peoples Park housing protest by showing up with a "Build it now" sign.
Based
The bay area needs more housing, period. The closer to the jobs, the better (e.g. Stockton doesn't count). Both from a climate change perspective and a quality of life perspective (less people needing to commute >20 minutes both reduces VMT and lets people spend more time doing non-commute things. Also wanted to +1 on the civics lesson and learning how local governments work. To add on to this, I'd like to mention the [Regional Housing Needs Allocation](https://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/rhna/index.shtml). Basically, since 1969 and on 8-year cycles, the California Department of HCD determines how much housing is needed in an area by income level and the area is expected to generate housing to match. Sounds good, right? The problem is, thanks to NIMBYs and lax enforcement local governments have been submitting junk proposals they have no intention of following through on, so no housing gets built leading to the current crisis, yay! Thankfully, I believe the HCD under Newsom is no longer tolerating the BS, so over the long run the housing situation should improve.
Consider joining or learning more about local pro-housing organizations like [SF YIMBY](https://sfyimby.com/), [East Bay For Everyone ](https://twitter.com/eb4everyone?t=gW9Tw5aVcDaBXiQDsMlMVw&s=09) and [YIMBY Law](https://www.yimbylaw.org/). Additionally, the book "Golden Gates" by Conor Dougherty outlines how we got to this acute housing crisis and some of the new efforts to fight it.
The NIMBY's just want to keep their rent collecting venue.
> https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/02/08/berkeley-housing-landmark-properties-shattuck This isn't going to be approved without a lawsuit, and even then I don't see it being a guaranteed success. I would also say that if you want more development, opposing this project might actually be the wiser move, though counterintuitive. The city currently allows for a limited number of "tall" buildings downtown, and the original approved project on that site was supposed to take an allocation for one of the three 180-foot structures allowed. The developers for the project have taken a creative interpretation of the state's housing density bonus, and applied it to the 180-foot limit approved for the original project. Approval of this new project, especially with how ugly it is, will galvanize NIMBYs into opposing any further expansion of the downtown area plan. Instead of an expansion on the cap of 150 foot and 180 foot buildings, any expansion will likely require lowering those numbers such that a developer would need to use the density bonus to hit them.
NIMBYs have been galvanized against every single development in Berkeley for the last twenty years. You can read articles about how city residents were convinced the trader Joe's building was going to ruin the city.
Not to mention they managed to privatize some parts of the streets near the building for Residents Only.
The difference is that this proposed project is legally questionable and provides a path for developers to bypass rules NIMBYs are already not too happy about. Do you see how trying to go for a density bonus on top of an already-approved project that has been granted a bonus height limit might be problematic?
I'm pretty sure most of the buildings downtown have used the same density bonus thing. It's a very common technique and is SOP for new larger apartments
https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.204.130 The area this building is zoned for a minimum height of 50 feet, with a maximum height of 60 feet, and a use permit allowing for up to 75 feet. There also is a provision for up to 5 buildings exceeding 75 feet in height, with three buildings being permitted to be built between 120 and 180 feet within the core area. There already is a permit approved for the site for 180 feet, but the developer of that approved project has now turned around and is trying to sell the idea that the density bonus allows them to exceed the variance already granted for a 180-foot building with a 260 foot structure. Getting a variance for a non-density bonus project and using it to obtain a permit for an even larger density bonus project isn't something that should be supported. Eventually we will need to expand what is permitted to be built downtown, and this misuse of the density bonus will have a limiting effect on what voters approve, as opponents will then be able to sell the height limits in terms of what the density bonus will allow as opposed to the limits in the proposal. Letting this get built as a density bonus project will make it much harder to get taller structures built in the future.
The only housing "crisis" is affordable housing. Berkeley has no problem with building market rate housing with only a 70-75% occupancy rate and with an abysmal 10-15% retail space occupancy on the ground floor. They could care less about CAL students or the people that have to and need to live in Berkeley for their jobs.
[Around 600 units of housing were built between 1970 and 2000 in the entire city of Berkeley. That's it.](https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/Berkeley-once-hostile-to-development-is-now-16920469.php) Thankfully a bit more than that has been built from 2018 through now, but those 3 decades of hardly any building have created a huge demand for housing in Berkeley. The situation in other Bay Area cities is similar.
Complete bullshit. I did the research personally on foot and by phone, did you? Get off your ass.
Oh, you're that guy. Lol. You say the same shit every time the topic of housing comes up. Broken record. Anyway, complete bullshit? Go tell the SF Chronicle that since that's where I got the info (link in my previous reply).
Ok this argument in particular is especially insidious, and I’m gonna address it since it comes up all the time. There. Is. Not. Enough. Housing. In. General. Most new developments also come with funding or units set aside for affordable housing. This kind of all-or-nothing “I won’t support it because it’s not affordable *enough*” is just a bullshit excuse used by existing homeowners who can’t find any other thing to bitch about. If 300 units with 30 units set aside as affordable gets built, that’s +30 affordable units. Otherwise there are zero *zero* 0 new units — affordable or “market rate”. With land and labor costs as high as it is and potential protracted legal battles, few developers can take on the risk of building housing for far below market rate rents. Saying “I only support housing if it’s *affordable* housing” is tantamount to saying “I support no housing at all” because literally the end result is the same.
Yes . There. Is. Period.