Darrell Owens

A significant amount of zoning is about what type of housing you can build where, how much of it you can build, and how you have to build it. For example, in Berkeley California, which was one of the first cities to implement "exclusionary zoning" has roughly the following zoning restrictions: * R-1: One home per lot or estate, only. Bans apartments in 49% of the city. * R-1A: One home per lot or estate, unless the parcel exceeds 2,400 SF which allows for an additional home. * R-2: Two homes on one parcel, only. * R-2A: One home per every 1,650 square feet on a parcel. A typical residential parcel in Berkeley is about 5,300 square ft thus commonly three homes maximum. [source](https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/berkeleys-upzoning-would-be-among)

There was a great article about this a couple weeks back: https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/ca-cities-to-lose-all-zoning-power… Basically, until these cities get a housing plan validated with the state, who is apparently sick of their crap like zoning in the middle of an active mall that will not be torn down, builder’s remedy is in place.

This is false, "vacant homes" has no relation to "vacant homes you'd want to live in". Half could be condemned shacks in Detroit and the other half could be homes people have signed leases for but aren't moving in till next week. And it's impossible to make squatting on a vacant home worthwhile, when you could be earning rent from it. https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/vacant-nuance-in-the-vacant-housin…

Hold that thought, and consider the following. Since the 1980s, the black-white income gap has been rising. Two contributing causes are racially biased law enforcement outcomes (particularly from the escalation of the drug war), and the abandonment of school bussing. If you look at https://www.sentencingproject.org/research/us-criminal-justice-data/, you'll find that progressive states like California are generally worse than conservative states like Alabama. When I've talked with progressives about the importance of fixing inequities in education, I've generally received excuses about how expensive and unaffordable that is. Yes, it is expensive. But because we choose not to deal with it, the ones who bear the real cost are the blacks who can least afford it. See https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/half-of-black-students-can-hardly for more. Democratic policies have focused on things like affirmative action, and equity in hiring. I see affirmative action as virtue signaling tokenism. It is far cheaper to admit a few more blacks to universities than to fix schools. I see equity in hiring as sheer cynicism. We have chosen to not fix our schools, but we can force companies to treat blacks that we failed to educate the same as whites who did learn. And then we can punish companies again for failing to promote underqualified blacks as fast as qualified whites. If we as a state taught the blacks, and offered them support services for the gaps that we left, then it would make…

I disagree completely. I'm seeing a common thread among all of these neo-progressive efforts. They defy reality and have a feeling of insidiousness to them. They are hurting the people that they purport to want to help, and they are all destroying the communities that implement them. SF is a perfect example, because there has been decades of left wing politics in charge and there's no Republican boogeyman to blame. And it's been nothing but failure and failure, and things are getting worse and worse. Education is the thing that really makes me the most angry, because the fact that 50% of Black and Brown students are "graduating" from high school barely able to read [1] is 100% the fault of the progressives. They claim to care about equity, yet all they are producing is generations of students unable to compete in the real world. Lowell is/was a top 100 high school in the US, and the progressives gutted the admissions because too many Asians got in, so they changed it to a lottery system. All that did was admit kids who were unprepared and flunked classes. The number of flunks classes tripled in a single year after merit-based admissions was cut [2]. All of these things are related. The progressive policies since the 60s have produced fantastic policies that are important for freedom. Gays and trans deserve the right to live in safety and be treated like everyone else. Drug addicts should not be criminalized, they are addicts that need help. Mental health problems should…

This. I still live here and you can really feel it. I like your solution - much cleaner while we're trying to reform permitting. Berkeley just nearly got it done but got stuck in committees https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/the-big-zoning-battle-of-berkeley - we need a faster solution. Edit: reading the article, Lurie is proposing this: - https://www.sf.gov/mayor-lurie-launches-permit-reform-effort-with-focu… - https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/lurie-housing-rezoning-plan-202… Note to self: Read the article before diving into the comments.

People seem to feel very smart for pointing out things that look and feel like gentrification without actually really understanding what gentrification is. I found this article from a couple years back illuminating: https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/the-look-of-gentrification > This conflation of modern architecture as a “gentrification style” was so common that low income builders began erecting signs explaining they were affordable housing. Also, this article is frustrating because it’s explicitly just trying to make some clickbait out of a couple tweets the author saw, presumably from a random people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

It’s creating a generation of black and brown students that are uneducated and won’t be able to compete against anyone else. It’s the ultimate in racism. Overt racist policies couldn’t be more effective and de-educating these students more than these ”progressive” policies have. Half of Black SF high school students can barely read. https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/half-of-black-students-can-hardly Decades of EXCLUSIVELY PROGRESSIVE policies have lead to this end result. There aren’t any Republican boogeymen you can blame for this damage these policies have created.

I think you are referring to AB 2097, which allows more housing near transit hubs. It was passed in the latest legislative session, but is distinct from the Builder's Remedy and has height restrictions unlike the topic of this article. The same author wrote about it here: https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/yimby-triumph-in-california

> Shortages of buildings are not the only reason that property prices can be high. It pretty much is - everything else is window dressing. Pretty much every single city in China is 3-10x more dense than any area in the US, so lack of land is a reason I find continually uncompelling. Our lack of density, zoning practices, NIMBY attitudes and car dependency all contribute to this, with the result being a lack of construction. Tokyo has been and continues to be affordable for anyone who wants to live there by building: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/editorials/tokyo-housing.ht… Here's a grad student on tiktok who does good, well-sourced analysis on this front (he has an entire playlist on the issue of vacancy rates given how frequently it comes up): https://www.tiktok.com/@divasunglasses?lang=en Article on zoning law changes in CA and how municipalities have put out estimates for how much they should build and then consistently, for decades, not even come close to meeting them: https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/ca-cities-to-lose-all-zoning-power… There's endless amounts of info on this front - look up strongtowns, YIMBY, parking minimums and associated issues (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8), japanese vs. american zoning policy (https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)...