I can't read the article, but this appears to be hitting us hard here in Bend, Oregon. House prices were already high and only appear to be going higher. I think more people could be a great thing if we get them involved locally, and if we add enough housing to accommodate them, which is tricky right now. As someone involved with a local YIMBY group, it's tough to see the prices - it felt like we were making some progress in several fronts and then BOOM.
In 1978 California passed the ill-conceived Proposition 13 which encourages people to keep houses rather than sell them through lower tax rates for longer ownership.
California has almost 40M residents and Oregon has a bit over 4M, even a fraction of those 40M going north to Oregon is going to overload the housing market there.
Yep. Oregon has something similar in Measures 5 & 50, and it distorts our market as well.
I follow CA housing politics fairly closely because, as you point out, they are important in Oregon too. It has been really dismaying to see them consistently fail to pass the kinds of reform they need.
Yes we have! HB 2001. One of my prouder YIMBY moments was turning out a bunch of people to speak with our state representative in support, on a weekday morning.
There's the view that its an intrusion on personal liberty and choice. Should they also democratically decide what car you should drive? What to name your kids?
Democracy is another kind of oppression, when taken too far.
"Should they also democratically decide what car you should drive?"
It depends. Most western european countries have fairly strict regulations on maintenance, road-worthiness, emissions and sound. Here in California we have relatively strict emissions regulations.
These regulations were, essentially, decided by a democratic process. Presumably if they attempted to regulate color it would fail at the polls.
That's an almost comical level of reductionism concerning exclusionary zoning.
If I lived in a suburban neighborhood I would not want a 7-11 nextdoor. Or a steel fab shop. That is exclusionary zoning and it has nothing to do with race or class discrimination.
It disappoints me to see democracy - and democratic outcomes - embraced only when it produces results we like.
People who run factories aren't going to tear down a house and try and wedge a factory there. That's not the sort of thing anyone wants to eliminate, anyway.
You ought to have a look at this book, which makes the link between exclusionary zoning and flat out racism pretty clear:
I am willing to stipulate that exclusionary zoning (like many other pieces of our laws and jurisprudence) has been used many times in bad faith and to ill effect.
As a literate person versed in current events, of course I am aware of this history.
That does not mean, however, that exclusionary zoning should not and should never have existed.
"People who run factories aren't going to tear down a house and try and wedge a factory there."[1]
When your starting point is well organized, well planned, well intentioned environments it's very easy to underestimate the effects of loosening these restrictions that never made any sense to you and why can't we have a cute little pub right here anyway ?
On the other hand, if you have actually grown up in a place where people had horse corrals next to light industrial with a smattering of houses in-between and oh, look, that's an auto-shop on the back of their residential lot ... you would know that the bullshit people pull in absence of these rules is incredible and fascinating.
When they started enforcing some rules there[2] it had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the fact that one quarter of the town was running unpermitted septic systems because, by god, they were not going to pay for city sewer. Also, llamas.
Just out of curiosity, how long have you been in Bend? My wife was born and raised in Bend and left in her mid 20s. Due to our out of state license plates and IDs she gets a fair amount of "please don't move here you out-of-stater" gruff, and it always feels silly coming from folks that themselves moved here for exact same reasons that the newcomers are flocking now.
A bit more than 5 years. And yes, there's this inane mentality that goes around about 'the new people ruining everything'. I get that attitude from someone who had relatives in the area in 1491, but from someone who moved here not that long ago, it's silly. I think Bend's a better place than when I was growing up on the other side of the mountains. More opportunities, more things to do, even some local tech companies.
I'm in a part of New England I won't name where this is also happening. Here, it's a convergence of families from both coasts who are now supported by remote work and various wealthy families able to simply buy up real estate that suddenly looks rather underpriced compared to the Bay Area or NYC/Boston. (I say families b/c this rural area is not much of a draw for singles.)
In September I called an agent the day a property hit Zillow and made an appt to look at 1pm the next day. At 10am the property had 7 offers.
I looked a bit at moving to Bend a couple years ago, and already at that point it was getting a little rich for me (also wanting to be close in town). Can't imagine what it's like now.
