Future of Sacramento (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland: low income, renters, condo)

[x15]

The drop out rate is the big long term concern.

In California 50% of the Cambodian, Laotian and Hmong drop out of high school (which is a big chunk of the Asian kids in this region) as do 40% of the Hispanic and African American kids.

Hispanic PR Wire - Campaign for High School Equity Calls on California and Federal Policy Makers to Address Dropout Crisis

With these types of numbers, how can you keep the underclass from growing? What kind of future do these people have? Why are we letting in so many additional poor people in when we seem to lack the ability to give them the tools to succeed in this society.

[kim racer]

Wburg brings up the reason I don't think this area is going to significantly densify. He wants this region to densify, but fears the consequences to his neighborhood if the densification was to actually happen in his neighborhood. If you can't increase the density in the neighborhoods where the proponents of density live. Where is it going to happen?

Densification is only going to happen in the neighborhoods where landprices are high enough to make it feasible. The costs of densification are significant, you need to buy out the existing landowner,* you need to remove the existing structure, you need to build the new building and you need to cover the interest expenses on capital borrowed during the approval process.

If the neighbors fight the project the cost of borrowing can get high enough to make the project economically infeasible and it won't occur.

In this region there are very few neighborhoods where increasing density is anywhere near economically feasible on paper.

Its not economically feasible to build in regions where housing prices are below replacement cost. So while in theory filling the abandoned lots in Oak Park with new houses probably would allow increases in densification with minimal additional infrastructure requirements, only government will spend to build in these neighborhoods. In places like Rancho Cordova, absent government subsidy again real estate prices don't come anywhere near the cost of covering the cost of replacing the existing land uses and building something much denser. This is why new construction projects near light rail stations all need to be subsidized.*

People have a lot of other expectations on their government besides redevelopment. They want money for better schools or public assistance for the poor. That creates an inherent restraint on how much cities can increase densification via subsidy. For densification to happen in significant fashion in this region its going to have to happen in the areas where its most economically feasible to do so. If the locals are fighting it there, then its just not going to happen.

Sacramento isn't coastal California. Sacramento is pretty flat and the local climates are pretty similiar throughout the region. There isn't a real limited supply of ocean views, marine microclimates that confer on some areas advantages so unique that its worth it for developers to build much denser in those specific areas. Elk Grove is a good substitute for Rancho Cordova. Roseville is a good substitute for Fair Oaks. New communities are good substitutes for the existing ones, so again their isn't a compelling reason to densify the existing ones.

Even if the region tries to cap land supply locally, Reno, Fresno, Stockton, Chico all serve as substitutes for this region. If this area fails to provide affordible suburban housing, than a lot of that housing demand will move to the areas that will supply it. Given the structural weakness in the regional economies in those areas, they have strong incentives to do so.

Because I think a lot more low density housing in this region is inevitable, I think the goal should be to figure out ways to do a better job doing it.

It might have made sense to have real strict zoning regiments when factories were coal fired and polluted a lot and for really obnoxious uses there probably still are a need for real strict zoning. But I suspect that we overzoned the region. I am curious about what would happen if we just relaxed some of the zoning catergories. Instead of specifying single family homes or multifamily if we just recategorized those neighborhoods as either residential letting people split or combine the existing housing as they saw fit or just rezoned the areas in a new mixed use zoning category and let people shift from housing to retail to office or some combination of those uses. If someone converted a house in Arden Park into a cafe, would it ruin or help the neighborhood? If a lawyer in Fair Oaks decided to practice law out of his house would that be the end of the neighborhood? If the owners of the local doughnut shop decided to build an apartment in the back of the building, does the state need to stop that?

None of that is necessarily involves pulling down existing structures to build new ones, but its probably would reduce car trips and mean that a lot more services are provided with in walking distance for a lot more people.

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by kim racer

Wburg brings up the reason I don't think this area is going to significantly densify. He wants this region to densify, but fears the consequences to his neighborhood if the densification was to actually happen in his neighborhood. If you can't increase the density in the neighborhoods where the proponents of density live. Where is it going to happen?

Densification is only going to happen in the neighborhoods where landprices are high enough to make it feasible. The costs of densification are significant, you need to buy out the existing landowner,* you need to remove the existing structure, you need to build the new building and you need to cover the interest expenses on capital borrowed during the approval process.

If the neighbors fight the project the cost of borrowing can get high enough to make the project economically infeasible and it won't occur.

In this region there are very few neighborhoods where increasing density is anywhere near economically feasible on paper.

Its not economically feasible to build in regions where housing prices are below replacement cost. So while in theory filling the abandoned lots in Oak Park with new houses probably would allow increases in densification with minimal additional infrastructure requirements, only government will spend to build in these neighborhoods. In places like Rancho Cordova, absent government subsidy again real estate prices don't come anywhere near the cost of covering the cost of replacing the existing land uses and building something much denser. This is why new construction projects near light rail stations all need to be subsidized.*

People have a lot of other expectations on their government besides redevelopment. They want money for better schools or public assistance for the poor. That creates an inherent restraint on how much cities can increase densification via subsidy. For densification to happen in significant fashion in this region its going to have to happen in the areas where its most economically feasible to do so. If the locals are fighting it there, then its just not going to happen.

Sacramento isn't coastal California. Sacramento is pretty flat and the local climates are pretty similiar throughout the region. There isn't a real limited supply of ocean views, marine microclimates that confer on some areas advantages so unique that its worth it for developers to build much denser in those specific areas. Elk Grove is a good substitute for Rancho Cordova. Roseville is a good substitute for Fair Oaks. New communities are good substitutes for the existing ones, so again their isn't a compelling reason to densify the existing ones.

Even if the region tries to cap land supply locally, Reno, Fresno, Stockton, Chico all serve as substitutes for this region. If this area fails to provide affordible suburban housing, than a lot of that housing demand will move to the areas that will supply it. Given the structural weakness in the regional economies in those areas, they have strong incentives to do so.

Because I think a lot more low density housing in this region is inevitable, I think the goal should be to figure out ways to do a better job doing it.

It might have made sense to have real strict zoning regiments when factories were coal fired and polluted a lot and for really obnoxious uses there probably still are a need for real strict zoning. But I suspect that we overzoned the region. I am curious about what would happen if we just relaxed some of the zoning catergories. Instead of specifying single family homes or multifamily if we just recategorized those neighborhoods as either residential letting people split or combine the existing housing as they saw fit or just rezoned the areas in a new mixed use zoning category and let people shift from housing to retail to office or some combination of those uses. If someone converted a house in Arden Park into a cafe, would it ruin or help the neighborhood? If a lawyer in Fair Oaks decided to practice law out of his house would that be the end of the neighborhood? If the owners of the local doughnut shop decided to build an apartment in the back of the building, does the state need to stop that?

None of that is necessarily involves pulling down existing structures to build new ones, but its probably would reduce car trips and mean that a lot more services are provided with in walking distance for a lot more people.

VERY INSIGHTFUL post. You gave me a very strong accurate view of Sacramento.

A little depressing future it seems, and I think you are right...I could see it just sprawling outward, replacing what becomes bad suburbs with new suburbs forever outward...and not much density in the inside...and it seems like you have a very strong point on that.

I had hope it COULD become denser and more compact and offer something interesting for into the future. But without the natural boundaries and forever cheap land to build outwards...and the points about the cost of building denser areas, a strong argument there!

Certainly give you a rep there.

(I wish you were wrong, as I'm considering Sacramento, but it certainly sounds very accurate and prophetic on Sacramento).

[Tiger Beer]

Actually I think Sacramento's fate is depressing now.

While more and more cities have people who WANT public transportation, WANT density, and DO NOT WANT car-centric cities and lives...Sacramento somewhat has a chance to be a city of the future and develop something like that while it is growing and such.

But, on the other hand, it does have a lot of room to spread out, and probably will become one of those cities that people leave behind large tracts of land and continally buy new properties forever outward, etc. Particularly if there is no measure or plan whatsoever to create a nice central area for its people with conducive support and building for with it in mind.

It seems like the cities that have natural barriers are the ones that have the incentives to build downtowns and public spaces for its citizens - i.e. Manhattan, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.

[kim racer]

If this country taxed gasoline use and tax automobile ownership like Europe and Japan do, then places like Sacramento would actually densify and there would actually be demand to live closer and to live near mass transit. You would see higher land values next to rail line and bus stops.

But right now a lot of policies are at cross purposes. If the feds mandate a doubling of mileage in the auto fleet but fail to raise the gas tax, one of the unintended consequences is that the policy has just made it half as expensive to drive and that has the consquence of encouraging people to live and drive twice as far from work. Which lowers the density of the region. Mandating hybrids without raising the gas tax probably just means more people commuting in from Placerville, Yuba City or Lodi and may do nothing to reduce fuel useage or shrink carbon footprints.

In Amsterdamn and Copenhagen you have 25 to 35 percent of all trips being done on bike. In Europe people take mass transit. But in these countries gasoline is more than $7 dollars a gallon and their equivalent of the car tax can be about 200% of the price of the car.

Because gas prices are so high there and the cost of auto ownership is so high people are willing to put up with the hassle of transit or commuting by bike.

But when car ownership and gas are this cheap, getting around by car is convientent and affordible. Regions with less density are at an advantage because that makes traffic congestion less of an issue. That also lowers the land costs making it easier and cheaper to have a bigger home. That also makes it easier and cheaper for employers to build suburban office parks with plenty of free parking?

When housing and work are spread out, you lose the corridors that sustain high frequency transit service.

I think there is an assortive mating process at work here too. The people who like high density living tend to move to places and seek out places like SF, Seattle and NYC where that is available and the people who are indifferent to it move to the burbs.

[NewToCA]

I just wonder if a lot of the population growth projections are even correct. I just have some difficulty seeing what would cause a million extra people to populate metro Sacramento within the next 30 or so years. I know some folks will point to babies being born as a huge growth engine, but places like Philly, Detroit, Memphis and Cleveland have a large birth rate too, and no population growth.

Not sure I really can see what would motivate folks to relocate or grow their businesses in Sacramento. The huge cost of metro San Francisco has largely evaporated, especially in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by NewToCA

Not sure I really can see what would motivate folks to relocate or grow their businesses in Sacramento. The huge cost of metro San Francisco has largely evaporated, especially in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

IF that continues, it would certainly erase my current interest in Sacramento. At the moment though, houses in Sacramento are widely available at a fraction of the cost...

But I think it is inevitable that eventually LA/SF/SEA and more desireable areas will have to lower their housing prices as well.

[wburg]

Sacramento's central city doesn't need "densification" in the sense of scraping the land and rebuilding from the ground up--it is already among the densest parts of the city. Despite its common characterization as a neighborhood of single-family older homes, more than 90% of the residences in the old city are multi-family units, and some blocks in Midtown are upwards of 50 DUA. Only a handful of blocks consist solely of single-family homes; there are many duplexes, fourplexes, and apartment buildings of various sizes. In fact, our many multi-unit residences is part of why Sacramento's old city is practically ungentrifiable; all those darn rental units! Despite our reputation as being expensive and gentrified, the central city currently has a higher percentage of affordable housing (around 17%) than any other neighborhood in Sacramento.

Part of this is because Midtown and other central city neighborhoods were built out before the automobile was common: they were always "transit-oriented, mixed-use" neighborhoods. There are commercial streets every couple of blocks, with residential above commercial along much of their length, generally along the old streetcar corridors (J, K, P, T, 10th, 21st, 28th.) These neighborhoods are the model for the kind of compact, walkable communities we want to build, not something to bulldoze. Besides, this is about the only part of the city where public transit works reasonably well, and bicycles and pedestrians are a common sight on the street. Displacing these people would destroy and disrupt these patterns of use. Putting new growth on the many infill sites near the central city would allow greater total density without having to remove the density that is already here.

Take a look at Sacramento's new 2030 general plan. There are plans to effectively triple the population of the central city, but it probably won't require any demolition (other than that done by short-sighted developers who don't realize the market for adaptive-reuse buildings and lofts.) There is room for tens of thousands of residences in the Richards Boulevard area, the Railyards, the Docks, the R Street corridor and the central business district. There is room for units in small infill lots and alleys throughout the central city, and a lot of the past decade's projects have filled many of those lots. Others under construction are replacing 1960s "Buzz Boxes," like the Trammell Crow apartments on Alhambra and S, which were built without any subsidy but have a density of 50-60 dua and is located two blocks from light rail. A new developer's plan for alley development is based on ownership housing of alley-loaded units, with parking for the house in front, basically a return of the "mother-in-law" alley unit.

Midtown's land-use category allows for much higher density than surrounding neighborhoods, which works quite well with its existing housing forms, and includes closer-knit mixed-use and retail corridors than other parts of the city. There is even a special consideration for apartment units technically above Midtown's density maximum: if a high-density apartment building in Midtown is demolished, the land owner can build to the same density even if that density exceeds the new specification in the general plan. Nearby older neighborhoods like Land Park, Curtis Park and East Sacramento are all rated "low-density traditional" with land-use densities that are actually lower than what is on the ground, because it is assumed that the central city will be dense but the ring of affluent suburbs around the central city will not.

Land prices in Midtown aren't high enough to justify high-density residential, but they're cheaper than downtown. Houses in Midtown tend to be expensive because they are historic homes loaded with character; they are often more expensive than new construction for the same reason a restored '57 Chevy can cost more than a new Chevy; they quite literally don't make them like that anymore.

I resist the demolition of Midtown not because I oppose density, but rather the loss of our architectural heritage and the densest, most vital, most beautiful and most historic neighborhoods in the city. We're an example of how cities used to be built before cars were required, and how we can do it again.

NewToCA: Those rust-belt cities lose population because of out-migration to other cities. While a few people are leaving Sacramento, more people are still moving in than going out, partially because even though the Bay Area isn't as ludicrously expensive as it was during the dot-com boom, it is still more expensive.

[Tiger Beer]

wburg - you just got me VERY interested in Sacramento again!

[wburg]

Here is the land-use map from the new general plan:

http://www.cityofsacramento.org/dsd/...dUse_11x17.pdf

The general plan site is here: City of Sacramento General Plan Update

The land-use map shows the concepts that will drive zoning in Sacramento for the next 20-25 years. The central city features a lot of different land uses in close proximity, including housing that is quite dense compared to suburban neighborhoods on the outer perimeters, aside from some high-density "opportunity areas" like Folsom & 65th Street and Swanston.