North 40
The East Bay Times published an article concerning the difficulty of building, using the North 40 project in Los Gatos as a prime example. It goes into some length about how the project has been held up for twenty years in a stalemate fight between the developer and the neighbors. It ultimately ended up in a lawsuit which the developer won, clearly having rights to build on their land.
Although I disagree with state directed housing supply mandates (enforcing property rights is a much better approach), it is interesting to see some of the other statistics the article revealed concerning the woeful lack of housing cities have permitted:
The article also cites research that found it takes on average 17 months to attain approval for projects and that these delays can add 30% to the price of new homes. It's a rarity for me to see California projects go from initial architectural contract to construction documents in under a year and those are typically very simple projects with low impact. I have, however, seen complex out of state projects do so in well under a year. I think I've seen more California projects go over five years than under one. That's a lot of money for getting nothing done.
Although I disagree with state directed housing supply mandates (enforcing property rights is a much better approach), it is interesting to see some of the other statistics the article revealed concerning the woeful lack of housing cities have permitted:
97 percent of cities and counties failed to keep pace with housing needs
The article also cites research that found it takes on average 17 months to attain approval for projects and that these delays can add 30% to the price of new homes. It's a rarity for me to see California projects go from initial architectural contract to construction documents in under a year and those are typically very simple projects with low impact. I have, however, seen complex out of state projects do so in well under a year. I think I've seen more California projects go over five years than under one. That's a lot of money for getting nothing done.
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