“Homeowner invokes ‘builders remedy’ in brazen plan to build 20-unit housing complex in Los Altos Hills.”
So reads the headline of a news story in the San Jose Mercury News, January 13. The homeowner involved is Sasha Zbrozek.
Brazen? Wow! What does Zbrozek want to do with the housing complex? Rent it to dealers in illegal drugs, perhaps? Or make it a house of ill repute?
If so, the Mercury writers, Ethan Varian and Aldo Toledo, forgot to mention it.
No, the plan is brazen because it would, gasp, allow more apartments in a city devoted mainly to large expensive houses.
Interestingly, Zbrozek didn’t start out with that plan. Varian writes:
Zbrozek said he got the idea to use the builder’s remedy during what he describes as an ongoing nightmare trying to get the necessary approvals and permits to repair his home after it was severely water damaged by storms in 2019 not long after he bought it. So soon after the January housing plan deadline passed, he filed the proposal with the town’s planning department.
As the late Ayn Rand would have said, “Brothers, you asked for it.”
Note: For more on the “builder’s remedy,” see this. In essence, the builder’s remedy would allow developers to build any size residential building as long as a portion of the units are under price controls. It would apply only if city governments fail to get plans approved by the state government for allowing more housing. As Varian writes:
As of Saturday afternoon, Los Altos Hills was just one of the 105 of 109 Bay Area cities and counties that hadn’t gotten the state to sign off on their every-eight-year plans due Jan. 31.
Further note: The pic above is of part of a brazen building plan, more commonly referred to as an apartment block.
READER COMMENTS
David Seltzer
Feb 14 2023 at 5:38pm
David, excellent discussion of individual creativeness. In the late 1980’s, rent control in NYC limited available apartments. Demand became increasingly inelastic. A number of developers, myself included, bought rental property in Hoboken and Jersey city. There were and still are rent controls in those cities. Ironically, both municipalities allowed conversions to condominiums in virtually weeks. We converted our four and six family units and builders increased supply with hundreds of new units as well. Enough people bought those units such that Hoboken is now referred to as the sixth borough.
Brandon Berg
Feb 16 2023 at 1:09am
Even when California does something right, they have to find some way to screw it up.
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