Isn’t near transit stations exactly where you’d want to put high density housing?

Here’s the California Avenue train station mentioned in that article: https://maps.app.goo.gl/2eMQc3EPPJiGzaMR8

Look at the Street View, and there is nothing but sparse, two-story buildings right near the station. If they let 5-story buildings be built, that station and the shops nearby would get a lot more use.

Americans have so much of their wealth sunk in their real estate / home that they eye any change with deep suspicion and an eye on how it affects their home value. Surely, a 5 story building next to your ranch home is going to lower your home value, so it must not happen.

I think this is a dilemma that everybody in the Bay Area faces: you can universally agree that more housing and especially more dense housing needs to be built, but you can’t allow it to be built near you because that drags your home value down. Even just a 5% drop in value may be all the equity you built if you are a recent buyer.

I guess a compromise might be to give people near these new buildings a property tax rebate as counterbalance. Also, instead of mandating parking, maybe you mandate that people moving into spaces designed to be near public transit not register cars there.

I used to live in this area. These people have money. I don’t mean they have money like their daughter whips a Benz and extra properties. Nah man some folks in this area have that fuck you money, like bury bodies money

Haha, so USA can’t have five story buildings because the parking lot would have to be really big. ½ mile is 800 m? That’s fine, distance wise from the train station. Maybe 0.4 miles would be better but you can still walk ½ mile in a bit over ten minutes.