A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable • Hacker News Board

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#41

Post by joshe » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #12

imgabe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is the case for a lot of the differences between the US and other countries. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as "just make the Federal government do it for everyone". The constitution limits the authority of what the Federal government can do in the US and delegates everything else to state and local governments.

Are the State governments the problem here though? From what I(not American) can tell the issue seems to be more that local residents have a surprising(to me) amount of political control over zoning on the municipal level. I guess this is all part of the American approach to the distribution of power and there are certainly good sides to this, but it also means that NIMBYs can have so much control by voting for the m…

But states can just decide. They usually leave it to the cities, but all they have to do is pass legislation and it will override all the city rules.

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#42

Post by dsfyu404ed » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #16

FussyZeus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we can make more computers, execute more healthcare services, etc. Land is a zero sum game; we have a fixed amount, and while it's possible to create more, it's prohibitively expensive to do so. Add to it, land is the primary method by which "old money" remains in that category.

The US isn't particularly space constrained. In city cores the lack of space is significant. For most of the country, there's plenty of room to build.

Distance costs money or time (basically the same thing at the macro level). When you have things spread out people need to eat the large opportunity cost of forgoing jobs or other opportunities that are far away or spent a lot of time and money commuting. If cities prioritized making it easy to commute in and out that would make distance cost less, effectively the same as increasing density. The problem is that there's many decades of pent up demand for both housing and transit infrastructure. There's no cheap way out of the situation. It's going to take a hell of a lot of either/both in order to measurably improve people's quality of life.

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#43

Post by burlesona » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #13

matchbok wrote: post #9

Seems like it could work. Nonsense local policies to encourage "affordable" housing like inclusionary zoning have been huge failures. In big cities, we just need way more housing. Yet NIMBYs fight it at every step, esp in SF.

Local policies actually make a lot of sense in most places, as most places have unique concerns. In Madison Wisconsin there were, for a long time, policies that tended to discourage building on the main east-side thoroughfare. Over time, no one really remembered why those policies, some of which one might construe as "inclusionary zoning", were in place. So we jumped on the urban development bandwagon. We were "All I…

Fair, but the root reason for many of the core zoning codes is that the WW2 and Boomer generations felt that cars were the future and that low density car-oriented development was the only kind of thing they wanted to be allowed near them, mostly for aesthetic reasons and also because they perceived (accurately at the beginning) that “those people,” meaning criminals but mostly just low income people, wouldn’t be able to follow, and thus they’d have their idillic suburban life. So when we examine those root causes it turns out that they’re pretty crap and we don’t need to keep them around.

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#44

Post by darksaints » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:44 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #13

matchbok wrote: post #9

Seems like it could work. Nonsense local policies to encourage "affordable" housing like inclusionary zoning have been huge failures. In big cities, we just need way more housing. Yet NIMBYs fight it at every step, esp in SF.

Local policies actually make a lot of sense in most places, as most places have unique concerns. In Madison Wisconsin there were, for a long time, policies that tended to discourage building on the main east-side thoroughfare. Over time, no one really remembered why those policies, some of which one might construe as "inclusionary zoning", were in place. So we jumped on the urban development bandwagon. We were "All I…

In vast swathes of the US, the reason for it was to prevent black people from moving into white neighborhoods. I'd still call that outdated.

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#45

Post by temp-dude-87844 » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

As with most things, engineering a blunt policy solution will lead to unintended consequences.

If this proposal goes into effect, by clobbering local zoning codes, anything with sufficient money behind it is going to get built. This typically means projects that optimize for the developer's ability to extract rent from residents: 3 or 4-story apartments with small unit sizes, basic finishes made to aesthetically look high-end, and bare minimum green space or community space. A common approach is to use high-end appliances, a one-time cost, to ask for higher rent. This is the sort of construction that pops up in American suburbia today, where there's sufficient demand, and gets adapted to a more "urban" form with flat roofs and minimal changes.

Despite many of these projects being built, there's a price floor beyond which the rent will not drop, because the developer has to make payments on loans and maintain a profit. Therefore, while housing affordability is sure to improve in some places where it's absurdly high, it won't meaningfully be altered in places whose urban form is predominantly suburban. This is doubly so because the plentiful supply of single-family homes offers an a low-cost way to get started as a landlord.

Developers also have a choice on where to build. If it's cheaper after expenses to assemble a large parcel in Morgan Hill or Tracy or Vacaville, build out the site, and charge those rents, than to do the same in West Portal, one of them isn't getting built.

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#46

Post by rayiner » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

ahoy wrote: post #26

kazinator wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm for Japanese zoning, and Japanese anything else, provided we make everyone "Japanese" first: bred with the same common code of decency. Also, Japan is NIMBY at the national level, as in "not on my island". For instance, accepting few refugees. Smart in other ways, not just the zoning, you see. They protect their culture.

Ah, the classic "only monocultures can work toward the social good, if we'd stop accepting 'outsiders' we could do the same" trope. It's tired and xenophobic. The presence of foreigners isn't why laws that benefit already-wealthy real estate developers persist.

Exclusionary zoning developed in response to Supreme Court cases striking down state laws making it illegal for african americans to buy property in majority white neighborhoods: https://tcf.org/content/commentary/exclusionary-zoning-conti...

People are racist and xenophobic, we know that. It’s not xenophobic to point out that, within a democratic framework, peoples’ racism and xenophobia, coupled with a hetrogenous population, could make it difficult to implement policies that more homogenous populations implement successfully.

For example, one mah argue that our justice system is strongly influenced by racism (an uncontroversial assertion, I think) and that’s a major reason why our voters prefer harsher sentencing and more aggressive policing than in Western Europe.

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#47

Post by ramblerouser » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:47 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #23

bradleyjg wrote: post #5

The charts at the top are eye opening. More and more of our income is going to pay for pieces of land. Unlike computers, TVs, and even troublesome areas like healthcare the land is not getting better and better. It’s instead a purely zero sum game. We probably can’t eliminate the scourge of land rents altogether but we can stop making the problem worse by putting in place more and more policies designed to raise hous…

For a long time there was a roughly equal balance in the US between the amount of money paid out as wages and the profits that go to capital. Recently that balance has gotten skewed with 60% going to capital. But basically all of that skew is due to rising rents and housing prices.

A big part of it is wage stagnation too. The average American hasnt had a meaningful raise since 1973, that's half a century. Not good. Growth of the labor supply and repeal of trade protections for industries that employ low-skill workers have caused it.

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#48

Post by bradleyjg » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:47 PM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #6

bradleyjg wrote: post #5

The charts at the top are eye opening. More and more of our income is going to pay for pieces of land. Unlike computers, TVs, and even troublesome areas like healthcare the land is not getting better and better. It’s instead a purely zero sum game. We probably can’t eliminate the scourge of land rents altogether but we can stop making the problem worse by putting in place more and more policies designed to raise hous…

Because we can make more computers, execute more healthcare services, etc. Land is a zero sum game; we have a fixed amount, and while it's possible to create more, it's prohibitively expensive to do so. Add to it, land is the primary method by which "old money" remains in that category.

It’s true that it’s inherently a zero sum game. As I said I don’t think we can eliminate the drag altogether. But there are lots of interventions at all three levels of government that make the problem worse. And worse yet these aren’t unintended consequences, it’s governments’ policy to try to increase the costs of housing.

Various cities have tiny band aid programs under the rubric of affordable housing but the low hanging fruit is to stop actively intervening to make the problem worse.

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#49

Post by 0xffff2 » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #21

s0rce wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicken-egg problem though. If you say transit doesn't go places or doesn't run often people claim the density is too low and we need more people to use it. Can't have the same excuses just used to block everything. Just start building everything, high density housing, dedicated bus lanes, multi-level parking garages, better utilities.

> Just start building everything, high density housing, dedicated bus lanes, multi-level parking garages I'd advise against this. We did that in Madison, and before we even got very far doing this, Mother Nature started to hint to us that it might not be a good idea. Maybe there are places where you can just build Willy-Nilly. (I doubt it, but what do I know?) I suspect, however, most places are like Madison, just no…

> Mother Nature started to hint to us that it might not be a good idea.

Could you explain what you mean by this?

Re: A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable

#50

Post by joshe » Wed, Sep 12, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #38

joshe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it solves lots of those problems too, more affordable housing would make it possible for teachers, waiters, bus drivers, waiters, grocery cashiers to live affordably in the city. Uber/Lyft and now scooters have already 10x improved transit in SF. Living without a car and even without buses is totally possible now. The cost of Lyft 10 times a week compares favorably with a car, and scooters/bikes are much che…

That’s no solution. So teachers and waiters can live in the city now—great. What new schools and restaurants will they work in? Where are all the new grocery stores going to be built to cater to all the new residents? How will the traffic grid handle more Lyfts and Ubers? Are you going to build wider roads in SF? You can’t just build taller buildings and dump 50% more people in a city.

There's now a bunch of new building to put schools and restaurants in.

Much of SF is 1 story buildings. You can absolutely convert those to 3-4 story buildings and get 100% more people in SF. The first floor can be restaurants, schools and grocery stores. In this new SF, like in Tokyo, you can get a flat for $600/month.

Think of the Mission, North Beach, Noe Valley, but building that in the Richmond and Sunset. Everyone wants to live there (see the current prices), why not build more if it? Why not build a bunch in Oakland?

People can just switch to scooters and bikes and there is tons of room on the streets. I remember a NY transit authority guy at a conference, he was just amazed at how much wider our streets are. There is tons of room.

Tokyo exists, it is a real big city with low rents and a great quality of life.