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

bloomberg.com

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

#131

Post by maxsilver »

oliwarner wrote: post #99
xvedejas wrote: post #3

In Japan, zoning is handled federally; and the result is much more affordable cities. "Why Tokyo is the land of rising home construction but not prices" https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3... An overview of zoning practices there: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Housing in Japan is culturally unique. The average house depreciates completely after just 22 years. People just don't buy used houses. It's folly to compare zoning rules when the spirit of the law is so different.

This is a big difference between the two. I'm totally ok with Japanese zoning, if we get Japanese depreciation and all housing is required to become worthless after 2 decades.

However, YIMBYs only want half of that -- they want Japanese zoning, with American infinite appreciation. Which is disastrous to basically everyone who works for a living.

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

#132

Post by quacked »

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #45

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…

This is exactly what's happening everywhere I look for housing. Apartments that aren't actually nice to live in but look good in photographs.

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

#133

Post by travisoneill1 »

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.

What is your point? That it's too difficult and we should just give up and be thankful for what we have?

> You can’t just build taller buildings and dump 50% more people in a city.

Tell that to NY.

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

#134

Post by CamTin »

joshe wrote: post #41
ginko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's tough politics for state legislatures to say "fuck you, cities, we're centralizing control in {Austin,Springfield,Albany}". They will essentially only do it if they are fearful of challenges in the next election by big money. In other words, states tend only to take over traditionally local issues when local government passes some ordinance odious to industry (see fracking in PA, Uber/Lyft background checks in Austin, etc.)

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

#135

Post by pessimizer »

I looked for an explanation of "exclusionary zoning" in the article, but I guess it just means "zoning."

It's always great when an administration can repurpose unimplemented legislation designed to reduce segregation, and use it to enrich property speculators.

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

#136

Post by bluGill »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #82
ginko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

NIMBY's have practically all of the power with zoning laws in Seattle. They have all of the money as well. We have a crazy amount of SFH right now when we have a housing crisis. It's not like housing would become more affordable anyway, Seattle only builds luxury housing for the rich (and they're having a hard time filling these units!).

Houses are generally built for/by the richer class. Then in a few tens of years the rich build a new house and sell the old one to someone poor.

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

#137

Post by TomMckenny »

burlesona wrote: post #33
xvedejas wrote: post #3

In Japan, zoning is handled federally; and the result is much more affordable cities. "Why Tokyo is the land of rising home construction but not prices" https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3... An overview of zoning practices there: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Federal zoning would be really difficult to get done constitutionally, but state level zoning wouldn’t be as hard and would have most of the same benefits, ie. reducing the power the nimbys. However there’s no reason to think that would fix it all, transportation planning, design, and funding is almost entirely a state and federal affair, and the nimbys still torpedo all sorts of things that would be great for the re…

>To some extent though, that’s a feature of democracy, not a bug

Because of strategic (cynical?) choices over how voter registration is implement, tenants have far less power at the polls.

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

#138

Post by Epenthesis »

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.

Land is zero sum (which is why a Land Value Tax is such a good idea), but housing, which is what people actually consume is not. We have the technology to build more housing, just not the regulatory regime, which is what this article is about.

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

#139

Post by Epenthesis »

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #45

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…

> rent will not drop, because the developer has to make payments on loans and maintain a profit

So, you're saying that if the developer has costs of X $/mo month, then in a oversupplied market, rather than take, say 0.8X $/mo in rent and have losses of -0.2X $/mo, they'll refuse to rent at all and take losses of -X $/mo?

Why?

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

#140

Post by nradov »

paulsutter wrote: post #57
xvedejas wrote: post #3

In Japan, zoning is handled federally; and the result is much more affordable cities. "Why Tokyo is the land of rising home construction but not prices" https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3... An overview of zoning practices there: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Japan and China also have one national building code. A very different issue, yes, but should aimpkify the challenge of construction technology (in the US building codes are localized)

All of the heavily populated areas in Japan have a similar climate and risk of natural disasters. Those factors are much more variable in the USA. A building code that works in San Francisco to protect against earthquakes would be ineffective in Miami where the risks are flooding and wind.
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