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Portland passes low-density zoning reform

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Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#301

Post by snickerbockers »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #221
war1025 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The silly thing in my opinion is that college dormitories are exactly that type of housing. No kitchens, shared bathrooms. Works perfectly fine for housing large numbers of young people. Somehow we've decided that we shouldn't give anyone other than college students access to that type of housing.

Dorms have RAs, security officers, cleaning staff, food courts, university police, and a wrap of social services that can nudge a person slipping back into line, or send them packing quickly. Landlords, rightly, shouldn't be able to send people packing with little to no notice. Without the security, social services, and cleaning staff I expect any project of the same scale as a large University to catastrophically fa…

>The unfortunate reality is that mentally ill people that don't know how to take care of themselves are expensive. Think cleaning feces off of every imaginable surface, thousand room bed bug outbreaks, all the awful diseases that occur in unkempt showers or locker rooms. How will we keep so many people in confined quarters happy and busy enough to not cause massive problems?

Removal of high-density housing isn't solving that problem, it's just forcing those people into more desperate circumstances.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#302

Post by paulcole »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #242
treis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have a second building on my property and a separate driveway for each one are government overreach. Increasing density has definite externalities. Traffic, street parking, and public spaces all get more congested. Plus a neighbor building a bigger building impacts my views and the light that falls on my property. We do need some way of balancing those concerns with development. IMHO, we've swayed too far towards…

> views and the light that falls on my property We need blanket legislation outlawing the notion that by virtue of purchasing a plot of land one is also purchasing control over everything visible from said plot at the time of purchase.

This is a huge reason so much of inner SE Portland doesn’t have high-rise development. Would block downtown’s view of Mt. Hood.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#303

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mertd wrote: post #296
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Areas where it is profitable to do this are areas where housing demand is increasing. Which means that anybody who owns property in such an area can sell it for more than they paid for it, move somewhere else and have the significant monetary gain to compensate them for their trouble. And the gain wouldn't exist with stricter zoning because it comes from the fact that your property is worth more when somebody can buy…

> And the gain wouldn't exist with stricter zoning because it comes from the fact that your property is worth more when somebody can buy it and build twice as much housing on it. Counterpoint Bay Area. Industry hotspot, liberally allows office development, aggressively fights any new residential develpment and also freezes property taxes at the time of purchase.

Three of those are just other ways of increasing real estate prices. They're additive, not alternative.

Now suppose somebody could knock down your million dollar three bedroom home there, put up five condos that size on the same lot and sell them each for $750K. That'd make the property itself worth more than a million dollars, right?

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#304

Post by driverdan »

stickfigure wrote: post #218
cptskippy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that's the norm? One au pair is a luxury, 3 seems lavish.

It's certainly not the norm. But we're not talking about average house size, we're talking about maximum house size. You're clipping off the edge of the bell curve. People with big families don't get to live in Portland? FWIW he's a single dad, and au pairs aren't always on duty. It's less lavish than it sounds.

> It's less lavish than it sounds.

People in tech are so out of touch. Being able to hire people is lavish.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#305

Post by driverdan »

d1zzy wrote: post #194
jeffbee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just reality. EVs solve a specific aspect of cars but they still have the main problem: they are unreasonably large. The future of urban mobility is also its past: walking.

Smart Electric seems as small as always. Goes about 65 miles (plenty for a suburban living needs, not going to work for travel of course).

Smart pulled out of the US.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#306

Post by rconti »

Judgmentality wrote: post #159
rconti wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in an 1140sqft house, just 2 of us. With just 1 (small) bathroom it is less than ideal, particularly when we have guests, but it works -- just. It is basically a box of a house with 3 bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a place to eat. There is no "extra" space aside from the rooms -- no wide hallways, no sitting areas, no extra horizontal surfaces to put junk. Of course, we have more space than we "need"…

That sounds like a pretty cushy setup to me. What exactly is it you're lacking?

It is pretty "comfortable", but that's to say, "just enough". Each room is 12x12, there's no "free" space. There's no "extra" space in the house in general; for example the kitchen table is where all of the projects happen (wife was making some jewelry the other day, I've soldered and built computers and so on there).

The additional things we'd want are all luxuries.

* Indoor room where we can work out (treadmill, bike, elliptical are all in the garage)

* Master bathroom with an actual walk in shower, space where we don't have to squeeze past each other getting ready, etc.

* Closet space

* Garage that can be used for parking cars and bikes, working on things, etc. (I've had a bike on a stand in the backyard for a month now, as I work on building it, and parts strewn all over a patio table)

All totally unnecessary, of course. But given that we have a decently-sized lot for silicon valley (6000sqft) it would be nice to have more indoor space. Especially since I spent all my waking hours in here now :)

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#308

Post by freeone3000 »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #273

This, is corruption, mixed with a dash of good old crony capitalism. Portland has some amazing neighborhoods, and this plan enables developers to build relatively high density apartment complexes without parking in those neighborhoods. The dogwhistles of "low density" and "low income" really just mean "no parking" and "full price for most of you". Anecdotal example - They're building an ~80 unit 3 story apartment com…

The project you're describing is the actual textbook definition of density. That apartment building seems like a good idea.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#309

Post by eli_gottlieb »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #242
treis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have a second building on my property and a separate driveway for each one are government overreach. Increasing density has definite externalities. Traffic, street parking, and public spaces all get more congested. Plus a neighbor building a bigger building impacts my views and the light that falls on my property. We do need some way of balancing those concerns with development. IMHO, we've swayed too far towards…

> views and the light that falls on my property We need blanket legislation outlawing the notion that by virtue of purchasing a plot of land one is also purchasing control over everything visible from said plot at the time of purchase.

As a matter of fact, once upon a time, there was a Supreme Court decision limiting property owners' claim on the airspace above their land. Someone was actually trying to ban planes from flying over their house.

https://uclawreview.org/2017/11/01/drones-damages-and-proper...

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#310

Post by Tiktaalik »

alistairSH wrote: post #280
zjaffee wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do own the views in numerous cities due to historical precedent, and cities cant change these laws as it would be considered unconstitutional taking.

I know some mountain and coastal areas actually do have view ordinances, but they're typically very limited (sometimes only to trees, not construction, etc). But, I don't believe that's the norm in most places.

City of Vancouver has a policy of protected public views.

The goal is to make it so that views of Vancouver's mountains are reasonably accessible by anyone, not just those that purchased a north facing suite in a tall condo tower.

It's pretty much the same underlying concept as why we create public parks.

The view cones are scattered around and are usually tied to areas of heavy public pedestrian activity, such as parks.

The policy is very popular.

https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/protecting-va...

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