Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Portland passes low-density zoning reform

sightline.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 438 posts

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#341

Post by sneak »

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…

Either you pay for it in full by having them in jail or on the street, or you pay (less) for it by addressing those issues. There is no way to avoid the costs of the fact that we need to help everyone in society.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#342

Post by asdff »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #309
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

El Al doesn't fly over Jewish cemeteries in Israel because religious groups put up similar complaints.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#343

Post by asdff »

freeone3000 wrote: post #297
ajmurmann wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe once we have the problems, people will accept the solution

We need to make driving suck so much that people would rather take the bus.

Or make the bus suck less. Curbed bus lanes with fat fines for violators would do more to change urban America than anything else; a de facto revival of the streetcar. Why drive through the gridlock at 7mph when the bus is going 35mph right past you?

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#344

Post by throwaway45349 »

egypturnash wrote: post #243
core-questions wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the desire of landowners to keep poor people off their block Well, can we come up with a more constructive and friendly way of doing this? It's not unreasonable for normal middle-class folks to not want to have to live in a problematic, crime-ridden, situation with high personal-security risks and property crime. That's why we pay for police, after all.

Why, yes; we could bring back a societal safety net and raise the minimum wage, so that it's actually possible for one income to pay rent, utilities, and still have some money left over for saving against a disaster and having some fun. We could take things like "healthcare" or "education" out of the hands of profit-seeking entities and run them with the philosophy that "a healthy population" is a much better profit…

US has crony capitalism, not capitalism. A social safety net is completely viable within the capitalist philosophy, and not considered "socialism". Real socialism is dangerous and people are scared of it for a reason.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#345

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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.

Agreed on the "view" aspect, but what about solar? If I build a house that gets X % of its electrical energy from the PV panels I install, and then my neighbor constructs something which blocks most of the incident sunlight, how does that work?

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#346

Post by whatshisface »

asdff wrote: post #340
whatshisface wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you give people infinite control over everything visible from their houses, they can build a radio telescope and control half the universe. On the other hand, your proposal is too radical, because I feel like I have a legitimate interest in not getting boxed in by several 100-foot walls spraypainted with obscenities and built one inch away from my property line, lit with daylight-strength spotlights at all ho…

If you have a legitimate interest, why not buy out the block yourself and live in your own little Shangri La? Otherwise, you are asking the government to subsidize your lifestyle preferentially over that of your neighbors. Believe it or not, the people living in the apartment next door with the spotlights are your neighbors too.

If my purposely extreme example isn't extreme enough to get you to side against it, just imagine one that's even more extreme.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#347

Post by makomk »

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.

So basically, we need to legally mandate that the only way for people to ensure that they have basic things like sunlight and not staring into a brick wall - or perhaps worse, having an endless parade of other people staring into their rooms and garden from the new multi-story art gallery across the street - is via sprawl that makes existing suburbia look positively compact?

The problem with this kind of thinking is that the denser housing is, the more its livability relies on things outside of the homeowners' direct ownership and control. So long as YIMBYs keep pushing this idea that keeping access to things like sunlight cannot be a shared act, it doesn't matter how many pretty drawings of wide sunlit boulevards of townhouses or towers in parks they produce to claim that density doesn't have to mean dark, dystopian hellscape - because the moment there's money in it, someone can just slap a big tall building right in one of those crucial empty spaces, and according to the YIMBYs the people affected would have no right to complain because they didn't personally and individually own them.

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#348

Post by triceratops »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #335
triceratops wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The construction costs are simply too high for a for-profit developer to be able to do it. I don't know about Vancouver's specific problems. Why are the construction costs so high there? In the Bay Area regulations, and tax laws that incentivize holding on to old housing, are largely to blame for the lack of housing supply. > If I'm a renter I'd rather have my monthly rent go to back into the public purse to be re-…

> I don't know about Vancouver's specific problems. Why are the construction costs so high there? There's no real reason why construction costs are high. As the amount of construction increases, the available labour pool decreases, and labour costs accordingly increase. There is always lots of construction going on. More highly trained trades would help, but easier said than done. If anything it's more that construct…

That just sounds like demand is outstripping supply. As you said, there's still a lot of construction going on but it's having no effect on prices. Either those developers are going to lose their shirts eventually by overbuilding (bonanza for buyers!) or there really are that many buyers willing to pay those prices.

It might be worth digging into why Vancouver has so much housing demand. It's a stunningly beautiful city, but the local economy doesn't seem to correlate with the price of real estate. There are no FAANGs paying senior engineers $400k, so why are people spending so much money?

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#349

Post by egypturnash »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #325
egypturnash wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I left the U District a couple of years ago, it was in part because the entire area was being razed and replaced by those things.

The U District? They've been putting up a bunch of town homes north of 45th (so 3 stories, not 1 + 5s), down near U village maybe? We considered buying a place out there for like 30 seconds, the U District just felt so depressing. We bought in Ballard which has a lot of townhomes (we bought one), but it doesn't feel depressing.

Nah, the U, I was a couple blocks off the Ave by 50th. When I'd walk a couple of blocks to Morsel's new location in the bottom of one of those on 50th and the Ave, I could see 3-4 more of various sizes (ranging from "filling up one plot" to "two or three entire blocks" while I ate if I got a window seat.

The U was a lot less depressing when I moved in around, what, 2012/3 I think it was?

Re: Portland passes low-density zoning reform

#350

Post by CyberDildonics »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #345
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agreed on the "view" aspect, but what about solar? If I build a house that gets X % of its electrical energy from the PV panels I install, and then my neighbor constructs something which blocks most of the incident sunlight, how does that work?

Probably the same way it works now with trees.
Post reply on HN