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Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#21

Post by mkoubaa »

softwaredoug wrote: post #5

Planning is a perverse set of incentives. First it’s usually longer term thinking, where decisions made now impact the shape of a city decades out. Second, the people that live in a place now have undue influence and veer conservative in how land is used (ie NIMBYism). This often gives rise to at least near term stagnation (on a historical scale) in established, wealthy cities and growth in up and coming metros that…

Among the most beautiful cities in world are those that were not planned, but were just allowed to happen. I don't know where we get the mindset that planning is necessary to begin with

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#22

Post by thatfrenchguy »

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

Some of the objections from the article: Sean Kieghran, president of San Francisco's Residential Builders Association, said he supports getting rid of single-family only zoning but doesn't think it will result in many new units. Kieghran said that building fourplexes requires either two staircases or a staircase and an elevator, which takes up too much of the site. And, unless the city streamlined the process of buil…

> Just because something is permitted doesn't mean it happens. It's very hard to find a vacant lot or tear down at a price that would work

First you make things legal then you streamline them.

> You would need to find a developer willing to take a risk on a minuscule profit and an architect who enjoys brain damage," he said. "They are complicated little projects. It's the absolute opposite of economy of scale."

Once you’ve gotten the streamlining part right, new actors can come in to make this cheaper. Those developers just want to keep the code complex so that only 100 unit projects are viable so that huge firms are the only ones who can execute projects.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#23

Post by sys_64738 »

What about the increases in cars and foot traffic this creates, and how will increases to road congestion and transport services be mitigated? How will electric, sewer and water services handle this increases in utilization? There seems to be a multitude of factors at play in this.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#24

Post by lotsofpulp »

mkoubaa wrote: post #21
softwaredoug wrote: post #5

Planning is a perverse set of incentives. First it’s usually longer term thinking, where decisions made now impact the shape of a city decades out. Second, the people that live in a place now have undue influence and veer conservative in how land is used (ie NIMBYism). This often gives rise to at least near term stagnation (on a historical scale) in established, wealthy cities and growth in up and coming metros that…

Among the most beautiful cities in world are those that were not planned, but were just allowed to happen. I don't know where we get the mindset that planning is necessary to begin with

How do you determine if planning or not planning is a causative factor? Maybe it’s just luck and maybe most unplanned cities do not survive to be viewed as beautiful.

I am sure scale of planning matters too, and that there was at least a little bit of planning, but perhaps smaller in scale.

The more evident factor in “beautiful” cities is probably that they came about before the advent of personal automobiles. They are much more pleasant to be in outside of a vehicle, and hence more “beautiful” simply because there were no vehicles at the time, and so whatever developed, planned or unplanned, had parameters that only considered people not in big boxes moving at high speeds.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#25

Post by rytor718 »

plank_time wrote: post #11

People are stupid if they think this will fix things. I went to the peninsula looking at houses and the new trend is to add ADUs as part of the house or in the back. You know why? To help the owners pay off their $3M houses they used to be $1M 8 years ago. This then figures into the calculus of how much you can afford to buy a house for. What is an unaffordable $8000/month mortgage now becomes $6000/month. So people…

This problem really does require competent city planning and a willing cohort of politicians to step up and make some dramatic, timely changes (good luck with that tho). The market cannot and will not figure this out, unless we define solution as "whatever the wealthy want to do is fine, homelessness and rents higher than a mortgage be damned".

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#26

Post by bittercynic »

_-david-_ wrote: post #14
spodek wrote: post #7

There's so much to object to about the idea that Earth is overpopulated. Then you get it and it hits you like a ton of bricks. The signs are everywhere and couldn't be more clear. But we're addicted to growth and efficiency, ignoring our limits, and our addiction blinds us to seeing what's plainly all around.

Earth is not overpopulated. The problem is that certain places have too much population density. If everyone spread out across the world there wouldn't be any of these issues. For a variety of reason people can't or won't spread out.

It's not that there isn't space for all the humans, but that we are very industrious and consume an impressive level of resources. I think it is reasonable to be concerned when a significant fraction of the planet's energy budget is diverted by a single species.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#27

Post by raldi »

Schiendelman wrote: post #20
raldi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. A better term would be Apartment Prohibition, which swept the country in the 1970s after the Supreme Court said you can't just directly exclude people by race.

Earlier - this started in 1911 when the Supreme Court said that.

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fair-housing-ac...

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#28

Post by vlovich123 »

Go further. Get rid of all zoning that’s unrelated to pollution of some kind or strictly a safety issue.

Why is the government involved in whether I can run a business from my home? Why is the government responsible for controlling where businesses might be located instead of the free market controlling that aspect more dynamically?

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#29

Post by lotsofpulp »

plank_time wrote: post #11

People are stupid if they think this will fix things. I went to the peninsula looking at houses and the new trend is to add ADUs as part of the house or in the back. You know why? To help the owners pay off their $3M houses they used to be $1M 8 years ago. This then figures into the calculus of how much you can afford to buy a house for. What is an unaffordable $8000/month mortgage now becomes $6000/month. So people…

> People in the Bay Area don’t realize that every little thing that keeps costs low gets funneled back into house prices.

Because the root cause is the demand for housing in Bay Area is far outstripping supply. You must tweak either or both of those to move the price. Addressing supply certainly does, but it might not be sufficient supply to overcome the demand. But it does help the situation.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#30

Post by seoaeu »

Schiendelman wrote: post #20
raldi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. A better term would be Apartment Prohibition, which swept the country in the 1970s after the Supreme Court said you can't just directly exclude people by race.

Earlier - this started in 1911 when the Supreme Court said that.

1917: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchanan_v._Warley
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