They needed this decades ago.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
31–40 of 373 posts
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#32Is the bigger problem availability or pricing? Where I live (in the US) increasing housing availability drives up housing prices proportionally. The way that works is that demand is fairly constant due to people moving in driving up the population (about 22.4% decade over decade) but there aren’t geographic limitations on construction. Real estate is a fixed resource though and you can only build so many houses befor…
> The increased number of multi family dwellings drives up the price of single family houses.
Increased demand for single family homes drives up price of single family homes.
People moving in drives up price of land and dwelling units, obviously because people need a place to live.
The only thing that can move price down is demand decreasing (which will not happen if people are migrating in) or supply increasing sufficiently to accommodate demand.
You obviously live in one of the most in demand places in the US right now, and so almost no amount of supply will keep up with demand to cause prices to stop going up. But at the end of the day, price is always a function of supply and demand.
> Consequently, avoiding new construction either results in depreciation or merely delays the same pattern even by up 15 years.
Places that are not desirable to live in simply do not have construction. Why would people want to invest in areas that they predict will depreciate or stagnate? There is no construction in Cairo, IL, but they are not avoiding construction to prevent prices from increasing.
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#33Planning 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
Paris is usually cited as a beautiful city and it definitely has undergone some serious transformation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann's_renovation_of_Pa...
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#34Go 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?
The reasonable justification is government builds public infrastructure like schools, highways, and subways based on assumptions about use and population density. It’s much harder and more expensive to have reasonable infrastructure if you can’t make accurate predictions.
The de facto justification is indirect negative externalities exist like traffic congestion. Also known as F U I got mine.
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#35Go 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?
Opening a chicken farm or leather tannery in a residential neighborhood sounds great.
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#36There'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.
> Earth is not overpopulated
Beg to differ. Exhibit A: climate change. Your solution would not ameliorate climate change. In fact it would likely exacerbate it. We need as much of the land as possible to be rewilded(left alone to maximize CO2 absorption and heal the planet). And stop having babies. Do you really want to bring a child into the nightmare we are barreling towards?
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#37Just going to point out - ending single family zoning doesn't mean building a single family house is prohibited, it just means that you can build things other than a single family home on a particular plot of land.
This is a very good step, but I wouldn't mind an outright prohibition either.
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#38Is the bigger problem availability or pricing? Where I live (in the US) increasing housing availability drives up housing prices proportionally. The way that works is that demand is fairly constant due to people moving in driving up the population (about 22.4% decade over decade) but there aren’t geographic limitations on construction. Real estate is a fixed resource though and you can only build so many houses befor…
> The increased number of multi family dwellings drives up the price of single family houses. Increased demand for single family homes drives up price of single family homes. People moving in drives up price of land and dwelling units, obviously because people need a place to live. The only thing that can move price down is demand decreasing (which will not happen if people are migrating in) or supply increasing suff…
Increased demand drives up construction rates before it drives up prices. The only thing close to what you are describing is approximate commute distance.
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#39People 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…
Google is not the cause of the housing crisis. It’s purely demographic. Count up all the people that graduated high school in your town and subtract the number of people who died, and that’s how many houses you need to build that year. Simple demographics and this figure has been ignored in most Bay Area cities for fifty years.
Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning
#40Planning 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
I live in one of those cities (Edinburgh). The old town (completely unplanned, grew naturally) is a beautiful place but utterly impractical for the size of the city now. The new town was meticulously planned and has fared much better.
Meanwhile, all of the brownfield sites that are appearing are being turned into student accomodation en masse; even with planning restrictions. I can only Imagine the state of the city if we just blindly allowed building.