Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by throwaway0a5e » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

jorts wrote: post #35

vlovich123 wrote: post #28

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?

Opening a chicken farm or leather tannery in a residential neighborhood sounds great.

None of those things are economically viable to put in an area that can support residential housing even at the single family level of density.

The only way they get there is when housing is built up around them.

If you're too lazy to fire up Google maps before you buy well then that's on you.

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

#72

Post by Ericson2314 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

compiler-guy wrote: post #50

BurningFrog wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Strong disagreement. The best thing for developers would be minimal zoning, Houston style. As the Bay Area built to expand from 7M people to, say, 20M in a decade, enormous fortunes and livelihoods would be made from all that construction work.

You wouldn’t have to go all the way to Houston style zoning. SF’s regulations are so onerous that going just half way would help massively.

Houston still has also sorts of housing covenant and other thing. Texas is still a low density mess, too.

We do need to get rid of stupid zoning, but also cannot rely on a housing market to do the right thing. We need to force a shift to anti-car rather than pro-car development (and it really is a dichotomy, with the midpoint being a highly unstable equilibrium).

The fact that they are talking about 4-plexes shows they really don't get the scale of density that is needed. Everything should be 5 stories minimum. Maybe some shorter Victorians can be grandfathered in, but the Sunset and western half more broadly needs to be almost entirely redeveloped.

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

#73

Post by seoaeu » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

nosianu wrote: post #45

lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My suspicion is that this might end up like more/wider streets and highways: You built it => it will be filled to capacity asap and there is no difference in the end, only more of the same (literally). Of course, this won't happen to infinity but far enough. In the end the area is just too attractive, combined with the industries there generate a lot of money.

This is called induced demand. Evidence suggests that for housing increasing supply doesn't cause demand to rise as quickly[0][1][2].

[0]: https://www.planetizen.com/news/2019/06/104783-doubt-cast-in...

[1]: https://cityobservatory.org/another-housing-myth-debunked-ne...

[2]: https://www.slowboring.com/p/induced-demand

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

#74

Post by austincheney » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #43

austincheney wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increased demand drives up construction rates before it drives up prices. The only thing close to what you are describing is approximate commute distance.

I do not know what commute distance has to do with anything. You can build a million dwelling units 5 hours west of Austin in the desert, and they will not sell for much if at all. > Increased demand drives up construction rates before it drives up prices. The rate of construction will go up if prices are going up, or the entities doing the construction believe prices will go up (and there is capacity to increase rat…

None of that reflects reality here. Higher prices slow construction rates in an immediate area only to drive construction further out.

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

#75

Post by notacoward » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

Most of the land in my (Massachusetts) town is zoned for single-family homes. There are several identifiable square-mile or larger areas with nothing but homes plus maybe one school and one church. Maybe a gas station / Dunkin Donuts within fifteen-minute walking distance. That's no way to live.

I'd love to change it, with greater zoning diversity and particularly that which allows higher density, but there valid objections to doing it all at once. Roads would need to be upgraded and then maintained, at direct town expense, plus dealing with increased traffic. Ditto for water and sewer lines, minus the traffic issue. Electrical, gas, and communications are better in that they're not at town expense but worse in that more parties have to be involved (and they tend to cheap out even more than the town does). And then there's schools - the town's crown jewels and the main reason anyone lives here. They're excellent but already overcrowded. Work is under way to fix that, but we really can't afford to add even more stress to that system.

These are very real issues that I'm sensitive to, even though I also think there are other issues - especially racial and income diversity - that we must address in the longer term. These same issues recur many other places, I'm sure including the Bay Area. It has to be not only allowable but profitable for developers to do the actual building, or else they won't, and then the town needs property-tax revenue from each tranche before they begin the next. It's a very tricky dance, and I do not at all envy the people on zoning/planning boards trying to reconcile all these conflicting needs.

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

#76

Post by Matticus_Rex » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #42

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Strong disagreement. The best thing for developers would be minimal zoning, Houston style. As the Bay Area built to expand from 7M people to, say, 20M in a decade, enormous fortunes and livelihoods would be made from all that construction work.

You're confusing the incentives of all developers and people who might become developers collectively with the incentives of entrenched large players already existing in the market.

It's like in many industries; the interests of the group as a whole push towards deregulation, while the interests of the biggest, politically well-connected firms is to increase regulation that will be harder for competitors to deal with and will allow them to get or maintain a stranglehold over the market.

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

#77

Post by seoaeu » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #52

xienze wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh I think it’s a little more complicated than that, and I’ve argued this for years, that Google et al certainly plays a part. Consider their infamous busses, that allow employees who simply can’t fathom the idea of living in Mountain View to easily live in SF and commute. Without those I think employees wouldn’t be shielded from the consequences of the whole “live in the city, commute into the suburbs” thing.

What is "infamous" about a bus? It's a workaround for the Bay Area's awful/nonexistent transportation system. Why aren't you carping about VMWare's "infamous cars" or the millions of cars driven every day to other companies without buses? Anyway the buses only explain partially how Googlers and other tech employees can survive the housing crisis, not what caused it. The cause is extremely simple. Births - Deaths = Gr…

> What is "infamous" about a bus?

They're considered a symbol of the class divide. Not a cause, but just a visible display of the income inequality present in the city. Poor people don't get a "workaround" for the the Bay Area's awful/nonexistent transportation system, they have to either rely on private cars or take public transit anyways.

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

#78

Post by muststopmyths » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

It's received wisdom on HN that the Bay Area housing crisis is caused by NIMBYs and restrictive zoning laws.

On the other hand my sense, based on anecdata, is that a large proportion of the condos constructed in the past 15-ish years in eastern SF (Embarcadero, Rincon, etc.) and SOMA/Dogpatch are owned by absentee landlords as investment property. Since these folk are mostly rich SV types (or wealthy overseas investors), they can afford the eye-watering prices. Their renters are also well-paid techies, so they can pay the hyper-inflated rents.

So I believe the housing crisis is instead a result of society deciding that no one actually has a right to a home of their own. Instead, it is in fact a good thing to engage in literally rent-seeking behavior[0] and we should all be in a race to accumulate the most wealth we can to pass down to our offspring, so that they can continue this cycle.

If my analysis is correct, then more construction will just result in more of the same. Rich people buying 2 and 3rd homes that they rent out to people who are here for the short term and can afford inflated rents.

It seems to me a good first step would instead be to slap a Vancouver-style 15% property tax on any home that is not occupied by the owner (not just foreigners). Of course, there is no way in hell Californians will actually do something that requires actual self-sacrifice, so that's never going to happen.

( I have more anecdata about SV residents buying 2 or 3 houses in the Austin area in order to capitalize on the real estate boom caused by other SV ex-residents moving there, further driving up costs in the area. But let's restrict the discussion to SF Bay Area for now).

This theory is obviously based on feels rather than data, since I don't know of any way to actually get ownership/residence data broken down this way. That would probably violate all kinds of privacy laws.

I would love to be disabused of my notions with data. Not motivated-reasoning "studies" by think-tanks who have vested interests, but actual data.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking (the rent seekers in this case being all the homeowners who resist any property tax reform which would affect their bottom line)

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

#79

Post by voidfunc » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #69

BurningFrog wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Strong disagreement. The best thing for developers would be minimal zoning, Houston style. As the Bay Area built to expand from 7M people to, say, 20M in a decade, enormous fortunes and livelihoods would be made from all that construction work.

Why would the Bay Area grow so much in the next decade? Now that remote working is becoming more normal, and considering the cost of living in the Bay Area, why would that many people want to move there? There are plenty of other places with comparable natural beauty, vibrant communities, cultural resources, etc.

Start naming those other places and we will tell you why they are not viable or comparable. If there are so many it should be easy.

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

#80

Post by Gimpei » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

Article seems to suggest that SF lots aren't large enough for 4-plexes to be economically feasible. I wonder what the minimum height is for this to work. Five stories perhaps?

The SF supervisor Mandelman who was mentioned in the article has been against all of Weiner's housing bills, so he has zero credibility in my book.