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

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

#121

Post by rcpt » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

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?

We have honest-to-god oil derricks right in the middle of residential neighborhoods in Los Angeles. They even pump oil directly from a school campus in Beverly Hills.

But fourplexes? Not a chance.

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

#122

Post by l1tany11 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #72

compiler-guy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The reason they are talking about 4-plexes is that's the reality of redeveloping a single family residence one at a time. If you could do it city block by city block there would be huge savings, and WAY more developer interest. The problem is it's too hard and expensive to assemble that much land to make such projects actually happen. No one wants to move, no one wants change.

The headlines will read "Poor Betty was forced from her home by the evil mayor and money grubbing developer".

They set the table when they built it, and to undo all of that is going to be crazy expensive and difficult.

Some people dream of a car free utopia. Some people like their SFR. Those things may not be compatible.

Things like the Miami tower collapse will make things worse. A lot of people don't want their life dictated by their neighbors. HOAs are well known to be horrendous. And the Miami disaster just goes to show that not only can your HOA affect your sanity, but also your life safety.

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

#123

Post by rcpt » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

The actual answer is to tax land at it's current market value instead of based on it's purchase price. Then it wouldn't be so attractive to park all the money in housing.

Jobs aren't a problem. Bay Area housing has been a mess since we'll before the internet and other parts of California, where jobs are nowhere near as good, have the same problem.

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

#124

Post by jnwatson » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:27 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.

Reducing red tape would help a lot, but Houston has geography on its side. Looking at a map of Beltway 8 superimposed over the SF Bay [1], it is easy to visualize why land is cheap. That's not even the outer loop for Houston.

SF and adjacent cities need to both reduce the approval process and encourage higher density.

1. https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/as-if-you-needed...

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

#125

Post by raldi » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #30

Schiendelman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Housing discrimination persisted well beyond 1917. See, for instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

It wasn't until the late 60's / early 70's that explicit racial discrimination was finally outlawed, and it's not a coincidence that exclusionary zoning took off immediately thereafter as a prima facie race-neutral way to achieve the same outcome.

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

#126

Post by rcpt » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #77

jeffbee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is kind of nuts considering that most people on those busses can't afford the South Bay houses they're commuting past. Otherwise there'd be no bus.

disclaimer: the windows were shot out when I was riding the Google bus a couple years back

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

#127

Post by wavefunction » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

smohare wrote: post #105

voidfunc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I bet those other places are 115 Fahrenheit right now.

If those places can suddenly hit 115F then so can the Bay Area. I am not saying it is likely but who would have said it is likely that Portland would hit 115.

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

#128

Post by Tiktaalik » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

DevKoala wrote: post #109

I am of the idea that we need to focus on building new cities and more efficient roads to connect them. I don’t want to live in the Bay Area particularly, but when I have to go to SF, it sucks that sometimes it can take up to 2 hours to commute 30 miles. As a software architect, it feels as if the common recipe for solving a scalability problem is decentralization for which you need an awesome messaging system. I do…

> more efficient roads

It's not possible. It's a geometry problem. Cars take up too much space.

And if you increase the size of the roads well, you simply induce demand, adding more space inefficient cars to clog up the road. This is why places like LA and Houston have never solved their traffic problems.

There's only really one way to move people faster, and that's to focus on moving the person with more space efficient forms of transportation (ie. trains).

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

#129

Post by jnwatson » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

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?

It has worked pretty well for Houston. Houston is as close to free market as you can get. It helps that much of what people call Houston isn't actually in any city boundary.

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

#130

Post by justanotherguy0 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #72

compiler-guy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

We don't need to force a shift. We just need to get rid of incentives for cars, like off street parking requirements and free parking.

The government shouldn't be telling people what they can or can't build (beyond safety)