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Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

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

#161

Post by tedunangst »

muststopmyths wrote: post #78

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 investo…

So keep building more and more homes for rich people to buy until inflated rents collapse and everyone has affordable housing.

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

#162

Post by Ericson2314 »

justanotherguy0 wrote: post #130
Ericson2314 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> We just need to get rid of incentives for cars, like off street parking requirements and free parking.

The Bay Area cannot hope to cancel all the car subsidization done at the state and national level. More active measures are needed.

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

I really fundamentally disagree. Even if we accept liberatarianism for individual and business choices by default, land is a public good in finite supply in fixed position. Isolated actors developing land as they please can cause public harm because the utility of land is based on how surrounding land is used.

We need to collectively agree cars and single family homes hold the bay area back, and then collectively work to move away from both, to replace wholesale self-perpetuating car culture with self-perpetuating public transit apartment culture.

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

#163

Post by imtringued »

burlesona wrote: post #88
slothtrop wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houses are bought and destroyed to make way for tri-plex blds and condos at a pretty consistent pace where I live, because the returns are that good. I'm surprised that this would be any different in SF.

If enough red tape was cleared it would be common in SF too. But the regulatory environment is so oppressive that it’s not worth doing a project unless it’s going to be a huge money-maker, which generally means large-scale. Changing the zoning is a good first step, but not the only (or even the most significant) obstacle.

It sounds like the problem isn't just the law but also the frivolous interruptions that delay permitting. Those aren't written into the law but they still matter a great deal.

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

#164

Post by notacoward »

pdonis wrote: post #146
notacoward wrote: post #75

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 obj…

> I'd love to change it The simplest way to change your own situation is to move. Different towns, cities, rural areas, etc. with different land uses exist so that people with different preferences can all find some place that reasonably matches their preferences. Making them all the same just so they match your personal preferences makes the situation worse, not better.

You're assuming infinite variety exists, or can exist. That's so absurd that it's hard to believe it was meant in good faith. No, I can't just select from a menu. What if I want good schools and other facilities that few towns have, and proximity to the people/places that matter to me, and a town that's not so much single-family-home wasteland everywhere but the center? What if I want other people who aren't millionaires to have access to some of these things? Oops, me moving doesn't solve that. Sometimes you have to build the kind of place you want (or think should exist) and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Every town that already exists has been shaped by the conscious choices of people who live there and vote there and serve in offices there. I have just as much right to push for what I want as any of them did.

P.S. Almost forgot to point out the "making them all the same" strawman. Never suggested that, champ.

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

#165

Post by beerandt »

almost_usual wrote: post #59
compiler-guy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect where you live doesn’t have environmental impact studies and objection by basically anyone in the entire city requiring design review. Fixing the zoning is a first step, but won’t solve all the other issues.

Also scarcity of contractors, architects, and essentially anyone who works on homes. Even with the project approved costs are going to be high in the Bay Area.

Addressing the regulations, but not the financing, means this scarcity doesn't change.

Dodd Frank made speculative financing so difficult, that the industry either scaled up, as was mentioned in the article, to make it worth the trouble of pacifying HUD, or scaled down and run a business that essentially relies on clients to finance the projects. Most builders (and others in the industry) were forced to scale down.

These were the builders that might have considered 4-plex or other small multifamily projects, but they've essentially been barred from the market.

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

#166

Post by imtringued »

jankyxenon wrote: post #110
Schiendelman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Highly progressive people continue to self segregate into very non-diverse neighborhoods when buying houses.

They also complain about ghettoization as soon as certain people come to their neighborhood.

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

#167

Post by ta2164 »

JamilD wrote: post #159
ta2164 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing stopping Blacks or Hispanics from moving to the suburbs except for the laws of supply and demand. It's no secret that Asians (a historically disadvantaged POC) flock to the suburbs. By definition not racist.

A law can be "not racist", but still be crafted with certain intentions in mind; it's easy to exploit certain correlations to achieve a certain end result. I don't think anyone would argue that there's something innate about one's skin color that would make them predisposed to living in apartments! But if you want to exclude certain people from your neighborhood, and those people happen to often be from a certain cul…

>A law can be "not racist", but still be crafted with certain intentions in mind; it's easy to exploit certain correlations to achieve a certain end result.

Correlation does not imply causation.

>But if you want to exclude certain people from your neighborhood, and those people happen to often be from a certain culture/socioeconomic class…

No doubt, no one wants to live around low class riff raff. That's not race specific, and so, is by definition not racist.

>It's also worth noting that the same laws were applied to Asians - exclusionary zoning and housing policies led to the consolidation of populations within certain neighborhoods, like San Francisco's Chinatown

Now you're straw manning hard. No one is making the claim that laws of the past weren't racist. Now, they're not, and so Asians, Indians, Africans (as in recent African immigrants) all flood to the suburbs because suburbs are decidedly not racist, and are free of the riff raff.

>It wasn't always the case that most Asians could (whether financially or politically) move to the suburbs.

Same for whites. Many/most were locked away in perpetual poverty in rural areas.

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

#168

Post by Ericson2314 »

l1tany11 wrote: post #122
Ericson2314 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you are accurately describing a current political reality, but this is deeply disappointing and not a response that will go behind virtue signalling ("zoning is racist") to actually solving the problem, or even right a wrong: ("there is so much cheap housing the non-white proportion of SF/Berekley/etc. goes up.")

> The reason they are talking about 4-plexes is that's the reality of redeveloping a single family residence one at a time.

I wish they could at least talk about 2 lots at a time!

> If you could do it city block by city block there would be huge savings, and WAY more developer interest.

Amen.

> The problem is it's too hard and expensive to assemble that much land to make such projects actually happen.

If only we could do just one, and then for the next one give people units and free moving in the prior one. That can become a virtuous cycle.

> No one wants to move, no one wants change.

Very true, but for all those perks and a nice cache out people can be persuaded. We would need some eminent domain for the stragglers, however.

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

Just gotta talk about how Better is getting $5M, a condo, and the elevator she will need anyways as she gets older.

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

They aren't! Spineless compromises as described in https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/09/18/cars-and-train... (pork for both sides!) is spineless politics that will diffuse outrage now, but at the cost mutually-undermining investment that just makes people disrespect government more later.

> 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.

The irony is suburbia is full of annoying HOAs. Just like the fact that without more broad economic growth homeowners will have a hard time paying off their mortgage in their lifetimes means that it is a lot closer to paying rent than they would like to think.

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

#169

Post by secabeen »

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.

Minimal zoning would be a bit much, but I think Japanese-style highest-allowed use zoning with few single-family home zones would be good.

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

#170

Post by nugget »

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.

The people I know who live in the Bay Area don’t particularly want it to expand. Part of the value of living there is its relative exclusivity.
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