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

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

#171

Post by zozbot234 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

yao420 wrote: post #81

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?

Well my neighbor works in construction and would park several of his giant dump trucks in the street parking and the crew would gather outside every morning making a ruckus while leaving for the day. It was terrible and I was glad the code department put a stop to that and made every person in that neighborhood happy. This reasoning is exactly why I stopped being a libertarian, the free market has no recourse mechani…

> This reasoning is exactly why I stopped being a libertarian, the free market has no recourse mechanisms for actors making peoples lives worse.

Nuisance law is a recourse mechanism in the case you point out, and is included in any reasonable notion of "free market". (In the more radical notions of libertarianism, you and the other guy would simply submit the dispute to a mutually-trusted outside arbitrator, with a voluntary agreement to abide by the arbitrator's ruling.)

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

#172

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #127

smohare wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s true in general. What really surprised me though was the recent/current heat wave across all of the west coast - it has been foggy and cool the entire time in the Bay Area. I hope that holds even as the climate changes, though I don’t know if it will.

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

#173

Post by Ericson2314 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #76

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'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…

People in general lack the imagination to grow the pie too. Getting / keeping a big slice allows you lord it over others, and do so immediately.

A big lie spread under capitalism is that the wealthy and powerful actually like growth.

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

#174

Post by Baeocystin » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

This seems like a good thread to link to https://missingmiddlehousing.com/ , which is a site I've seen discussed directly here on HN several times previous. I am still in the process of consolidating my opinions on this, but I did find it an interesting, useful read.

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

#175

Post by Ericson2314 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:57 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.

I don't think remote work would become that common fast enough.

Even if it did, remote-work-driven sprawl would be terrible for humanity. We should still congregate for environmental reasons, whether that means 5 story walkable towns, or 20 story city. No where does SFH fit in the picture. Li-on will not save us.

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

#176

Post by ta2164 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

raldi wrote: post #154

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.

The laws of supply and demand are being manipulated by the powerful: They're suppressing the ability of supply to rise to meet demand, which has the effect of granting windfall profits to the haves while keeping the have-nots away from areas of opportunity.

Not arguing that, but that is decidedly not racist.

It's why educated Blacks in the US are moving back to red Southern states more so than they're moving to blue Northeast and Western ones. It's much cheaper and easier to build new housing in suburban Dallas or Atlanta versus San Francisco, New York, or LA.

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

#177

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #13

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…

These don’t read so much as objections as pointing out that the zoning change is necessary but not sufficient.

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by smichel17 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

Baeocystin wrote: post #174

This seems like a good thread to link to https://missingmiddlehousing.com/ , which is a site I've seen discussed directly here on HN several times previous. I am still in the process of consolidating my opinions on this, but I did find it an interesting, useful read.

On the about page, I found

> We call them “Missing” because they have typically been illegal to build since the mid-1940s

but I could not easily find and further explanation about why this is, etc

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

#179

Post by raldi » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #157

raldi wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the threat of litigation became a new constant, the San Francisco Planning Department slowly began to craft a new approach to development. The city’s 1971 Urban Design Plan was the first to codify the shift in values from the Modernist freeway-and-tower model toward a greater respect for San Francisco’s unique neighborhoods and their human-scale features. The plan focused on preserving and expanding existing neigh…

That proves that exclusionary zoning was around in 1971, but not that it wasn't used earlier. Massachusetts amended its constitution in 1918, literally one year after Buchanan, to enable cities to impose zoning. And the idea of using it to create racial segregation was specifically discussed at the time [0]: Of particular concern was the fear that zoning would bring about racial and socioeconomic segregation in Massa…

Yep, my position isn't that EZ was invented in the 70's; that's just when it swept the nation, and in particular, the Bay Area.

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

#180

Post by ericd » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

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)

Disagree with the last one, one of government’s main responsibilities is to regulate peoples’ externalities so they don’t infringe on other peoples’ rights. Noise and pollution especially negatively affect neighbors.

It’d be great if this was done parametrically (Eg setting max noise output at your property boundaries, particulate output, etc,), but I guess it’s been historically more convenient to do it via broad zoning instead. Japan’s max-use zoning seems like a good compromise.