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

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

#191

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #163

burlesona wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It can take 250k in permits and 5 years just to renovate a duplex. It is insane

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

#192

Post by blamazon » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #18

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…

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.

One issue (of many) in California compared to other locations is the requirement for water sprinkler fire suppression systems in new buildings. This eats a lot of money and space in each building.

Between California and Bay Area regulations it is very challenging to turn a profit on demolitions except at the highest echelons of the housing market.

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

#193

Post by ericmay » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:27 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…

I wouldn’t confuse this incident and the solution with libertarianism or any other government system because it would take a large systematic and philosophical analysis to really arrive at an agreed-upon “what is causing this” consensus.

Annnnd from the perspective of the person you’re complaining about this is an incentive for libertarianism, you are making their life worse by enacting arbitrary rules that make you happy and enforcing those rules with violence.

And it could be that some other inane government rule made it so that they had to park trucks where they did in the first place.

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

#194

Post by ericmay » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

DevKoala wrote: post #120

elbasti wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and more efficient roads. The efficiency of roads is limited by the fact that the vehicles occupying them are large, individually piloted, and have slow reaction times. Throughout is limited because, as cars go faster, they need to be spaced out more. We have known this for seventy years. Automobile highways simply cannot work for ultra high throughput corridors.

Fine, let’s evolve our transportation units. We just need to rethink the problem as a whole. I don’t want to go into conspiracy theory territory, but it does seem as if there are powerful entities that are invested in maintaining the status quo or perhaps it’s just incompetence.

It’s both. There’s a lot of “we’ve always done it this way” and “what would I ever do without taking my car everywhere???” And then there are construction companies, automobile companies, and oil and gas companies that employ a lot of people. Kind of hard to employ those people if we built more sidewalks and bike lanes, and built medium-density mixed use neighborhoods.

Where’s the lobby against the automobile industry and all the deaths that cars cause? Aren’t car wrecks the #1 cause of death of teenagers? “But utility of cars!!” Well that utility only exists because we’ve decided to create it, not that it’s actually necessary.

If in reading this comment you find yourself disagreeing, think about the alleyways and layout of Lago d’Orta for example. Oh but how do they live without 2 cars per household!?

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

#195

Post by imtringued » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #160

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…

Rich SV types don’t seek housing because landlords appear to rent it to us. We seek housing because we get jobs. Each SV type who rents a new home is one who’s not competing for an existing home. If you want to put a stop to the kind of development that is actually causing SV types to materialize, that would be offices. Offices are are generally popular and unobjectionable.

Prop 13 killed tax revenue so local governments must obtain it through commercial property. It's pretty obvious what the problem is. A pro job bias that makes sure there are more jobs than housing.

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

#196

Post by Lammy » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

Relevant: https://fiftythree.studio/blogs/news/lets-talk-about-why-la-...

"The small apartment buildings that triggered this revolt are called are called 'dingbats'. They're those boxy buildings you see all over the place with pompous names like 'La Traviata' or 'Chateau Antoinette'. These kinds of housing weren't pretty, but they were no-frills apartments you could afford if you were an actor, or a grocery clerk, or a secretary. This scared the hell out of homeowners in rich neighborhoods, because apartments were for poor people and minorities. So, we voted for politicians who reduced the zoning of LA bit by bit, effectively freezing the status quo in place. And after 1970, rich communities just stopped building new housing, period. You can see the results from the population table below."

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

#197

Post by grandmczeb » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

nugget wrote: post #170

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.

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.

The people who value the “exclusivity” of the Bay Area tend to be a very narrow demographic. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not a particular representative group.

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

#198

Post by rcpt » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #186

rcpt wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The division between long time Californian landowning families and 20-something immigrant engineers somehow never comes up. Someone's whose been making 250k before taxes isn't poor by any stretch. But they're nowhere near affording a house in Mountain View, hence the busses.

>But they're nowhere near affording a house in Mountain View, hence the busses. The buses are because they want to live in the city rather than essentially suburban Mountain View. It's not like SF is cheap housing.

The busses go to places besides SF

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

#199

Post by imtringued » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

larsiusprime wrote: post #143

wesleyy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent seeking refers to economic rent, which is not the same thing as "housing rent". It has a very specific definition when used in the context of economic rent seeking. Renting out houses for people to live in is not rent seeking.

According to certain economic philosophies, all rent on land (but not buildings) is economic rent.

Exactly, you can even rent seek by buying a plot of land and intentionally keeping the number of units below what demand would suggest. E.g. you have a plot with enough demand to house 20 people but you only build a single family house for 4 people (2 parents 2 children) denying 16 people the possibility to live there. The land is still priced as if it could support 20 people and you make your money off of the sale of the land. This is what people buy into when they buy their house as an "investment". They bank on population growth and increasing demand. If upzoning is impossible then you gain nothing from selling because you have to pay taxes and then buy another property that costs the same amount (which you cant afford because of the taxes), turning the real estate wealth into paper wealth that has to be paid (your mortgage) for but is difficult to draw from except via reverse mortgages.

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

#200

Post by dheera » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #196

Relevant: https://fiftythree.studio/blogs/news/lets-talk-about-why-la-... "The small apartment buildings that triggered this revolt are called are called 'dingbats'. They're those boxy buildings you see all over the place with pompous names like 'La Traviata' or 'Chateau Antoinette'. These kinds of housing weren't pretty, but they were no-frills apartments you could afford if you were an actor, or a grocery clerk, or…

From TFA

> But while the movement to allow multifamily buildings in zones previously limited to single-family homes

How is this even a thing? Couldn't two families just define themselves as a big extended family? They could for example just have two people marry for a day, move into the upstairs and downstairs respectively, and then get divorced the next day to hack the system.