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

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

#221

Post by dillondoyle » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

ta2164 wrote: post #167

JamilD wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spe…

You don't think we have laws that are currently racist?

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

#222

Post by pdonis » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #164

pdonis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 milliona…

> You're assuming infinite variety exists, or can exist.

I'm assuming no such thing. I'm only assuming that there are places that would match your preferences better than where you currently live (or, if you want to be really precise, enough better to justify the costs of moving). Since people move all the time, for precisely that reason (I've done it myself, several times), that does not seem to me like a very extravagant assumption.

It is true that no place will be perfect: no place will satisfy literally all of someone's preferences. (There may be rare people that can find such a place, but they are going to be rare enough that we can ignore them for this discussion.) But I did not claim that you could find a place that would be perfect for you. I only claimed that you could find a place that would be better than where you currently are.

> 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.

That's true. And if you think enough other people in your town would support your desired changes, you can of course get them to help you enact them, and then you won't have to move. But that is likely to take a lot more time and effort than moving to a place that already matches your preferences better than where you are now. I didn't say moving was the only solution to your problem. I only said it was the simplest one.

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

#223

Post by dillondoyle » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #200

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.

It's 100% a thing in law. Denver up until very recently only allowed 2!!!

They shouldn't have to. That's a ton of work.

At one point in time black people could vote if they 'hacked the system' by paying or passing a test.

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

#224

Post by erik_seaberg » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #61

jeffbee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is not the cause of the housing crisis. It’s purely demographic. Count up all the people that graduated high school in your town and subtract the number of people who died, and that’s how many houses you need to build that year. Simple demographics and this figure has been ignored in most Bay Area cities for fifty years.

Most of the people graduating in bay area cities are forever priced out of living in their hometowns already. Tech is largely to blame at this point because it fuels the extreme valuations. Without tech, prices would still be high because of lack of new supply for the growing population, but we left that price zone years ago.

The median resident doesn't work in tech; even here we're only something like 15% of the population. It's mostly cash investors who don't necessarily live here that can sustain these prices, at least for the moment.

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

#225

Post by ZoomerCretin » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #148

jnwatson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Genuinely curious as to how much time you have lived or worked in Houston ? I found many pieces of it - some of which were directly related to lack of zoning - to be aesthetic disasters . There seems to be a conception that support of zoning, and things like it, need be grounded in some scientific public-good maximalism that probably doesn't exist. I don't feel bound by that at all. The reason I am against ad-hoc liq…

It's easy to value things like aesthetics when you've got yours. Rents are taxing people out onto the streets and raising the cost of everything, but heaven forbid we offend any NIMBY's personal aesthetic tastes.

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

#226

Post by pdonis » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #164

pdonis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 milliona…

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

If you succeeded in making your desired changes in your town, what would happen to the people that didn't want them--that like things the way they are now?

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

#227

Post by dillondoyle » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #116

They should just largely remove these kinds of zoning laws, raise the height restriction to at least 6 stories and maybe require a commercial ground floor for buildings over a certain footprint and/or on arterials. Allow builders to combine lots. Get rid of the parking and driveway requirements as well. At least do this in strips down arterials so that entire blocks could be converted to high density mixed residentia…

I would add removing car parking requirements AND simultaneously pay for public transport, dedicated protected bike lanes etc to serve this new density.

Like you mention importance of stores.

I would maybe subsidize grocers & shops with tax breaks for a few years to get the walkability cycle going. The cart before horse problem, build it and they will come theory.

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

#228

Post by clairity » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #188

Der_Einzige wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, Portland or Seattle? They're political similar, economically as similar as you'll get (silicon forest in Hillsboro and Seattle's whole tech scene rivals SF), and geographically similar in terms of climate to parts of the bay area.

Neither Portland nor Seattle can match the Bay Area in terms of overall culture. Neither has a world-class orchestra or opera, to say nothing of the early-music scene in the Bay Area, which is easily the best in the US. Neither measures up to the Bay Area in the art scene, either. Or the restaurant scene. Or the wine scene. Neither comes very close in terms of climate, although that argument is muted lately due to Ca…

that sounds like the koolaid talking. while SF offers a lot of "culture", portland and seattle have great "scenes" too. restaurants in both cities easily rival those of SF, which tend to be long on cost and short on flavor. but in CA, LA outdoes SF for food, weather, art, music, entertainment, fashion, and shopping, with a more diverse (not tech-centric) economy to boot.

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

#229

Post by orthoxerox » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #56

scythe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are valid objections to fourplexes , but there are still plenty of things in between SFH and fourplexes -- including, most particularly, semi-detached duplexes, which are much easier and still double the density on the lot! I do agree that much of the hype about fourplexes is suspect (including the noise isolation of units that are one-atop-another), but there are many other possibilities, including ADUs. Also,…

Or midrises that are between 4plexes and large condos, are another option

Five-over-ones are nice medium density units, but they depend on public transit to be viable. If you can't get to work without a car (let's suppose those ground floor stores cover all your shopping needs) you need a parking spot, everyone and their partner needs a parking spot, and now the whole complex is surrounded by a huge parking lot.

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

#230

Post by austincheney » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

slashdev wrote: post #217

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…

I want to point out some evidence for the theory can be found in Vancouver where the entire city was rezoned for fourplexes (a duplex where each side has a rental unit.) It has added barely any new supply at all. I think it didn't go far enough. Rezone for 4-10 story apartment buildings, and now you're getting somewhere. This single family home thing just doesn't work in cities with as much demand as San Francisco an…

That sounds like an epic value destroyer. It won’t lower prices. Instead it will drive out owners to be replaced by leasers incapable of owning property. The only people that win are owners of multi-tenant properties, which are often commercial businesses.