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Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

sfchronicle.com

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

#301

Post by treis »

scythe wrote: post #41
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…

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,…

>semi-detached duplexes, which are much easier and still double the density on the lot!

They built a duplex by me and the combined units went for less than what a SFH would have gone for. Plus I imagine it was more expensive to build.

I think it only makes sense where the lot is big enough to fit 2 essentially full SFHs as a duplex.

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

#302

Post by carom »

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…

>society deciding that no one actually has a right to a home of their own

I feel this argument is a nice way to phrase that neighborhoods should never change. There is a limited amount of land. For everyone to have long term housing we need to build. We need to build until there are more units than what rich people can afford to monopolize. Rent control, historical preservation, they're just ways to restrict growth and I hate it. I am not sure people should have a right to a home if that prevents growth. It just creates a new set of haves.

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

#303

Post by Clewza313 »

arcticbull wrote: post #253
austincheney wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more supply brings down rents People say that on here all the time, but I have never seen that happen. Do you have an example where increased housing supply lowered prices aside from a natural or market disaster? Maybe, Detroit where people simply abandoned their homes with no intent to sell.

Japan is the classical example where they have national zoning rules permitting residential development in each zone. You can get a place in downtown Tokyo for like $300K USD. [1] > While the cost of housing is climbing in many global cities, the average middle-class family in Tokyo can still afford to buy a new, single-family detached home for $300,000. That’s right. The typical Tokyo starter home is a brand new thr…

However, that Tokyo 3BR is much smaller than anything you'd find in the US. The average house (not apartment) size in Tokyo is 91 sqm, or under 1000 sqft.

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

#304

Post by shard972 »

cheriot wrote: post #298
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.

"Hey, we've economically oppressed minorities and made our neighborhood too expensive for them. Not racist!" No, our nation's history guarantees that economic segregation is racial segregation. These laws were literally designed to create racial segregation. Saying, "we only like the economic segregation part now" doesn't change the outcome.

blacks and mexicans being lazy is racist lol

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

#305

Post by kingsuper20 »

handmodel wrote: post #206
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.

I disagree. Developers who are entrenched enjoy the fact it is hard to get a permit. Then, the specialty becomes navigating the system (which the surviving developers are de facto good at). It is hard for the best developers from other cities, who may be amazing at cheap/efficient/quality construction to challenge the incumbents in SF. It is like saying that government contractors who build websites want the bid syst…

>Developers who are entrenched enjoy the fact it is hard to get a permit.

Imagine how much a developer with Coastal Commission expertise could charge. That's probably a specialty in itself.

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

#306

Post by istillwritecode »

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…

This really resonated with me.

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

A large percentage of the people living in my R-1 neighborhood are retired now. They could sell their houses and "cash out", but what would be the point? Money is no substitute for a lifestyle. We chose this lifestyle because of the attractions it offered. A couple of my neighbors have moved away, but for every one that moved, there are ten who have stayed. Once we retire we aren't making that long commute any more, and most of us don't leave our neighborhood during the week because we have almost everything we need within a mile or two. For the people who are working in tech, a lot of them used to have WFH days, but now most of them expect to have more regular WFH days - perhaps even a majority. That's pretty much the utopia that people want to achieve through dense development, namely living locally.

I think there is one major issue that doesn't get mentioned, namely the fact that companies have chosen to site themselves in areas where there was a shortage of nearby housing. The south bay areas are the best example of this, with so many of the employers being north of 101 but almost no housing north of 101. This is not a new problem - I remember people commuting long distances to Lockheed and other defense employers north of bayshore in the 70s. As employers have continued to pack more and more jobs into tight spaces, they have exacerbated the problem.

There is a severe problem with affordability of housing, but that is caused by increased demand as much as limited supply. We worship at the altar of economic growth, and refuse to consider the consequences of that growth. Urban planning is about maintaining balances, in much the same way that we seek to strike balances in our lifestyles. Would anyone accept that employment growth is constrained to not exceed housing supply? It's hard to imagine.

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

#307

Post by pdonis »

notacoward wrote: post #294
pdonis wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still assuming there is such a a place. Have you tried to find out? > "Just move" only works for one constituency - those who don't have or want any connection to whatever community they live in Not at all. People can change communities. The fact that a person chooses to move does not mean that had no connection to the place they are leaving, or that they won't form any connections to the place they move to. Maybe…

> Maybe you can't imagine ever being connected to any other place than the one you live in right now I've lived 20 places in my life, from New Zealand to Massachusetts. I know all about uprooting oneself to seek something better, broadening horizons, etc. Please stop making convenient personal assumptions.

> I've lived 20 places in my life, from New Zealand to Massachusetts.

Then I fail to understand why you seem unable to comprehend why people might want to move.

> Please stop making convenient personal assumptions.

It seems to me that you are the one who is doing that: you seem to be assuming that, since you, after moving many times, have now found a place you want to stay in, nobody else can have any reason to move.

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

#308

Post by khazhoux »

> explore the benefits of getting rid of a land use policy designed to keep people of color and working class families out of certain neighborhoods.

The article provides no reference to this claim of racism. I personally find it more likely that these zoning laws are simply to control density.

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

#310

Post by austincheney »

compiler-guy wrote: post #293
austincheney wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of a decrease on average?

https://www.sfweekly.com/news/what-happens-to-rents-after-th... Has the decrease at about 22% at one point. Lowest rents since 2013. They seem to have gone back up somewhat since, but that is a big adjustment and reflects excess supply.

That’s rents. What is the change of ownership value?
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