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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

#341

Post by l1tany11 »

xnx wrote: post #91
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.

Can previously-approved plans be used as precedence for design review, or is everything in design review de novo?

Everything depends on the city, but in my experience it's de novo. Code changes every 3 years (usually pretty minor stuff). Additionally every site has unique features. Different shape, different elevations, different neighbors, different soils, etc so some rework of the plans is always necessary to accommodate those differences.

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

#342

Post by arcticbull »

Clewza313 wrote: post #303
arcticbull wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds, fwiw, roughly in line with SF or NY 3br apartments. [1] By the way, that's actually part of the value proposition. New houses in the US are twice as big as they were in the 1970s - while costing the same per square foot on an inflation adjusted basis. This means 3br houses are 2x as expensive now as they were back then and is part of the reason folks are priced out of the market entirely. This is also a zoning issue.

We need small 3br houses and apartments. That doesn't mean we can't also have large 3br houses.

[1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/139-Steiner-St-3-San-Fran...

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

#343

Post by irrational »

Bud wrote: post #329
UpsilonAlpha wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in Seattle so my viewpoint is biased. > Neither has a world-class orchestra or opera Seattle Symphony is fantastic and has multiple Grammy awards. The one that stands out to me is the 2014 premiere of John Luther Adams' work, Become Ocean. Not everyone's cup of team, but a phenomenal performance nonetheless. > to say nothing of the early-music scene in the Bay Area, which is easily the best in the US Grung…

Grunge is not "early music". Bach is. ;) That said, yes, granted, Seattle deserves credit for grunge. But no, the Seattle Symphony is not a world-class orchestra. The SF Symphony is, though.

And yet, this is the first I’ve ever heard that SF has a symphony, despite the local classical music station being my standard station in the car. Maybe it’s not as world-class as you might think.

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

#344

Post by eloff »

brailsafe wrote: post #321
slashdev wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seems to me like in Van this is just a gradual process. Particularly in east van, I'm seeing houses be replaced or renovated to specifically accomodate at least twice the addresses and maintain the feel of the existing neighborhood; I'm living in one. I think something to consider though is that a lot of people were renting the basements anyway, and might instead be renting an intentionally constructed unit on the sa…

> I'm also of course seeing nimbys against tower development at commercial and broadway, which would have the biggest short term impact imo. They want to protect their scarcity.

Ugh. We have to put a stop to that if we don't want to end up like San Francisco. The Tokyo model is the one to emulate.

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

#345

Post by eloff »

pempem wrote: post #274
eloff wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're condos, you can own it, at least as much as you can own half a duplex. If they're rental units, that's also ok, more supply brings down rents and lower rent causes more landlords to sell. Extra supply does add downward pressure on prices one way or another. I don't see where the "value destroyer" is.

Condos are not advantageous to the owner. You're not building equity or able to borrow on the value, just ensure a very slow growth investment at risk of value destruction at the hands of the condo board.

> You're not building equity or able to borrow on the value.

You buy condos, you own them, and you can get a mortgage on them. I think you don't know what a condo is.

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

#346

Post by dillondoyle »

ta2164 wrote: post #322
dillondoyle wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marijuana is in the news right now as just a mega obvious example

So you have nothing. "Marijuana" is not a law. Please point to a specific law that is racist, please link to the actual statutes/text.

Federal marijuana prohibition and the War on Drugs (yes including laws) is rooted in racial bias. There are a HUGE amount of sources and you aren't acting in good faith so this is pointless. Some links below.

You might argue that the context around why these laws, for instance why there are specifically sentencing disparities written into law, doesn't matter because the plain text doesn't say black people shall have a 2x longer sentence. That's ignorant IMHO.

Even so, racist laws were specifically written in plain text IN OUR CONSTITUTION spelling out black worth as only 3/5ths of white.

Nixon's advisor has a 'great' quote plainly laying out the motivation and showing why context and the actual affects of these laws are racist.

you're being purposefully being flippant with a throwaway account so I'm not going to continue responding but go ahead and downvote again.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=marijuana+racial+bias+u...

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/06/23/mariju...

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/the-shocking-and-sickening-st...

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/racial-d...

https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/sentencing-reform/...

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

#347

Post by dillondoyle »

ta2164 wrote: post #332
dillondoyle wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big thing I've noticed - especially on HN which is mostly white and male - is we perhaps fundamentally disagree on what 'racist' means. To me I view racism as a larger umbrella. Includes bias, both on the surface but also more broadly what has been cultivated as a society. Context is very important in my definition viewpoint. centuries of historic oppression, which led to unequal wealth, opportunity, and more. ongo…

You don't get to magically redefine what "racist" is because the current definition doesn't match up with your narrative. Suburbs are de facto and de jure not racist. No one is stopping any race of people from moving to the suburbs, no law is stopping any members of any race from moving to the suburbs, etc. You can definitely make the claim that suburbs are classist, but racist? No.

Seriously? If this was reddit i'd say fck off.

That's not what I was saying.

I'm pointing out that you for instance, could benefit from some perspective in understanding why there is disagreement between because we fundamentally have different word-views / disagree on the language of this argument.

It's like trying to argue about bikes, if your definition of bike is a self powered two wheel and mine is a motorized machine.

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

#348

Post by seoaeu »

rcpt wrote: post #141
seoaeu wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, 20% of households in the Bay Area earn under $36k/year. Obviously shooting out bus windows isn't the right approach, but I think you may be underestimating just how much of a divide there is between even average tech workers and lower class people living in the region.

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.

I'm sorry but but a single person making nearly an order of magnitude more than a low income household in the same metro is more than just not poor. There is worlds of difference between not getting to live in the neighborhood you want compared to being severely rent burdened, having a horrible commute, and having to deal with a subpar living living situation in whatever handful neighborhoods have apartments remotely in your price range.

Also, a quick glance at zillow listings looks to me like someone making $250k/year could easily afford to rent an apartment in Mountain View and would have a good shot at buying a cheaper condo there too. Sure buying a single family home might be out of reach, but it is hard to feel too much sympathy about that

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

#349

Post by brailsafe »

eloff wrote: post #344
brailsafe wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me like in Van this is just a gradual process. Particularly in east van, I'm seeing houses be replaced or renovated to specifically accomodate at least twice the addresses and maintain the feel of the existing neighborhood; I'm living in one. I think something to consider though is that a lot of people were renting the basements anyway, and might instead be renting an intentionally constructed unit on the sa…

> I'm also of course seeing nimbys against tower development at commercial and broadway, which would have the biggest short term impact imo. They want to protect their scarcity. Ugh. We have to put a stop to that if we don't want to end up like San Francisco. The Tokyo model is the one to emulate.

Do you mean put a stop to nimbyism or put a stop to tower development?

I'm not one for completely favouring towers, but in this particular neighborhood, there's basically no new buyable housing stock. If people want to live here, they're either renting or buying one of the endlessly appreciating massive houses. That need to rent and the scarcity drives up the big house value further, and the only people who can get ahead are the ones who cam buy something for 1.7m.

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

#350

Post by [deleted] »

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.

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