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Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

timesheraldonline.com

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Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#21

Post by fighterpilot »

colechristensen wrote: post #17
meowtimemania wrote: post #2

Surprised there aren’t more comments here. This is great news for affordable housing right?

Has there ever been an effort of freeing up high density construction that resulted in lower housing prices? In the places I lived, new construction of big apartment complexes was correlated with prices going up. The new buildings charged more for rent, people paid it, and the surrounding housing followed.

Zoning laws are responsible for higher prices:

https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2018/pdf/rdp2018-03....

The mechanism is clear cut. Restrict supply, price goes up. There's quite a bit of empirical support as well.

I don't doubt what you've observed but I think it needs to be addressed rigorously.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#22

Post by 0xB31B1B »

colechristensen wrote: post #17
meowtimemania wrote: post #2

Surprised there aren’t more comments here. This is great news for affordable housing right?

Has there ever been an effort of freeing up high density construction that resulted in lower housing prices? In the places I lived, new construction of big apartment complexes was correlated with prices going up. The new buildings charged more for rent, people paid it, and the surrounding housing followed.

Yes, seattle over the last 5 years, as well as down town Houston Texas have both seen construction booms and price declines or slower than average price increases.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#23

Post by kortilla »

> A study by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that the new law likely would add, at most, fewer than 700,000 housing units across California.

A good, a pointless divisive bill that does nothing to fundamentally address the issues.

It’s almost as if California politicians have discovered it’s better to have a bill that makes a lot of noise to make it seem like work is being done while simultaneously not doing anything meaningful that would truly disturb anyone.

This is another version of banning restaurants from automatically giving water while the majority of the water goes to farms that hardly pay anything for it.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#24

Post by dado3212 »

Just in case people don't understanding zoning laws, this doesn't mean you can't have single family homes. It just allows people to split existing lots (with criteria around 3 years of tenancy and some other caveats) and in general removes places where you can only have single family homes.

As a general question, I think this means that people who currently own single family homes around the Bay Area are going to make out like bandits even more than they already were.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#26

Post by remarkEon »

If I wanted to move to California and live in a single family home (my wife is from there), won’t this legislation just make those dwellings even more expensive now? Because California government says no more future supply.

I get the urgency on addressing the housing situation in California, but this feels to me like “we must do something, and this is something, so we will do it”.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#27

Post by kadoban »

kortilla wrote: post #23

> A study by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that the new law likely would add, at most, fewer than 700,000 housing units across California. A good, a pointless divisive bill that does nothing to fundamentally address the issues. It’s almost as if California politicians have discovered it’s better to have a bill that makes a lot of noise to make it seem like work is being done while simultane…

700,000 is not a tiny amount.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#28

Post by esrauch »

dado3212 wrote: post #24

Just in case people don't understanding zoning laws, this doesn't mean you can't have single family homes. It just allows people to split existing lots (with criteria around 3 years of tenancy and some other caveats) and in general removes places where you can only have single family homes. As a general question, I think this means that people who currently own single family homes around the Bay Area are going to mak…

I'm not sure about that last part. In general the people who own single family homes in the Bay Area have had nimby opposition to more dense housing being constructed since more supply lowers prices.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#30

Post by dado3212 »

kortilla wrote: post #23

> A study by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that the new law likely would add, at most, fewer than 700,000 housing units across California. A good, a pointless divisive bill that does nothing to fundamentally address the issues. It’s almost as if California politicians have discovered it’s better to have a bill that makes a lot of noise to make it seem like work is being done while simultane…

6% increase in housing units isn't nothing [1]. That said, I think you're right that more aggressive measures would need to be taken to resolve the shortage. Is there a link to recommendations that would have larger impact? I know CEQA's brought up a lot, but is there some paper that's been written around proposals and estimated housing units?

[1] https://www.infoplease.com/us/census/california/housing-stat...

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