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Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

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Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#61

Post by kbob »

reactspa wrote: post #34
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…

There seem to be 2 provisions. If one's lot is smaller, one can have a duplex on it. If one's lot is larger, one can split the lot and have a duplex on each sub-lot (i.e. 2 duplexes total). However, I can't find the guidelines for when one is allowed to split the lot into 2 sub-lots. I'm curious because I have a large-ish empty lot (8,000 sqft in a coastal town) and yes, would make out like a bandit if I'm allowed to…

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

Many, many rules. That ones that stood out to me are:

* Do not demolish more than 25% of existing house's exterior walls.

* Each sub-lot must be at least 2,400 square feet.

* Each sub-lot must be at least 40% of the original lot.

* Each housing unit must be at least 800 square feet.

I didn't read it closely enough to see how you can turn an existing single-family into a duplex.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#62

Post by ehutch79 »

nixpulvis wrote: post #9
meowtimemania wrote: post #2

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

The rush to comment while relevant is getting out of hand frankly. Some things require actual research. EDIT: However, I have some personal experience in single family zoned housing in the Bay Area, but I would really need to read up on the proposed changes first... That said, I can say I felt very out of place and wish I had found a better, smaller place to live, for less. Meanwhile, my first apt in SF was clearly b…

I'm just assuming you meant $3k/month

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#63

Post by ch4s3 »

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.

This confuses correlation and causation. Increased demand causes new units with a price premium to be built and causes older units to rise in price. You see them concurrently because of the lease cycle, and sometimes secondarily because of weird municipal rent laws.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#64

Post by colechristensen »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #56
colechristensen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have the causality wrong. - Builders build because if high demand. - Landlords raise rent because of high demand. - High demand is based on the localities productivity. Places that are in high demand have lots of jobs that pay high wages. The only way to relieve the pressure is to build faster than existing demand or to lower the productivity of the region.

Yes that’s the econ 101 explanation but what seems to have actually happened is the existing demand wasn’t driving up prices in a neighborhood of old brownstones and some rental houses until after new large apartment complexes went up and the new places charged considerably higher rent than the existing supply. This is something I heard first hand more than once from small landlords saying they were increasing prices because the large buildings nearby were also expensive.

I.e. it wasn’t demand but normalizing higher prices that people willing to pay high prices.

What I am asking for is actual demonstrated evidence of changing policies leading to changing housing supply leading to lower prices.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#65

Post by ch4s3 »

kortilla wrote: post #41
kadoban wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

700,000 is not a tiny amount.

It’s tiny when it’s the max end of the estimation in a state of 40 million people.

It’s probably enough to house almost 10% of those people at 3 persons per unit, which is not insubstantial.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#66

Post by colechristensen »

fighterpilot wrote: post #21
colechristensen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All i’ve seen so far is people explaining their preferred reasons for why things happen and their guesses for what new policy will do.

What I haven’t seen is a case study or anecdote of something actually resulting in lower prices. (besides tech busts and covid in SF)

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#69

Post by kelnos »

personjerry wrote: post #11

I remember reading article about San Francisco being the "mercenary city": Young professionals come here, live in tiny apartments, get big tech wages for a couple of years, then move somewhere more affordable. With the remote situation, people are getting out of SF faster than ever. Won't this bill drive up the price of a single family home while driving down the price of multifamily homes? But the dream for most Ame…

I think the "mercenary" bit is (aside from being exaggerated) not really the point. My view on this is that if you want to live in a dense, urban area, you should have to pay a premium to live in a single family home, because SFHs are incredibly inefficient uses of land in that kind of environment. Suburbs, sure, SFHs all over, and that's expected. But not in a city.

The goal of less restrictive zoning like this is that we see more in-law units and 2-, 3-, and 4-plexes cropping up all over (some/many of these replacing existing single family homes). While that may increase the cost of SFHs, the average cost of homes in general will go down, because you'll have greater supply to meet demand. And they don't have to be "tiny apartments", either.

I do think this is a bit overblown; it's not like I see SF's Outer Sunset converting any significant amount of housing stock to duplexes and 4-plexes any time soon (or ever), and I expect residents will (unfortunately) still have other non-zoning-related tools at their disposal to fight development plans they don't like.

A UC Berkeley study (referenced and quoted elsewhere on this post) expects this measure to only increase the statewide housing stock by around 700k units. That's not nothing, but if they expected a significant number of SFHs to get torn down and replaced by multi-unit buildings, that number would be a good order of magnitude higher.

Re: Single Family Zoning is now banned in California

#70

Post by colechristensen »

ch4s3 wrote: post #63
colechristensen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This confuses correlation and causation. Increased demand causes new units with a price premium to be built and causes older units to rise in price. You see them concurrently because of the lease cycle, and sometimes secondarily because of weird municipal rent laws.

When you have a conversation with a landlord about why they raised rent, it’s not confusing corrolation for causation.
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