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Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

latimes.com

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Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#41

Post by ehutch79 »

foobarian wrote: post #14
seibelj wrote: post #2

I live in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Nearly every single home is multi-family, and the single families that do exist are usually $2 million and up. Take a stroll down one of our streets https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3130357,-71.1188873,3a,75y,1... It is dense, walkable, and extremely beautiful. There is no reason every neighborhood with duplexes has to look like cookie cutter sprawl tha…

Ah yes, Boston. No need to worry about what would happen to those 2, 3, and 4 story wood houses if they got a good shakeup at 5+ on the Richter scale.

It's not like developers in LA don't know how to build things resistant to seismic events.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#42

Post by DanCarvajal »

jperras wrote: post #7

Montréaler here; I live in a neighbourhood which is uniquely composed of plexes - 3 to 8 units per "plex", with the typical number being 3, thus the term "triplex". Honestly, it's the ideal density IMHO. I get the convenience factors of urban density, but without (most) of the downsides of a high-rise condominium building.

When I was last in Montreal I was struck by these types of units and deeply jealous.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#43

Post by quadrangle »

thehappypm wrote: post #33
tjr225 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boston was incorporated two hundred years before Los Angeles. Of course it is going to have more beautiful, old houses. Of course it is going to have more walkable neighborhoods. But what I'm more interested in is this: > Nearly every single home is multi-family, and the single families that do exist are usually $2 million and up. SFH are already 1 million and up in LA, really in SD, LA, SF, Seattle, and Vancouver. I…

Most houses in JP are from the ~40s.

Yup, in other words, the last period of development before the interstate highway push and car-sprawl suburban experiment ruined and bankrupted the country.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#45

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

foobarian wrote: post #14
seibelj wrote: post #2

I live in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Nearly every single home is multi-family, and the single families that do exist are usually $2 million and up. Take a stroll down one of our streets https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3130357,-71.1188873,3a,75y,1... It is dense, walkable, and extremely beautiful. There is no reason every neighborhood with duplexes has to look like cookie cutter sprawl tha…

Ah yes, Boston. No need to worry about what would happen to those 2, 3, and 4 story wood houses if they got a good shakeup at 5+ on the Richter scale.

https://earthquaketrack.com/us-ma-boston/biggest

I remember that Sanbornton quake. We lived in rural NH. At first I thought it was the clothes washer...then the house really started shaking.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#46

Post by joefigura »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #20
_fat_santa wrote: post #5

As soon as you look at the zoning of LA, the housing problem there becomes clear as day, even for someone who doesn't visit very often. I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet, once you purchase a house, all the…

> I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. If they upzone my single family home lot I will make out like a bandit. Developers will be all over this neighborhood, building townhouses galore. The last townhouse to sell in my neighborhood went for 2.1MM+. Upzoning does not magi…

The development you're describing is the whole goal of upzoning, and the intended effect. Where you once had a single family home, you now have multiple units.

The brand-new townhouses sell for many millions because they're brand new. But adding new units relieves price pressure on the rest of the market - every person that moves into a brand new townhouse is therefore not moving in to older houses in other neighborhoods.

You're making out like a bandit because you're creating new wealth. Where there was only one housing unit, there are now many. This is a win for everyone involved, it's net positive.

> Housing pricing is more complicated than a simple supply and demand curve

People say this, but it's not true. The U.S, particularly in growing areas, has not built enough homes per capita since the real estate bubble, and so prices go up[1]. It's as simple as that.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-underbuilding-housing-ove...

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#47

Post by mistrial9 »

mywittyname wrote: post #17
baby wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m convinced that this is the reason behind SF housing problems as well. There’s just too much value for landlords.

Not just landlords, but everyday home owners too. People who got a $X00k mortgage on a house by-and-large are not going to actively support policies which may reduce the asset backing that loan. There would absolutely be long-term benefits to lowering housing costs in parts of the country, but some people are going to have to feel the short-term pain to make that happen.

> which may reduce the asset backing that loan.

IMO its worse than that.. no asset has been "reduced" yet the tempers and decision making get worse and worse.. This is a fundementally divisive issue that brings out the worst in people. Community is nowhere to be seen when it comes to private property and the dollars that come with it. It is a bitter end-game of an explosive and wealthy 100 years of growth in this part of the world.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#48

Post by vanusa »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #39
gautamcgoel wrote: post #9

Obviously I support these kind of movements - the housing crisis is no joke. But every time I see an article about multifamily homes, I think: ok, but we really need is are hundreds of tall high rises with 500+ units, like in New York or Boston, each of which uses land much more efficiently than LA (2x more residents per square mile).

That sounds like absolute hell.

The commenter intends that these places are for other people to live in (or adjacent to), of course.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#49

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #20
_fat_santa wrote: post #5

As soon as you look at the zoning of LA, the housing problem there becomes clear as day, even for someone who doesn't visit very often. I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet, once you purchase a house, all the…

> I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. If they upzone my single family home lot I will make out like a bandit. Developers will be all over this neighborhood, building townhouses galore. The last townhouse to sell in my neighborhood went for 2.1MM+. Upzoning does not magi…

> If they upzone my single family home lot I will make out like a bandit.

Only if they only upzone your neighborhood, because if they upzone all of them then developers can buy any of them at existing prices instead of having to all bid on an artificially scarce subset.

And in the first case the money comes at the cost of housing prices for all the other neighborhoods they didn't upzone, who all fight against upzoning your neighborhood.

> And truly affordable housing can only be created by mandating that units sell below market value.

This is balderdash. Not only false, but inverted.

Where does the money to sell "below market value" come from? The rest of the housing market, increasing prices for everyone else, but especially for the people who make three cents too much money to be eligible for "affordable housing." Because then you separate housing into subsidized projects with concentrated poverty and luxury housing that lower middle class people can't afford.

Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods

#50

Post by klyrs »

_fat_santa wrote: post #5

As soon as you look at the zoning of LA, the housing problem there becomes clear as day, even for someone who doesn't visit very often. I don't know what you would call this system but LA's problem is that the folks that have the power to fix housing have zero interest in doing because it would hurt their self interest. Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet, once you purchase a house, all the…

It's even worse than that. Because LA is so spread out, merely living in apartment buildings doesn't solve the problem: the apartment-dwellers still need cars to live in LA. When you need 1-3 parking spots for every apartment, the economic efficiency of apartment buildings drops precipitously.

With rose-colored glasses, I can see a path forward; building free-standing parking garages that will eventually be demolished / repurposed when car ownership in a neighborhood goes below a certain level. But that's expensive, clunky, and ugly -- and folks aren't going to want to walk across a wide, busy street just to get to their cars. Probably not politically viable.

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