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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

#71

Post by runako »

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).

> hundreds of tall high rises with 500+ units, like in New York or Boston

Notably, those cities have been very expensive for decades because they also slowed their pace of housing construction below demand.

Meanwhile, cities like Houston have kept prices down by granting tons of building permits. For the purposes of pricing (as opposed to urban design), it doesn't matter what form the new units take, as long as they get built.

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

#72

Post by jedberg »

nouveaux wrote: post #52
_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…

Why is this a LA/California problem? New York City and all major cities have had high price housing that benefits owners for decades. What steps have Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, etc done to take their housing prices down to their national average?

In most of those places, zoning rules come from a state/national level. In California, the city has enormous power in zoning rules and the city council is beholden primarily to homeowners.

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

#73

Post by marto1 »

_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…

> Housing is only a "problem" if you haven't bought a house yet

So what if you want to have a family and need to move to a bigger place ? Is it not a problem then ?

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

#75

Post by kodah »

_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…

Speaking as someone who doesn't own a house in California, apartments are not enough and never will be. Housing is an investment, and if I am put in a position to perpetually rent then I am excluded from a very stable and viable long term investment that is not easily replaced. What complicates this more, is if you shove all the affordable houses to the outskirts of the city where most companies are not then you create an entirely new class-based issue.

Edit: I don't care what kind of housing it is, but it needs to be for sale as opposed to for rent.

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

#76

Post by Maarten88 »

riku_iki wrote: post #18
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).

What would be traffic in LA if you build so many new units?

If you build more dense and closer to work and shops, people can travel smaller distances. Public transport, walking and biking will become viable alternatives, resulting in fewer car trips. You could have less traffic when planning it well.

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

#77

Post by seneca »

_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…

> In fact this whole situation is weirdly democratic but un-democratic. Un-democratic in the sense that it casts out folks that don't live there, but democratic in the sense that the voices of those who own homes are clearly heard.

This isn't undemocratic at all.

I know people hate this generally, but just to make a point: Democracy literally means "rule by the demos". The demos is (definitions from wiktionary because it was the first search result): "ordinary citizens, common people from a district, in a city-state” or "(political science) The common populace of a state or district, the people". So, the citizens or the populace. Meaning the people who live there.

That is to say, the will of "folks that don't live there" has nothing to do with Democracy. The citizens of an area voting for their self interest is completely democratic. It just doesn't end up with the results some people want.

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

#78

Post by AnthonyMouse »

colechristensen wrote: post #28
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).

There isn’t a housing crisis, there is a jobs location crisis. Apartments are terrible, there is plenty of space out there for people to have their own and not be crammed in like sardines. Cities though have the problem of allowing much more space for jobs than they have for housing. You don’t want high density housing in your city? Fine, cap your employer zoning. It’s a big country out there and people need to decen…

> You don’t want high density housing in your city? Fine, cap your employer zoning.

The political incentive is to do the opposite. Make it cheaper and more attractive to employers, then make residential housing scarce. You get huge demand for housing, then employers have to pay more (generating more income tax revenues) even though all the money goes to landlords, then landlords have to pay more in property taxes. From the perspective of the self-interested government bureaucrat, this is the system working as intended.

> Nobody needs to use land “efficiently” by packing more people into it.

Except that then things are more spread out, and what you're using inefficiently then is transportation.

If you have a twenty story building with shops at the bottom and housing at the top, anyone in that building can walk to any of those shops, or any of the ones across the street.

There is enough land that we could build all of that stuff across a hundred square miles, but then everybody needs a car. And many people don't want that, but restrictive zoning prohibits the thing they do want.

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

#79

Post by runako »

throwawaysea wrote: post #67
belligeront wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is huge demand for people to live in dense walkable areas that can't be met because of restrictive zoning. You may not want to live like that, but plenty of people do. We should allow them.

> You may not want to live like that, but plenty of people do. We should allow them. I suspect that number is a lot lower than is claimed. It's only a very loud set of vocal urbanist activitsts who clamor for these changes and create the illusion of that demand. The reality is most people grow out of wanting to live in dense areas and walkability is very overrated. In fact walk scores basically don't matter when peop…

> walk scores basically don't matter when people actually shop for a house compared to other factors (price, size, location, schools, etc)

This is not supported by home prices in many housing markets. The walkable parts of cities tend to be among the most expensive in every metro area. Realtors even have a phrase for not being able to afford to live in the dense metro core: "drive until you qualify" (for a mortgage, given your income).

This is also weird thing to note given that real estate websites pay to license walk scores presumably because they believe that home buyers want this information.

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

#80

Post by opportune »

I find it interesting that the majority of democrats were in favor of the duplexes, republicans were split, and the LA city council (14/15 democrats) were all opposed to the new law.

This matches my experiences in SF and other parts of the country. I’ll ignore the irony that republicans are voting against expanded property rights and transparently are voting simply for class interests…

I am not sure why democratic elected officials are so opposed to these rules, whether it’s not in the lawmakers’ best interests directly (ie maybe since they are on average much wealthier, they think the law will hurt them. Or result in redistricting, etc.), bog-standard graft and corruption, or whether they legitimately think the measures are unpopular and likely to result in non getting re-elected. NIMBYs are certainly loud but they actually aren’t the majority. I am so tired of hearing tortured, nonsensical explanations for why new housing must be denied or become onerously hard to get approved. So at this point I’m leaning less towards thinking politicians are (incorrectly) following what they think their constituents think, and more towards suspecting some kind of inherent conflict of interest between lawmakers and the prospect of expanded housing.

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