Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by SmellTheGlove » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

ihaveajob wrote: post #109

_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…

The thing I don't get is why many SFH owners don't see the benefit of upzoning their lot: Overnight, their house is much more valuable because if they choose to, they can sell to a developer who can make MORE money by building more homes. And if they choose to keep their house as is, nobody is going to force them. In the end, it boils down to cars, though. Many people see the free parking space in front of their hous…

I can tell you that when we were moving from SF to Seattle this past year, we were getting _crushed_ on any house that was sitting on an upzoned lot. Seattle's done a decent job of upzoning parts of neighborhoods around transit corridors, and we were looking at houses on those lots because I believe in the upside as you do. Well, so do others, and they have _cash_ to buy it - we did not!

We're now in a SFH in a mostly SFH neighborhood, but a block or so from an upzoned area that has townhouses and some apartments. The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason, but people living in them do have cars. I'm hoping that larger projects start to require parking because transit here just isn't good enough to not have a car. I don't care if people park in front of my house or anything - we're all neighbors - but at some point we're going to run out of street parking. And a lot of people think that's a fake concern, and all I can say to that is, they've never visited Philadelphia.

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

#132

Post by klyrs » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

ihaveajob wrote: post #103

klyrs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 demolishe…

Somewhere someone had proposed a new rule that would require all parking structures to be built on level floors, with the idea of allowing a future conversion when the conditions are right. Slanted floors negate this option from the start.

A (pipe-)dream of mine is that parking structures will eventually be taken over by tiny homes...

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

#133

Post by seibelj » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #70

seibelj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for more mature and professional people than Allston, but there is a growing group of Northeastern students starting to populate things. I obviously can't prove this, but I believe because everything is so beautiful, people instinctively treat the location better. Whereas Allston is a party area and everything is grimy, so no one cares and joins into the debauchery and littering.

I've never spent a lot of time in JP, but my understanding is that it is nicer than it used to be. And the gentrification has been somewhat controversial: https://planetgeogblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/22/the-two-jps-... Also, for those not from the area, JP is indeed a "Boston neighborhood" but it's on the outskirts around parkland, the Arnold Arboretum, etc. and is about a 30 minute public transit ride [edit: on the…

The JP line is the orange line, and getting downtown takes less than 20 minutes. It is the second fastest and most reliable line after the blue line. Arlington is a car suburb and is not Boston proper.

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

#134

Post by ceras » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

et-al wrote: post #24

CPLX wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's truth to that, but Paris and Barcelona are some of the densest cities on the planet. People really underestimate how much you can get just with 5 stories or so if you do it consistently. As anyone who's been to those places knows there's no sacrifice of beauty, sun, or livability really.

> People really underestimate how much you [density] can get just with 5 stories or so if you do it consistently. This is the rub, right? We can only redevelop a block or two at a time, so the only choice is for 10+ story towers. Especially because land is so expensive in these cities. I'm curious if new residential buildings (non-luxury if that even exists) in Paris or Barcelona are only 5-6 stories high.

> We can only redevelop a block or two at a time, so the only choice is for 10+ story towers. Especially because land is so expensive in these cities.

That's not necessarily true: it's much easier to build a duplexes/triplexes than a high-rise. Companies that can build the former cannot necessarily build the latter. IIRC when Bloomberg downzoned many "missing middle" outer-borough neighborhoods and upzoned core areas to support high-rises in NYC, many small building companies couldn't transition and just folded.

> I'm curious if new residential buildings (non-luxury if that even exists) in Paris or Barcelona are only 5-6 stories high.

I'm curious to see actual data on this, but many (most? almost all?) European cities have zoning rules that prevent building much taller than that in residential areas. It's especially true near the city center, where the restriction may apply to all buildings. So my guess would be it's still pretty common to not build high-rises in European cities -- similar to many NYC neighborhoods outside Manhattan (that weren't downzoned by Bloomberg).

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

#135

Post by SkeuomorphicBee » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #75

_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 crea…

I suspect there was a language barrier here. For the whole world "apartments" means what the US refer as "condos".

So, in short, L.A. needs a lot of "apartments"(world)/"condos"(USA). And you are right, "apartments"(USA) don't help.

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

#136

Post by RandallBrown » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

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.

Explain the thousands and thousands of new 2, 3, and 4 story wood houses in Seattle.

From my understanding wood is actually pretty good for earthquakes.

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

#137

Post by pxeboot » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

ihaveajob wrote: post #109

_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…

The thing I don't get is why many SFH owners don't see the benefit of upzoning their lot: Overnight, their house is much more valuable because if they choose to, they can sell to a developer who can make MORE money by building more homes. And if they choose to keep their house as is, nobody is going to force them. In the end, it boils down to cars, though. Many people see the free parking space in front of their hous…

> Overnight, their house is much more valuable because if they choose to, they can sell to a developer who can make MORE money by building more homes.

This only works due to scarcity. If everybody could do this, the values would stop increasing and could potentially drop.

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

#138

Post by duped » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

ihaveajob wrote: post #109

_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…

The thing I don't get is why many SFH owners don't see the benefit of upzoning their lot: Overnight, their house is much more valuable because if they choose to, they can sell to a developer who can make MORE money by building more homes. And if they choose to keep their house as is, nobody is going to force them. In the end, it boils down to cars, though. Many people see the free parking space in front of their hous…

Some people aren't solely motivated by the rise in their property. Evidence already suggests doing nothing increases it plenty.

On the other hand, some folks just don't like living in higher density neighborhoods. I can empathize with someone that bought a single family home decades ago, probably can't afford to buy a new one today even after selling it, and doesn't want to see their quiet neighborhood turn into a bustling urban environment.

As an example, my parents live in the suburbs of a midwestern city. It's almost entirely residential single family housing, with a downtown business district that sprung up along a rail line 100 years ago. The city has major highway access, but not close to the rail station.

There are plans to build a 400 unit apartment complex adjacent to the downtown area. Even with light rail to/from the major city, you still need a car to get around. Current residents are naturally livid that their quaint downtown they enjoy is going to change, and the streets around it that weren't designed to handle the daily commutes of hundreds of people are going to have far more traffic and road maintenance.

It has nothing to do with home prices, and everything to do with maintaining the community experiences that they bought into, sometimes decades ago.

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

#139

Post by davidw » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #125

davidw wrote: post #113

Huh, nice to see Los Angeles, a city of some 4 million people catching up with... uh, Bend, Oregon, which recently passed its city code changes to allow up to fourplexes thanks to HB2001. Bend recently hit 100,000 people! And you wonder why California has a housing crisis.

Doesn't Bend also have a housing crisis?

It does. It'll take a while for changes like this to help, but it's good to see them happening. And while I dislike the NIMBY-ish "don't move to Oregon" stuff, it is undeniable that California is exporting their own housing crisis up and down the entire west coast.

A place like LA should have enacted this kind of incremental change years ago.

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

#140

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #50

_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 demolishe…

When you need 1-3 parking spots for every apartment

Part of the problem is parking is heavily subsidized and the real costs not borne by drivers. Free public street-side parking in many urban and semi-urban zones. Parking minimums codified into building codes. Allowances for giant asphalt fields in suburban zones.

For a start, in downtown areas (both city and town), remove the parking requirements from building codes and let the market dictate how much parking is needed per apartment, per office, per shop. We currently over-allocate parking.