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

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

#201

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

itake wrote: post #174
wanderingmoose wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is you are already allowed to build an ADU (additional dwelling unit) due to state laws. What I've seen in my city (LA adjacent) is the city can find really creative ways of making adding an ADU very expensive. On my block the same contractor built 2 different ~500 sq ft units on two different lots. They both were a garage tear down replaced by a 1 bedroom unit above a garage. The first unit was done…

1/ who actually wants to live in a ADU? 2/ adding 1 more unit to a plot is hardly going to make dent in the crisis. We need to look at Asia to see how they offer affordable house: giant high density housing complexes with ground floor grocery stores and shopping malls for convenient access.

Case in point: my son and his music/business partner have just moved to Santa Fe, where housing for young/lower income people is almost impossible to find. Because of the "tradition" of building casitas here for centuries, we effectively have ADUs, and the only thing our son's friend could find that was affordable was essentially a very small ADU/casita.

Is it a dream home? No. Is it an acceptable living space while someone gets their feet on the ground, starts figuring out a new job/life? Absolutely.

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

#202

Post by notJim »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #131
ihaveajob wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mostl…

> 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

The reason is that parking requirements massively add to the costs of building new apartments. It works out that everyone in the building has to pay extra, regardless of whether they actually use the parking. Parking minimums also mean that some projects just will never work economically.

> at some point we're going to run out of street parking

Sounds fine! The city doesn't need to provide free car storage to everyone.

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

#203

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

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.

I lived almost all my life on neighborhoods of "walk up apartments" (3 or 4 floor high condo buildings without a lift, typically with 2 units per floor), and I agree completely. It is small enough density to be calm and quiet, but high enough density to support small local businesses at walking distance.

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

#204

Post by davidw »

ghaff wrote: post #175
SmellTheGlove wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mostl…

People complain about parking requirements but, in most US cities (and indeed in a great deal of the world) most households have cars. If I lived in Seattle, even if I didn't need one day to day for work/errands/etc., I'd certainly own one for going out to the mountains and so forth on the weekends.

So let the market work. If people don't have a car, they're doing the environment a favor for all of us and clogging the roads less. It's only fair that they should get a discount: not forcing them to pay for automobile storage they're not using!

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

#205

Post by sjg007 »

francisofascii wrote: post #147
throwawaysea wrote: post #55

Good grief. Not everything is a "crisis". This type of alarmist language games needs to stop. This is less a housing crisis and more an entitlement crisis. There is an entire country between the coasts. There are jobs available over the country. There is open land and housing all over the country. It's more that people feel entitled to a certain location, a certain line of work, a certain income level, a certain prox…

Sure, but the entitlement goes both ways. The current landowners feel entitled to enjoy massive appreciation gains while paying very little property tax, just because they settled there first. But I agree we are lucky in that we have other places to move, but that might not always be true.

People can vote for change.

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

#206

Post by thaumasiotes »

_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…

> 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.

And the voices of those who own land?

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

#207

Post by usrusr »

danans wrote: post #60
_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…

> This is a small step in the right direction but California has really dug themselves into a hole here. California needs whole apartment blocks, not just duplexes, but apartments is something that is likely to never happen because of the above issue where no one will vote against their self interest Incremental upzoning is what will get us there. So changing single family zoning to duplex zoning like what this does,…

Sorry for being so ignorant about particularities of American zoning (I hardly know more than what you pick up playing the original Sim City): could it be easier to shift commercial to high density residential? Of course the general threat to owners would still be there, "if we solve the housing crisis my Prophet might stop appreciating like mad". But that's true for any approach short of an October 1917 reenactment.

And are commercial acres actually valued higher than residential across all density ranges? If not, would regulation actually prevent repurposing? If only the latter was true I'd expect The Most American Thing to happen, finger to regulation in the shape of habitation-as-a-service companies (long term lease disguised as hotels) gobbling up unprofitable locations left and right. Call the company Beanberia if you feel particularly uncreative.

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

#208

Post by ihaveajob »

ghaff wrote: post #181
xxpor wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to solve the parking problem is to price street parking, not to require new buildings to build parking while the existing houses get off scott free. It's the exact same supply and demand argument: limited supply so how do you reduce demand to the supply that exists? Increase prices.

I expect residential parking is pretty price-insensitive. Maybe more households would forgo owning a marginal second car. But if a households needs a car, they need a car. And if that means paying $100+/month that's just something they're going to have to eat.

With parking requirements, families who don't have/need/want a car still have to pay the extra price for a built-in feature they don't need. When we bought our first home, it was a condo in SoMa without car parking. We loved it because we didn't want or need a car, and we couldn't have comfortably afforded a place with parking included. Especially in metropolitan environments, minimum parking requirements are the near the core among the reasons many things don't work well (public service, street safety, runaway home prices...)

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

#209

Post by apengwin »

sushsjsuauahab wrote: post #199

I live in Washington and I don't understand how anybody can live in LA unless they have a physical job or family that is tying them there. If you like hot weather, there are many better places to live, like Scottsdale or Naples. If you must live in California, why not Palm Springs? If you are concerned about taxes and cost of living and you don't need California's weather, virtually any other state has a safe communi…

The food is really good here.

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

#210

Post by bluGill »

beerandt wrote: post #178
alistairSH wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Developers are typically required to include on street parking in their developments before the right-of-way is deeded over to the public. There's rarely any public subsidies for parking. That's largely a myth. It's paid for in the price of the development by the developer (and is usual a government or zoning requirement).

That is still a public subsidy as the city is expected to maintain that on street parking.
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