Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes because new york is so cheap
On the other hand, though, how much more expensive might it be if only single-family homes were available?
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Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
271–280 of 403 posts
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#272(Stealing this argument from a friend who I discussed something similar with ...) It's hard to see how allowing duplexes will do _anything_ to address housing issues. We have a similar law here in Minneapolis which allows triplexes on any property. But what are the economics of this? Surely there's not a lot of vacant land in LA or Mpls just waiting for a new plex to be built. Instead, all the plots are already occup…
> “This plex stuff seems like political theater.”
it absolutely is just political theater, at least for duplexes and accessory dwelling units (adu), two laws recently passed here in CA. it’s a show of ‘doing something’ while not changing the landscape at all. less than 1% of LA will upgrade to duplexes from single-family homes because of the underwhelming economics. what we need is a minimum of 4+1 (quadplex plus adu) by right on an R1-zoned property, and scaling up from there.
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#273As 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…
After living in Asia for the last several years where cities combine high density housing and good mass transit with door to door access to great shopping centers the US just looks comically dysfunctional to me. Who wants to spend hours every day stuck in traffic and looking for parking and then pay outrageous rents for the privilege?
> Who wants to spend hours every day stuck in traffic and looking for parking and then pay outrageous rents for the privilege?
I'm guessing you didn't live in Beijing or Shanghai. Though to their benefit, both had reasonable transit and lots of affordable taxis. But...I've never seen traffic as bad as Beijing in the USA, even in LA. And the wild parking is crazy: how can someone afford a black Audi A8 yet still have to park it on the road illegally because they lack a parking space for their apartment?
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#274What is the end solution to this housing crisis? The solutions will all hurt existing homeowners or multi-homeowners and are not likely to be implemented. The duplex in a single family lot is not going to move the needle on this crisis much, as building 2 houses on a existing lot will require a teardown of the original structure, then a buildup of the new duplex, all very costly. It will run at least $500K+ and I don…
A much better alternative for #1: simply improve tenant protections so much that renting out a property becomes a bad investment (to risky).
That forces people who shouldn't own a house to buy one. Renting vs buying as which is a better investment is a complex calculation, but for some people renting is clearly better, and you have just ensured they are forced to make a bad investment.
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#275The city has been too far gone for 20 years. You have some of most inept local politicians you can imagine, who are more focused on taking glamor shots in front of half a million dollar per unit homeless shelters. If it's really costing half a million dollars to house a single homeless family, why not just give them $5,000 to move? Even for someone like myself, and I do consider myself to be somewhat upper middle cla…
> If it's really costing half a million dollars to house a single homeless family, why not just give them $5,000 to move? I'm sure they would if they could, but with all the greyhound buses full of people going to LA from places like Texan prisons, how do you prevent them from coming back? Also, I don't think $5k provides as much influence these days as you think it does, even to someone who is homeless. > LA and muc…
This. Texas once openly bragged about how they've solved their homeless problem by simply buying their homeless a bus fare to L.A. (See Gov Rick Perry bragging about this during one of the GOP presidential candidate debates.) While they don't openly brag anymore, this is still their primary policy for dealing with the homeless...
We know this because while writing a series of LA Times articles a few years ago on the homeless situation in Hollywood, George Lopez (the reporter, not the comedian) discovered that most of the homeless people he was interviewing weren't even L.A. locals. The overwhelming majority of the homeless came from the Midwest (mostly: Texas), because someone bought them a ticket and told them the weather here was great.
And the bigger problem: when offered shelter, most homeless refuse because almost all shelters in L.A. are sober facilities that do not allow contraband (i.e., booze or drug paraphenelia) and they would rather keep their drugs/alcohol than have housing. This is why L.A. is attempting to introduce new rules that would prohibit individuals from camping in public areas if there is shelter space available and they refuse shelter.
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#276I 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 el…
Yes, and a lot of Democrats want open borders but no housing for them or existing younger generations. I understand some may not want to hear, but it is a direct aspect of the problem, and not unsubstantial. Nothing against immigrants of course, they'll surely need a place to live—just like everyone else. The "not in my backyard" strategy of (14/15) is not a solution.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've unfortunately been doing that a lot lately, and it's not what this site is for.
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that the case already pretty much everywhere land is scarce? When I lived in Seattle, parking was an extra $300 a month on top of rent but I didn't have to pay that when I didn't have a car.
The norm in post-WWII North America is to mandate specific quantities of parking per land use type. Some places get really detailed about this. Here's a map of places that have eliminated parking mandates in some way: https://parkingreform.org/resources/mandates-map/
Yes I know. I'm responding to the "not forcing them to pay for automobile storage they're not using". This website says it costs 25-50k to build an underground parking spot [0] which when they can charge $3,600 per year it is totally profitable to build them without any subsidy by the renters not driving.
[0]: https://www.dbsg.com/blog/surface-parking-vs-underground-par....
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#278Earlier 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…
> 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 economic…
The poster didn't say he wanted the city to provide free car storage. Parking on the street is being put on people because the city isn't putting in the realistic requirement that makes developers deal with the fact that people actually do have cars, especially in LA
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#279Obviously 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).
Why do you think this?
Obviously, the discussion above (read: comment thread elsewhere) about "middle density housing" is the same armchair urban planning as your comment, but middle density seems like a much more "moderate" solution by comparison to your proposal.
Re: Facing housing crisis, L.A. voters back duplexes in single-family neighborhoods
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
After living in Asia for the last several years where cities combine high density housing and good mass transit with door to door access to great shopping centers the US just looks comically dysfunctional to me. Who wants to spend hours every day stuck in traffic and looking for parking and then pay outrageous rents for the privilege?
> Who wants to spend hours every day stuck in traffic and looking for parking and then pay outrageous rents for the privilege? I'm guessing you didn't live in Beijing or Shanghai. Though to their benefit, both had reasonable transit and lots of affordable taxis. But...I've never seen traffic as bad as Beijing in the USA, even in LA. And the wild parking is crazy: how can someone afford a black Audi A8 yet still have…
Yeah I've never been to mainland China. Traffic in Bangkok is also horrible but you can mostly avoid it if you live near a train station and plan your activities accordingly.