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

#321

Post by hyuuu » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #164

subsubzero wrote: post #130

What 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).

it's already pretty bad in tenant friendly areas and that's why those areas have severe housing crisis, not just in the Bay Area. Here is a more recent example: https://reason.com/2021/11/10/developers-halt-projects-mayor...

you'd want to incentivize the private market to purchase, maintain, market to distribute housing to the masses and the government does that through favorable taxes. Making them unprofitable would put the burden on the renters + government with no private money capital injection.

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

#322

Post by xboxnolifes » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

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…

From a US perspective, I think walkability score is overrated because walkability scores are ridiculously inflated. There are like 5 places in the entire country I would consider actually walkable (and they aren't affordable), yet many places will have a good or great "walkability score".

And walkability is a tradeoff for space. Pretty much everyone in my family are Single-family home for life kind of people, but they all enjoy visiting walkable places and talk about how nice they are. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not that people don't value walkability, it's that there are very, very few good walkable places to live. Would even go as far to say close to none, but I'm sure some smaller towns are out there that go under the radar.

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

#323

Post by egberts1 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

treeman79 wrote: post #315

abduhl wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares if they're taxed at the max tax rate? One of the main effects of repealing Prop 13 would be to start actually collecting taxes. I don't think that the fact that people who are forced out (because they can't pay their yearly taxes) now have to pay taxes, which they CAN pay because they're now liquid, something we should be concerned about after making the decision to repeal Prop 13? Old people get a lot of p…

California collects plenty of taxes. It doesn’t need more. It’ll just blow it on more trains that don’t run or such. 100% tax rate would not be enough for many politicians.

Trains that don’t even reach their intended destinations.

45-minute to 1-hour drive to a nonexistent but planned train stations times TWO (for end-waypoints) just to enjoy a two-hour (or less) time-saving trip across the California farmland makes about much sense as skydiving off a plane to reach your destination.

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

#324

Post by ghaff » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

ihaveajob wrote: post #307

ghaff wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent was making a different point though which was that increasing the price of parking would decrease the demand. And while that is true almost by definition, mostly you'll just transfer money from all the people who want/need cars to someone or someones else. Most adults aren't going to forego a car because parking is too expensive. (Of course, they may decide just to live someplace else where parking is chea…

There's definitely a core set of drivers who can't give up their cars, for whom any price increase will just be swallowed. However there's a big swath of gray cases at the boundary. For example, when we moved to San Francisco, we kept our car and parked on the street. After two parking tickets within the first month (because we forgot the weekly sweep schedule), we decided it didn't make sense to keep the car. We sol…

There is a gray area. I know a couple who live in SF who don't have a car. (They actually have a parking space but they sublet it.) They take muni some although my observation when I visit is that they use a lot of Zipcars, regular rentals, deliveries, and Ubers.

One of the things that's probably true as well is that many people adjust their lifestyle to what's convenient. If you need to rent a car to go somewhere on the weekend, you probably tend to favor other activities.

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

#325

Post by opportune » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #30

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.

And getting rid of cars! Pre-1920s neighborhoods in the USA are dense, yet spacious. So much of the density problems in America are due to our over-reliance on cars.

Many people are in denial that neighborhoods like these are possible despite them existing in pockets of the US (I live in one in SF) and ALL over the world. All you need to do is not surrender space to cars and allow density - and have the demand to support the density - and it just works.

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

#326

Post by wumpus » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

_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…

California did step in, when the elected legislature passed legislation that overrode local zoning decisions.

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

#327

Post by 2-718-281-828 » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #246

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 agree with all the points. If only sound insulation was better in these old plexes. Hearing someone sneezing (and not only) on the upper floor is not much fun.

oh how I despise hearing my neighbours. especially loud music or TV.

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

#328

Post by SmellTheGlove » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

Seattle3503 wrote: post #198

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…

> 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. Mandatory parking minimums make constructing new housing more difficult, raising the cost of housing. The city is making th…

> Mandatory parking minimums make constructing new housing more difficult, raising the cost of housing. The city is making the tradeoff that affordable housing is more important than free parking. As density increases it will hit a point where you need to pay for parking. I live in Belltown and own a parking spot. Ultimately I think this is the right direction to go, the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car.

I get it, but Seattle public transportation isn't good enough to just tell people they shouldn't have a car. I have a driveway and a garage, so the problem is solved for me, and in theory means someone could put their car in front of my house on the street. But if they're putting 6 townhouses on a lot, that won't scale, and maybe they should instead build 4 and parking.

> the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car.

I agree, but that's pretty much what forcing people to park on the street is. I do get that mandating parking raises the cost of housing, which is also counterproductive. But if you drive through Ballard, street parking is pretty tight - I'm not saying people are going to start parking in the median on 8th and 15th, but I'm not sure how much more they can build w/o parking before it starts to look like S. Broad St in Philly!

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

#329

Post by politician » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

ariwilson wrote: post #170

politician wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dream: Build light rail and cluster high density mixed-use housing and commercial around the stops. Reality: LA runs out of water as climate change intensifies in the Rockies.

LA will never run out of water; it's not the major water user in CA state and it has a huge body of potentially drinkable water next to it and the cash to use it.

Californians will never approve the energy generation projects required to unlock high volume desalination. They'll be drinking water pumped overland from Colorado until the Hoover Dam is dry.

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

#330

Post by ghaff » Thu, Dec 02, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #281

ghaff wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bleh. I knew that. Google did say 30 minutes when I looked. (I've never actually taken transit to JP.) Of course, the reason that Arlington doesn't have better transit links is that they didn't want it when the Red line was extended to Alewife. JP is certainly less suburban than Arlington but it also doesn't (to me) really feel like it's in "the city."

I agree - it's more suburb than urban, but it is much more of an urban mix than almost all suburbs in the US. I would not say Arlington feels anything like being near the city, the amount of lights and traffic makes it take forever to get downtown. JP is very walkable and has pretty good nightlife if you wanna get blasted and walk home. I love JP.

>the amount of lights and traffic makes it take forever to get downtown

If I go into Cambridge after work, it takes me something like 45 minutes to get to Alewife near the Arlington line in pretty nominal reverse commute traffic. It takes me a good other half hour to go the last few miles. (And that's Cambridge. Boston would take even longer although I'd normally take a different route from my house)