Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 403 posts

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

#361

Post by mateo411 »

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.

There are a lot of people who want their own space, but can't afford their own apartment. It is ridiculously easy to rent out spaces like this in Southern CA. If you post an ad for it on Craigslist on Friday, it will be rented by Sunday. Multiple people will be interested.

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

#362

Post by maccolgan »

cageface wrote: post #102
_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…

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?

What part of Asia are you living in? Remember Asia is a massive fucking continent...

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

#363

Post by closeparen »

greedo wrote: post #350
foofoo4u wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard this quote before, but I like it. It's a good point. So how about this to help lead the discussion. We, the HackerNews community, seem to have a general consensus that increasing supply is the best way to lower prices. Rather straight forward, really. But the reason why housing is currently limited is due to a conflict of interests; existing property owners want to stifle supply. And they have more…

Is more housing really the answer? I keep thinking of induced demand increasing traffic on the roads, and I wonder whether California would just have more people consume the additional housing. Instead of increasing the supply, perhaps addressing the demand is the only way out.

Of course more people would consume the additional housing. Did you think the proponents planned for it to sit empty?

There is some rank ordering for access to housing in desirable places. They take in N households. In a market economy, a small value of N shows up as a high price. Of course a lower price would correspond to a higher value of N. That's not some kind of counterintuitive cause and effect relationship, it's the same fact.

The point is that more people get to satisfy their desires to live in cities. Living in a city stops being something reserved for the top N households.

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

#364

Post by tata71 »

what_is_orcas wrote: post #306
Causality1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think anti-profiteering laws could be helpful. If you bought land and built a house and want to live in a quiet neighborhood until you die, fine. But maybe if you vote against expanded housing you don't get to sell your house for more than you paid for it, or maybe don't get to sell it at all while you're alive. Separating the homesteaders from the investors would do a lot of good.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot: how to make homes less of an "investment". When I bought my house my realtor seemed unable to accept that I don't plan on ever selling. I bought this house because I like it and I want to live here, not because I think I can sell it in a few years. I work remote and I hate moving. I know a lot of the HN crowd hates the thought of government regulation but I do agree t…

And if you regulate those individuals, they will never trust an economic policy you push forward again, because you majorly pulled the rug, after building a ponzi scheme that they were monkeyed into taking part in.

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

#365

Post by cageface »

maccolgan wrote: post #362
cageface wrote: post #102

Earlier 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?

What part of Asia are you living in? Remember Asia is a massive fucking continent...

Oh really? In living there for over a decade I somehow hadn’t noticed.

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

#366

Post by ghaff »

perl4ever wrote: post #360
milkytron wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a car either for this exact reason. I could get a car, but the costs are just insane when compared with the alternatives. $8-10k a year in savings is usually what I come out to.

Do you find, in general, that buying smaller slices of things from service providers tends to be cheaper?

It depends how often you use them.

Personally, $8-10K/year seems expensive unless you aren't trying to economize. I have an 11 year old ~$40Kish vehicle that I wouldn't typically pay $1K/year for maintenance and less on insurance.

But there is certainly some point at which it makes economic sense to just rent, especially if you are paying to park the car. In a city with difficult parking I wouldn't pay to own a car to use every couple of months.

But if you're going to be paying a few thousand dollars for local rentals for trips, plus some Uber, plus deliveries, plus some Zipcar, it starts to become pretty attractive to just own a car if only for the convenience.

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

#367

Post by perl4ever »

tomnipotent wrote: post #92
chestertn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can buy apartments?

You're thinking of condos. Otherwise, I don't it's possible for a multi-unit apartment building to sell single units.

>I don't it's possible for a multi-unit apartment building to sell single units.

Ok. I own one unit of a 4-unit building, which was as far as I know built to sell, not rent, roughly 30 years ago. It is definitively not a condo, in terms of the ownership structure and the portion that I own. No HOA either.

So your point is that it's not an apartment? Empirically, it is true that people don't call it an apartment. But it has the same square footage and decor as nearby apartments. The only thing approaching a fundamental difference is that it's on two levels, with bedrooms upstairs.

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

#368

Post by tomrod »

ethanbond wrote: post #121
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> system is called feudalism Peasants didn't vote for their lords. Somehow California's poor and renters have been convinced that building less housing is in their interests. (For example, see [1].) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29419007

Landlords (look at the word!) are not elected. Building more loosens their grip, and yes it’s counterproductive to go against that, but also land is de facto finite. Today’s landlords are descended from a long line of landlords, lords, warlords, and eventually just assholes who said, “get off this piece of earth or I will murder you, it’s mine now.” Of course this lineage is no longer exclusively hereditary, but it o…

> Today’s landlords are descended from a long line of landlords, lords, warlords, and eventually just assholes who said, “get off this piece of earth or I will murder you, it’s mine now.”

What prevents anyone from being a landlord?

If it's capital, what prevents someone from seeking capital?

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

#369

Post by fomine3 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #62
quadrangle wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me you need to watch the NotJustBikes overview of the Missing Middle problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o Super dense cities are efficient in some ways, but they have tons of other problems and they externalize tons of costs. What we're missing in the U.S. is human-scale density, especially in the form of cohousing arrangements. Tall high-rises are not actually efficient. You know how much ene…

No, dense city is much more efficient than suburbs. A hundred floors is a tiny fraction of miles. There was a post here showing the costs. Most folks would prefer the “missing middle” if ever given a chance to experience it.

It's extreme. Let's compare to 3 floor condos.

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

#370

Post by Archio »

ryandrake wrote: post #254
duped wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

Exactly. I'm an evil SFH owner. I don't give a single shit about how much it is worth, because I'm not a house flipper and I plan to live in this home for decades. I deliberately moved to this home, away from higher-density housing, primarily to get away from high population density and for the other various benefits of living in a SFH neighborhood. Some people like living in higher-density neighborhoods, and they sh…

To clarify, do you live in a city?

Respectfully: you bought your house — not the neighborhood around your house, and everything in it. It's true that it's OK to have mixed densities of housing, but I think it's an unrealistic and ungrounded expectation to buy a single family house in a city and expect your neighborhood around it to never change.

There are areas of the country where you can cheaply move to, outside of cities, that will likely never upzone (or land is so cheap you can buy everything around your house to ensure it never changes).

Post reply on HN