Live data from Hacker News

To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

npr.org

11–20 of 200 posts

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#11
post #8

Feels like it will perpetuate the trend of young adults not being able to afford to purchase a home. Duplexes and more apartments mean more renters. No matter your view on home ownership, there’s a lot to be said of the ability to stabilize your budget’s largest line item via fixed rate mortgages. This helps but is just a band aid.

Condos? Townhomes?

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#12
post #7

It needs to be affordable as well as multi unit. There is a massive influx in many burbs of "luxury apartments" with rents $2500+ and I'm not talking downtown NYC. That's more than most mortgages.

Nope, just needs to be more building. New luxury apartments will make the old stock cheaper. The fight over the number of affordable units in every single new development slows things down and exacerbates the affordability problem. Remove as many of the barriers to development as possible, and the problem will be solved.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#14
post #7

It needs to be affordable as well as multi unit. There is a massive influx in many burbs of "luxury apartments" with rents $2500+ and I'm not talking downtown NYC. That's more than most mortgages.

New apartments are inevitably going to be higher priced. Unless we're just going to deliberately build units with worse insulation, earthquake resistance, etc. all new construction of the same square footage is going to be higher value. Today's "luxury" apartments are tomorrow's affordable apartments. Today's dearth of affordable apartments is due to lack of construction in the past couple decades.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#15
post #2

> We don't have the space to incorporate a city, or urbanized living, within this small village of a community that we have," says Julie Lee, president of a neighborhood civic association and founding member of Arlingtonians for Upzoning Transparency, a group fighting the plan. Comments to these zoning fights are full of gems like this. Arlington is about the size of Buffalo NY and 50% denser. It hasn’t been anything…

An interesting question to ask is why do we always seem to grow by increasing density rather than establishing new small towns? Leon Krier's Drawing For Architecture contrasts over-expansion both with excessive density and excessive sprawl and by duplication.

It seems to me that if it were legal to do so there are plenty of tiny towns that could grow to the size of a small city like Arlington or Buffalo.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#16
post #4

I hate how that's phrased. No one is ending single-family housing. They're legalizing multi-resident housing.

> I hate how that's phrased. No one is ending single-family housing.

That would be a fair complaint, if the word “housing” had been used in place of “zoning”. Single-family zoning is a legal restriction that allows only single-family housing. Ending it is not the same as ending single-family housing.

If you are going to complain about phrasing, you should complain about the actual phrasing.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#17
post #12
post #7

It needs to be affordable as well as multi unit. There is a massive influx in many burbs of "luxury apartments" with rents $2500+ and I'm not talking downtown NYC. That's more than most mortgages.

Nope, just needs to be more building. New luxury apartments will make the old stock cheaper. The fight over the number of affordable units in every single new development slows things down and exacerbates the affordability problem. Remove as many of the barriers to development as possible, and the problem will be solved.

> New

How often are they new and how often are they "newly renovated"?

As I got a downvote I'm going to edit this and say I used to pay a little over $800/month for a particular apartment. About 7 years later I looked back at the complex. It had been completely remodeled and the cheapest unit was over $1600/month. How often is this happening?

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#18
post #8

Feels like it will perpetuate the trend of young adults not being able to afford to purchase a home. Duplexes and more apartments mean more renters. No matter your view on home ownership, there’s a lot to be said of the ability to stabilize your budget’s largest line item via fixed rate mortgages. This helps but is just a band aid.

An increase in housing supply can only put downward pressure on prices, even if the majority go to rentals. There's no magic solution to high demand for limited land, the best we can do is build up.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#19
post #2

> We don't have the space to incorporate a city, or urbanized living, within this small village of a community that we have," says Julie Lee, president of a neighborhood civic association and founding member of Arlingtonians for Upzoning Transparency, a group fighting the plan. Comments to these zoning fights are full of gems like this. Arlington is about the size of Buffalo NY and 50% denser. It hasn’t been anything…

An interesting question to ask is why do we always seem to grow by increasing density rather than establishing new small towns? Leon Krier's Drawing For Architecture contrasts over-expansion both with excessive density and excessive sprawl and by duplication. It seems to me that if it were legal to do so there are plenty of tiny towns that could grow to the size of a small city like Arlington or Buffalo.

As long as we don't have teleportation there are network effects to concentration. I don't like it though, and would take a pay cut to move to a more roomy area.

Re: To ease the housing crunch, more places end single-family zoning

#20
post #4

I hate how that's phrased. No one is ending single-family housing. They're legalizing multi-resident housing.

This has been a major point of confusion. A lot of people respond as if their house will be torn down against their will and replaced with an apartment building.
Post reply on HN