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

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

#71

Post by lynndotpy »

tomtheelder wrote: post #30
xyzelement wrote: post #24

I kinda get it and kinda hate it. I am a pretty responsible dude but nothing has made me as invested in my community, surroundings, etc as owning a home. I always loved the US but once we bought the house I really understood it on the next level. Apartments are great for single people and retirees. Families should have a house with a back yard and a drive way. It's our dream.

With all due respect that’s _your_ dream. I hated growing up in a house with a back yard and a driveway. I’m not sure I would have wanted to grow up in downtown Manhattan, but an apartment in a small city would have been infinitely better.

I second this sentiment. I grew up in rural and suburban America, and I'm jealous of those who grew up with more people around them.

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

#72

Post by tonfreed »

osigurdson wrote: post #35

I used to think that if average income cannot afford the average home, the market must necessarily correct. I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I understand that wealthier people have vacation homes, but the only reason for a wealthy person to purchase an additional non-vacation home is to rent it out to someone less wealthy. Since the less wealthy person couldn’t cover the mortgage to b…

Anecdotally, when my wife and I were looking at homes it'd be inevitable we'd hear someone else at the open houses talking about their 7th or 8th investment property.

My wife is the chatty sort, so she'd ask them about how they could afford it and they'd always be leveraged up to the eyeballs. The cheap credit hog has been a complete disaster, and when the rates inevitably rise to where they should be we're going to see a lot of idiots with a lot of unbacked debt defaulting on everything.

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

#73

Post by JoshTriplett »

osigurdson wrote: post #35

I used to think that if average income cannot afford the average home, the market must necessarily correct. I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I understand that wealthier people have vacation homes, but the only reason for a wealthy person to purchase an additional non-vacation home is to rent it out to someone less wealthy. Since the less wealthy person couldn’t cover the mortgage to b…

> the market must necessarily correct

This kind of market-based intuition doesn't always work in a constrained market like housing, where what kind of housing you're allowed to build, how much of it, or whether you can build housing at all, is all heavily determined by local regulation.

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

#74

Post by anon291 »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #50
tomtheelder wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect that’s _your_ dream. I hated growing up in a house with a back yard and a driveway. I’m not sure I would have wanted to grow up in downtown Manhattan, but an apartment in a small city would have been infinitely better.

Well, you are an extreme outlier. There are all kinds of people on this world but this very uncommon. Most people in apartment complexes are trying to get into their own home or hole that they can.

That's not true.

Most renters want to own because owning is cheaper. Renters live in houses too... It's not like home renters are less likely to want to own.

I know a family who rents a lovely house in a super nice neighborhood... They still want to own.

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

#75

Post by m0llusk »

imglorp wrote: 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.

Affordability is a market dynamic. If you look carefully you will find that newly built housing almost always commands a premium and truly affordable housing is almost always older stock. It is similar to but not exactly the same as used cars compared to new. There are cheaper cars but truly affordable transportation is used. It is also the case that as long as supply is highly restricted the prices will be as much as the wealthy side of the market can bear.

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

#76

Post by anon291 »

jmathai wrote: 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.

You can own a duplex or a unit in one

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

#77

Post by spicyusername »

osigurdson wrote: post #35

I used to think that if average income cannot afford the average home, the market must necessarily correct. I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I understand that wealthier people have vacation homes, but the only reason for a wealthy person to purchase an additional non-vacation home is to rent it out to someone less wealthy. Since the less wealthy person couldn’t cover the mortgage to b…

The rationale I have for explaining situations where it doesn't feel like prices are being dictated by the relative levels of supply and demand is that there is latency involved in reaching equilibrium.

The time it takes for prices to reflect reality can take far far longer, in some cases, than anyone is comfortable accepting. There is no fundamental law that says things need to happen at the speed of convenience.

Certainly over the course of human history some sociopolitical or economic arcs took multiple human lifetimes to play themselves out.

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

#78

Post by phphphphp »

osigurdson wrote: post #35

I used to think that if average income cannot afford the average home, the market must necessarily correct. I’m wrong about this obviously but I still cannot understand why. I understand that wealthier people have vacation homes, but the only reason for a wealthy person to purchase an additional non-vacation home is to rent it out to someone less wealthy. Since the less wealthy person couldn’t cover the mortgage to b…

because there’s a big gulf between “afford” and “survive”. The point at which most people could afford housing passed by long ago, nowadays housing is something many people are only able to survive the cost of by making big sacrifices elsewhere. Housing is not optional, there’s no room to cut a little cost here or a little cost there, so everything else is sacrificed before it.

Landlords couldn’t care less about affordability, so “the market” is very happy to make money by pushing people into survival mode.

(Affordability in housing is often measured as being up to 30% of income, whereas people can survive by sacrificing everything else — including heat, and food — spending up to 80% of their income on housing. That gap is where the increases and profit of the last decade have been coming from.)

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

#79

Post by mikebenfield »

xyzelement wrote: post #24

I kinda get it and kinda hate it. I am a pretty responsible dude but nothing has made me as invested in my community, surroundings, etc as owning a home. I always loved the US but once we bought the house I really understood it on the next level. Apartments are great for single people and retirees. Families should have a house with a back yard and a drive way. It's our dream.

You can have your single family home. I don't want one, and you shouldn't be able to dictate what kind of housing I live in.

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

#80

Post by epistasis »

lazypenguin wrote: post #69
epistasis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you OK with other people living in multi unit housing, or does your desire for a detached unit extend to others' way of living? I ask because it seems that where ever this happens, many people oppose merely allowing multiunit because they don't want to live in multiunit, even though it doesn't actually impact where they live. It's like lifting a ban on a certain type of car; it doesn't change your car, and there…

To me it’s replacing one problem with another. Simply changing zoning from single to multi-family doesn’t actually change core root problems in my opinion. A suburb full of single family homes or a suburb of multi-family homes are just different kinds of suburban hells. I think we need to be thinking about designing entire communities more intelligently with things like local markets, shops, parks, rest areas, school…

While I agree that we need mixed use zoning, if you look at where the upzoning is happening, it's typically in places that allow mixed use.

Ending single family zoning is also required to allow corner stores, not just allow apartments.

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