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Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

blog.jonathannolan.net

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Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#21

Post by AnthonyMouse »

boplicity wrote: post #13
Dig1t wrote: post #5

I personally tried to build more housing, I tried to buy 5 acres and build 5 homes on them. 5 acres could have easily held 5 large homes with big yards. The city zoning board denied me, saying that that 5-acre plot had been zoned for ONE house and an ADU of no larger than 300 sqft. That was when I realized why housing is so expensive.

In this case, it may not have just been that 5 acres was enough "room" for five houses. It gets into questions of building infrastructure for those houses -- sewers, water rights, etc. One development of 5 houses might not move the needle on that, but it then opens the door to neighbors doing the same thing, which could very much require major investment in infrastructure for the area.

> One development of 5 houses might not move the needle on that, but it then opens the door to neighbors doing the same thing, which could very much require major investment in infrastructure for the area.

But then there is a corresponding increase in property tax revenues to pay for it, so this should require no approval and just be something that happens. The city pays for the new infrastructure from the taxes paid by the new people using it.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#22

Post by WaxProlix »

Dig1t wrote: post #18
WaxProlix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've looked at something similar. The path is to split the plot first via your county (or whatever) and then build.

Correct, but the zoning board people outright told me they would deny the request to split the lot because it had already been zoned as “single family”.

Strange, and frustrating sounding - 1a each is plenty to leave the resulting plots as conformant single family housing.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#23

Post by jahewson »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #11
voisin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not actually intending to be sarcastic at all - I think the entire industry is morally bankrupt. I am a real estate developer (re-developer actually - specializing in heritage buildings and other complicated adaptive reuse projects), so I deal with planners, committees, official plans, zoning by-laws and the building code daily. It is painful to see indefensible requirements being thrust on projects - even those…

> by taxing / fining people for having a second home. I don't see the issue with this? The profits in Canadian real estate are not on the back of some new found resource. It's entirely an effective wealth redistribution from have-nots to haves. If you have property, the vast amount of value in it is strictly from the fact that it is artificially scarce. To get into the "haves" you have to pay an artificial tax in the…

No, no, the government interjecting themselves into housing and creating an artificial scarcity, to aid their favoured voters at the time, is the problem. The idea that the solution to this is not to have the government step back but to have them become even more involved by redistributing this wealth distortion to their new favoured voters is a further level of madness.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#24

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #11
voisin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not actually intending to be sarcastic at all - I think the entire industry is morally bankrupt. I am a real estate developer (re-developer actually - specializing in heritage buildings and other complicated adaptive reuse projects), so I deal with planners, committees, official plans, zoning by-laws and the building code daily. It is painful to see indefensible requirements being thrust on projects - even those…

> by taxing / fining people for having a second home. I don't see the issue with this? The profits in Canadian real estate are not on the back of some new found resource. It's entirely an effective wealth redistribution from have-nots to haves. If you have property, the vast amount of value in it is strictly from the fact that it is artificially scarce. To get into the "haves" you have to pay an artificial tax in the…

> I don't see the issue with this?

Consider the incentives the government has created here.

You can't build new housing, or it's extremely expensive because it's limited to specific lots and then you have to buy out whatever happens to be there even if they don't want to sell, and destroy a 5 story building in order to build a 10 story building, doubling costs while halving the increase in housing. Housing is thereby expensive.

So you tax people who own housing. Well, that doesn't lower rents, because there are still the same number of people who need somewhere to live but now fewer people to invest in new construction because it's less profitable with more of the money going to taxes, so that lowers supply even more and rents increase to cover the new taxes.

This an undersupply problem. You don't fix it by taxing suppliers.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#25

Post by AnthonyMouse »

alistairSH wrote: post #19
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your opinion on the recent SCOTUS decisions declaring that forcing developers to pay for community improvements qualifies as a taking? Do you see this having a material effect on housing development?

Do you have a link to a summary? I missed it, if it ever made the front page news. IANAdeveloper… if a developer is otherwise within code/zoning, SCOTUS is probably correct. If they’re asking for zoning changes, there should be room for negotiation on nearby improvements.

The takings clause was ratified in 1791. Unless the current zoning restrictions predate that, there is an element of cheating to imposing a restriction and then "negotiating" to remove it in exchange for something that would otherwise be a taking.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#26

Post by tmnvix »

philips wrote: post #6
voisin wrote: post #4

> Planners do important work moulding how our cities grow. Lost me at the first sentence. Let me fix it: “Planners follow the flavour of the day while committing the same sins over and over, their failures recognizable only in retrospect once replaced with a new (also faulty) paradigm based on centralized planning. Despite their repeated failures, as an industry or field of study they show no contrition and continue…

I have personally been involved in a few planning and “traffic engineering” issues where I live. And although this comment is heavy on the sarcasm it is very reflective of my experience. As a whole planning departments seem unable to defend decisions with relevant data and instead rely on indefensibly old manuals and standards. Some of which themselves use indefensible statistics- particularly traffic manuals (lets p…

> I don’t know what the answer is but Parking Reform, Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes are my north stars on this stuff. Do you have any others?

I think you might like this planning talk given in the 90s. One of my favourite videos on youtube and quite hilarious at times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMvwHDFVpCE

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#27

Post by toast0 »

WaxProlix wrote: post #22
Dig1t wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but the zoning board people outright told me they would deny the request to split the lot because it had already been zoned as “single family”.

Strange, and frustrating sounding - 1a each is plenty to leave the resulting plots as conformant single family housing.

Where I'm at, our least dense zone is 1 unit per 2.5 acres. If the lot was almost, but not quite 5 acres, it couldn't be split without a variance.

In theory, the state requires the city to allow for 2x population growth, and the zoning process directs where the growth should happen. In practice, the city pushes back so hard on everything, that the growth is going to happen wherever whoever has patience and money to spend on fighting the council wants to build. Everyone else is going to be frustrated by the long process of back and forth on pulling permits over many years and many dollars that actually the city won't let you do whatever you wanted to do anyway.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#28

Post by bongodongobob »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #24
Workaccount2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by taxing / fining people for having a second home. I don't see the issue with this? The profits in Canadian real estate are not on the back of some new found resource. It's entirely an effective wealth redistribution from have-nots to haves. If you have property, the vast amount of value in it is strictly from the fact that it is artificially scarce. To get into the "haves" you have to pay an artificial tax in the…

> I don't see the issue with this? Consider the incentives the government has created here. You can't build new housing, or it's extremely expensive because it's limited to specific lots and then you have to buy out whatever happens to be there even if they don't want to sell, and destroy a 5 story building in order to build a 10 story building, doubling costs while halving the increase in housing. Housing is thereby…

Taxing people who own multiple homes and taxing people who own apartment complexes are two completely different things and shouldn't be conflated.

Re: Measuring the impact of zoning on housing in a city

#29

Post by AnthonyMouse »

swozey wrote: post #12

> Giving up some aesthetic control means creating a city much more like Tokyo where building heights differ markedly even on lots next door to each other. I've lived a ridiculous number of major USA cities and I'll never forget what Houston, which is the only one I can think of that had no zoning, looked like. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Wei...

The main thing you actually want from zoning is to separate noxious/industrial uses from everything else. Houston is weird if it doesn't even do that. None of that other stuff is a problem. Living in a single-family home next to an office tower isn't any worse than living in a condo tower next to an office tower. People just aren't used to it because it's prohibited nearly anywhere else.
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