Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning • Hacker News Board

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#41

Post by scythe » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

Some of the objections from the article: Sean Kieghran, president of San Francisco's Residential Builders Association, said he supports getting rid of single-family only zoning but doesn't think it will result in many new units. Kieghran said that building fourplexes requires either two staircases or a staircase and an elevator, which takes up too much of the site. And, unless the city streamlined the process of buil…

Those are valid objections to fourplexes, but there are still plenty of things in between SFH and fourplexes -- including, most particularly, semi-detached duplexes, which are much easier and still double the density on the lot! I do agree that much of the hype about fourplexes is suspect (including the noise isolation of units that are one-atop-another), but there are many other possibilities, including ADUs.

Also, small elevators are definitely something that could benefit from an economy of scale, and anyway make a big difference in accessibility for any building above one story. Likewise, the possible designs of multi-unit homes on small lots could become more standardized. And the regulations could improve, and the regulatory institutions could gain more experience handling these kinds of projects.

All of that starts with the zoning.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#42

Post by BurningFrog » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #22

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

Some of the objections from the article: Sean Kieghran, president of San Francisco's Residential Builders Association, said he supports getting rid of single-family only zoning but doesn't think it will result in many new units. Kieghran said that building fourplexes requires either two staircases or a staircase and an elevator, which takes up too much of the site. And, unless the city streamlined the process of buil…

> Just because something is permitted doesn't mean it happens. It's very hard to find a vacant lot or tear down at a price that would work First you make things legal then you streamline them. > You would need to find a developer willing to take a risk on a minuscule profit and an architect who enjoys brain damage," he said. "They are complicated little projects. It's the absolute opposite of economy of scale." Once…

> Those developers just want to keep the code complex so that only 100 unit projects are viable so that huge firms are the only ones who can execute projects.

Strong disagreement.

The best thing for developers would be minimal zoning, Houston style.

As the Bay Area built to expand from 7M people to, say, 20M in a decade, enormous fortunes and livelihoods would be made from all that construction work.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#43

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #38

lotsofpulp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The increased number of multi family dwellings drives up the price of single family houses. Increased demand for single family homes drives up price of single family homes. People moving in drives up price of land and dwelling units, obviously because people need a place to live. The only thing that can move price down is demand decreasing (which will not happen if people are migrating in) or supply increasing suff…

Increased demand drives up construction rates before it drives up prices. The only thing close to what you are describing is approximate commute distance.

I do not know what commute distance has to do with anything. You can build a million dwelling units 5 hours west of Austin in the desert, and they will not sell for much if at all.

> Increased demand drives up construction rates before it drives up prices.

The rate of construction will go up if prices are going up, or the entities doing the construction believe prices will go up (and there is capacity to increase rate of construction, of course). These are all very fluid measures, but all are a function of supply and demand.

There is no situation where increase in supply of a good alone by itself causes the price of the good to increase.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#44

Post by xienze » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #39

plank_time wrote: post #11

People are stupid if they think this will fix things. I went to the peninsula looking at houses and the new trend is to add ADUs as part of the house or in the back. You know why? To help the owners pay off their $3M houses they used to be $1M 8 years ago. This then figures into the calculus of how much you can afford to buy a house for. What is an unaffordable $8000/month mortgage now becomes $6000/month. So people…

Google is not the cause of the housing crisis. It’s purely demographic. Count up all the people that graduated high school in your town and subtract the number of people who died, and that’s how many houses you need to build that year. Simple demographics and this figure has been ignored in most Bay Area cities for fifty years.

Ehh I think it’s a little more complicated than that, and I’ve argued this for years, that Google et al certainly plays a part. Consider their infamous busses, that allow employees who simply can’t fathom the idea of living in Mountain View to easily live in SF and commute. Without those I think employees wouldn’t be shielded from the consequences of the whole “live in the city, commute into the suburbs” thing.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#45

Post by nosianu » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #29

plank_time wrote: post #11

People are stupid if they think this will fix things. I went to the peninsula looking at houses and the new trend is to add ADUs as part of the house or in the back. You know why? To help the owners pay off their $3M houses they used to be $1M 8 years ago. This then figures into the calculus of how much you can afford to buy a house for. What is an unaffordable $8000/month mortgage now becomes $6000/month. So people…

> People in the Bay Area don’t realize that every little thing that keeps costs low gets funneled back into house prices. Because the root cause is the demand for housing in Bay Area is far outstripping supply. You must tweak either or both of those to move the price. Addressing supply certainly does, but it might not be sufficient supply to overcome the demand. But it does help the situation.

My suspicion is that this might end up like more/wider streets and highways: You built it => it will be filled to capacity asap and there is no difference in the end, only more of the same (literally). Of course, this won't happen to infinity but far enough. In the end the area is just too attractive, combined with the industries there generate a lot of money.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#46

Post by BurningFrog » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #18

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

Some of the objections from the article: Sean Kieghran, president of San Francisco's Residential Builders Association, said he supports getting rid of single-family only zoning but doesn't think it will result in many new units. Kieghran said that building fourplexes requires either two staircases or a staircase and an elevator, which takes up too much of the site. And, unless the city streamlined the process of buil…

Houses are bought and destroyed to make way for tri-plex blds and condos at a pretty consistent pace where I live, because the returns are that good. I'm surprised that this would be any different in SF.

Demolition and construction are nearly completely regulated out of existence here.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#47

Post by catern » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #37

LurkersWillLurk wrote: post #2

Just going to point out - ending single family zoning doesn't mean building a single family house is prohibited, it just means that you can build things other than a single family home on a particular plot of land.

This is a very good step, but I wouldn't mind an outright prohibition either.

That's hubris. The reason we're in this situation, where a lack of dense housing is causing housing prices to rise, is because earlier planners were confident 50 years ago that single-family homes were the best option, and they weren't content to just follow that strategy then and there. They decided that this had to be enforced on future people too - us, that is.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#48

Post by compiler-guy » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #18

pmoriarty wrote: post #4

Some of the objections from the article: Sean Kieghran, president of San Francisco's Residential Builders Association, said he supports getting rid of single-family only zoning but doesn't think it will result in many new units. Kieghran said that building fourplexes requires either two staircases or a staircase and an elevator, which takes up too much of the site. And, unless the city streamlined the process of buil…

Houses are bought and destroyed to make way for tri-plex blds and condos at a pretty consistent pace where I live, because the returns are that good. I'm surprised that this would be any different in SF.

I suspect where you live doesn’t have environmental impact studies and objection by basically anyone in the entire city requiring design review. Fixing the zoning is a first step, but won’t solve all the other issues.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#49

Post by zo1 » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

jorts wrote: post #35

vlovich123 wrote: post #28

Go further. Get rid of all zoning that’s unrelated to pollution of some kind or strictly a safety issue. Why is the government involved in whether I can run a business from my home? Why is the government responsible for controlling where businesses might be located instead of the free market controlling that aspect more dynamically?

Opening a chicken farm or leather tannery in a residential neighborhood sounds great.

Yeah, but being allowed to have a couple chickens on your small plot is an example of allowing sustainable and relatively poor living. Can't have that! We want you supporting your local supermarket instead! The one that delivered that egg from that licensed farm 200km away in the middle of nowhere.

Re: Bay Area cities want to end single-family home zoning

#50

Post by compiler-guy » Sat, Jul 03, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #42

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because something is permitted doesn't mean it happens. It's very hard to find a vacant lot or tear down at a price that would work First you make things legal then you streamline them. > You would need to find a developer willing to take a risk on a minuscule profit and an architect who enjoys brain damage," he said. "They are complicated little projects. It's the absolute opposite of economy of scale." Once…

> Those developers just want to keep the code complex so that only 100 unit projects are viable so that huge firms are the only ones who can execute projects. Strong disagreement. The best thing for developers would be minimal zoning, Houston style. As the Bay Area built to expand from 7M people to, say, 20M in a decade, enormous fortunes and livelihoods would be made from all that construction work.

You wouldn’t have to go all the way to Houston style zoning. SF’s regulations are so onerous that going just half way would help massively.