Earlier quoted context omitted.
High rises are not dystopian. What is dystopian is people living in fucking tents
I'd rather live in a tent in a rural area with access to nature than an inner city high rise.
You can go ahead and do that
Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
651–660 of 1001 posts
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#652Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a point I don't often see discussed. I have friends and family in CA whose primary asset is their home, with little to nothing invested elsewhere (perhaps because of the high cost of living)...resulting in a mortgage they have no intention of ever paying off, little retirement savings, and fingers crossed for a cash-out down the line.
That's not all of it, either. Older buyers have gotten the lionshare of their wealth from housing appreciation by preventing new housing and pay a lower tax burden than new buyers due to Prop 13. There's a reason that when it made it to the supreme court Justice Stevens called it medeival and referred to entrenched owners as Squires. "During the two past decades, California property owners have enjoyed extraordinary…
Yet you can hardly get a house sitting in the market even if it is more than a million dollars. Obviously the demand is very high.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#653Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…
> Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around Basically how things were built pre-WW2? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=68s The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (misguided) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apart…
> Basically how things were built pre-WW2?
The majority of America was not some idyllic "streetcar suburb" even pre WWII. Majority of it was either grid based urban development or rural residential / agriculture in large plots (often 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640 acre plots).
https://web.archive.org/web/20131108174122/http://www.thegre...
As agriculture got more efficient, and raising food for ones self became less common, and as cars became more prevalent these large rural plots often got sold to developers who would be tasked with breaking up the land into parcels and installing new roads and infrastructure.
Even in 1906 in San Francisco, you can see that cars are beginning to overtake the cable car and horse carriage as the central form of transport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHkc83XA2dY
So it's natural that majority of American land was developed around the automobile.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#654I think this line from the article serves as a good summary:
> We’ve never seen anything like this in California housing history where a residential building of any height, with any amount of parking, can be placed in the wealthiest communities in the world provided its just 20% affordable and is safe.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has little to do with the existence of zoning laws themselves, but the specific zones that they define. Japan has zones, so does Spain. But there's just nothing anywhere near as Restrictive as most US cities' R1 zone. Many places have R2s and R3s that are still more restrictive than the least dense thing than a Spanish city has. Remove zones alone, and HOAs will get areas into legally binding covenants that are…
> The answers are very uncomfortable. Are they? Isn't it possible that people who live in beautiful neighborhoods with mature trees, nice big yards, and low traffic streets that are safe for kids to play around, want to keep them that way for primarily those reasons? Of course their desires alone shouldn't be the final word on proposed changes to codes, but implying that all of these homeowners are primarily driven b…
many others have pointed out how tunnel-vision you are being, but just wanted to add:
Low traffic → Less cars driving
How do you get less cars driving? People need realistic options. How do you get those options? Density to support transit and Density to support having businesses close to everyone's homes so they can just walk or bike. Car-dependent suburbia IS the problem, and the more of it you have in the city the bigger the problems of traffic and unaffordability get.
Finally though:
> want to keep them that way
Look, don't get carried away. Unless a very significant block of homeowners in your beautiful leafy neighborhood are itching to sell, you have literally nothing to fear. Maybe when a large mall is demolished a mile away from you, someone will build something other than single-family tract homes. Big whoop.
*Nobody is coming for your suburbs with bulldozers* just because "SFH" might not be enshrined as the only way anything can be developed.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#656Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has little to do with the existence of zoning laws themselves, but the specific zones that they define. Japan has zones, so does Spain. But there's just nothing anywhere near as Restrictive as most US cities' R1 zone. Many places have R2s and R3s that are still more restrictive than the least dense thing than a Spanish city has. Remove zones alone, and HOAs will get areas into legally binding covenants that are…
Dumb question, but how do HOAs enforce things? Presumably they have some binding agreement, but I can't imagine why someone would opt into one. 'Why yes, I'd love to pay dues and fines to my noisiest neighbors.'
It’s in the deed so owning the property means you agree to follow the rules of the deed. The HOA can sue you for enforcement.
At a high level, anyone can sue you to enforce a deed term, as long as the organization/person with an interest is around to do it and knows to do it. As an easy example, a long time ago people added racist stuff to deeds, but those family descendants no longer enforce it. HOAs don’t die like people and collect dues so they don’t run out of legal fees.
You can try to get dead HOAs removed from a deed, and you can try to get a living HOA removed from a deed. Obviously one is a lot easier because it doesn’t fight back. You can also get the residents to vote to dissolve an HOA. Some HOAs expire after so long if the residents don’t renew.
TLDR you can’t buy the house without agreeing to the HOA.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#657Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it makes sense to mix Residential and Commercial in many cases. It rarely makes sense to mix Industrial with either Residential or Commercial. No one wants a smelter next to a house or an office.
This SimCity style thinking about zoning is just too simplistic. Yes, absolutely, nobody wants to live next to a smelter. But not every commercial property is a smelter. People love to live near corner stores, yet that is "commercial."
The smelter is "Industrial" not "Commercial". At least in SimCity abstractions.
Usually commercial and some level of manufacturing overlap in zoning, but smelters are in a different category.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#658> Old law proposes to turn the Bay Area's zoning system into something like Japan's in just two days.
Would be exciting to see this flip switched because it would help resolve some debates at the very least.
Clearly the housing market in Japan is dramatically different than that of North America and it would be very interesting to see if it is indeed the zoning that is the dominant reason for this difference.
Many have pointed to the zoning as being the core thing that induces more affordable housing in Japan, and hand in hand with that is the notion that if we adopted a more Japanese style zoning that we'd see some of our housing problems solved, but there are many other differences between the housing economy of Japan and NA than just zoning.
If we more closely mirror Japanese style zoning and we don't see the same results, it means there's more to it than just the zoning.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
This SimCity style thinking about zoning is just too simplistic. Yes, absolutely, nobody wants to live next to a smelter. But not every commercial property is a smelter. People love to live near corner stores, yet that is "commercial."
That's why zoning in the US is classified Residential, Commercial / Light Industrial, and Heavy Industrial, and Residential never abuts Heavy Industrial.
Yes. I personally still find this far too simplistic, and would prefer non-exclusionary zoning.
Re: Builder's Remedy goes into effect in many California cities tomorrow
#660Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cities should be able to plan their own growth. They are able to plan their own growth, but they aren't able to refuse to grow. Or at least, not through zoning; being located where potable water or sewer/septic are at capacity is probably still valid to restrict new building.
Why not? if a low density community wants to plan to remain low density, who are the rest of us to stop them?
I think this is only applicable if said community is isolated enough. But most communities in the Bay Area (for example) are not isolated. People live in one city, work in another, on the weekends they drive out to some other cities for R&R.