9 ms·

I find it hilarious that a CA company is leading the charge in new, efficient, high-quality pre-fab design and construction. These units are going to improve co

by ohazi 8y ago

I find it hilarious that a CA company is leading the charge in new, efficient, high-quality pre-fab design and construction. These units are going to improve construction quality and lower costs in every state except CA, thanks to our asinine zoning laws.

tomjakubowski 8y ago
What are the state zoning laws? As far as I know, the state constitution leaves zoning as an issue for the cities/counties to handle. Is that your beef or are there laws on the books I'm ignorant of?
- jimrandomh 8y ago
  Yes, the problematic zoning laws exist mainly at the city level. The problem is that the decisions about key areas are being made by people who are incentivized to make housing prices go up (because they own property), which they do by severely restricting construction of dense housing.
  - ajmurmann 8y ago
    Even that seems super short sighed though isn't it? If an area turns into the next Manhattan all land owners win big time. I'd love it if it became economically desirable to build a 100 story skyscraper next to my house and someone went ahead and did it!
    - baybal2 8y ago
      This idea is entirely alien to majority of American high class suburbians. My sorries to people insulted by this statement.
- JohnnyConatus 8y ago
  See this AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar...
  - patja 8y ago
    Where in that AMA is there a reference to zoning being defined at the state level? I did not see it in the long starting post.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      ohazi never talked about zoning laws being defined at the State level. Just that zoning laws in CA are asinine.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  The issue is that regional concerns (there is not enough housing in the region) do not mesh well with local control. Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult. If all the localities in a region, or even most of them, act this way, the end result is a housing shortage even when the economy is barely chugging along.
  - njoro 8y ago
    Personally I wouldn't mind the Bay Area looking like Shenzhen, but I don't understand why people think that anything is going to change. Housing and education are prime assets in the new information based society and economy. People aren't going to share that anymore than natural resources, stocks, bitcoins or domains. Regardless of the larger consequences.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      Also, Shenzhen isn’t much cheaper either (at least to buy, rents are much more reasonable of course).
    - adrianratnapala 8y ago
      > People aren't going to share ... It's more complicated than just sharing. It's not about whether you have to let people come and live on your own property. It's about whether your neighbour may subdivide her own property for a profit. Collectively, owners have an incentive to stop her; but individual incentives are mixed. We can see how the politics of that tension is working out right now. But how can anyone tell how it will play out in the future?
  - vkou 8y ago
    > Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult. The localities have a point. Why should existing residents pay for new infrastructure, to accommodate housing for 10,000 new residents (All because large tech firms keep building offices in the valley?) In a proper world, either the tech giant, or those new employees should pay for those infrastructure improvements. Traditionally, this has been done through high re-zoning and subdivision fees.
jpao79 8y ago
Actually its driven by the need for localized labor and unfortunately due to high housing costs, labor can't afford to live in downtown SF/LA and so a lot of time is wasted getting to the job site from the outer suburbs.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > unfortunately due to high housing costs And housing costs are high because of asinine zoning laws, as OP mentioned.
  - jpao79 8y ago
    Ok true. Just would add that high housing costs are actually the sum of asinine zoning laws + high labor costs and that high labor costs are due to high housing costs. :)
branchless 8y ago
Nope. In urban areas land is undersupplied therefore you will be paying the "monopoly price" where you bid what you can afford. So if a building used to cost 400k, broken into 200k land cost and 200k building cost, it will still cost 400k, 300k land cost and 100k building cost. That's how prices are set. It's not "how much this costs to build plus a fair profit".
- derefr 8y ago
  I don't think anyone would be using one of these pre-fab buildings for gentrifying existing urban centers. Those development projects usually aim to create aspirational purchases, or investment properties—neither of which wants the taint of "put together from parts, like a trailer-home or something." No, I imagine these would mostly be used to construct "condo-cities": exurbs/farmland "reformatted" all at once into new urban branch-nodes by plopping five hundred mixed-use condo buildings onto it, and then connecting it to the nearest urban center using high-speed rail or other public transit.
  - majormajor 8y ago
    > Those development projects usually aim to create aspirational purchases, or investment properties—neither of which wants the taint of "put together from parts, like a trailer-home or something." Live in a few of them and you'll see that the level of build quality can be wildly divorced from appearance and sales messaging. :)
- ohazi 8y ago
  The zoning and permitting regulations prevent you from building reasonably on land that you already own. There are plenty of wealthy individuals and developers in San Francisco who would love to tear down two or three shabby Victorian houses to put up a five-story 20-unit condo if they could only get the project approved. San Francisco in particular makes it extremely easy for neighborhood residents to impede projects that would be automatically approved in any other city [1, 2]. This is why nothing gets built here, it has nothing to do with the cost of land. No developer can afford to put up with a five-year battle with neighbors who complain about the shadow that the new building will cast onto their back yard, or to pay for fifteen $X0,000 bullshit environmental studies that the city will make the developer conduct as a "compromise." And remember, these are for designs that are completely up to code and that are zoned legally. [1]: https://sf.curbed.com/2013/4/17/10252934/what-the-heck-is-discretionary-review https://sf.curbed.com/2013/4/17/10252934/what-the-heck-is-di... [2]: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Discretionary-review-SF-should-raise-standard-2477940.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Discretionary-...
maire 8y ago
We just built a "hybrid" house in Santa Cruz county. We picked the default design and stuck to it. We had to make a few changes to get through the planning department. The biggest issue was not at the building level - but rather everything they made us do to prepare the site for building. Yikes - that was expensive. It also took a long time to get through the planning department.
- digikata 8y ago
  Was more required of the site prep for the hybrid house than one using more typical construction processes?
  - maire 8y ago
    The site prep was normal for any house. The biggest change was in septic system requirements. Septic systems cost three times as much as they did a few years ago because we have to have an active system with a fan and they have to have lifetime inspections. The contractor said this is normal now for the state of California. There are also relatively new rules to manage water runoff.
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      Does your town/city also ban composting toilets? I wanted to buy a $60,000 foreclosure in my town-- they told me I'm not allowed to even step foot on the property until I install a septic system.
      - maire 8y ago
        I don't know. The county was reviewing composting toilets in 2013. I don't know the outcome.
        anoncoward111 8y ago
        Many of the counties in the Northeast have taken a strong stance against composting toilets. It's because the local construction companies control the local governments here. They literally don't let you buy or move onto specific properties without submitting plans from "an approved septic installation company." You can imagine who is on the approval board, and which companies are "approved providers."
oftenwrong 8y ago
The same problems are pretty much everywhere in the US. This brings to mind a proposed project in Boston that faced a lot of friction, in part because prefab construction was proposed: https://www.universalhub.com/2016/lagrange-street-residents-win-board-rejects-condo?nocache=1 https://www.universalhub.com/2016/lagrange-street-residents-... >The Zoning Board of Appeals this week rejected a proposed condo building on the site of a former asthma-inhaler factory in West Roxbury, citing neighborhood concerns about density, parking and the developer's proposal to assemble prefab modular units on the site, rather than hiring local workers for more traditional construction. >... >But board member Mark Erlich, who is also executive secretary and treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, used the proposed modular construction to open an attack on the project. City officials have frequently expressed skepticism of such prefab units being bolted together, he said. But he added: >It also removes a lot of [work] hours that could be done by people who live and work in the city vs. people in Maine, who wear sneakers.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  What's the relevant of 'who wear sneakers'? It seems so orthogonal that I think it must be some kind of local joke?
  - jt2190 8y ago
    It's likely an allegation of lax worker safety, i.e. the workers should wear safety (a.k.a "steel toe") boots.
  - cocacola1 8y ago
    Perhaps he's trying to structure it as "Those people from Maine are going to take our jobs."
  - jmalicki 8y ago
    They’re not wearing steel toed boots, therefore aren’t real respectable tradespeople.
beamatronic 8y ago
The whole state? Isn’t there any county that is development friendly?
Iv 8y ago
"leading the charge"? In the US maybe, but the world has not waited for them. https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/apr/30/china-build-57-storey-skyscraper-19-days-timelapse-video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/apr/30/china-bu...

by ohazi 8y ago

tomjakubowski 8y ago

What are the state zoning laws? As far as I know, the state constitution leaves zoning as an issue for the cities/counties to handle. Is that your beef or are there laws on the books I'm ignorant of?

jimrandomh 8y ago
Yes, the problematic zoning laws exist mainly at the city level. The problem is that the decisions about key areas are being made by people who are incentivized to make housing prices go up (because they own property), which they do by severely restricting construction of dense housing.
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  Even that seems super short sighed though isn't it? If an area turns into the next Manhattan all land owners win big time. I'd love it if it became economically desirable to build a 100 story skyscraper next to my house and someone went ahead and did it!
  - baybal2 8y ago
    This idea is entirely alien to majority of American high class suburbians. My sorries to people insulted by this statement.
JohnnyConatus 8y ago
See this AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_architect_in_la_specializing_in_multifamily/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar...
- patja 8y ago
  Where in that AMA is there a reference to zoning being defined at the state level? I did not see it in the long starting post.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    ohazi never talked about zoning laws being defined at the State level. Just that zoning laws in CA are asinine.
bobthepanda 8y ago
The issue is that regional concerns (there is not enough housing in the region) do not mesh well with local control. Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult. If all the localities in a region, or even most of them, act this way, the end result is a housing shortage even when the economy is barely chugging along.
- njoro 8y ago
  Personally I wouldn't mind the Bay Area looking like Shenzhen, but I don't understand why people think that anything is going to change. Housing and education are prime assets in the new information based society and economy. People aren't going to share that anymore than natural resources, stocks, bitcoins or domains. Regardless of the larger consequences.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    Also, Shenzhen isn’t much cheaper either (at least to buy, rents are much more reasonable of course).
  - adrianratnapala 8y ago
    > People aren't going to share ... It's more complicated than just sharing. It's not about whether you have to let people come and live on your own property. It's about whether your neighbour may subdivide her own property for a profit. Collectively, owners have an incentive to stop her; but individual incentives are mixed. We can see how the politics of that tension is working out right now. But how can anyone tell how it will play out in the future?
- vkou 8y ago
  > Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult. The localities have a point. Why should existing residents pay for new infrastructure, to accommodate housing for 10,000 new residents (All because large tech firms keep building offices in the valley?) In a proper world, either the tech giant, or those new employees should pay for those infrastructure improvements. Traditionally, this has been done through high re-zoning and subdivision fees.

jpao79 8y ago

Actually its driven by the need for localized labor and unfortunately due to high housing costs, labor can't afford to live in downtown SF/LA and so a lot of time is wasted getting to the job site from the outer suburbs.

ucaetano 8y ago
> unfortunately due to high housing costs And housing costs are high because of asinine zoning laws, as OP mentioned.
- jpao79 8y ago
  Ok true. Just would add that high housing costs are actually the sum of asinine zoning laws + high labor costs and that high labor costs are due to high housing costs. :)

branchless 8y ago

Nope. In urban areas land is undersupplied therefore you will be paying the "monopoly price" where you bid what you can afford. So if a building used to cost 400k, broken into 200k land cost and 200k building cost, it will still cost 400k, 300k land cost and 100k building cost. That's how prices are set. It's not "how much this costs to build plus a fair profit".

derefr 8y ago
I don't think anyone would be using one of these pre-fab buildings for gentrifying existing urban centers. Those development projects usually aim to create aspirational purchases, or investment properties—neither of which wants the taint of "put together from parts, like a trailer-home or something." No, I imagine these would mostly be used to construct "condo-cities": exurbs/farmland "reformatted" all at once into new urban branch-nodes by plopping five hundred mixed-use condo buildings onto it, and then connecting it to the nearest urban center using high-speed rail or other public transit.
- majormajor 8y ago
  > Those development projects usually aim to create aspirational purchases, or investment properties—neither of which wants the taint of "put together from parts, like a trailer-home or something." Live in a few of them and you'll see that the level of build quality can be wildly divorced from appearance and sales messaging. :)
ohazi 8y ago
The zoning and permitting regulations prevent you from building reasonably on land that you already own. There are plenty of wealthy individuals and developers in San Francisco who would love to tear down two or three shabby Victorian houses to put up a five-story 20-unit condo if they could only get the project approved. San Francisco in particular makes it extremely easy for neighborhood residents to impede projects that would be automatically approved in any other city [1, 2]. This is why nothing gets built here, it has nothing to do with the cost of land. No developer can afford to put up with a five-year battle with neighbors who complain about the shadow that the new building will cast onto their back yard, or to pay for fifteen $X0,000 bullshit environmental studies that the city will make the developer conduct as a "compromise." And remember, these are for designs that are completely up to code and that are zoned legally. [1]: https://sf.curbed.com/2013/4/17/10252934/what-the-heck-is-discretionary-review https://sf.curbed.com/2013/4/17/10252934/what-the-heck-is-di... [2]: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Discretionary-review-SF-should-raise-standard-2477940.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/Discretionary-...

maire 8y ago

We just built a "hybrid" house in Santa Cruz county. We picked the default design and stuck to it. We had to make a few changes to get through the planning department. The biggest issue was not at the building level - but rather everything they made us do to prepare the site for building. Yikes - that was expensive. It also took a long time to get through the planning department.

digikata 8y ago
Was more required of the site prep for the hybrid house than one using more typical construction processes?
- maire 8y ago
  The site prep was normal for any house. The biggest change was in septic system requirements. Septic systems cost three times as much as they did a few years ago because we have to have an active system with a fan and they have to have lifetime inspections. The contractor said this is normal now for the state of California. There are also relatively new rules to manage water runoff.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    Does your town/city also ban composting toilets? I wanted to buy a $60,000 foreclosure in my town-- they told me I'm not allowed to even step foot on the property until I install a septic system.
    - maire 8y ago
      I don't know. The county was reviewing composting toilets in 2013. I don't know the outcome.
      - anoncoward111 8y ago
        Many of the counties in the Northeast have taken a strong stance against composting toilets. It's because the local construction companies control the local governments here. They literally don't let you buy or move onto specific properties without submitting plans from "an approved septic installation company." You can imagine who is on the approval board, and which companies are "approved providers."

oftenwrong 8y ago

The same problems are pretty much everywhere in the US. This brings to mind a proposed project in Boston that faced a lot of friction, in part because prefab construction was proposed: https://www.universalhub.com/2016/lagrange-street-residents-win-board-rejects-condo?nocache=1 https://www.universalhub.com/2016/lagrange-street-residents-... >The Zoning Board of Appeals this week rejected a proposed condo building on the site of a former asthma-inhaler factory in West Roxbury, citing neighborhood concerns about density, parking and the developer's proposal to assemble prefab modular units on the site, rather than hiring local workers for more traditional construction. >... >But board member Mark Erlich, who is also executive secretary and treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, used the proposed modular construction to open an attack on the project. City officials have frequently expressed skepticism of such prefab units being bolted together, he said. But he added: >It also removes a lot of [work] hours that could be done by people who live and work in the city vs. people in Maine, who wear sneakers.

chrisseaton 8y ago
What's the relevant of 'who wear sneakers'? It seems so orthogonal that I think it must be some kind of local joke?
- jt2190 8y ago
  It's likely an allegation of lax worker safety, i.e. the workers should wear safety (a.k.a "steel toe") boots.
- cocacola1 8y ago
  Perhaps he's trying to structure it as "Those people from Maine are going to take our jobs."
- jmalicki 8y ago
  They’re not wearing steel toed boots, therefore aren’t real respectable tradespeople.

beamatronic 8y ago

The whole state? Isn’t there any county that is development friendly?

Iv 8y ago

"leading the charge"? In the US maybe, but the world has not waited for them. https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/apr/30/china-build-57-storey-skyscraper-19-days-timelapse-video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/apr/30/china-bu...