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Speaking as your neighbour to the north, Vancouver has a similarly horrible NIMBY zoning problem. https://imgur.com/a/CftAdv5 https://imgur.com/a/CftAdv5 All

by ttul 8y ago

Speaking as your neighbour to the north, Vancouver has a similarly horrible NIMBY zoning problem. https://imgur.com/a/CftAdv5 https://imgur.com/a/CftAdv5 All the grey areas are single-family only zoning. Just eye-balling it, I'd say 80% of the land is for low density use only, despite Vancouver having some of the world's most expensive real estate relative to incomes and rents. This situation is perpetuated by successive city governments who owe their existence to wealthy single family home owners. Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox.

artursapek 8y ago
Quality of life in a single-family home neighborhood is higher than in a dense-housing neighborhood.
- sf_rob 8y ago
  Not for those who can't afford to live in an area with artificially constrained supply and instead will have to commute from the exurbs.
- cpursley 8y ago
  According to what metrics?
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    If you like it quieter, with vastly fewer people around you, no vagrants, and you enjoy your own little bit of green space, then by those metrics a single-family dwelling is certainly better. It's really not an easy issue. It seems like objectively there are benefits to high density. But it's more expensive (to individuals, if not society as a whole), louder, more polluted, etc. It's easy to understand why plenty of people want to live in their own little castle, and it's also easy to understand why they would vote to preserve the status quo.
    - cpursley 8y ago
      > no vagrants I used to live in American suburbia; it was full of vagrants. I had to call the police on several occasions. > your own little bit of green space Meh. I used to loath cutting the grass. Now I'm in quick walking distance to several large very green parks. > But it's more expensive Is it really vs the costs of maintaining a single-family home and having to own and maintain a vehicle(s) for commuting? > louder, more polluted The city I live in now is cleaner than the suburb that I lived in (trash cleanup is more frequent) and generally quieter. Full disclosure: I'm living in a European city (vs. an American city)
      - rootusrootus 8y ago
        > I used to live in American suburbia; it was full of vagrants. I had to call the police on several occasions. I've never seen a vagrant within several miles of my neighborhood. It would be such a terrible place to be vagrant, with a relatively low population density and mediocre public transit. There's a reason they don't hang out in my neighborhood, they do much better in the city. > I used to loath cutting the grass. Yeah, I'm not a fan either. However, I pay someone about 1/8th of the HOA fee for the place in the city to have my yard kept tidy for me. > Is it really vs the costs of maintaining a single-family home and having to own and maintain a vehicle(s) for commuting? I don't drive a particularly expensive car, and my house is still pretty new so just the HOA fee alone for the place in the city is quite a lot more expensive. > The city I live in now is cleaner than the suburb that I lived in (trash cleanup is more frequent) and generally quieter. I'm guessing you lived in a very different sort of suburb than I do, based on how you describe it. I live in a residential area of a very small city ("oldest west of the Rockies" is our only real claim to fame) on the edge of a mid-size metro in a liberal state. It's very clean, low traffic, there are several parks in easy walking distance (not just my yard ;-)), the school my kids go to is about a hundred yards away, etc. I'd have to pay twice as much for half as much if I wanted to live in the city, and I'd be irritated all the time by noisy people. Maybe I am a little antisocial ;-).
- hrktb 8y ago
  As for everything it depends. If you want fiber internet, a number of local shops, medical facilities, “third places”, communal pools, libraries, schools at walkable distance, that’s not how you get them.
  - artursapek 8y ago
    I have young kids. Until recently I lived in the East Village, and now in a proper house on 1/3 acre in Colorado. Life in Manhattan is fun but damn is it hard. Especially with young kids. And that was lower Manhattan, probably the richest, most charming high-density place in the world. I can completely understand why the residents of Vancouver wouldn't want to see their quaint little neighborhood demolished for the sake of stacking more people into the city in a bunch of glass-and-concrete trash cans.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      Then just move. After years of living downtown (Chicago, Baltimore, etc.) I moved to the suburb of Annapolis. It has its charms, but if Annapolis suddenly explodes in population, I don't see myself as having a right to freeze it in time circa 2018. You have no right to tell people what they can do with their own property, unless it's harming you. (And your snowflake aesthetic sensibilities do not count as harm.)
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        >You have no right to tell people what they can do with their own property, unless it's harming you. The definition of "harming you" in CA is far more inclusive than it is on the east coast and that is reflected in the local laws that restrict what people can do on their own property.
      - greedo 8y ago
        And I as well, would tell those who are unhappy with the cost of housing in SF to just move to a cheaper area. By your argument, they have no right to tell people living there what they can do with their property. That's obviously not how it works though. By voting and electing people who want to change the status quo, they can tell people what to do with their property. (edited for typos)
- saosebastiao 8y ago
  No it isn't.
  - cam3ham 8y ago
    yes it is
- _jal 8y ago
  Even granting the premise for argument, this says nothing about the tradeoffs involved in zoning some of the highest-demand real estate in the world as singe-family. Not to mention that many, many people (including me) disagree with that notion, and the US is hardly wanting for 'burbclaves, if you like that sort of thing. Dense urban housing, on the other hand, is a relative rarity.
- eldavido 8y ago
  I've been thinking about this a lot as someone who recently bought into a condo building. I think SFR neighborhoods do tend to be better on average, than renter-dominated ones. Alameda (city next to Oakland) is instructive. Walk across the bridge from Oakland to Alameda, it's like you're stepping into a different world: the streets are cleaner, people drive with more civility, it really is noticeably nicer. Condos are a bit of a wildcard. They can be better in theory but most probably aren't. As someone on my HOA board, I put a lot of time into making sure my condo is a good place to live. (328 units, 1000+ residents). Just yesterday, we invited Monkeybrains over for a chat about getting fiber in the building. We'll do it soon. I think it's just that the challenges are different. In a SFR neighborhood, you get a lot of very invested people, which is good but also can be bad (NIMBY). Apartments people don't care as much. Condos have "ownership" but also governance problems; they can be the best when run well, but horrible when they aren't, which seems depressingly common
BurningFrog 8y ago
This reminds me that SF's actual neighbor to the north, Marin County, is mostly real unbuilt wilderness. This is all such an epic waste.
- azinman2 8y ago
  You have to balance short term housing with the desirability of the location in the first place. I would not call it epic waste, I’d call it a nice contrast to the density of the city and a place for those who don’t want density can go live.
  - protonimitate 8y ago
    Agreed. Why clear-cut and destroy wilderness instead of building vertically? Expanding the metro region just increases commuting times and removes and recreational value the wilderness provides. Not sure why people would want suburban waste lands instead of denser metro areas.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- mikeryan 8y ago
  This is true, a better solution (for everyone) then high rises might be better access through (or around?) the city to the east and north bays. Getting into, or especially through SF from Marin is a nightmare.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    high rises might be better access through (or around?) the city to the east and north bays How about having them in the east and north bay? How about large vessels operating as gated communities, with integral ferry docks? Getting into, or especially through SF from Marin is a nightmare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17567916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17567916
- tarr11 8y ago
sandworm101 8y ago
Not sure I would trust that image. It has West Vancouver on the wrong side of the Lionsgate bridge. Vancouver has many layered issues. I'm no fan of building more apartments only to have them sit empty 90+% of the time. Much/most of Vancouver's current multi-unit capacity is underused either as second homes or as investment vehicles. Building more will make current owners rich, but I say we shouldn't do than until we are better-utilizing current stock. The percentage of single-family homes that are either empty or under some form of construction amazes me. I walk through neighborhoods I grew up in that are now practically empty but for carpenter's pickup trucks. These are no longer residential neighborhoods. They are industrial zones where workers commute in to 'mine' real estate.
- pascalxus 8y ago
  Sure ideally they would all be filled with renters. but building more buildings 90% empty isn't such a bad deal: the owners pay all the same property taxes without any burden on the local system for schools, traffic, etc. In fact, i'd say it's a great deal.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    >>> .. it's a great deal. Which is why we have elected officials run cities rather than property developers. The goal is not to make a profit today. The long term goal is a pleasant city with happy residents. Look at the Spanish neighbourhoods that were overbuilt only to be abandoned when the bubble burst. Think gentrification is bad? When an underused building looses its value it becomes blighted, saddling the city with all sorts of social problems.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  You're right about empty units in high density properties. It's a problem in a lot of cities (London is another). I've heard some cities thinking about imposing a supplemental tax on unoccupied housing. It would help a lot, not just in skyscrapers but also in low-density areas where slumlords let their houses rot waiting for the land values to rise. But unfortunately, the same people who would get hit by this tax are the most solid part of the tax base. Real estate taxes are a huge part of many cities revenue. Increasing them is never popular.
calyth2018 8y ago
Probably a typical case of "Got mine, fuck you". It's like some of the comment seen for the Ontario election. I got my dental insurance through my work, so fuck the other guys, I don't want to pay more taxes.
- finaliteration 8y ago
  I’ve heard this referred to as “drawbridge thinking” in cases where someone moves to an area, makes sure they have access to whatever they want, and then essentially pulls up the “drawbridge” and says, “No new outsiders allowed! It’s too crowded here!”. I feel like this is essentially what has happened in the Bay Area/SV. Though I live in Portland and it’s just as bad. It’s such bullshit.
  - ghouse 8y ago
    Prop 13 in California has the same impact. "I was here first, so don't let my taxes keep pace with inflation -- the newcomers should pay for my police, fire, schools, etc.."
    - finaliteration 8y ago
      “Meanwhile let me raise rents by 20%...”
    - kindatrue 8y ago
      It's really hard for people who move to California and don't hang out with retirees (aka voters) to understand/appreciate this mindset. But it's so prevalent. Classic example: https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/927583483186225152 https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/927583483186225152
    - sbuttgereit 8y ago
      Yes. We should absolutely not allow people to own homes in neighborhoods where they simply can't keep up with the financial realities of the neighborhood. Especially, the older people that maybe once were highly productive but, now, might not be able to as rapidly advance in wages or, God forbid, may even be retired and now on a fixed income; the nerve of those people to think that somehow property ownership entitles them to live in their homes for as long as they want. The community has needs and, as the old saying goes, "on ne saurait faire d'omelette sans casser des œufs"! Imagine how much faster re-gentrification and local government growth could be if you could push the churn of homes up? Clear out the dead-weight I say. Now admittedly, I'm being somewhat of a hypocrite here. I am best described as a marginal homeowner in beautiful San Francisco. I bought a home in a somewhat so-so part of town that was surprisingly affordable, relative speaking, for what we got. And we could afford it, we measured where we were looking, and balanced our expenses including taxes, and made good decisions. But that was more than a decade ago and times have changed over the past few years. Our little neighborhood is on an uptick and getting much more expensive. While that has brought some advantages (lower crime, better shopping)... it means if I were to try and buy my home at today's market rates, I simply couldn't do it. And if the taxes on my place had kept up "with inflation" in local home prices, I'd have to sell. Sure, I'd have a handsome capital gain... much of which I would also have to pay in taxes (the community has needs after all), before having to likely move out of the Bay Area, but... progress. I'm also older... damn near 50! Which means I'm not at the bottom of my earning potential, but at the top. So I'm with you. It's completely unfair that those newcomers should come here and bear the brunt of higher taxes, of course, they should also not think that they can count on stability in tax rates. The community has needs, and you know, progress.
lainga 8y ago
>if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. But that would require giving a damn about the local situation. A large segment of single-family-home owners in Vancouver - foreign and local - see the house and plot as an abstract asset, not something you can live in, let alone part of the strange thing they're calling a "neighbourhood". There are 4 empty houses on my street in the West Side alone. Telling the owners they can profit from rezoning probably sounds like telling them they can make more money if they fold their bond certificates into paper cranes. </rant>
tyu100 8y ago
Vancouver has done nothing but massively build new housing, one of the most prolific metros in North America. There were just lots of greenfield and brownfield areas to build on first, rather than up-zoning existing residential areas. (Olympic Village, now NE False Creek). The transit and other systems can barely handle the existing density as it is. It doesn't matter how much you upzone SFH areas when you have tens of thousands of new people coming to your metro every year, it will never be enough.
- iandanforth 8y ago
  If you could add some sourced numbers to this comment it would be helpful. You might be right or wrong but I can't tell from this comment alone.
  - patja 8y ago
    Lots of data here: http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/PlanningPublications/MV_Housing_Data_Book.pdf http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/Pla... to answer many questions about Vancouver housing. They average about 20,000 new housing units per year.
- stale2002 8y ago
  If 10s of thousands of people are moving to an area, there is easily a way to build enough housing. All you have to do is build more than 10s of thousands of apartments. This really isn't that hard. Just pick a small 1 square mile area in a singular section of your city and say "THIS is the high density zone. Anyone can build any amount of 20-30 story buildings." And then you simply keep zone laws the same in all the other "low" density areas. Everyone wins. The new people who are moving to a city get their apartments, and the suburban people can keep their yards.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    First you have to put a stop to all the speculation. Otherwise half of those apartments will be empty, owned by people overseas.
24gttghh 8y ago
You're telling me none of those big houses (viewed in satellite and street view) are even Duplexes‽
- Sharlin 8y ago
  The US has some ridiculously huge single-family houses. Five to ten times bigger than what's the norm here (Northern Europe).
  - 24gttghh 8y ago
    I was referring to Vancouver, BC, Canada that the GP was sharing a purported zoning map of. Many US cities would at least allow duplexes in such zones I would think (my experience being from the NE US).
patja 8y ago
"Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox." They are already rich by virtue of the property they own, so you would have to revise this to be "would become even more rich", which is more illuminating. These folks are already well above the "food, housing, basic needs" level of Maslow's hierarchy and are working towards self-fulfillment, part of which (to them) relies on preserving their current experience in their current home and neighborhood as it is (like living in a museum, as another commenter labeled it). They bought it for what it is, and that's what they want to preserve. It isn't about the money, it is about the experience they want to preserve. Or put in monetary terms, the market may value their home at $2m, but they put a personal value of maybe $3m or $5m on it in order to compensate for the cost of moving (people who have put down these kind of roots hate moving) AND finding an acceptable substitute or upgrade from what they currently have.
- LanceH 8y ago
  Going in on land development is a great way for the amateur to go broke.
- Flimm 8y ago
  The paradox you talk about is well-known. Property owners often don't sell their property even when it seems advantageous to do so, both for them and for the economy in general. This reminds me of an episode of EconTalk, interviewing the author of the book Radical Markets, which includes new and radical ideas for how an economy could be run. One of the ideas is to allow anyone to buy a property at its set value at any time (giving a reasonable notice period, I presume). The property owner is the one who sets the value of the property. To stop property owners from gaming the system and pricing the property too high, all property owners would be required to pay a tax periodically on the value of their property. (Of course, the lower the price set, the more likely it is that the property will get bought, so the property owner can't set the price too low either.) The goal of this idea is to allow land to be used the most efficiently, the way the market is supposed to work for most goods. Of course, this idea has a lot of obvious drawbacks, but I thought it was an interesting thought to discuss. - Podcast episode: http://www.econtalk.org/glen-weyl-on-radical-markets/ http://www.econtalk.org/glen-weyl-on-radical-markets/ - Article from website of the book: http://radicalmarkets.com/chapters/property-is-monopoly/ http://radicalmarkets.com/chapters/property-is-monopoly/
rcpt 8y ago
> Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox. Because there's no insurance for drops in property values and most home owners have the vast majority of their wealth tied up in a single asset they are rationally terrified of any change which might increase the variance of property values, even if it means a higher expected value. https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF is a good read
- dfxm12 8y ago
  most home owners have the vast majority of their wealth tied up in a single asset Is this a problem, and is it feasible to fix it?
  - kerbalspacepro 8y ago
    It is a problem because it creates NIMBY behavior. It is not feasible to fix it because it would require rewriting the US tax code.
    - rcpt 8y ago
      The linked paper discusses the idea of an insurance market for property values. Somehow, prior to 1970, housing was a home and not an investment. I'm not entirely sure what happened to change it.
hodgesrm 8y ago
> Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. It's not just zoning though. There is also California's infamous Proposition 13 and other market distorting tax breaks. Prop 13 limited real estate tax increases to 2% annually, which is far less than the property appreciation rate for San Francisco in recent times. If you sell out and want to move to another single-family home in the region you may have substantially higher taxes. See the following article for a discussion of prop 13 effects, tweaks on prop 13, as well as other tax breaks. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-15/tax-cuts-are-killing-california-s-housing-market https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-15/tax-cuts-... No matter how you cut it the incentives are politically hard to unwind.
pessimizer 8y ago
> Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox. It's because you assume their motive is greed, and then try to interpret the reality of the situation to justify your original assumption. Assigning greed as a motive is a result of a simple projection "They have something I want, they won't let me have it, I am a good person, therefore they are greedy." If you think their motives might be to continue living in their homes, to not have their neighborhoods packed with traffic or the sun blotted out by hideous condo boxes, their problems with large multi-unit developments built without regard to adequate parking might make complete sense.
spencerg12 8y ago
Interesting case of economic incentive not driving human behavior here. Specifically, people don’t want to subdivide even though it is potentially lucrative. I think the counter balance in their decision making is the trouble they went through to get the property. Creates a bond to it as it is.
smokinn 8y ago
Seattle also has a growing affordability problem and is in the same zoning situation as SF or Vancouver. Here's the official zoning map showing the absolute domination of single-family zones: http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/Research/gis/webplots/smallzonemap.pdf http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/Research/gis/webplots/smallzonema... And an article with commentary on how much of Seattle is zoned for single-family home only: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seattles-rapid-growth-most-new-housing-restricted-to-a-few-areas/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seatt... Something needs to give.
kazinator 8y ago
> Vancouver having some of the world's most expensive real estate relative to incomes and rents. That is fueled mostly by unbridled foreign investment. > Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox. Could that be because they actually live there; it's their home? They aren't foreign speculators sitting on empty property, only thinking about how to make a profit.
- munk-a 8y ago
  As a Vancouverite I'll object to that analysis, there is indeed a large influx of foreign money into the city but that is only truly damaging for the vacated property squatters which are a relatively small proportion. Anti-density regulation is hurting the city much more and driving folks out to sunny New West where the mayor is much more progressive about supporting affordable housing by allowing density to expand in a targeted manner. Downtown Vancouver Nimby'ing is so bad that public transit has been stymied to the point where neither of our major universities has a dedicated metro option to reach them and the city has a total of 3 1/2 different transit lines that leave most of the metro area without coverage. https://www.translink.ca/-/media/Slider-Zoom-Tool-Images/tnc/nes_mr_pm/FutureRailNetwork.png https://www.translink.ca/-/media/Slider-Zoom-Tool-Images/tnc...
  - kazinator 8y ago
    Influx of foreign money is damaging empty property squatters? How; rather, it has been making them richer. Vancouver has rather low wages; so why are people coming here at all? Basically just the mild climate and nature and greed fueled by the real estate boom. Take away the real estate boom, and I think most of the problem will take care of itself. If the world were to lose an interest in Vancouver and people moved away, that would be great; for that, I'm willing to take a loss on my property value; it would be worth it. What's a hundred grand or two, if it makes all the greedy people go away, and allows the place to be livable once again by people like, oh, school teachers. (Who wants their kids instructed by someone who is stressed out, living hand to mouth?) I hope this market crashes and all the greedy scum lose their money. I'm willing to go down with them; I have the income to weather it. Those who don't can go back wherever the heck they came from and go back to doing whatever it was before they thought they would gamble on Vancouver at the expense of the long time locals. I look forward to going a little bit out of town and finding free picnic tables, low crowds on popular hikes, easy to get camp ground spots and so on. We should re-start the stock exchange; if someone wants to gamble in Vancouver, and the River Rock Casino isn't enough, give them pump and dump mining stocks, and keep them out of housing.
graeme 8y ago
How did you get that zoning map? Does anyone have one for Montreal?
cheeseomlit 8y ago
It's easy to understand, many people don't want to live in overpopulated urbanized environments. They want a nice piece of land with room to breath, they want to preserve the natural beauty of their surroundings, they want a nice place to raise their kids. I'm equally perplexed at people who want urban sprawl to spread indefinitely
- fivre 8y ago
  Many people do like living in densely-populated, urbanized environments. The SF metro area isn't Wyoming and pretending that it is won't make it become Wyoming.
nerfhammer 8y ago
> those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox. There isn't unlimited demand. Just a few large apartment buildings could soak up most of the demand and then prices would go down across the board. So essentially, you want to ban your neighbors from being able to sell for upzoning but not you. But your neighbors won't let you do that either, so everyone agrees to ban everything.

by ttul 8y ago

artursapek 8y ago

Quality of life in a single-family home neighborhood is higher than in a dense-housing neighborhood.

sf_rob 8y ago
Not for those who can't afford to live in an area with artificially constrained supply and instead will have to commute from the exurbs.
cpursley 8y ago
According to what metrics?
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  If you like it quieter, with vastly fewer people around you, no vagrants, and you enjoy your own little bit of green space, then by those metrics a single-family dwelling is certainly better. It's really not an easy issue. It seems like objectively there are benefits to high density. But it's more expensive (to individuals, if not society as a whole), louder, more polluted, etc. It's easy to understand why plenty of people want to live in their own little castle, and it's also easy to understand why they would vote to preserve the status quo.
  - cpursley 8y ago
    > no vagrants I used to live in American suburbia; it was full of vagrants. I had to call the police on several occasions. > your own little bit of green space Meh. I used to loath cutting the grass. Now I'm in quick walking distance to several large very green parks. > But it's more expensive Is it really vs the costs of maintaining a single-family home and having to own and maintain a vehicle(s) for commuting? > louder, more polluted The city I live in now is cleaner than the suburb that I lived in (trash cleanup is more frequent) and generally quieter. Full disclosure: I'm living in a European city (vs. an American city)
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      > I used to live in American suburbia; it was full of vagrants. I had to call the police on several occasions. I've never seen a vagrant within several miles of my neighborhood. It would be such a terrible place to be vagrant, with a relatively low population density and mediocre public transit. There's a reason they don't hang out in my neighborhood, they do much better in the city. > I used to loath cutting the grass. Yeah, I'm not a fan either. However, I pay someone about 1/8th of the HOA fee for the place in the city to have my yard kept tidy for me. > Is it really vs the costs of maintaining a single-family home and having to own and maintain a vehicle(s) for commuting? I don't drive a particularly expensive car, and my house is still pretty new so just the HOA fee alone for the place in the city is quite a lot more expensive. > The city I live in now is cleaner than the suburb that I lived in (trash cleanup is more frequent) and generally quieter. I'm guessing you lived in a very different sort of suburb than I do, based on how you describe it. I live in a residential area of a very small city ("oldest west of the Rockies" is our only real claim to fame) on the edge of a mid-size metro in a liberal state. It's very clean, low traffic, there are several parks in easy walking distance (not just my yard ;-)), the school my kids go to is about a hundred yards away, etc. I'd have to pay twice as much for half as much if I wanted to live in the city, and I'd be irritated all the time by noisy people. Maybe I am a little antisocial ;-).
hrktb 8y ago
As for everything it depends. If you want fiber internet, a number of local shops, medical facilities, “third places”, communal pools, libraries, schools at walkable distance, that’s not how you get them.
- artursapek 8y ago
  I have young kids. Until recently I lived in the East Village, and now in a proper house on 1/3 acre in Colorado. Life in Manhattan is fun but damn is it hard. Especially with young kids. And that was lower Manhattan, probably the richest, most charming high-density place in the world. I can completely understand why the residents of Vancouver wouldn't want to see their quaint little neighborhood demolished for the sake of stacking more people into the city in a bunch of glass-and-concrete trash cans.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Then just move. After years of living downtown (Chicago, Baltimore, etc.) I moved to the suburb of Annapolis. It has its charms, but if Annapolis suddenly explodes in population, I don't see myself as having a right to freeze it in time circa 2018. You have no right to tell people what they can do with their own property, unless it's harming you. (And your snowflake aesthetic sensibilities do not count as harm.)
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      >You have no right to tell people what they can do with their own property, unless it's harming you. The definition of "harming you" in CA is far more inclusive than it is on the east coast and that is reflected in the local laws that restrict what people can do on their own property.
    - greedo 8y ago
      And I as well, would tell those who are unhappy with the cost of housing in SF to just move to a cheaper area. By your argument, they have no right to tell people living there what they can do with their property. That's obviously not how it works though. By voting and electing people who want to change the status quo, they can tell people what to do with their property. (edited for typos)
saosebastiao 8y ago
No it isn't.
- cam3ham 8y ago
  yes it is
_jal 8y ago
Even granting the premise for argument, this says nothing about the tradeoffs involved in zoning some of the highest-demand real estate in the world as singe-family. Not to mention that many, many people (including me) disagree with that notion, and the US is hardly wanting for 'burbclaves, if you like that sort of thing. Dense urban housing, on the other hand, is a relative rarity.
eldavido 8y ago
I've been thinking about this a lot as someone who recently bought into a condo building. I think SFR neighborhoods do tend to be better on average, than renter-dominated ones. Alameda (city next to Oakland) is instructive. Walk across the bridge from Oakland to Alameda, it's like you're stepping into a different world: the streets are cleaner, people drive with more civility, it really is noticeably nicer. Condos are a bit of a wildcard. They can be better in theory but most probably aren't. As someone on my HOA board, I put a lot of time into making sure my condo is a good place to live. (328 units, 1000+ residents). Just yesterday, we invited Monkeybrains over for a chat about getting fiber in the building. We'll do it soon. I think it's just that the challenges are different. In a SFR neighborhood, you get a lot of very invested people, which is good but also can be bad (NIMBY). Apartments people don't care as much. Condos have "ownership" but also governance problems; they can be the best when run well, but horrible when they aren't, which seems depressingly common

BurningFrog 8y ago

This reminds me that SF's actual neighbor to the north, Marin County, is mostly real unbuilt wilderness. This is all such an epic waste.

azinman2 8y ago
You have to balance short term housing with the desirability of the location in the first place. I would not call it epic waste, I’d call it a nice contrast to the density of the city and a place for those who don’t want density can go live.
- protonimitate 8y ago
  Agreed. Why clear-cut and destroy wilderness instead of building vertically? Expanding the metro region just increases commuting times and removes and recreational value the wilderness provides. Not sure why people would want suburban waste lands instead of denser metro areas.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mikeryan 8y ago
This is true, a better solution (for everyone) then high rises might be better access through (or around?) the city to the east and north bays. Getting into, or especially through SF from Marin is a nightmare.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  high rises might be better access through (or around?) the city to the east and north bays How about having them in the east and north bay? How about large vessels operating as gated communities, with integral ferry docks? Getting into, or especially through SF from Marin is a nightmare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17567916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17567916
tarr11 8y ago

sandworm101 8y ago

Not sure I would trust that image. It has West Vancouver on the wrong side of the Lionsgate bridge. Vancouver has many layered issues. I'm no fan of building more apartments only to have them sit empty 90+% of the time. Much/most of Vancouver's current multi-unit capacity is underused either as second homes or as investment vehicles. Building more will make current owners rich, but I say we shouldn't do than until we are better-utilizing current stock. The percentage of single-family homes that are either empty or under some form of construction amazes me. I walk through neighborhoods I grew up in that are now practically empty but for carpenter's pickup trucks. These are no longer residential neighborhoods. They are industrial zones where workers commute in to 'mine' real estate.

pascalxus 8y ago
Sure ideally they would all be filled with renters. but building more buildings 90% empty isn't such a bad deal: the owners pay all the same property taxes without any burden on the local system for schools, traffic, etc. In fact, i'd say it's a great deal.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  >>> .. it's a great deal. Which is why we have elected officials run cities rather than property developers. The goal is not to make a profit today. The long term goal is a pleasant city with happy residents. Look at the Spanish neighbourhoods that were overbuilt only to be abandoned when the bubble burst. Think gentrification is bad? When an underused building looses its value it becomes blighted, saddling the city with all sorts of social problems.
reaperducer 8y ago
You're right about empty units in high density properties. It's a problem in a lot of cities (London is another). I've heard some cities thinking about imposing a supplemental tax on unoccupied housing. It would help a lot, not just in skyscrapers but also in low-density areas where slumlords let their houses rot waiting for the land values to rise. But unfortunately, the same people who would get hit by this tax are the most solid part of the tax base. Real estate taxes are a huge part of many cities revenue. Increasing them is never popular.

calyth2018 8y ago

Probably a typical case of "Got mine, fuck you". It's like some of the comment seen for the Ontario election. I got my dental insurance through my work, so fuck the other guys, I don't want to pay more taxes.

finaliteration 8y ago
I’ve heard this referred to as “drawbridge thinking” in cases where someone moves to an area, makes sure they have access to whatever they want, and then essentially pulls up the “drawbridge” and says, “No new outsiders allowed! It’s too crowded here!”. I feel like this is essentially what has happened in the Bay Area/SV. Though I live in Portland and it’s just as bad. It’s such bullshit.
- ghouse 8y ago
  Prop 13 in California has the same impact. "I was here first, so don't let my taxes keep pace with inflation -- the newcomers should pay for my police, fire, schools, etc.."
  - finaliteration 8y ago
    “Meanwhile let me raise rents by 20%...”
  - kindatrue 8y ago
    It's really hard for people who move to California and don't hang out with retirees (aka voters) to understand/appreciate this mindset. But it's so prevalent. Classic example: https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/927583483186225152 https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/927583483186225152
  - sbuttgereit 8y ago
    Yes. We should absolutely not allow people to own homes in neighborhoods where they simply can't keep up with the financial realities of the neighborhood. Especially, the older people that maybe once were highly productive but, now, might not be able to as rapidly advance in wages or, God forbid, may even be retired and now on a fixed income; the nerve of those people to think that somehow property ownership entitles them to live in their homes for as long as they want. The community has needs and, as the old saying goes, "on ne saurait faire d'omelette sans casser des œufs"! Imagine how much faster re-gentrification and local government growth could be if you could push the churn of homes up? Clear out the dead-weight I say. Now admittedly, I'm being somewhat of a hypocrite here. I am best described as a marginal homeowner in beautiful San Francisco. I bought a home in a somewhat so-so part of town that was surprisingly affordable, relative speaking, for what we got. And we could afford it, we measured where we were looking, and balanced our expenses including taxes, and made good decisions. But that was more than a decade ago and times have changed over the past few years. Our little neighborhood is on an uptick and getting much more expensive. While that has brought some advantages (lower crime, better shopping)... it means if I were to try and buy my home at today's market rates, I simply couldn't do it. And if the taxes on my place had kept up "with inflation" in local home prices, I'd have to sell. Sure, I'd have a handsome capital gain... much of which I would also have to pay in taxes (the community has needs after all), before having to likely move out of the Bay Area, but... progress. I'm also older... damn near 50! Which means I'm not at the bottom of my earning potential, but at the top. So I'm with you. It's completely unfair that those newcomers should come here and bear the brunt of higher taxes, of course, they should also not think that they can count on stability in tax rates. The community has needs, and you know, progress.

lainga 8y ago

>if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. But that would require giving a damn about the local situation. A large segment of single-family-home owners in Vancouver - foreign and local - see the house and plot as an abstract asset, not something you can live in, let alone part of the strange thing they're calling a "neighbourhood". There are 4 empty houses on my street in the West Side alone. Telling the owners they can profit from rezoning probably sounds like telling them they can make more money if they fold their bond certificates into paper cranes. </rant>

tyu100 8y ago

Vancouver has done nothing but massively build new housing, one of the most prolific metros in North America. There were just lots of greenfield and brownfield areas to build on first, rather than up-zoning existing residential areas. (Olympic Village, now NE False Creek). The transit and other systems can barely handle the existing density as it is. It doesn't matter how much you upzone SFH areas when you have tens of thousands of new people coming to your metro every year, it will never be enough.

iandanforth 8y ago
If you could add some sourced numbers to this comment it would be helpful. You might be right or wrong but I can't tell from this comment alone.
- patja 8y ago
  Lots of data here: http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/PlanningPublications/MV_Housing_Data_Book.pdf http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/regional-planning/Pla... to answer many questions about Vancouver housing. They average about 20,000 new housing units per year.
stale2002 8y ago
If 10s of thousands of people are moving to an area, there is easily a way to build enough housing. All you have to do is build more than 10s of thousands of apartments. This really isn't that hard. Just pick a small 1 square mile area in a singular section of your city and say "THIS is the high density zone. Anyone can build any amount of 20-30 story buildings." And then you simply keep zone laws the same in all the other "low" density areas. Everyone wins. The new people who are moving to a city get their apartments, and the suburban people can keep their yards.
- kazinator 8y ago
  First you have to put a stop to all the speculation. Otherwise half of those apartments will be empty, owned by people overseas.

24gttghh 8y ago

You're telling me none of those big houses (viewed in satellite and street view) are even Duplexes‽

Sharlin 8y ago
The US has some ridiculously huge single-family houses. Five to ten times bigger than what's the norm here (Northern Europe).
- 24gttghh 8y ago
  I was referring to Vancouver, BC, Canada that the GP was sharing a purported zoning map of. Many US cities would at least allow duplexes in such zones I would think (my experience being from the NE US).

patja 8y ago

"Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox." They are already rich by virtue of the property they own, so you would have to revise this to be "would become even more rich", which is more illuminating. These folks are already well above the "food, housing, basic needs" level of Maslow's hierarchy and are working towards self-fulfillment, part of which (to them) relies on preserving their current experience in their current home and neighborhood as it is (like living in a museum, as another commenter labeled it). They bought it for what it is, and that's what they want to preserve. It isn't about the money, it is about the experience they want to preserve. Or put in monetary terms, the market may value their home at $2m, but they put a personal value of maybe $3m or $5m on it in order to compensate for the cost of moving (people who have put down these kind of roots hate moving) AND finding an acceptable substitute or upgrade from what they currently have.

LanceH 8y ago
Going in on land development is a great way for the amateur to go broke.
Flimm 8y ago
The paradox you talk about is well-known. Property owners often don't sell their property even when it seems advantageous to do so, both for them and for the economy in general. This reminds me of an episode of EconTalk, interviewing the author of the book Radical Markets, which includes new and radical ideas for how an economy could be run. One of the ideas is to allow anyone to buy a property at its set value at any time (giving a reasonable notice period, I presume). The property owner is the one who sets the value of the property. To stop property owners from gaming the system and pricing the property too high, all property owners would be required to pay a tax periodically on the value of their property. (Of course, the lower the price set, the more likely it is that the property will get bought, so the property owner can't set the price too low either.) The goal of this idea is to allow land to be used the most efficiently, the way the market is supposed to work for most goods. Of course, this idea has a lot of obvious drawbacks, but I thought it was an interesting thought to discuss. - Podcast episode: http://www.econtalk.org/glen-weyl-on-radical-markets/ http://www.econtalk.org/glen-weyl-on-radical-markets/ - Article from website of the book: http://radicalmarkets.com/chapters/property-is-monopoly/ http://radicalmarkets.com/chapters/property-is-monopoly/

rcpt 8y ago

> Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox. Because there's no insurance for drops in property values and most home owners have the vast majority of their wealth tied up in a single asset they are rationally terrified of any change which might increase the variance of property values, even if it means a higher expected value. https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF is a good read

dfxm12 8y ago
most home owners have the vast majority of their wealth tied up in a single asset Is this a problem, and is it feasible to fix it?
- kerbalspacepro 8y ago
  It is a problem because it creates NIMBY behavior. It is not feasible to fix it because it would require rewriting the US tax code.
  - rcpt 8y ago
    The linked paper discusses the idea of an insurance market for property values. Somehow, prior to 1970, housing was a home and not an investment. I'm not entirely sure what happened to change it.

hodgesrm 8y ago

> Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. It's not just zoning though. There is also California's infamous Proposition 13 and other market distorting tax breaks. Prop 13 limited real estate tax increases to 2% annually, which is far less than the property appreciation rate for San Francisco in recent times. If you sell out and want to move to another single-family home in the region you may have substantially higher taxes. See the following article for a discussion of prop 13 effects, tweaks on prop 13, as well as other tax breaks. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-15/tax-cuts-are-killing-california-s-housing-market https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-15/tax-cuts-... No matter how you cut it the incentives are politically hard to unwind.

pessimizer 8y ago

> Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox. It's because you assume their motive is greed, and then try to interpret the reality of the situation to justify your original assumption. Assigning greed as a motive is a result of a simple projection "They have something I want, they won't let me have it, I am a good person, therefore they are greedy." If you think their motives might be to continue living in their homes, to not have their neighborhoods packed with traffic or the sun blotted out by hideous condo boxes, their problems with large multi-unit developments built without regard to adequate parking might make complete sense.

spencerg12 8y ago

Interesting case of economic incentive not driving human behavior here. Specifically, people don’t want to subdivide even though it is potentially lucrative. I think the counter balance in their decision making is the trouble they went through to get the property. Creates a bond to it as it is.

smokinn 8y ago

Seattle also has a growing affordability problem and is in the same zoning situation as SF or Vancouver. Here's the official zoning map showing the absolute domination of single-family zones: http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/Research/gis/webplots/smallzonemap.pdf http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/Research/gis/webplots/smallzonema... And an article with commentary on how much of Seattle is zoned for single-family home only: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seattles-rapid-growth-most-new-housing-restricted-to-a-few-areas/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/amid-seatt... Something needs to give.

kazinator 8y ago

> Vancouver having some of the world's most expensive real estate relative to incomes and rents. That is fueled mostly by unbridled foreign investment. > Oddly, those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox. Could that be because they actually live there; it's their home? They aren't foreign speculators sitting on empty property, only thinking about how to make a profit.

munk-a 8y ago
As a Vancouverite I'll object to that analysis, there is indeed a large influx of foreign money into the city but that is only truly damaging for the vacated property squatters which are a relatively small proportion. Anti-density regulation is hurting the city much more and driving folks out to sunny New West where the mayor is much more progressive about supporting affordable housing by allowing density to expand in a targeted manner. Downtown Vancouver Nimby'ing is so bad that public transit has been stymied to the point where neither of our major universities has a dedicated metro option to reach them and the city has a total of 3 1/2 different transit lines that leave most of the metro area without coverage. https://www.translink.ca/-/media/Slider-Zoom-Tool-Images/tnc/nes_mr_pm/FutureRailNetwork.png https://www.translink.ca/-/media/Slider-Zoom-Tool-Images/tnc...
- kazinator 8y ago
  Influx of foreign money is damaging empty property squatters? How; rather, it has been making them richer. Vancouver has rather low wages; so why are people coming here at all? Basically just the mild climate and nature and greed fueled by the real estate boom. Take away the real estate boom, and I think most of the problem will take care of itself. If the world were to lose an interest in Vancouver and people moved away, that would be great; for that, I'm willing to take a loss on my property value; it would be worth it. What's a hundred grand or two, if it makes all the greedy people go away, and allows the place to be livable once again by people like, oh, school teachers. (Who wants their kids instructed by someone who is stressed out, living hand to mouth?) I hope this market crashes and all the greedy scum lose their money. I'm willing to go down with them; I have the income to weather it. Those who don't can go back wherever the heck they came from and go back to doing whatever it was before they thought they would gamble on Vancouver at the expense of the long time locals. I look forward to going a little bit out of town and finding free picnic tables, low crowds on popular hikes, easy to get camp ground spots and so on. We should re-start the stock exchange; if someone wants to gamble in Vancouver, and the River Rock Casino isn't enough, give them pump and dump mining stocks, and keep them out of housing.

graeme 8y ago

How did you get that zoning map? Does anyone have one for Montreal?

cheeseomlit 8y ago

It's easy to understand, many people don't want to live in overpopulated urbanized environments. They want a nice piece of land with room to breath, they want to preserve the natural beauty of their surroundings, they want a nice place to raise their kids. I'm equally perplexed at people who want urban sprawl to spread indefinitely

fivre 8y ago
Many people do like living in densely-populated, urbanized environments. The SF metro area isn't Wyoming and pretending that it is won't make it become Wyoming.

nerfhammer 8y ago

> those same single family home owners would become rich if they could subdivide their properties for intensive development. I have never understood this paradox. There isn't unlimited demand. Just a few large apartment buildings could soak up most of the demand and then prices would go down across the board. So essentially, you want to ban your neighbors from being able to sell for upzoning but not you. But your neighbors won't let you do that either, so everyone agrees to ban everything.