5 ms·

Zoning laws are absurdly restrictive, and sometimes just absurd. A few examples I've seen: - homeowner (me) can't install a duplex addition for a home zoned du

Zoning laws are absurdly restrictive, and sometimes just absurd. A few examples I've seen: - homeowner (me) can't install a duplex addition for a home zoned duplex without turning the front yard into a 4-car parking lot. It doesn't matter that I have one car and could decide to only rent to people with one car, the driveway would need to fit four cars instead of the current two. - most homes are limited to building one ADU (accessory dwelling unit). Only one ~800-sq foot ADU is allowed regardless of whether you have a 3,000 sq foot house on 4,500 sq foot lot, or a 2,000 sq foot house on a 100,000 sq foot lot. - if you want to have a home-based day care business, zoning sets a max number of kids that can attend. In California, this is 14 kids. It doesn't matter if your home is 1,500 square feet or 5,000 square feet, whether you're in the middle of downtown SF or in a rural area, or whether you have 2 parking spaces or 20. I think zoning seriously infringes on people's property rights. You should be able to do whatever you want to your property if it doesn't really hurt anyone. Zoning feels like EULAs to me: you "buy" something, but you don't really own it because another party has a lot of say in what you can and cannot do.

sokoloff 7y ago
Zoning laws enacted after a property purchase can infringe on property rights. Zoning laws that exist prior to a purchase merely form the foundation upon which you should expect to exercise the property rights in your purchase. (Just as you are prevented from operating a junkyard on your property, your neighbor is also prevented from operating a junkyard on theirs, protecting your property rights [assuming you don't want to live next to a junkyard].) If you want unencumbered use of your property, buy out in an unincorporated area with no zoning laws. When you do, don't be surprised when your neighbor decides to start a pig farm...
- bluGill 7y ago
  The junkyard on my neighbor's property doesn't hurt me - as long as my neighbor is careful to prevent oil leaks and other sources of pollution. It might be ugly, but ugly is a first amendment right.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    If you buy a nice little SFR for $X and the day after closing, your neighbor opens up a new junkyard, do you think your house is still worth $X on the market? That is part of why people buy in areas with zoning and, more extreme example, why people buy in areas with HOA regulations.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Yes it will be. I've compared houses with junkyards next to them to houses without and it made no difference. Junkyards next to your house implies a rural area, where your neighbors will have horses and tractors. Your house isn't that close to theirs in the first place. Either that or the junkyard has been there for years - the neighborhood is probably bad, but the junkyard isn't the cause it is the effect.
- rayiner 7y ago
  "Not living next to a junk yard" is protecting a property right in any way property rights are recognized. There are such things as nuisances, but they generally require concrete harms of a type recognized at common law. (Stuff like health and safety, not aesthetics.) Zoning is not a part of property rights. Zoning was something invented in the early 20th century, because property law wasn't sufficient to enact the kind of racist controls people wanted.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > Zoning laws enacted after a property purchase can infringe on property rights. Zoning laws that exist prior to a purchase merely form the foundation upon which you should expect to exercise the property rights in your purchase. The first problem with this is that most existing zoning rules don't actually meet your premise. They were imposed on whoever owned the property when they were enacted, regardless of their consent. The second problem is that even for things like HOAs where all the properties were owned by one entity that originally consented to the restrictions, what you then get is essentially a local government-style entity where only land owners get a vote. This is clearly not a particularly egalitarian style of governance.
shados 7y ago
> if it doesn't really hurt anyone And you should! The problem is as long as you have neighbors (even distant ones), it's very hard to do ANYTHING that doesn't impact them -somehow-. It might be indirect, but it does. Heck, lets not forget that just the act of building or renovating at all (anything!) can be hell for the neighbors. It's all gray areas and you have to draw the line somewhere. People work together to draw those lines, but obviously not everyone agrees on where to draw it. Even when they do, it's frequently short sighted. Not just for the NIMBYs either. A lot of "affordable housing" initiatives just make things worse for everyone, too.
- rayiner 7y ago
  The law has a rich articulation of what things are "harms." Almost nothing modern zoning codes address would qualify as a harm. (That is to say, absent the zoning code, it's not something you could sue someone over.)
  - shados 7y ago
    I'd argue that when we're talking about people's livelihood and where they sleep, it's quite expected that that definition won't be enough.
spamizbad 7y ago
In Chicago we're fighting just to get ADU's built period. A handful of them exist in the city that have been grandfathered in and can be rented/lived in legally, but no new ones may be created. It's a shame, really; they can provide affordable housing in "safe" neighborhoods or be used to keep family members together as an alternative to the so-called "Mother In-Law" basement apartments that pepper the city. I hope they do it right, though; if they put the same height restrictions on them as they do (new) garages in the city, unless you have a double-lot it'll be impossible to have an ADU above your garage.
- jackcosgrove 7y ago
  I'm new to the term "ADU", but if you're referring to coach houses those are some of the most desirable apartments in the city, and you can't build more of them. The most egregious zoning ordinance in Chicago is that in many residential districts an existing structure cannot be subdivided into multiple units, but multiple units can be combined into a larger unit. This is a legal bias in favor of rising prices and falling access.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  Same even in Olympia WA. A project called the Missing Middle (to increase the viability of medium density housing)... Many property owners were irate, screaming that people would be demolishing their homes to put up fourplexes in every street, etc. But the most heinous venom was reserved for the study that showed that with the increase in housing volume and availability that their homes would go from an expected 9% year over year increase to 4.8%, and that somehow infringed on their rights as property owners (I'm still confused as to which clause of the Constitution relates to your rights to have your property value exceed inflation by a certain value). There was no prediction that it'd depress home values - they'd still appreciate. Just not as fast. But you'd think the government was asking them to turn off life support on their children.
throwawaycert 7y ago
None of these things are actually true. Zoning laws are defaults. By default, you have to provide a certain amount of parking, or are only allowed to put up one additional unit, without additional planning authority. That's an important phrase. If you start building a bunch of houses on your land, you may overload available transportation, utility, and public service capacity. That is why you must first go to a planning commission. You know what happens 90% of the time when someone with a hundred thousand sqft lot wants to add another house? You fill out some paperwork requesting a zoning variance and get your answer in a few weeks.
- lpolovets 7y ago
  FWIW I tried going to the zoning board for the parking issue mentioned above, and I got different answers from different people (which is a big problem in and of itself), but basically the answer I got from city officials was "you have to do this if you want to build a duplex." The lot is already zoned/approved for duplex, and whether there are 2 or 4 parking spots won't affect things like utility capacity.
  - throwawaycert 7y ago
    This isn't the sort of thing you talk to "city officicals" about. There is almost certainly a political entity in your city/county made up of appointed or elected citizens called something like a planning commission. You do not talk to the city employees, they implement policy. You need to talk to the politicians who make policy, and have the policy modified for your project, if it will serve the community's interest.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > If you start building a bunch of houses on your land, you may overload available transportation, utility, and public service capacity. If you build a bunch of houses then you have a larger customer base and tax base and have the money to provide more services. The real issue is that if you get a bunch of new lower income residents who consume more in services than they pay in taxes then it raises costs on the existing residents who have to make up the difference. But if that's the concern then better to use flat-rate service fees so that new lower income residents are at least paying for what they consume than to do something even more regressive with zoning by effectively excluding them from the community entirely.
Someone1234 7y ago
Your examples really undercut your point. > homeowner (me) can't install a duplex addition for a home zoned duplex without turning the front yard into a 4-car parking lot. It doesn't matter that I have one car and could decide to only rent to people with one car, the driveway would need to fit four cars instead of the current two. Once it is a duplex it is a duplex. You cannot make those assurances for the next homeowner, or the one after that. Even you yourself aren't obliged to stick to your self-imposed rental limitations. Your argument essentially boils down to a hypothetical (that extra cars won't always be needed) but ignores that zoning laws are designed for the common case (that extra cars will scale with number of dwellings). > if you want to have a home-based day care business, zoning sets a max number of kids that can attend. In California, this is 14 kids. It doesn't matter if your home is 1,500 square feet or 5,000 square feet, whether you're in the middle of downtown SF or in a rural area, or whether you have 2 parking spaces or 20. So a property not designed to hold a large number of people, isn't allowed to hold a large number of people. That seems reasonable. Just from a fire-safety perspective alone it makes a lot of sense to require custom-built commercial facilities after a certain number of kids. Plus parking (drop off/pick up), noise, pollution, and so on. > You should be able to do whatever you want to your property if it doesn't really hurt anyone. I agree. But all of your examples hurt someone else.
- lpolovets 7y ago
  > Once it is a duplex it is a duplex. You cannot make those assurances for the next homeowner, or the one after that. I don't think that is true, or at least it doesn't have to be true. First, imagine a world where instead of "you need four parking spots if you want a duplex," the law was more flexible and said something like "the # of cars registered to an address cannot be greater than the # of parking spots at that address." That would solve the problem but also allow the duplex owner to rent to at least some subset of tenants instead of not being able to rent at all. Second, my understanding is older houses are grandfathered in, so if I owned a duplex built 50 years ago that wouldn't pass duplex code today, I would still be able to use it as a duplex without bringing it up to code. That means there are already duplexes with two parking spots that are legal, but I just can't have one if I build it today with more modern, safer building methods. (IANA real estate laywer, but this grandfathering is my understanding of how zoning law works.) > So a property not designed to hold a large number of people, isn't allowed to hold a large number of people. That seems reasonable. Just from a fire-safety perspective alone it makes a lot of sense to require custom-built commercial facilities after a certain number of kids. I understand the need for some requirements, like fire safety. That's very important and there are separate rules for that. But California requires something like 35 indoor sq feet per child in a home day care facility. That means you can have 14 kids in a 1,000 square foot home, but can't have 15 kids in a 3,000 square foot home. These laws are very blunt instruments.
mjevans 7y ago
We could do much better with the Japanese Zoning standard: (2014) http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html Previously linked here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845

sokoloff 7y ago

Zoning laws enacted after a property purchase can infringe on property rights. Zoning laws that exist prior to a purchase merely form the foundation upon which you should expect to exercise the property rights in your purchase. (Just as you are prevented from operating a junkyard on your property, your neighbor is also prevented from operating a junkyard on theirs, protecting your property rights [assuming you don't want to live next to a junkyard].) If you want unencumbered use of your property, buy out in an unincorporated area with no zoning laws. When you do, don't be surprised when your neighbor decides to start a pig farm...

bluGill 7y ago
The junkyard on my neighbor's property doesn't hurt me - as long as my neighbor is careful to prevent oil leaks and other sources of pollution. It might be ugly, but ugly is a first amendment right.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  If you buy a nice little SFR for $X and the day after closing, your neighbor opens up a new junkyard, do you think your house is still worth $X on the market? That is part of why people buy in areas with zoning and, more extreme example, why people buy in areas with HOA regulations.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Yes it will be. I've compared houses with junkyards next to them to houses without and it made no difference. Junkyards next to your house implies a rural area, where your neighbors will have horses and tractors. Your house isn't that close to theirs in the first place. Either that or the junkyard has been there for years - the neighborhood is probably bad, but the junkyard isn't the cause it is the effect.
rayiner 7y ago
"Not living next to a junk yard" is protecting a property right in any way property rights are recognized. There are such things as nuisances, but they generally require concrete harms of a type recognized at common law. (Stuff like health and safety, not aesthetics.) Zoning is not a part of property rights. Zoning was something invented in the early 20th century, because property law wasn't sufficient to enact the kind of racist controls people wanted.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Zoning laws enacted after a property purchase can infringe on property rights. Zoning laws that exist prior to a purchase merely form the foundation upon which you should expect to exercise the property rights in your purchase. The first problem with this is that most existing zoning rules don't actually meet your premise. They were imposed on whoever owned the property when they were enacted, regardless of their consent. The second problem is that even for things like HOAs where all the properties were owned by one entity that originally consented to the restrictions, what you then get is essentially a local government-style entity where only land owners get a vote. This is clearly not a particularly egalitarian style of governance.

shados 7y ago

> if it doesn't really hurt anyone And you should! The problem is as long as you have neighbors (even distant ones), it's very hard to do ANYTHING that doesn't impact them -somehow-. It might be indirect, but it does. Heck, lets not forget that just the act of building or renovating at all (anything!) can be hell for the neighbors. It's all gray areas and you have to draw the line somewhere. People work together to draw those lines, but obviously not everyone agrees on where to draw it. Even when they do, it's frequently short sighted. Not just for the NIMBYs either. A lot of "affordable housing" initiatives just make things worse for everyone, too.

rayiner 7y ago
The law has a rich articulation of what things are "harms." Almost nothing modern zoning codes address would qualify as a harm. (That is to say, absent the zoning code, it's not something you could sue someone over.)
- shados 7y ago
  I'd argue that when we're talking about people's livelihood and where they sleep, it's quite expected that that definition won't be enough.

spamizbad 7y ago

In Chicago we're fighting just to get ADU's built period. A handful of them exist in the city that have been grandfathered in and can be rented/lived in legally, but no new ones may be created. It's a shame, really; they can provide affordable housing in "safe" neighborhoods or be used to keep family members together as an alternative to the so-called "Mother In-Law" basement apartments that pepper the city. I hope they do it right, though; if they put the same height restrictions on them as they do (new) garages in the city, unless you have a double-lot it'll be impossible to have an ADU above your garage.

jackcosgrove 7y ago
I'm new to the term "ADU", but if you're referring to coach houses those are some of the most desirable apartments in the city, and you can't build more of them. The most egregious zoning ordinance in Chicago is that in many residential districts an existing structure cannot be subdivided into multiple units, but multiple units can be combined into a larger unit. This is a legal bias in favor of rising prices and falling access.
FireBeyond 7y ago
Same even in Olympia WA. A project called the Missing Middle (to increase the viability of medium density housing)... Many property owners were irate, screaming that people would be demolishing their homes to put up fourplexes in every street, etc. But the most heinous venom was reserved for the study that showed that with the increase in housing volume and availability that their homes would go from an expected 9% year over year increase to 4.8%, and that somehow infringed on their rights as property owners (I'm still confused as to which clause of the Constitution relates to your rights to have your property value exceed inflation by a certain value). There was no prediction that it'd depress home values - they'd still appreciate. Just not as fast. But you'd think the government was asking them to turn off life support on their children.

throwawaycert 7y ago

None of these things are actually true. Zoning laws are defaults. By default, you have to provide a certain amount of parking, or are only allowed to put up one additional unit, without additional planning authority. That's an important phrase. If you start building a bunch of houses on your land, you may overload available transportation, utility, and public service capacity. That is why you must first go to a planning commission. You know what happens 90% of the time when someone with a hundred thousand sqft lot wants to add another house? You fill out some paperwork requesting a zoning variance and get your answer in a few weeks.

lpolovets 7y ago
FWIW I tried going to the zoning board for the parking issue mentioned above, and I got different answers from different people (which is a big problem in and of itself), but basically the answer I got from city officials was "you have to do this if you want to build a duplex." The lot is already zoned/approved for duplex, and whether there are 2 or 4 parking spots won't affect things like utility capacity.
- throwawaycert 7y ago
  This isn't the sort of thing you talk to "city officicals" about. There is almost certainly a political entity in your city/county made up of appointed or elected citizens called something like a planning commission. You do not talk to the city employees, they implement policy. You need to talk to the politicians who make policy, and have the policy modified for your project, if it will serve the community's interest.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> If you start building a bunch of houses on your land, you may overload available transportation, utility, and public service capacity. If you build a bunch of houses then you have a larger customer base and tax base and have the money to provide more services. The real issue is that if you get a bunch of new lower income residents who consume more in services than they pay in taxes then it raises costs on the existing residents who have to make up the difference. But if that's the concern then better to use flat-rate service fees so that new lower income residents are at least paying for what they consume than to do something even more regressive with zoning by effectively excluding them from the community entirely.

Someone1234 7y ago

Your examples really undercut your point. > homeowner (me) can't install a duplex addition for a home zoned duplex without turning the front yard into a 4-car parking lot. It doesn't matter that I have one car and could decide to only rent to people with one car, the driveway would need to fit four cars instead of the current two. Once it is a duplex it is a duplex. You cannot make those assurances for the next homeowner, or the one after that. Even you yourself aren't obliged to stick to your self-imposed rental limitations. Your argument essentially boils down to a hypothetical (that extra cars won't always be needed) but ignores that zoning laws are designed for the common case (that extra cars will scale with number of dwellings). > if you want to have a home-based day care business, zoning sets a max number of kids that can attend. In California, this is 14 kids. It doesn't matter if your home is 1,500 square feet or 5,000 square feet, whether you're in the middle of downtown SF or in a rural area, or whether you have 2 parking spaces or 20. So a property not designed to hold a large number of people, isn't allowed to hold a large number of people. That seems reasonable. Just from a fire-safety perspective alone it makes a lot of sense to require custom-built commercial facilities after a certain number of kids. Plus parking (drop off/pick up), noise, pollution, and so on. > You should be able to do whatever you want to your property if it doesn't really hurt anyone. I agree. But all of your examples hurt someone else.

lpolovets 7y ago
> Once it is a duplex it is a duplex. You cannot make those assurances for the next homeowner, or the one after that. I don't think that is true, or at least it doesn't have to be true. First, imagine a world where instead of "you need four parking spots if you want a duplex," the law was more flexible and said something like "the # of cars registered to an address cannot be greater than the # of parking spots at that address." That would solve the problem but also allow the duplex owner to rent to at least some subset of tenants instead of not being able to rent at all. Second, my understanding is older houses are grandfathered in, so if I owned a duplex built 50 years ago that wouldn't pass duplex code today, I would still be able to use it as a duplex without bringing it up to code. That means there are already duplexes with two parking spots that are legal, but I just can't have one if I build it today with more modern, safer building methods. (IANA real estate laywer, but this grandfathering is my understanding of how zoning law works.) > So a property not designed to hold a large number of people, isn't allowed to hold a large number of people. That seems reasonable. Just from a fire-safety perspective alone it makes a lot of sense to require custom-built commercial facilities after a certain number of kids. I understand the need for some requirements, like fire safety. That's very important and there are separate rules for that. But California requires something like 35 indoor sq feet per child in a home day care facility. That means you can have 14 kids in a 1,000 square foot home, but can't have 15 kids in a 3,000 square foot home. These laws are very blunt instruments.

mjevans 7y ago

We could do much better with the Japanese Zoning standard: (2014) http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html Previously linked here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845