6 ms·

If the city would rezone all of the single family homes into higher density buildings, this wouldn't be a problem. Flood the area with supply and the cost will

by xyst 6y ago

If the city would rezone all of the single family homes into higher density buildings, this wouldn't be a problem. Flood the area with supply and the cost will go down to reasonable levels. This is a problem all across the nation. Everyone wants a single family home, so this leads to two things: outrageously high costs of homes, or people moving out to the suburbs and thus worsening the rush hour traffic and smog issue.

Schiendelman 6y ago
And a lot of people only want a single family home because they want a certain amount of living space. In a commodified housing market, they would likely pay less for that space in a condo.
- lock-free 6y ago
  I want a single family home because it has no shared walls and a private backyard space for my kids and dog. It's not that hard to find condos or apartments with decent floor space.
  - Schiendelman 6y ago
    Do you understand why we’re all talking about housing? What you said seems to be a “whoooosh” moment.
ihsw 6y ago
> or people moving out to the suburbs and thus worsening the rush hour traffic and smog issue Phoenix AZ seems to handle being an enormous suburb fairly well.
ihaveajob 6y ago
Honestly I'm surprised no other city in the bay area has taken the baton and aimed to overtake SF in terms of relevance by becoming the densest, most thriving city in the region. Oakland is at least trying to cope with demand in some neighborhoods. I'm rooting for that.
- aabhay 6y ago
  Some have, e.g. Daly City. The issue is that the rent is skyrocketing because people are desperate to live in that tiny patch of land that is precisely walking distance to their and other startup HQs. It’s a massive network effect.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I would say it’s basically impossible to recreate a dense city based on today’s codes of construction requiring numerous safety/ADA measures in the US. In an existing city, the cost to purchase land and buildings that would need to demolished, rezoned, and rebuilt as a higher density area with accompanying infrastructure is astronomical and wouldn’t be possibly by anyone other than the federal government only because they can print money. And politically, that effort would be dead on arrival.
  - wbl 6y ago
    Change the zoning and speed permits and watch it happen.
  - jnwatson 6y ago
    Citation needed. The biggest issue with residental construction today is approval process and the amount of land that can be utilized. An unreliable approval process means increased investment risk which keeps away investors. Setbacks and parking space requirements significantly impact the amount of usable living space per acre of land. Both of the above can be addressed by local municipalities. High density dwellings are going up all around in the rest of the US.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      The giant parking lots and 6 to 8 lane roads are what would need to go in order to make a place walkable on the level of SF or NYC. Additionally, a lot of the smaller, quirky high density living in these cities is because they didn’t have to comply with ADA at the time of construction. If you start adding elevators and ramps and the space needed in passages and doorways for wheelchairs to turn around, you will end up with a much larger footprint. Granted, ADA and other upgrades in quality of life are nowhere near the big problem of the cost of reducing lot and block sizes retroactively. The design for cities made for cars and for pedestrians are fundamentally opposed, and cannot coexist.
claydavisss 6y ago
Increasingly, single family detached homes in the interior of SF are owned by the very wealthy who can remain in the city to shape policy over the long term, while renters come and go. So don't expect anyone at City Hall to swing a wrecking ball in the direction of Pac Heights. The problem has solved itself already - the US is big and empty. There is little reason to stack people twenty stories high in a Zoom economy. So much talk here of policy changes, LVT etc etc...just freaking move!! That's a very trite response but it also is the best one. If anything, the pandemic has taken a wrecking ball to the entire thesis of New Urbanism and dense development...many Bay Area residents have already figured it out, don't be the last to get the memo.
- wbl 6y ago
  How is North Dakota doing? Meanwhile Hong Kong and Tokyo escaped relatively unscathed.
- oblio 6y ago
  I wouldn't bet against urbanization. There are many advantages to living in a large, busy city and Zoom can only counter some of them.
  - claydavisss 6y ago
    Then pay the price and stop complaining. Once again, this is a trite response but what else is there to say? Accept the cost or move. Don't wait - the things people are complaining about here have been constants in California since the 90s and aren't going to change no matter how many upvotes you earn...the people who shape these rules realized long ago that real votes outrank upvotes. HN conceives of itself as a master-race but is really just a disposable worker-class. The real master-race are the owners of capital.
TrackerFF 6y ago
Having lived on another island, with the same woes of SF (limited land, high growth), the problem is always the same - even though it's been on a much smaller scale. The people that have owned for the past 30-50 years, are completely unwilling to give up on their single family homes, gardens, etc. They basically demand to live a nice and cushy suburban life, in the middle of a big city. It then takes forever to build vertically, because for every projects that's proposed, there are hundreds, of not thousands of protests from neighbors that'll lose some sunlight, depreciation of property value, and what not - or they just don't like the modern architecture. So it can take YEARS to just get the first shovel in ground, because these projects go through so many rounds in city councils and what not. That's how you end up with extremely partisan / one-sided city councils, consisting of established home/land owners, that will fight tooth and nail to impose draconian zoning laws, and general NIMBY-politics.
- RhodesianHunter 6y ago
  > unwilling to give up on their single family homes I think that expecting people to "give up their homes" is more than unreasonable. The reasonable compromise being that builders can build in more densely once the current owners sell it.
  - oblio 6y ago
    I think the point is: what if they don't sell it, at all? Kids move out of the house, parents retire at 65 and live to 85+. That's 20 years, a whole generation.
    - ProblemFactory 6y ago
      If the developer can get permission to build 3-5 story apartments on the lot, then their land suddenly becomes way more valuable than the single home ever was. Most retirees will gladly sell and live in luxury elsewhere. If a few don't, it won't make a difference.
      - bernawil 6y ago
mola 6y ago
And then who would want to live in SF? Surely not the people who love it now.
WhompingWindows 6y ago
I live in a rural area, so I'm no expert...but how do you weigh the value of private property of San Fransiscans vs. the communal good of more apartment units? Surely you wouldn't "knock down" old houses, or would you? Just curious as to your thoughts.
- Redoubts 6y ago
  Zoning is necessarily an infringement of property rights, by the by. > surely you wouldn’t “knock down” I suppose that’s up to the owner. Though the question is about no longer making it illegal for owners to do so.
- flaque 6y ago
  Rezoning doesn’t force anyone out of their homes. It just lets someone sell their homes to someone who will turn around and build a larger building. Buildings in the old zone are grandfathered in. But folks who want to live in a single family home in the middle of san francisco can still do so. Just don’t sell the house.
  - chii 6y ago
    and you end up with a house surrounded by hi-rises : https://www.oddee.com/wp-content/uploads/_media/imgs/articles2/a99288_nail-house_4-up.jpg https://www.oddee.com/wp-content/uploads/_media/imgs/article...
hardtke 6y ago
The best land for high density construction in SF are the smaller rent controlled buildings, not single family homes. These smaller rent controlled buildings are near lively neighborhoods and transit, and are also often at the outer edge of their useful lifespan. I have yet to see a policy proposal to open up this land for development because nobody wants to give up rent controlled units.
Tiktaalik 6y ago
Seems like an easy enough solution, though in an environment of plunging rents developers very quickly seem to put projects on hold and shift gears to other sorts of things. I've witnessed this first hand in my city whenever there's bumps in the road (eg. global financial crisis, recent introduction of various foreign buyer/speculation taxes). This should intrinsically make sense. Private developers don't have to build and there's other ways for them to invest their money. Now if the developer was a public entity with a mandate that they had to build now that would be different.

by xyst 6y ago

Schiendelman 6y ago

And a lot of people only want a single family home because they want a certain amount of living space. In a commodified housing market, they would likely pay less for that space in a condo.

lock-free 6y ago
I want a single family home because it has no shared walls and a private backyard space for my kids and dog. It's not that hard to find condos or apartments with decent floor space.
- Schiendelman 6y ago
  Do you understand why we’re all talking about housing? What you said seems to be a “whoooosh” moment.

ihsw 6y ago

> or people moving out to the suburbs and thus worsening the rush hour traffic and smog issue Phoenix AZ seems to handle being an enormous suburb fairly well.

ihaveajob 6y ago

Honestly I'm surprised no other city in the bay area has taken the baton and aimed to overtake SF in terms of relevance by becoming the densest, most thriving city in the region. Oakland is at least trying to cope with demand in some neighborhoods. I'm rooting for that.

aabhay 6y ago
Some have, e.g. Daly City. The issue is that the rent is skyrocketing because people are desperate to live in that tiny patch of land that is precisely walking distance to their and other startup HQs. It’s a massive network effect.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
I would say it’s basically impossible to recreate a dense city based on today’s codes of construction requiring numerous safety/ADA measures in the US. In an existing city, the cost to purchase land and buildings that would need to demolished, rezoned, and rebuilt as a higher density area with accompanying infrastructure is astronomical and wouldn’t be possibly by anyone other than the federal government only because they can print money. And politically, that effort would be dead on arrival.
- wbl 6y ago
  Change the zoning and speed permits and watch it happen.
- jnwatson 6y ago
  Citation needed. The biggest issue with residental construction today is approval process and the amount of land that can be utilized. An unreliable approval process means increased investment risk which keeps away investors. Setbacks and parking space requirements significantly impact the amount of usable living space per acre of land. Both of the above can be addressed by local municipalities. High density dwellings are going up all around in the rest of the US.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    The giant parking lots and 6 to 8 lane roads are what would need to go in order to make a place walkable on the level of SF or NYC. Additionally, a lot of the smaller, quirky high density living in these cities is because they didn’t have to comply with ADA at the time of construction. If you start adding elevators and ramps and the space needed in passages and doorways for wheelchairs to turn around, you will end up with a much larger footprint. Granted, ADA and other upgrades in quality of life are nowhere near the big problem of the cost of reducing lot and block sizes retroactively. The design for cities made for cars and for pedestrians are fundamentally opposed, and cannot coexist.

claydavisss 6y ago

Increasingly, single family detached homes in the interior of SF are owned by the very wealthy who can remain in the city to shape policy over the long term, while renters come and go. So don't expect anyone at City Hall to swing a wrecking ball in the direction of Pac Heights. The problem has solved itself already - the US is big and empty. There is little reason to stack people twenty stories high in a Zoom economy. So much talk here of policy changes, LVT etc etc...just freaking move!! That's a very trite response but it also is the best one. If anything, the pandemic has taken a wrecking ball to the entire thesis of New Urbanism and dense development...many Bay Area residents have already figured it out, don't be the last to get the memo.

wbl 6y ago
How is North Dakota doing? Meanwhile Hong Kong and Tokyo escaped relatively unscathed.
oblio 6y ago
I wouldn't bet against urbanization. There are many advantages to living in a large, busy city and Zoom can only counter some of them.
- claydavisss 6y ago
  Then pay the price and stop complaining. Once again, this is a trite response but what else is there to say? Accept the cost or move. Don't wait - the things people are complaining about here have been constants in California since the 90s and aren't going to change no matter how many upvotes you earn...the people who shape these rules realized long ago that real votes outrank upvotes. HN conceives of itself as a master-race but is really just a disposable worker-class. The real master-race are the owners of capital.

TrackerFF 6y ago

Having lived on another island, with the same woes of SF (limited land, high growth), the problem is always the same - even though it's been on a much smaller scale. The people that have owned for the past 30-50 years, are completely unwilling to give up on their single family homes, gardens, etc. They basically demand to live a nice and cushy suburban life, in the middle of a big city. It then takes forever to build vertically, because for every projects that's proposed, there are hundreds, of not thousands of protests from neighbors that'll lose some sunlight, depreciation of property value, and what not - or they just don't like the modern architecture. So it can take YEARS to just get the first shovel in ground, because these projects go through so many rounds in city councils and what not. That's how you end up with extremely partisan / one-sided city councils, consisting of established home/land owners, that will fight tooth and nail to impose draconian zoning laws, and general NIMBY-politics.

RhodesianHunter 6y ago
> unwilling to give up on their single family homes I think that expecting people to "give up their homes" is more than unreasonable. The reasonable compromise being that builders can build in more densely once the current owners sell it.
- oblio 6y ago
  I think the point is: what if they don't sell it, at all? Kids move out of the house, parents retire at 65 and live to 85+. That's 20 years, a whole generation.
  - ProblemFactory 6y ago
    If the developer can get permission to build 3-5 story apartments on the lot, then their land suddenly becomes way more valuable than the single home ever was. Most retirees will gladly sell and live in luxury elsewhere. If a few don't, it won't make a difference.
    - bernawil 6y ago

mola 6y ago

And then who would want to live in SF? Surely not the people who love it now.

WhompingWindows 6y ago

I live in a rural area, so I'm no expert...but how do you weigh the value of private property of San Fransiscans vs. the communal good of more apartment units? Surely you wouldn't "knock down" old houses, or would you? Just curious as to your thoughts.

Redoubts 6y ago
Zoning is necessarily an infringement of property rights, by the by. > surely you wouldn’t “knock down” I suppose that’s up to the owner. Though the question is about no longer making it illegal for owners to do so.
flaque 6y ago
Rezoning doesn’t force anyone out of their homes. It just lets someone sell their homes to someone who will turn around and build a larger building. Buildings in the old zone are grandfathered in. But folks who want to live in a single family home in the middle of san francisco can still do so. Just don’t sell the house.
- chii 6y ago
  and you end up with a house surrounded by hi-rises : https://www.oddee.com/wp-content/uploads/_media/imgs/articles2/a99288_nail-house_4-up.jpg https://www.oddee.com/wp-content/uploads/_media/imgs/article...

hardtke 6y ago

The best land for high density construction in SF are the smaller rent controlled buildings, not single family homes. These smaller rent controlled buildings are near lively neighborhoods and transit, and are also often at the outer edge of their useful lifespan. I have yet to see a policy proposal to open up this land for development because nobody wants to give up rent controlled units.

Tiktaalik 6y ago

Seems like an easy enough solution, though in an environment of plunging rents developers very quickly seem to put projects on hold and shift gears to other sorts of things. I've witnessed this first hand in my city whenever there's bumps in the road (eg. global financial crisis, recent introduction of various foreign buyer/speculation taxes). This should intrinsically make sense. Private developers don't have to build and there's other ways for them to invest their money. Now if the developer was a public entity with a mandate that they had to build now that would be different.