6 ms·

Did you read the origins of their zoning code? "Protecting" the city by attempting to limit Black people to certain areas. Not a great look. A lot of zoning co

by davidw 6y ago

Did you read the origins of their zoning code? "Protecting" the city by attempting to limit Black people to certain areas. Not a great look. A lot of zoning code is based on similar ideas, even if most people are not dumb enough to say the quiet part out loud these days. You do still hear it on occasion: Bend, Oregon, where I live, passed a similar change a few years back, which was then superseded by Oregon's HB 2001, which effectively eliminates exclusionary zoning in our cities. At the local hearing for the Bend rule, there was a woman who was really upset that "renters" might be able to live in her neighborhood. They're dirty, messy, and "don't care about where they live", according to her testimony. It's economic segregation, plain and simple.

cameldrv 6y ago
I can’t say what was in that woman’s head, but neighborhoods that have a lot of rentals tend to have a different character independent of race. Homeowners have stable enough lives to have saved up a down payment, they tend to be older and have families. They also have a reason to not annoy their neighbors, because they will have to live with them for many years. Now, younger less settled people also need places to live, and the Bay Area’s solution is to send them to Stockton or something, but not everything is about race.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > not everything is about race. Sure, but we're not talking about "everything", we're talking about housing trends in American cities.
- davidw 6y ago
  "Economic segregation" is what I wrote, so not just race, but keeping those with less money away from "nice" neighborhoods and their good schools. Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US. And when you describe 'those neighborhoods', keep in mind that that's probably a policy. If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a concentration of people who aren't as wealthy.
  - u678u 6y ago
    > Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US. America has the cheapest housing in the Developed world. SF is not cheap, but its still cheaper than big cities in Europe.
    - davidw 6y ago
      Oh, I know something about that! I own a home in Padova, Italy. Land is mostly cheaper in the US, but Italy and most of Europe provide far more housing options, in large part because they do not impose things like single family zoning. Padova has twice the population of the town where I live here in the US, in about the same area, and housing is cheaper. The economy isn't great there, but that's a separate story from housing. If it were hotter, it's a place where you can simply build homes in many shapes and sizes, from small apartments to nice villas.
      - adolph 6y ago
        Part of real property TCO is taxes. I wonder how Italy stacks up agains comparable areas of other countries. https://www.accountingbolla.com/blog/property-tax-in-italy-guide-for-2020 https://www.accountingbolla.com/blog/property-tax-in-italy-g...
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    > If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a concentration of people who aren't as wealthy. I don't think this is possible, or even desirable. A huge part of a home's value is the neighborhood. How much crime is there? How good are the schools? How are the neighbors? A "fancy" house and an "affordable" house in the same neighborhood are not going to have a large price difference. If you revert every neighborhood to the mean, then you more or less revert all property prices to the mean. Which means you have erased all the "affordable" housing options, and also reduced the QOL of the top 50% of people.
    - 6y ago
- rsync 6y ago
  "Homeowners have stable enough lives to have saved up a down payment, they tend to be older and have families. They also have a reason to not annoy their neighbors, because they will have to live with them for many years." This can be generalized - beyond the housing debate - as "having skin in the game". As someone who has been (at various times) a short and long term renter, a landlord, and a homeowner ... it rings true to me that, generally speaking, renters invest less in their homes and their neighborhoods and have less at stake in the outcomes of those neighborhoods/communities. That was certainly the case with me as a renter. I don't think it's morally negative to segregate neighborhoods on the basis of renting vs. owning. The attempts to link this kind of segregation to past periods of literal racial segregation is, in my opinion, going to find less and less traction - especially as non-white stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same kind of skin-in-the-game cooperation with their neighbors.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > non-white stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same kind of skin-in-the-game cooperation with their neighbors. What about the rampant housing discrimination in home-buying (without any enforcement) [0]? What about massive racial wealth disparates? I think it is pretty naïve to suggest that the current backlash against having "renters" has nothing to do with race. Not more naïve than suggesting it only has to do with race, but close. [0]: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-investigation/ https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-...
    - rsync 6y ago
      Well, we could argue about this ad infinitum ... Or, we could take a shortcut and ask those very people what they think and what they would like. Which is to say, let's find some non-white stakeholders (homeowners) with skin in the game in their neighborhoods and communities and ask them what they think. I drive through some very nice, very well ordered, single family zoned nieghborhoods in Fremont - the owners of which are predominantly non-white. The same exists in many other bay area communities. Are those people vehemently advocating for upzoning and loss of local control ? Do those people have a strong preference for owners over renters ? Genuinely curious ...
- syshum 6y ago
  There are dual problems with renters, my personal experience leads me to believe it is not the renters that are the problem in neighborhoods with high amounts of renters. While it is true the renter does not have "skin in the game" it is also true that many landlord put in only the absolute bare minimum of resources to maintain the rental property. For example my grandmother before she passed lived in a aging neighborhood, as the original residents passed the homes where sold off as investment properties. She generally had a good relationship with most of the renters however the owners of homes routinely refused to repair things, refused to have proper tree maintenance done, and other such problems that would not be the responsibility of the renter.
  - tt433 6y ago
    If the property is adjacent to a gentrified neighborhood but not yet pricey, the landlord can degrade service until the low income tenants leave, renovate the property, and charge new gentrified prices as well. I know of a couple buildings in the DMV area that were doing this within the last 10 years
    - syshum 6y ago
      Well in my families case it was what ever the reverse of gentrification is. As the original owners died off in that neighborhood the neighborhood got worse and worse, more crime, less value, etc etc etc The owners of the properties were not waiting out the poor people hoping to strike it rich like you seem to be implying
      - tt433 6y ago
        Just wanted to add there's lots of factors at play besides the renters specifically
intrasight 6y ago
Just because the original intent may have bad doesn't mean that single family zoning in and of itself is bad. There are lots of municipalities with single family zoning. Mine does. Mine also doesn't allow any commercial property. And lots must be one acre or more. The residents want it this way. What's wrong with that?
- davidw 6y ago
  Government enforced 1 acre lots is a good proxy for "keep the poor people out". Also contributes massively to sprawl and thus carbon emissions because you can't have a more traditional sort of neighborhood where people might walk to the park and corner store. Nothing against people owning a 1 acre lot if they want - that's fine! Imposing it on everyone is economic segregation.
  - syshum 6y ago
    >>Nothing against people owning a 1 acre lot if they want Sounds like you do, you more or less accused anyone that desires a 1 acre plot of classism or wanting to "keep the poor people out", and of wanting to destroy the environment. In reality most people that want that simply desire privacy, I for example desire that because i do not want to "walk to the corner store" or have a park at all in my neighborhood. I do not want to have "neighborhood" events, or be able to talk to my neighbor from my porch. I want privacy, I want to be able to enjoy my hobbies which are solitary pursuits not group activities.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Lammy 6y ago
    > Imposing it on everyone is economic segregation. I agree but only in the sense that it should include 39 more acres. And a mule.
  - zug_zug 6y ago
    >>> Government enforced 1 acre lots is a good proxy for "keep the poor people out". Uhhh not in the very least. Many of us want to live in areas that have 3-acre minimum lots because of a little thing called nature. Those who want to live crammed into micro-apartments with 1 tree for every 30 people can, but those of us who want a whole town that is more grass that pavement should NOT be accused of classism or racism. If you really want to help poor people, figure out a system that doesn't box them into ever-decreasing concrete apartments further and further from clean air.
dominotw 6y ago
What does it matter what they are based on. GP's point " To serve the people living in the city." still holds.
- xvedejas 6y ago
  We're discovering that zoning is a tragedy of the commons style issue where it may sound good for any individual city, but is detrimental if everyone does it. It makes no sense to put on blinders with respect to the problems cities create just because of some notion that cities can operate in a vacuum, narrowly focused inward at the expense of good citizenship.
Lammy 6y ago
> A lot of zoning code is based on similar ideas, even if most people are not dumb enough to say the quiet part out loud these days. That's the way it's always been. Here's an '80s example I ran across just the other day, and I'm actually grimly impressed by the clever video editing that puts up a WW2-era photo of mostly-white schoolkids to anchor a viewer's thinking away from "is this racist?" just as he says the worst part about "them" lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=973&v=jCMvOiupDLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=973&v=jCMvOiupDLo
centimeter 6y ago
> "Protecting" the city by attempting to limit Black people to certain areas. Why do you put protecting in quotes? The residents of areas typically like to be protected from demographic disruption, especially if the disrupting demographic is known to bring problems. > Not a great look. People are more worried about the place that they have to live, work, and raise their children than they are about your patronizing condescension.
- driverdan 6y ago
  > especially if the disrupting demographic is known to bring problems. So racism, got it.
  - frongpik 6y ago
    Call it racism, if you want. Homeowners conspiring to protect their neighborhood from people who aren't up to their standard isn't different than a country setting up an army to protect its borders from low quality foreigners.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      And here I thought the purpose of the army is to defend against high quality foreigners violating our laws.
throwawaysea 6y ago
> Did you read the origins of their zoning code? "Protecting" the city by attempting to limit Black people to certain areas. Not a great look. I've seen this claim in this discussion but without hard evidence that this was the sole or even primary motivation at the time (who would you even measure/prove that?). Regardless, it isn't the motivation today behind zoning so I am not sure why it matters what the motivation was 100 years ago. I feel like that's a weak attempt by urban activists to associate a negative label (like "racist") with zoning to trivialize the legitimate reasons people like zoning restrictions. People want zoning so that they can retain the kind of city or neighborhood character they want to live in. There's nothing wrong with incumbents resisting change that accommodates others at their own expense. The point of local government is to serve the incumbent residents first and foremost and I don't see why the desires of newcomers to live wherever they want at whatever price point they want supersedes the quality of life that existing residents have sought out and cultivated for themselves previously. Those newcomers are certainly free to move to a part of the country with less demand than the Bay Area and make a life there. > It's economic segregation, plain and simple. Not really. It's segregation by people who are invested in their community versus people who may move on because they haven't put down deep roots. And even if it was economic segregation in effect or directly, so what? I, and certainly most other parents, want a safe neighborhood for our families, and higher income neighborhoods typically experience less crime. I also want better educated and more successful people in my neighborhood, because their children form the environment and society my children are exposed to and influenced by. Leaving all that aside, an influx of renters changes a city's politics, culture, and other characteristics. I've seen this first-hand in Seattle where the dramatic changes of the last 10 years have really hurt the quality of life in this city and crowded out 'old Seattle' culturally. So I see many understandable and legitimate reasons for people to want to avoid renters.
majormajor 6y ago
So, if you end single family zoning, you'll likely be displacing lower-economic-status minorities once again. Perpetuating the cycle. Areas with cheaper land and higher rates of renter-occupied homes will be easier for developers to target and buy up the land. I don't think you can make an argument that you're going to repair any past harms by doing this. I think the argument that you're going to continue them if you do this is much stronger.

by davidw 6y ago

cameldrv 6y ago

I can’t say what was in that woman’s head, but neighborhoods that have a lot of rentals tend to have a different character independent of race. Homeowners have stable enough lives to have saved up a down payment, they tend to be older and have families. They also have a reason to not annoy their neighbors, because they will have to live with them for many years. Now, younger less settled people also need places to live, and the Bay Area’s solution is to send them to Stockton or something, but not everything is about race.

whimsicalism 6y ago
> not everything is about race. Sure, but we're not talking about "everything", we're talking about housing trends in American cities.
davidw 6y ago
"Economic segregation" is what I wrote, so not just race, but keeping those with less money away from "nice" neighborhoods and their good schools. Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US. And when you describe 'those neighborhoods', keep in mind that that's probably a policy. If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a concentration of people who aren't as wealthy.
- u678u 6y ago
  > Plenty of people who rent might buy if there were more opportunities to do so, which there would be if housing weren't such an artificially scarce good in the US. America has the cheapest housing in the Developed world. SF is not cheap, but its still cheaper than big cities in Europe.
  - davidw 6y ago
    Oh, I know something about that! I own a home in Padova, Italy. Land is mostly cheaper in the US, but Italy and most of Europe provide far more housing options, in large part because they do not impose things like single family zoning. Padova has twice the population of the town where I live here in the US, in about the same area, and housing is cheaper. The economy isn't great there, but that's a separate story from housing. If it were hotter, it's a place where you can simply build homes in many shapes and sizes, from small apartments to nice villas.
    - adolph 6y ago
      Part of real property TCO is taxes. I wonder how Italy stacks up agains comparable areas of other countries. https://www.accountingbolla.com/blog/property-tax-in-italy-guide-for-2020 https://www.accountingbolla.com/blog/property-tax-in-italy-g...
- dahfizz 6y ago
  > If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a concentration of people who aren't as wealthy. I don't think this is possible, or even desirable. A huge part of a home's value is the neighborhood. How much crime is there? How good are the schools? How are the neighbors? A "fancy" house and an "affordable" house in the same neighborhood are not going to have a large price difference. If you revert every neighborhood to the mean, then you more or less revert all property prices to the mean. Which means you have erased all the "affordable" housing options, and also reduced the QOL of the top 50% of people.
  - 6y ago
rsync 6y ago
"Homeowners have stable enough lives to have saved up a down payment, they tend to be older and have families. They also have a reason to not annoy their neighbors, because they will have to live with them for many years." This can be generalized - beyond the housing debate - as "having skin in the game". As someone who has been (at various times) a short and long term renter, a landlord, and a homeowner ... it rings true to me that, generally speaking, renters invest less in their homes and their neighborhoods and have less at stake in the outcomes of those neighborhoods/communities. That was certainly the case with me as a renter. I don't think it's morally negative to segregate neighborhoods on the basis of renting vs. owning. The attempts to link this kind of segregation to past periods of literal racial segregation is, in my opinion, going to find less and less traction - especially as non-white stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same kind of skin-in-the-game cooperation with their neighbors.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > non-white stakeholders (homeowners) aspire to the same kind of skin-in-the-game cooperation with their neighbors. What about the rampant housing discrimination in home-buying (without any enforcement) [0]? What about massive racial wealth disparates? I think it is pretty naïve to suggest that the current backlash against having "renters" has nothing to do with race. Not more naïve than suggesting it only has to do with race, but close. [0]: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-investigation/ https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/real-estate-agents-...
  - rsync 6y ago
    Well, we could argue about this ad infinitum ... Or, we could take a shortcut and ask those very people what they think and what they would like. Which is to say, let's find some non-white stakeholders (homeowners) with skin in the game in their neighborhoods and communities and ask them what they think. I drive through some very nice, very well ordered, single family zoned nieghborhoods in Fremont - the owners of which are predominantly non-white. The same exists in many other bay area communities. Are those people vehemently advocating for upzoning and loss of local control ? Do those people have a strong preference for owners over renters ? Genuinely curious ...
syshum 6y ago
There are dual problems with renters, my personal experience leads me to believe it is not the renters that are the problem in neighborhoods with high amounts of renters. While it is true the renter does not have "skin in the game" it is also true that many landlord put in only the absolute bare minimum of resources to maintain the rental property. For example my grandmother before she passed lived in a aging neighborhood, as the original residents passed the homes where sold off as investment properties. She generally had a good relationship with most of the renters however the owners of homes routinely refused to repair things, refused to have proper tree maintenance done, and other such problems that would not be the responsibility of the renter.
- tt433 6y ago
  If the property is adjacent to a gentrified neighborhood but not yet pricey, the landlord can degrade service until the low income tenants leave, renovate the property, and charge new gentrified prices as well. I know of a couple buildings in the DMV area that were doing this within the last 10 years
  - syshum 6y ago
    Well in my families case it was what ever the reverse of gentrification is. As the original owners died off in that neighborhood the neighborhood got worse and worse, more crime, less value, etc etc etc The owners of the properties were not waiting out the poor people hoping to strike it rich like you seem to be implying
    - tt433 6y ago
      Just wanted to add there's lots of factors at play besides the renters specifically

intrasight 6y ago

Just because the original intent may have bad doesn't mean that single family zoning in and of itself is bad. There are lots of municipalities with single family zoning. Mine does. Mine also doesn't allow any commercial property. And lots must be one acre or more. The residents want it this way. What's wrong with that?

davidw 6y ago
Government enforced 1 acre lots is a good proxy for "keep the poor people out". Also contributes massively to sprawl and thus carbon emissions because you can't have a more traditional sort of neighborhood where people might walk to the park and corner store. Nothing against people owning a 1 acre lot if they want - that's fine! Imposing it on everyone is economic segregation.
- syshum 6y ago
  >>Nothing against people owning a 1 acre lot if they want Sounds like you do, you more or less accused anyone that desires a 1 acre plot of classism or wanting to "keep the poor people out", and of wanting to destroy the environment. In reality most people that want that simply desire privacy, I for example desire that because i do not want to "walk to the corner store" or have a park at all in my neighborhood. I do not want to have "neighborhood" events, or be able to talk to my neighbor from my porch. I want privacy, I want to be able to enjoy my hobbies which are solitary pursuits not group activities.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Lammy 6y ago
  > Imposing it on everyone is economic segregation. I agree but only in the sense that it should include 39 more acres. And a mule.
- zug_zug 6y ago
  >>> Government enforced 1 acre lots is a good proxy for "keep the poor people out". Uhhh not in the very least. Many of us want to live in areas that have 3-acre minimum lots because of a little thing called nature. Those who want to live crammed into micro-apartments with 1 tree for every 30 people can, but those of us who want a whole town that is more grass that pavement should NOT be accused of classism or racism. If you really want to help poor people, figure out a system that doesn't box them into ever-decreasing concrete apartments further and further from clean air.

dominotw 6y ago

What does it matter what they are based on. GP's point " To serve the people living in the city." still holds.

xvedejas 6y ago
We're discovering that zoning is a tragedy of the commons style issue where it may sound good for any individual city, but is detrimental if everyone does it. It makes no sense to put on blinders with respect to the problems cities create just because of some notion that cities can operate in a vacuum, narrowly focused inward at the expense of good citizenship.

Lammy 6y ago

> A lot of zoning code is based on similar ideas, even if most people are not dumb enough to say the quiet part out loud these days. That's the way it's always been. Here's an '80s example I ran across just the other day, and I'm actually grimly impressed by the clever video editing that puts up a WW2-era photo of mostly-white schoolkids to anchor a viewer's thinking away from "is this racist?" just as he says the worst part about "them" lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=973&v=jCMvOiupDLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=973&v=jCMvOiupDLo

centimeter 6y ago

> "Protecting" the city by attempting to limit Black people to certain areas. Why do you put protecting in quotes? The residents of areas typically like to be protected from demographic disruption, especially if the disrupting demographic is known to bring problems. > Not a great look. People are more worried about the place that they have to live, work, and raise their children than they are about your patronizing condescension.

driverdan 6y ago
> especially if the disrupting demographic is known to bring problems. So racism, got it.
- frongpik 6y ago
  Call it racism, if you want. Homeowners conspiring to protect their neighborhood from people who aren't up to their standard isn't different than a country setting up an army to protect its borders from low quality foreigners.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    And here I thought the purpose of the army is to defend against high quality foreigners violating our laws.

throwawaysea 6y ago

> Did you read the origins of their zoning code? "Protecting" the city by attempting to limit Black people to certain areas. Not a great look. I've seen this claim in this discussion but without hard evidence that this was the sole or even primary motivation at the time (who would you even measure/prove that?). Regardless, it isn't the motivation today behind zoning so I am not sure why it matters what the motivation was 100 years ago. I feel like that's a weak attempt by urban activists to associate a negative label (like "racist") with zoning to trivialize the legitimate reasons people like zoning restrictions. People want zoning so that they can retain the kind of city or neighborhood character they want to live in. There's nothing wrong with incumbents resisting change that accommodates others at their own expense. The point of local government is to serve the incumbent residents first and foremost and I don't see why the desires of newcomers to live wherever they want at whatever price point they want supersedes the quality of life that existing residents have sought out and cultivated for themselves previously. Those newcomers are certainly free to move to a part of the country with less demand than the Bay Area and make a life there. > It's economic segregation, plain and simple. Not really. It's segregation by people who are invested in their community versus people who may move on because they haven't put down deep roots. And even if it was economic segregation in effect or directly, so what? I, and certainly most other parents, want a safe neighborhood for our families, and higher income neighborhoods typically experience less crime. I also want better educated and more successful people in my neighborhood, because their children form the environment and society my children are exposed to and influenced by. Leaving all that aside, an influx of renters changes a city's politics, culture, and other characteristics. I've seen this first-hand in Seattle where the dramatic changes of the last 10 years have really hurt the quality of life in this city and crowded out 'old Seattle' culturally. So I see many understandable and legitimate reasons for people to want to avoid renters.

majormajor 6y ago

So, if you end single family zoning, you'll likely be displacing lower-economic-status minorities once again. Perpetuating the cycle. Areas with cheaper land and higher rates of renter-occupied homes will be easier for developers to target and buy up the land. I don't think you can make an argument that you're going to repair any past harms by doing this. I think the argument that you're going to continue them if you do this is much stronger.