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54% of San Francisco homes are in buildings that would be illegal to build today
- neolog 6y agoThat's probably true everywhere. If you build for certain requirements, your building won't meet a different set of requirements.
- modeless 6y ago> These buildings aren't illegal to build because of safety reasons or any construction deficiencies - they are only illegal due to regulations called zoning laws that San Francisco passed to restrict the density of housing in certain areas, originally to keep poor minorities out of white neighborhoods.
- shiftpgdn 6y agoYou're going to need some sort of evidence to back that up. Most of the restrictions are around keeping current homeowner's values artificially inflated.
- api 6y agoHistorically those two objectives are closely related, as people would worry that blacks moving into a neighborhood would decrease property values.
- themihai 6y ago>> blacks moving into a neighborhood would decrease property values. I'm not from U.S but why would black people decrease property values? Isn't this really about poor people (that in the U.S are more likely to be black) decrease property values?
- api 6y agoIt's because racist Americans don't want to live near blacks, reducing demand, and because of perception of blacks as always being poor. Here's an example of the same house in the same neighborhood being appraised much higher when the appraiser didn't know there was a black occupant: https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/nation-world/jacksonville-couple-sees-home-appraisal-jump-40-percent-after-they-remove-all-traces-of-blackness/77-c3087e8c-0c65-4fb9-8319-da82f5c0ea20 https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/nation-world/jacksonville-... Money quote: "... because in the Black community, it’s just common knowledge that you take your pictures down when you’re selling the house."
- pembrook 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_Uni... "White communities are more likely to have strict land use regulations (and whites are more likely to support those regulations).[25][26] Strict land use regulations are an important driver of housing segregation along racial lines in the United States.[25]" Further reading: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/geography-of-inequality-how-land-use-regulation-produces-segregation/BAB4ABDF014670550615CE670FF66016 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-s...
- neolog 6y agoParent is quoting the original post which links to a document with sources.
- kbuchanan 6y agoI'm reading this claim every day across so many subjects now—that the goal was racist in origin. Not knowing anything about SF myself, I am however tempted to ask if __classism__ is the better culprit. Classism can masquerade as racism (as in this example), creating the same outcomes, but it requires a different antidote to treat.
- jedberg 6y agoThey point out in that post that Houston for example doesn't this problem because they have no zoning laws. But also, the point is that SF keeps changing the rules. Places that don't change the rules as often won't have this problem.
- shiftpgdn 6y agoThat's nonsense. Houston absolutely has the same problems and many many buildings and home that exist in Houston would also be illegal to build today under city ordinances. The reason Houston doesn't have the same degree of housing shortage is Houston has over 668 square miles of land (1779 square miles for Harris county) vs 40 for San Francisco.
- colinmhayes 6y agoThat definitely plays a big part, but banning high density housing is a major contributor to the problem SF is facing.
- jedberg 6y agoYou're confusing safety ordinances with land use.
- shiftpgdn 6y agoLand use ordinances exist in Houston. To an extreme degree even. But its about how you build and not where. It's defacto zoning.
- imtringued 6y agoGeography prevents you from fleeing bad zoning.
- wyldfire 6y agoIs it a problem? Or is it awesome that they were able to raise the bar for newly constructed residences? I've lived in newer homes over the last couple of decades. It's awesome to have smoke detectors in every room, grounded outlets, GFCI outlets, well-insulated windows and exterior walls, firewalls, plenum-rated cables, safe and easy-to-maintain plumbing. The market would've only demanded a subset of these improvements. And the least expensive builders would've just built residences without them.
- kazen44 6y agoi would assume so. Atleast in my experience (in a northern european country with many 120> old houses) almost no houses are strictly "up to modern standards" in terms of building regulations. Usually it is something minor or energy inefficient. Using single pane windows for instance. Most dangerous regulations are taken quite seriously however, Electrics are usually old(80's and later) but not ancient(pre-ww2 - reconstruction). Water and gas supply is usually in good order because of the strict laws regarding those regulations.
- closeparen 6y agoYou might naively expect a booming area to zone for more capacity over time, not less.
- ethagknight 6y agoWhoaaaaa whoa whoa, not in my backyard, pal! Build that stuff in THEIR backyard! That’s the refrain.
- zip1234 6y agoThis is why zoning is dumb. How do most cities zone? They draw borders around what is already there and make it a zone based on what is there. The first effect is to freeze those areas how they already are. The places that are not built up get borders around them too. Those places are zoned for a particular use based on the wild ass guess of some elected officials. Since those elected officials cannot see the future, those wild ass guesses are often wrong.
- handmodel 6y agoI don't think this is true for the reasons listed, though. It isn't like they are illegal because they have old pipes or something. The interactive shows they are illegal because they are duplexes or apartments where now they only allow you to build single family homes. I suppose you could go to smaller cities/towns and say that it would also be illegal to build apartments there - but the types of houses in suburban towns built 50 years are still very legal today.
- varjag 6y agoThat's also true in any old enough city and is probably what the GP means.
- shados 6y agoYeah, that's why the title is kind of meaningless here. If you did the opposite (make it illegal to build single families in an area with only single families, to promote density), you'd end up with the exact same issue. A title like "Zoning laws explicitly forbid increasing density" or something would be more interesting/accurate. Saying "X% of houses would be illegal OMGZ!", while true, is not particularly productive as it implies its bad, but the a solution using zoning to increase density could have the exact same headline.
- handmodel 6y agoI'm aware of very limited cases in which there is minimum density zoning on lots. It is just that given a vacant lot within a demand area developers are going to naturally build the highest density legally allowed. I'm fairly certain you could buy an apartment building in Manhattan, demolish it, and build a picket-fence house there. It was just lose you tens or hundreds of millions of dollars so no one has done it. From what I can tell the way that interactive was constructed it would also highlight a lot if it fell into the category you mentioned but I can't find any where this is the case. It is a one-side problem and to pretend like it is two-sided is a bit detached from reality.
- drewgross 6y agoThe map also explicitly lists "number of homes that would be illegal", presumably for that reason. If you make it illegal to build anything smaller than a duplex, on a lot that currently contains a single family home, the "number of illegal homes" on that lot is still zero.
- brudgers 6y agoAround the turn of the century, I worked for the city of St. Petersburg (FL). More than sixty percent of the single family housing was non-conforming to base flood elevation requirements. Much of what wasn't in the flood plane was non-conforming to zoning because people built on the high ground first. And then there was Isla del Sol. Dredged from Boca Ciega Bay, it destroyed the incredibly productive fishery and is the reason the ACoE became involved in reviewing projects for environmental impact. That's they way cities are. They build and learn.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoIt's amazing how much we let city governments get away with zoning restrictions. Almost universally city governments will say they're "pro affordable housing", yet they will never budge an inch and give away some of their zoning power.
- abfan1127 6y agoI agree. I was surprised to hear that Houston doesn't have zoning in the traditional sense. https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of#:~:text=Of%20course%2C%20jokes%20like%20that,known%20for%20being%20an%20anomaly https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-h....
- meddlepal 6y agoYou're not letting city governments get away with anything, the voters, the ones that actually show up, support these measures.
- brudgers 6y agoThe market produces market rate housing. Developers prefer to develop higher priced housing because the effort to develop a housing project is mostly independent of the number of units and the market segment for which they are built...a few low cost units is about the same effort and risk as a lot of high priced units. Actually, it's probably harder to build low cost units because bankers prefer a higher upside and psychologically tend to identify more with wealth than poverty...I mean people usually don't go into banking to alleviate poverty, misery, and suffering...although I have known bankers and they were all pretty decent people. It's just that their day to day work was serving wealth.
- bcrosby95 6y agoReminds me of something I read somewhere: the difference between condos and "luxury" condos is usually just the price.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
- incadenza 6y agoI remember when I lived there everyone was so against the “manhattanization” of the city, so it was a big uproar every time a new building went in. I never quite understood how to square that view with the desire to keep housing affordable
- ASM_god 6y agolots of hypocrisy when it comes to housing
- imajoredinecon 6y agoRent controls!
- aaronbrethorst 6y agoI assume this is meant to be read in the same tone as "The Aristocrats!"
- ralusek 6y agoThat just turns the city into a firt-come-first-serve lottery, in addition to all sorts of perverse incentives/disincentives for landlords and tenants alike, rather than a place where the people who are most willing/able to pay to live there are the ones that do. Rent control is one of the worst solutions to any problem.
- majormajor 6y ago> That just turns the city into a firt-come-first-serve lottery That's how property ownership works, after all. Extending the same benefits to renters has a lot of obvious appeal even if it does nothing to fix overall price increase trends.
- kar5pt 6y agoYeah, property _ownership_ not property renting. They work differently for a reason. When housing prices rise, owners are incentivized to sell. When rents rise on rent controlled buildings, renters are incentived to stay put, even if they don't need the space. This incentivizes building owners to not maintain the buildings since they know renters won't leave anyway. There's tons of ways to make housing affordable without resorting to policies that have been rejected almost unanimously by economists.
- antattack 6y agoMoving to 1200sqft minimum lot size seems reasonable but 500sqft lot is tight, with little if any outdoor space. Plus 500sqft would not be friendly to older people or people with bad knees because of stairs.
- darrenoc 6y agoThat's a ridiculous expectation for a city. Urban housing needs to be dense. The kind of housing you're describing belongs in the suburbs.
- mikeyouse 6y agoOther people want to live in affordable housing in proximity to transit and parks -- so your preferences and theirs are in strict conflict. If you want space and outdoors, feel free to buy a place with those features. Making it illegal to build anything but your preference is insane.
- zzapplezz 6y agoYour argument boils down to righteous dignity. You presume that it's below another person's dignity to live in, gasp, 500sqft. This is obviously nonsense. I've lived in less. It is important to understand that scaling down square footage is the simplest path to creating market-rate, sustainable, affordable housing
- Robelius 6y agoReading *Golden Gates* by Conor Dougherty right now! If anyone is deciding on a book to read about the history of housing policies, then I recommend it to anyone in California over *The Color of Law* (which is also a great book). Does a great job of painting how decades of decision making led to this point despite decades of warnings.
- mdoms 6y agoYou'll find similar statistics in almost any city.
- rm_-rf_slash 6y agoNo city is as expensive and as associated with social egalitarianism as San Francisco.
- Qwertious 6y agoThen the title should talk about that, rather than a statistic of dubious relevance. (More than 90% of people who drank water have died.)
- imtringued 6y agoYes, any Californian city.
- scrooched_moose 6y agoI'd be shocked if this wasn't true in just about every city proper (not suburbs). For fun one time, some friends and I checked the modern basic lot requirements against our homes, and every single one of us failed some check. Almost everyone had issues with setback, some were footprint to lotsize ratios, and one minimum lot size. The city just found a massive plot of undeveloped land (hugedefunct corporate campus is being developed) and we're all kinda curious how different those homes are going to look, being the first major development of new homes in the city in quite some time.
- gumby 6y agoSo what? Changes to building codes and such always grandparent in existing construction so this statistic is likely true everywhere.
- Nelkins 6y agoThe number is 40% in Manhattan (buildings, not homes though). https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...
- payne92 6y agoThis is true in many, many places: as zoning, safety, access, and environmental rules evolve most older buildings become not buildable under current rules. Our national housing stock is FULL of places with narrow winding stairs, lead paint, full flow toilets and shower heads, untempered glass, single pane windows, uninsulated walls or ceilings, ungrounded outlets, undersized plumbing, sketchy chimneys, springy floors, etc. I'm surprised the number isn't closer to 80-90%, especially with the recent energy efficiency rules.
- jdavis703 6y agoThis article specifically addresses buildings that are only illegal because of zoning. They aren’t including buildings that are unsafe due to building regulations like firecodes, ADA, etc.
- shados 6y agoYou zone for what you want to build, not what is there already. The later wouldn't make any sense. The arguments generally given are to show that we're preventing building for density, pointing out NIMBYism, etc, but even if we were doing the polar opposite, the same would be true: If you have a town that's all single family, and zoning rules pass that any and all buildings MUST be 3+ stories, then all the existing houses wouldn't be allowed under current zoning laws. The fact that they're not allowed under current zoning rules is irrelevant. The question is only if the new zoning rules are good for what you want to see or not.
- zzapplezz 6y agoStraw man - generally the idea of YIMBYism is to be more inclusionary, so that 3+ stories is allowed not required. In contrast, SFH-only zoning is exclusionary.
- shados 6y agoEven if you allowed skyscrapers, most existing houses and buildings would be illegal because of code. The map on this particular page mentions it only looks at zoning, so it's still very valid. But my point is saying "X amount of homes would be illegal to build" is completely pointless and just meant to rile people up. OF COURSE most buildings are illegal to build today. We don't build like we use to for a variety of reasons. Even if you forget about building code, there's also rules around minimum amount of affordable units that older buildings didn't need to follow. Zoning is a specific one and yes, it's often problematic and regressive. Let's focus on that.
- oh_sigh 6y agoSince 65-70% of SF residents are renters from what I can gather, how/why exactly do these laws keep passing that restrict housing and increase home prices and rent?
- dghlsakjg 6y agoRenters vote less. Renters don't show up every week to city council meetings. Renters don't write objections to planning proposals.
- leafmeal 6y agoThey touch on this sort of indirectly, but homeowners aren't the only objectors. Often NIMBYs don't like development because they don't want to live next to a tall apartment building with lower income people, for example.
- missedthecue 6y agoBecause it's not very intuitive to most people that things like zoning, rent control, and laws against gentrification are anti-renter.
- lopatin 6y agoWhy is it that our Chicago buildings that keep collapsing?
- umeshunni 6y agoThis isn't really a problem. Building new housing is illegal in 80% of San Fransisco anyway: https://twitter.com/erikbryn/status/1006159415970549760 https://twitter.com/erikbryn/status/1006159415970549760
- balozi 6y agoRemember that the people that create and enforce these rules are the same people in charge of all the other rules that govern San Franciscans' lives. Look carefully and you'll see the same designs in transportation, education , policing, etc. It doesn't stop at housing.
- rdtwo 6y agoI’m surprised it’s not 100%
- m1117 6y agoThe best looking ones probably
- ic0n0cl4st 6y agoNobody: HN: san francisco should be torn down entirely, including its parks, and replaced with 100-story soul less buildings so we can all work at advertising and copycat social media startups. The average HN commenter is an ayn randian fetishist who hates San Francisco and has endless drivel of right-wing party line bulllllshit to spew about how to ruin us. San Francisco is more than your shitty tech startup.
- antattack 6y ago"These days, many people who don't have explicitly racist motivations support zoning laws because they like the status quo, even though the status quo bans the construction of affordable housing in most of the city." I don't think status quo is the only reason. Property values near more dense development are likely to suffer.
- qwerty456127 6y agoIt always baffled me how people make expensiveness mandatory by law so nobody can get a home without at least some decades of mortgage. Some times I envy primitive people who would just build a hut when and where they need from what they find around and no authorities would come after them and say "you must buy a landed spaceship to live in and spend the rest of your life paying for it".
- dirtyid 6y ago80% of Toronto basement units are illegal as well. Gov looks away because housing supply more pressing. Sometimes I envy Japan, enough disasters like earth quakes and hurricanes for urban resets. Urban environments are just like forests, sometimes you need a controlled burn to rebalance ecosystem. Entrenched bad forestry and urban policies lead to bad environments. Sometimes you just need an act of god to shake things up.