4 ms·
That's probably true everywhere. If you build for certain requirements, your building won't meet a different set of requirements.
by neolog 6y ago
That'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.