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That'll never happen. One of the main reasons SF even has a housing crisis is because they refuse to allow people to build multiple levels upwards bc of zoning.
by edm0nd 5y ago
That'll never happen. One of the main reasons SF even has a housing crisis is because they refuse to allow people to build multiple levels upwards bc of zoning.
- bradly 5y ago> That'll never happen. One of the main reasons SF even has a housing crisis is because they refuse to allow people to build multiple levels upwards bc of zoning. Couldn't the Gov. sign another law stopping that as well? Similar to the legislation around single family housing lots?
- conanbatt 5y agoWhat you have now was passed by Gov.
- bradly 5y agoYes. That was the point of my comment :)
- smugma 5y agoWhat's more feasible is that CA HCD (Housing and Community Development) rejects SF's plan as not consistent with state law, as they recently did to LA[0] (even though LA's plan was really pro-housing overall, there were some equity issues that HCD was unhappy with). SF is considering allowing any property have a 4-plex (6 if at a corner), which may be used as a poison pill to continue to restrict development [1]. [0] https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2022-02-24/la-needs-to-rezone-for-a-lot-more-housing https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2022-02-24/la... [1] https://reason.com/2022/03/09/san-franciscos-efforts-to-block-duplexes-could-force-it-to-allow-skyscrapers-instead/ https://reason.com/2022/03/09/san-franciscos-efforts-to-bloc...
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoOkay - serious question - with current building codes - how does anyone tear down a house in SF and rebuild anything - let alone split a narrow lot in 2 and build two duplexes on that? The duplexes would be like 30% stairs, right? This seems like a $5M+ investment to end up with 4 500 sqft 1-window studios (at best) that would be absurdly cashflow negative, and none of them would sell for $1M... SB 9 economically does not seem to work out for almost every lot in SF proper. So if SF doesn't want anything to happen - wouldn't the best thing be to just keep things as they are? The SF proposal similarly seems like garbage. The vast majority of homes cannot just magically become quadplexes. There's not enough stairs to pass fire code. And, importantly, it's impossible to build enough. On another note - isn't part of SB 9 that lots cannot be joined? If you want to build a practical multifamily that actually adds density - in SF - isn't it basically necessary to join AT LEAST 3 lots? LA has bigger lots - so there has been tons of 3-storey tri-plexes that are quite livable being built. The economics are there. Unless building codes change - how does SF do anything like this? The real solution seems like to massively incentivize 5 over 1 mixed use complexes. Then you end up with cities closer to Berlin & Paris & Madrid which are all substantially denser than almost all US cities AND more livable.
- gkop 5y ago> So if SF doesn't want anything to happen - wouldn't the best thing be to just keep things as they are? Yes
- thatfrenchguy 5y agoGiven the size of the lots in SF, you could easily build 4-plexes that have a lot of windows. They already exist in all the pre-WW2 neighborhoods! Four stories will easily give you four units.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y agoYes - but how many houses could you tear down and build something like that with CURRENT building codes? IIUC, you need 6 ft of space on each side of the lot for fire code. That takes away the majority of available floor space. You could build something 4-storeys, but after stairs, you'd be left with half as much leasable floor space...
- manquer 5y agoCounty and city also have powers to decide their local planning rules, so it will not be simple would be guess to have state level rule.