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Wow that's great news! The level of bureaucratic creep that has been imposed on property owners is actually unbelievable to me. I obviously understand some re

Wow that's great news! The level of bureaucratic creep that has been imposed on property owners is actually unbelievable to me. I obviously understand some regulations (you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously), but cities have creeped themselves into all-powerful overseers. Most cities now have the power to tell you what kind of house you can build, how you can paint it, how you can landscape it, what kinds of cars you can keep in your own driveway, what you can do in your leisure time on the property etc. It is insane. I honestly hope there is a property-rights case that abolishes all of this. If I own the property, then it's mine. If I want to collect old VW busses and park them in the front yard, I don't care what effect this has on my neighbors property value. This is my home. If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country.

ethanbond 4y ago
For what it's worth, most zoning is created by property owners, too. Gotta preserve their investment at the expense of our nation's growth.
- gretch 4y ago
  As a property owner, I've always found this to be remarkably short sighted. If the city booms, land value goes up. E.g. Manhattan. Trying to keep your small suburb a small suburb isn't maximizing investor value. edit: to responders, yes I'm aware houses have other value. My comment is in response the parent comment that specifically addresses investment value protection aspect.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    Some people just want to live in a small suburb
    - Ar-Curunir 4y ago
      Except when that small suburb is in a not-small town (Eg: many parts of SF, Berkeley Sunnyvale, etc.)
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      Well some other people have decided that that's not allowed.
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      I get some people want to live in a small suburb. Small suburbs are often quiet and peaceful. But small suburbs are also inefficient, environmentally unfriendly, and expensive to support so much road/electricity/water/etc infrastructure for so few people. Especially if the voting base of the suburb is effectively strangling their children by ensuring their kids will never be able to themselves afford a life there. It makes sense to me that the broader voting base is seeing they no longer benefit from a minority of suburban voters with a hold on city-level politics, and thereby vote in state-level politicians to force the issue. edited to add: I'm sympathetic to the suburban homeowners near/in cities who are under pressure for their lifestyle and environment to end up rapidly changing within their generation due to economic local growth. I just don't think it's reasonable that that sympathy should extend to supporting their wants over the clear consequences of refusing to capitulate to the majority's needs for more housing.
      - uoaei 4y ago
        If we taxed suburbs by how much they actually drain city budgets, no one would want to live in suburbs. It is by now a well-studied fact that suburbs are effectively subsidized by metropolitan cores. Makers and takers, indeed... Here's a video about some of the studies done to come to this conclusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI The folks at Strong Towns also talk a lot about productive land use measured as property tax income per square foot. They say it is the gold standard way to make sure your budget remains solvent and you can provide the services people need to make your city thrive. Obviously this means building up.
        sokoloff 4y ago
        I hear that a lot from the StrongTowns-types, but I also observe many of the (financially independent) cities and towns that surround Boston are all financially doing extremely well, in contrast to the prediction that their lower density, less intensely urban development patterns would fall apart once the town/small city is fully built out and goes into maintenance mode.
        4y ago
    - GalenErso 4y ago
      You can't have your cake and eat it too.
      - dahfizz 4y ago
        Why? It works pretty much everywhere in America except CA. 61% of Americans live in a town of less than 50,000 people.[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nation-of-small-towns.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nat...
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        How's that deal with attached suburb-cities and town-in-city-enclaves? Are parts of major metro areas excluded? I bet 300-400 thousand of the people in my metro area live in such sub-50k "towns" but actually they live in the city—go a few blocks over and it looks exactly the same, but now you're "in the city" instead of "in a town". Perhaps that many again live in places far-flung enough that you could maybe count them as independent towns, but aside from local fast food workers they all commute to the city for work.
        Spivak 4y ago
        If you include the burbs as part of the definition of city then what are we even talking about? If they're completely detached then they're not suburbs.
        pwinnski 4y ago
        That's the point, I think. Most metro areas are made up of a collection of many incorporated areas which collectively make up what people think of as the city. Some of those incorporated areas are large, some are small, and you might not realize you're driving from one to another since nothing changes except which legal entity collects the property taxes.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Everybody (for certain values of "everybody", I guess I should specify because this is HN) wants 0.5-5 acres on the edge of a nice, compact city. A little land, no close neighbors, but still very close to everything and the city itself is nice & pleasant to visit. But if too many people get it, you don't have a compact city anymore, you have a sprawl hellscape that's neither country nor city, but a habitat for cars.
      - nsxwolf 4y ago
        I live in what you would probably call a sprawl hellscape, and I love it.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        Having to hop in a car to do either human things or nature things makes it the worst of both worlds. Not enough land to do anything with, view is just a bunch of cookie-cutter houses with boring landscaping, lawn-mower noises all weekend long. Anything worth doing starts with a 15 minute drive, minimum, each way, and the view out the window the whole way is mostly parking lots and roads. And fast food signs. But I don't have enough money for private school for all the kids, and all the top 50% of school districts for like a 200 mile radius are in the burbs. So. I "love" them.
    - eli 4y ago
      And many more would like to be able to afford a place to live
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Value can be non-monetary, particularly for owner-occupied non-investment property.
  - singlow 4y ago
    A little game theory may come to play though. If the whole city booms and just my neighborhood stays single-family large lot, my price/sqft may increase drastically, and I may get better return on any improvements I do to my property based on my investment profile. If instead my neighborhood is converted to apartments or high-density condos, I might not have the capital to take advantage of those opportunities but my single family house becomes undesirable in that zone. I am forced to sell to a developer in order to maximize return. I probably still make money, but it might be less then I could have made in the other scenario, and I am unable to use the house for my own residence up until the time I need to liquidate. So its not necessarily illogical.
    - fragsworth 4y ago
      No, it's almost entirely short-sighted, at least in terms of economics. First, I've never heard of anyone being forced to sell, unless there's some truly huge and necessary infrastructure development. You are generally offered some money by a developer and you personally decide whether or not to take it. Sometimes people can be stubborn and there are plenty of examples of large high-rises built around tiny structures that wouldn't sell. Also, your price per square foot goes up fastest directly adjacent to the largest developments. If your neighborhood can economically support larger buildings, that directly increases the amount of money developers will pay for your land. The less development you allow your neighborhood to have, the less your neighborhood will be able to support large developments. You want your neighborhood to support large developments. You may want to hold on to YOUR house as an investment, and to keep from a property tax re-assessment, but it makes no economic sense to prevent your neighbors from building higher if they want to.
      - anticensor 4y ago
        > I've never heard of anyone being forced to sell Maybe not in the USA but certain countries have a special emergency nationalisation procedure that has payment first, skips the consent and leaves the challenge to after-the-fact.
      - singlow 4y ago
        I never meant that anyone was forced to sell, legally. Only that the economics forced them to sell at a different schedule or terms than they would have preferred.
  - rcpt 4y ago
    It's the variance. If you're already 5x leveraged into a single asset in a single location whose value is wholly outside of your control you don't need the extra risk of redevelopment
  - hemloc_io 4y ago
    It can be when you can artificially induce a housing shortage. E.g. I have a friend whose area has become extremely popular for city people and prices have gone up a ton over the past couple years. Their father owns a bunch of property in the area and sits on a bunch of local board, and specifically lobbies to block housing development to protect their "future" that's locked up in these properties. (Mostly SFH in suburbs.) It's an explicit goal for some people. As long as demand is high, b/c of mostly immutable factors, schools/weather/job opportunities etc and people have the money to spend then prices will go up if you keep housing supply low.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > zoning is created by property owners Supported. Individual property owners rarely have external zoning power.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Um, sure. If you take away the property-owner lobby, the vast majority of truly bad zoning wouldn't exist. I'm comfortable ascribing causality directly to the force which, if removed, would eliminate the effect.
- amluto 4y ago
  This is a great example of a financial misunderstanding. Land use restrictions reduce land value. Seriously, compare property prices per unit lot area in fancy, restricted communities (e.g. Atherton) to neighboring lots in less restricted, less fancy areas (e.g. Menlo Park or Fair Oaks, hah). Land in Atherton is worth less. Which makes sense — you can’t do as much with it. At best, single family zoning preserves the value of a (depreciating!) house to a limited extent.
- jeffwask 4y ago
  100%. It's NIMBYs who drive the creation of these laws, actively block multi-family housing, prevent development of new roads and resources, etc... Now with large corporate ownership in residential real estate the problem has gotten worse as houses are investments not places for people to live.
- grumple 4y ago
  Zoning is also used to preserve the character of a neighborhood. Unfortunately, that typically includes racial character. The US has a long history of zoning as a proxy for redlining and racism [0]. 0. https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/06/17/exclusionary-zoning-its-effect-on-racial-discrimination-in-the-housing-market/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/06/17/...
  - eli 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Character is the worst part of any area. They are preserving old buildings that cannot be made energy efficient without a large investment, while making that investment illegal as well. All in name of preserving a building just because it is 'old'. Sure there are a few buildings that are historic and should be preserved, but the vast majority are only old, and have no other historic value.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      This position would be a lot more popular if 99% of new development wasn't hideous beyond words and an affront to human dignity. People want to preserve old stuff because (and only when) it's beautiful, but there's no reason we couldn't and shouldn't be building beautiful stuff today!
mschuster91 4y ago
> how you can landscape it, what kinds of cars you can keep in your own driveway These two at least make some sense. The former, landscaping restrictions, can be used to prevent people from creating groundwater issues or flood risks, and the latter... no one wants a neighbor in a residential zone keeping broken-down trash cars out in the open. Some things have to be regulated even in a relatively free society because otherwise the potential is too high for greedy or stupid people to ruin everyone else's life.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  No, they don't. These exact sorts of "well nobody likes" arguments are why the bureaucracy has the reach it does and CA has the problems it does. Yes, society probably won't crumble if we cave to your whining and regulate your pet issue of the minute but regulating in this manner is like littering in the park, if everyone does it the park is ruined. If people are poisoning the groundwater or creating other "off their property" problems then fine them accordingly. If they aren't then screw off. None of this "the thing you want to isn't already on the approved list so you have to go through an onerous and expensive process of proving it won't hurt anything" garbage.
  - thepasswordis 4y ago
    >Yes, society probably won't crumble if we cave to your whining and regulate your pet issue of the minute I disagree, and I think this sort of nonsense is a cornerstone of why society is crumbling. People don't look at their homes as homes they look at them as temporary investments that they hope to sell to somebody else for more money in the future. People don't end up investing (in the societal, emotional sense) into their communities and their homes because they recognize that they don't really own them. Give the rights back to the people to own their homes and they start to care again. Tell property investors that I'm sorry, but actually you might have to deal with a guy who doesn't give a shit about weeds and likes to work on his car in the driveway next to your investment and maybe houses stop being such a safe speculative vehicle.
    - 4y ago
mc32 4y ago
Goodbye "high-rises can't be built in SF because they cast an unsightly shadow". But also hope it doesn't mean California gets to regulate San Jose's "green belt".
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  isn't building high-rises in SF precarious because the ground is soft, with inadequate bedrock? are there also concerns about aesthetics, if i understand?
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    I would expect there to be a viable range of building heights (and building techniques) on the spectrum of single storey house to highrise.
  - jedberg 4y ago
    From what I understand it's about the same as building in Tokyo. With modern technology and proper materials you can build a safe building. But the residential tower currently sinking into the ground indicates that either that isn't actually true or the rules aren't being enforced.
    - mc32 4y ago
      Yeah, that one was a case of taking shortcuts. The bedrock was 200"[1] down but the studies they used said that wasn't necessary. So NOW they are taking steps to introduce new pilons that go all the way down to bedrock and will be braced to the current, faultily installed ones. [1] Not sure the exact depth, but whatever, they went like half way down to save on money.
    - mullingitover 4y ago
      I think it's more likely that corners were cut with the Millennium Tower, or the engineers made an error of some kind. None of the other big buildings in SF are connected to the bedrock. None of the towers in LA have supports connected to the bedrock. Heck, the Burj Khalifa isn't connected to bedrock. They all use friction piles, and these can work fine if they're done properly.
Finnucane 4y ago
>(you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously) You can get darn close in some places. I mean, in Texas, residential damage and evacuations from chemical plant explosions are practically routine. I live in a neighborhood surrounded by biotech labs, which tend not to blow up, though we do joke a bit about being zombie-apocalypse-ground-zero (also, every available developable lot gets sucked up by a new lab project). And of course, in some rural areas, the proximity of farms waste lagoons and low-income neighborhoods is a serious issue.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  I mean, in Texas, residential damage and evacuations from chemical plant explosions are practically routine. See also: Charleston, West Virginia. Locals sometimes call the Kawawha Valley "Chemical Valley." Kids growing up learn different lyrics to The Mickey Mouse Club: M - I - C — Methyl isocyanate! K - E - Y — It's why we evacuate!
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >You can get darn close in some places. I mean, in Texas, residential damage and evacuations from chemical plant explosions are practically routine. Because the plants always got built on the outskirts and then the outskirts expanded. The same thing used to happen in the formerly industrial parts of CA before CA kicked out most of its heavy industry over the decades.
jimbob45 4y ago
Most cities now have the power to tell you what kind of house you can build, how you can paint it, how you can landscape it, what kinds of cars you can keep in your own driveway, what you can do in your leisure time on the property etc. In my experience, the city regulations around what you’ve listed are always sensible. It’s the HOA regulations that tend to be kooky and capricious.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Pretty much any city that was rich in at any point in the latter half of the 20th century has a ton of regulations that boil down to "if you couldn't get away with it in a gated community you can't get away with it here." No one regulation is onerous on its face but the sum total of them are damn near impossible to comply with unless being a high class homeowner is your hobby so this just results in discretionary enforcement which is complaint driven. And of course because the .gov doesn't want their snitches getting stitches they won't tell you who complained so you can't even go attempt to work things out with your neighbors. Karen complains about your shed and you're getting fined $50/day until you tear the thing down not knowing that she'd have been fine if you just painted it.
- freedomben 4y ago
  Your experience sounds outdated. It was like that 10 years ago, even 5 years ago in many cities, but in the last few years so many cities have gotten into HOA territory. Even small cities in places you wouldn't expect.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    That kind of timeline is extreme and definitely doesn't pass the smell test. Sounds like a whitewashed variation of "big gubmint takin over as nanny state" reactionary predilections.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
> If I want to collect old VW busses and park them in the front yard, I don't care what effect this has on my neighbors property value. This is my home. If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. Many (most?) of these types of rules are imposed by HOAs made up of property owners, not the city.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  You should read your city's code. Most cities have now adopted the same restrictions that used to be exclusive to HOAs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- singlow 4y ago
  I think most larger cities have rules against parking vehicles in a yard visible to the street. In the driveway is usually ok. And converting more of your yard into driveway is usually restricted by zoning as well.
nlavezzo 4y ago
> If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. The reverse could also be said - if you don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country. You can do pretty much whatever you want in rural areas without significantly impacting your neighbors. People living together in a small area do get to decide together what they want that area to be like within reason. Creating some guidelines to create a desirable, pleasant and safe environment for them and their families is totally reasonable and has been the historical norm for most of the history of civilization. Of course things can get out of hand and over-reaching. If the people decide together to change it though, they can. I don't think the solution is just nuking all zoning regulations from orbit.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Where this breaks down is cities that do not even have space for their own offspring. Again sticking with my own city of Berkeley, demographic processes, birth rate combined with increasing longevity, means that Berkeley has been exporting young people for 50 years, causing housing crises in those places, too. In what way is that equitable to either the offspring in question or the people who already lived in the other places?
  - AdrianB1 4y ago
    All developed countries have negative demographic growth, if people want to get into very few places this does not make it right. At the opposite end you find the example of hundreds of villages in Italy that are deserted (and many more in less famous countries), do you say they are also exporting population?
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  Again this is where we are getting into what it means to own something. Do I own the property or not? If my neighbors want to get together and buy my house from me because they want to do something with it, then they are by all means allowed to do so.
whakim 4y ago
The idea that property rights are totally inviolable doesn't really hold water when you think about it a little more. Stuff like electricity, running water, trash and recycling, roads, parks, schools, public safety, the technology behind your fridge/oven/heating/AC etc. only exist because of decades or even hundreds of years of robust public investment. Without any of that, you wouldn't even have a house!
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  What is the relation between property rights and services? Paying for consumption versus having property rights is orthogonal.
  - whakim 4y ago
    The relationship is that private property only exists because of a system that enforces it and provides many of the services that lend it value. Whatever you think of this system, the two are deeply intertwined.
    - CydeWeys 4y ago
      And, crucially, the relevant services all have easements that supercede your desires to do whatever you want on your property. You don't have the right to NOT have a powerline going down the street on your property, or a city sewer line, or a sidewalk, etc.
    - AdrianB1 4y ago
      So the next logical step would be that property tax to be extended over all your property, not just real estate. We already pay property tax on cars in Europe, but not yet on bank accounts, clothes on our back, collection of family photos, etc. Probably with you guys, it's already on the way.
      - anticensor 4y ago
        Cars are registered property, just like houses. Clothes and family photos are not. How would you tax them without registering titles for them?
scruple 4y ago
> If I want to collect old VW busses and park them in the front yard, I don't care what effect this has on my neighbors property value. This is my home. If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. I don't like that we have to have laws like this in society anymore than you do. But you're kind of ignoring Chesterton's fence here. I've lived next to places like you're describing, and I don't mean trash heaps like you see in rural parts of America, though I've lived next to them, too. I mean collectors who simply fall behind on preventative maintenance for mundane reasons. So I don't care until I'm forced to... Which is typically when the rats show up.
- lovecg 4y ago
  This argument is a strawman though. Reasonable restrictions are fine, but in practice you get neighbors arguing about what kind of tile you’re allowed to put on your porch roof. If you ever listen in on local city planning/design meetings it’s pretty illuminating.
rcpt 4y ago
> you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously Actually we have oil derricks in the middle of residential neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
- munificent 4y ago
  As far as I know, pumping crude doesn't produce the same pollution and nearby collateral damage that processing chemicals does. Source: Grew up in Texas surrounded by mostly harmless pump jacks and then moved to Louisiana in Cancer Alley.
  - tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago
    Until there's an oil spill, fracking discharge, earthquake (from fracking), or refinery explosion like in Houston. Houston has both petrochem refining and chemical plants with people living in "sacrifice zones".
  - rcpt 4y ago
    We have some refineries right up against homes in Wilmington and the bad parts of Long Beach. In either case, the fact that zoning laws aren't stopping this but are taken as seriously as laws of physics when it comes to apartments shows that they're mostly a scam
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Just the wells themselves are prone to leaking lots of toxic gases, and a lot of the modern extraction procedures have additional risks too. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-03-05/deserted-oil-wells-los-angeles-toxic-fumes-cleanup-costs https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-03-05/deserte... Modern epidemiology also enables really accurate tracking of the increase in asthma and other health problems near wells: https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2021-06-02/urban-oil-wells-linked-to-asthma-and-other-health-problems-in-los-angeles https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2021-06-02/urban...
- tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago
  Yeap. "Gasland" is a good documentary
strawhatguy 4y ago
Yeah, no kidding, no residential zoning at all? Hard to believe it's CA, but good for them! This will vastly improve the housing situation, if CA has sense enough to keep it this way.
- tigen 4y ago
  Isn't this misleading? It's not "no zoning" it's specifically required to be low-income or whatever housing. Right?
  - uoaei 4y ago
    Mandating one zone is like mandating zero zones in the "fish asks, 'what's water?'" way.
nemo44x 4y ago
Actually it strips power away from the people making us less democratic. What will happen is developers with political connection/money to get their people elected, will have fewer barriers to their profits now. This is a transfer of power from the people, that is democracy, to the oligarchy. > I don't care what effect this has on my neighbors property value. That is such an awful attitude and a big problem of what is wrong in the country today. We live in communities and communities agree to certain values. It's about well more than just you and what you want to do.
- gorbypark 4y ago
  I'm always of the mind that it's harder for developers to have connections at a state level compared to a local level. It's more believable that a local developer has connections to city council in a single city and the amount of palms to grease is much less. Moving up to state level (especially in CA) the amount of money / influence would greatly increase to be able to influence the new zoning regulators. Not saying it can't happen, but it would be more of an undertaking (imo).
jdmtheNth 4y ago
And when your street starts looking like San Francisco? You just abandon ship after encouraging this nonsense?
- kevinburke 4y ago
  San Francisco is a good case study in what happens when you don't build enough housing - people who were previously able to afford cheap apartments now can't and do all of their business out in the street. Other cities and states have worse problems with drug use but don't have problems with homelessness because housing is more affordable there.
  - jdmtheNth 4y ago
    That's one way of looking at it, assuming you want to encourage needy people to take over your city. Or you could look at it the same way New York and Colorado are looking at it: https://www.voanews.com/a/new-york-mayor-says-no-room-in-his-city-for-migrants/6919855.html https://www.voanews.com/a/new-york-mayor-says-no-room-in-his...
    - kevinburke 4y ago
      I'd like people with substance problems to get help for their problems, and I'd like for everyone in the richest country in the world to be able to sleep with a roof over their head, instead of in the cold and rain.
      - jdmtheNth 4y ago
        I can absolutely agree with you on both of those things. Until everyone in North America has adequate food, shelter, and medical care, we need to insist that our children and country-people come first.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Yeah man I was shocked here in Texas on how much crap I had to go through with the city to build a small workshop in my backyard. It was absolutely ridiculous since it was a permanent structure (stone and wood with concrete foundation). Good for California and I hope other states follow suit. Austin has two failed attempts to set up rezoning in the past 15 years or so, millions of dollars spent on the plans that ultimately failed.
bwestergard 4y ago
"If I own the property, then it's mine." I'm assuming you are U.S. citizen and not super familiar with the common law; apologies up front if that isn't the case. Property law principles in the common law are vastly more complicated than this. There are all sorts of ways that your right to use real estate as you wish can be affected by past practices, hazy conventions, etc. Check out "easements", "mineral rights", "air rights", "adverse possession", and the sometimes elaborate processes of establishing title and specific property interests in particular jurisdictions. And many of those limitations are logically prior to U.S. specific legislation around zoning, restrictive covenants, etc.
TedShiller 4y ago
Wow that’s actually terrible news. Who wants more pollution crowding traffic and crime?
runnerup 4y ago
> you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously Lots of people disagree with this! There are tons of chemical processing facilities that pop up near my neighborhood, particularly rail car cleaning. Can smell a different chemical every day depending on what they’re spraying out of the rail cars. La Porte, TX Pasadena, TX Lake Jackson, TX There are both new subdivisions and new processing facilities going up all the time. ProPublica ran some big articles on it, absolutely skyrocketing cancer rates around here.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ethanbond 4y ago

For what it's worth, most zoning is created by property owners, too. Gotta preserve their investment at the expense of our nation's growth.

gretch 4y ago
As a property owner, I've always found this to be remarkably short sighted. If the city booms, land value goes up. E.g. Manhattan. Trying to keep your small suburb a small suburb isn't maximizing investor value. edit: to responders, yes I'm aware houses have other value. My comment is in response the parent comment that specifically addresses investment value protection aspect.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  Some people just want to live in a small suburb
  - Ar-Curunir 4y ago
    Except when that small suburb is in a not-small town (Eg: many parts of SF, Berkeley Sunnyvale, etc.)
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    Well some other people have decided that that's not allowed.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    I get some people want to live in a small suburb. Small suburbs are often quiet and peaceful. But small suburbs are also inefficient, environmentally unfriendly, and expensive to support so much road/electricity/water/etc infrastructure for so few people. Especially if the voting base of the suburb is effectively strangling their children by ensuring their kids will never be able to themselves afford a life there. It makes sense to me that the broader voting base is seeing they no longer benefit from a minority of suburban voters with a hold on city-level politics, and thereby vote in state-level politicians to force the issue. edited to add: I'm sympathetic to the suburban homeowners near/in cities who are under pressure for their lifestyle and environment to end up rapidly changing within their generation due to economic local growth. I just don't think it's reasonable that that sympathy should extend to supporting their wants over the clear consequences of refusing to capitulate to the majority's needs for more housing.
    - uoaei 4y ago
      If we taxed suburbs by how much they actually drain city budgets, no one would want to live in suburbs. It is by now a well-studied fact that suburbs are effectively subsidized by metropolitan cores. Makers and takers, indeed... Here's a video about some of the studies done to come to this conclusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI The folks at Strong Towns also talk a lot about productive land use measured as property tax income per square foot. They say it is the gold standard way to make sure your budget remains solvent and you can provide the services people need to make your city thrive. Obviously this means building up.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        I hear that a lot from the StrongTowns-types, but I also observe many of the (financially independent) cities and towns that surround Boston are all financially doing extremely well, in contrast to the prediction that their lower density, less intensely urban development patterns would fall apart once the town/small city is fully built out and goes into maintenance mode.
        4y ago
  - GalenErso 4y ago
    You can't have your cake and eat it too.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      Why? It works pretty much everywhere in America except CA. 61% of Americans live in a town of less than 50,000 people.[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nation-of-small-towns.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nat...
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        How's that deal with attached suburb-cities and town-in-city-enclaves? Are parts of major metro areas excluded? I bet 300-400 thousand of the people in my metro area live in such sub-50k "towns" but actually they live in the city—go a few blocks over and it looks exactly the same, but now you're "in the city" instead of "in a town". Perhaps that many again live in places far-flung enough that you could maybe count them as independent towns, but aside from local fast food workers they all commute to the city for work.
        Spivak 4y ago
        If you include the burbs as part of the definition of city then what are we even talking about? If they're completely detached then they're not suburbs.
        pwinnski 4y ago
        That's the point, I think. Most metro areas are made up of a collection of many incorporated areas which collectively make up what people think of as the city. Some of those incorporated areas are large, some are small, and you might not realize you're driving from one to another since nothing changes except which legal entity collects the property taxes.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
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  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Everybody (for certain values of "everybody", I guess I should specify because this is HN) wants 0.5-5 acres on the edge of a nice, compact city. A little land, no close neighbors, but still very close to everything and the city itself is nice & pleasant to visit. But if too many people get it, you don't have a compact city anymore, you have a sprawl hellscape that's neither country nor city, but a habitat for cars.
    - nsxwolf 4y ago
      I live in what you would probably call a sprawl hellscape, and I love it.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        Having to hop in a car to do either human things or nature things makes it the worst of both worlds. Not enough land to do anything with, view is just a bunch of cookie-cutter houses with boring landscaping, lawn-mower noises all weekend long. Anything worth doing starts with a 15 minute drive, minimum, each way, and the view out the window the whole way is mostly parking lots and roads. And fast food signs. But I don't have enough money for private school for all the kids, and all the top 50% of school districts for like a 200 mile radius are in the burbs. So. I "love" them.
  - eli 4y ago
    And many more would like to be able to afford a place to live
- kube-system 4y ago
  Value can be non-monetary, particularly for owner-occupied non-investment property.
- singlow 4y ago
  A little game theory may come to play though. If the whole city booms and just my neighborhood stays single-family large lot, my price/sqft may increase drastically, and I may get better return on any improvements I do to my property based on my investment profile. If instead my neighborhood is converted to apartments or high-density condos, I might not have the capital to take advantage of those opportunities but my single family house becomes undesirable in that zone. I am forced to sell to a developer in order to maximize return. I probably still make money, but it might be less then I could have made in the other scenario, and I am unable to use the house for my own residence up until the time I need to liquidate. So its not necessarily illogical.
  - fragsworth 4y ago
    No, it's almost entirely short-sighted, at least in terms of economics. First, I've never heard of anyone being forced to sell, unless there's some truly huge and necessary infrastructure development. You are generally offered some money by a developer and you personally decide whether or not to take it. Sometimes people can be stubborn and there are plenty of examples of large high-rises built around tiny structures that wouldn't sell. Also, your price per square foot goes up fastest directly adjacent to the largest developments. If your neighborhood can economically support larger buildings, that directly increases the amount of money developers will pay for your land. The less development you allow your neighborhood to have, the less your neighborhood will be able to support large developments. You want your neighborhood to support large developments. You may want to hold on to YOUR house as an investment, and to keep from a property tax re-assessment, but it makes no economic sense to prevent your neighbors from building higher if they want to.
    - anticensor 4y ago
      > I've never heard of anyone being forced to sell Maybe not in the USA but certain countries have a special emergency nationalisation procedure that has payment first, skips the consent and leaves the challenge to after-the-fact.
    - singlow 4y ago
      I never meant that anyone was forced to sell, legally. Only that the economics forced them to sell at a different schedule or terms than they would have preferred.
- rcpt 4y ago
  It's the variance. If you're already 5x leveraged into a single asset in a single location whose value is wholly outside of your control you don't need the extra risk of redevelopment
- hemloc_io 4y ago
  It can be when you can artificially induce a housing shortage. E.g. I have a friend whose area has become extremely popular for city people and prices have gone up a ton over the past couple years. Their father owns a bunch of property in the area and sits on a bunch of local board, and specifically lobbies to block housing development to protect their "future" that's locked up in these properties. (Mostly SFH in suburbs.) It's an explicit goal for some people. As long as demand is high, b/c of mostly immutable factors, schools/weather/job opportunities etc and people have the money to spend then prices will go up if you keep housing supply low.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> zoning is created by property owners Supported. Individual property owners rarely have external zoning power.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Um, sure. If you take away the property-owner lobby, the vast majority of truly bad zoning wouldn't exist. I'm comfortable ascribing causality directly to the force which, if removed, would eliminate the effect.
amluto 4y ago
This is a great example of a financial misunderstanding. Land use restrictions reduce land value. Seriously, compare property prices per unit lot area in fancy, restricted communities (e.g. Atherton) to neighboring lots in less restricted, less fancy areas (e.g. Menlo Park or Fair Oaks, hah). Land in Atherton is worth less. Which makes sense — you can’t do as much with it. At best, single family zoning preserves the value of a (depreciating!) house to a limited extent.
jeffwask 4y ago
100%. It's NIMBYs who drive the creation of these laws, actively block multi-family housing, prevent development of new roads and resources, etc... Now with large corporate ownership in residential real estate the problem has gotten worse as houses are investments not places for people to live.
grumple 4y ago
Zoning is also used to preserve the character of a neighborhood. Unfortunately, that typically includes racial character. The US has a long history of zoning as a proxy for redlining and racism [0]. 0. https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/06/17/exclusionary-zoning-its-effect-on-racial-discrimination-in-the-housing-market/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/06/17/...
- eli 4y ago
  [flagged]
- bluGill 4y ago
  Character is the worst part of any area. They are preserving old buildings that cannot be made energy efficient without a large investment, while making that investment illegal as well. All in name of preserving a building just because it is 'old'. Sure there are a few buildings that are historic and should be preserved, but the vast majority are only old, and have no other historic value.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    This position would be a lot more popular if 99% of new development wasn't hideous beyond words and an affront to human dignity. People want to preserve old stuff because (and only when) it's beautiful, but there's no reason we couldn't and shouldn't be building beautiful stuff today!

mschuster91 4y ago

> how you can landscape it, what kinds of cars you can keep in your own driveway These two at least make some sense. The former, landscaping restrictions, can be used to prevent people from creating groundwater issues or flood risks, and the latter... no one wants a neighbor in a residential zone keeping broken-down trash cars out in the open. Some things have to be regulated even in a relatively free society because otherwise the potential is too high for greedy or stupid people to ruin everyone else's life.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
No, they don't. These exact sorts of "well nobody likes" arguments are why the bureaucracy has the reach it does and CA has the problems it does. Yes, society probably won't crumble if we cave to your whining and regulate your pet issue of the minute but regulating in this manner is like littering in the park, if everyone does it the park is ruined. If people are poisoning the groundwater or creating other "off their property" problems then fine them accordingly. If they aren't then screw off. None of this "the thing you want to isn't already on the approved list so you have to go through an onerous and expensive process of proving it won't hurt anything" garbage.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  >Yes, society probably won't crumble if we cave to your whining and regulate your pet issue of the minute I disagree, and I think this sort of nonsense is a cornerstone of why society is crumbling. People don't look at their homes as homes they look at them as temporary investments that they hope to sell to somebody else for more money in the future. People don't end up investing (in the societal, emotional sense) into their communities and their homes because they recognize that they don't really own them. Give the rights back to the people to own their homes and they start to care again. Tell property investors that I'm sorry, but actually you might have to deal with a guy who doesn't give a shit about weeds and likes to work on his car in the driveway next to your investment and maybe houses stop being such a safe speculative vehicle.
  - 4y ago

mc32 4y ago

Goodbye "high-rises can't be built in SF because they cast an unsightly shadow". But also hope it doesn't mean California gets to regulate San Jose's "green belt".

jjtheblunt 4y ago
isn't building high-rises in SF precarious because the ground is soft, with inadequate bedrock? are there also concerns about aesthetics, if i understand?
- barbazoo 4y ago
  I would expect there to be a viable range of building heights (and building techniques) on the spectrum of single storey house to highrise.
- jedberg 4y ago
  From what I understand it's about the same as building in Tokyo. With modern technology and proper materials you can build a safe building. But the residential tower currently sinking into the ground indicates that either that isn't actually true or the rules aren't being enforced.
  - mc32 4y ago
    Yeah, that one was a case of taking shortcuts. The bedrock was 200"[1] down but the studies they used said that wasn't necessary. So NOW they are taking steps to introduce new pilons that go all the way down to bedrock and will be braced to the current, faultily installed ones. [1] Not sure the exact depth, but whatever, they went like half way down to save on money.
  - mullingitover 4y ago
    I think it's more likely that corners were cut with the Millennium Tower, or the engineers made an error of some kind. None of the other big buildings in SF are connected to the bedrock. None of the towers in LA have supports connected to the bedrock. Heck, the Burj Khalifa isn't connected to bedrock. They all use friction piles, and these can work fine if they're done properly.

Finnucane 4y ago

>(you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously) You can get darn close in some places. I mean, in Texas, residential damage and evacuations from chemical plant explosions are practically routine. I live in a neighborhood surrounded by biotech labs, which tend not to blow up, though we do joke a bit about being zombie-apocalypse-ground-zero (also, every available developable lot gets sucked up by a new lab project). And of course, in some rural areas, the proximity of farms waste lagoons and low-income neighborhoods is a serious issue.

reaperducer 4y ago
I mean, in Texas, residential damage and evacuations from chemical plant explosions are practically routine. See also: Charleston, West Virginia. Locals sometimes call the Kawawha Valley "Chemical Valley." Kids growing up learn different lyrics to The Mickey Mouse Club: M - I - C — Methyl isocyanate! K - E - Y — It's why we evacuate!
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>You can get darn close in some places. I mean, in Texas, residential damage and evacuations from chemical plant explosions are practically routine. Because the plants always got built on the outskirts and then the outskirts expanded. The same thing used to happen in the formerly industrial parts of CA before CA kicked out most of its heavy industry over the decades.

jimbob45 4y ago

Most cities now have the power to tell you what kind of house you can build, how you can paint it, how you can landscape it, what kinds of cars you can keep in your own driveway, what you can do in your leisure time on the property etc. In my experience, the city regulations around what you’ve listed are always sensible. It’s the HOA regulations that tend to be kooky and capricious.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Pretty much any city that was rich in at any point in the latter half of the 20th century has a ton of regulations that boil down to "if you couldn't get away with it in a gated community you can't get away with it here." No one regulation is onerous on its face but the sum total of them are damn near impossible to comply with unless being a high class homeowner is your hobby so this just results in discretionary enforcement which is complaint driven. And of course because the .gov doesn't want their snitches getting stitches they won't tell you who complained so you can't even go attempt to work things out with your neighbors. Karen complains about your shed and you're getting fined $50/day until you tear the thing down not knowing that she'd have been fine if you just painted it.
freedomben 4y ago
Your experience sounds outdated. It was like that 10 years ago, even 5 years ago in many cities, but in the last few years so many cities have gotten into HOA territory. Even small cities in places you wouldn't expect.
- uoaei 4y ago
  That kind of timeline is extreme and definitely doesn't pass the smell test. Sounds like a whitewashed variation of "big gubmint takin over as nanny state" reactionary predilections.

insane_dreamer 4y ago

thepasswordis 4y ago
You should read your city's code. Most cities have now adopted the same restrictions that used to be exclusive to HOAs.
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singlow 4y ago
I think most larger cities have rules against parking vehicles in a yard visible to the street. In the driveway is usually ok. And converting more of your yard into driveway is usually restricted by zoning as well.

nlavezzo 4y ago

> If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. The reverse could also be said - if you don't want to deal with people deciding together that they want their community to have certain guidelines, move to the country. You can do pretty much whatever you want in rural areas without significantly impacting your neighbors. People living together in a small area do get to decide together what they want that area to be like within reason. Creating some guidelines to create a desirable, pleasant and safe environment for them and their families is totally reasonable and has been the historical norm for most of the history of civilization. Of course things can get out of hand and over-reaching. If the people decide together to change it though, they can. I don't think the solution is just nuking all zoning regulations from orbit.

jeffbee 4y ago
Where this breaks down is cities that do not even have space for their own offspring. Again sticking with my own city of Berkeley, demographic processes, birth rate combined with increasing longevity, means that Berkeley has been exporting young people for 50 years, causing housing crises in those places, too. In what way is that equitable to either the offspring in question or the people who already lived in the other places?
- AdrianB1 4y ago
  All developed countries have negative demographic growth, if people want to get into very few places this does not make it right. At the opposite end you find the example of hundreds of villages in Italy that are deserted (and many more in less famous countries), do you say they are also exporting population?
thepasswordis 4y ago
Again this is where we are getting into what it means to own something. Do I own the property or not? If my neighbors want to get together and buy my house from me because they want to do something with it, then they are by all means allowed to do so.

whakim 4y ago

The idea that property rights are totally inviolable doesn't really hold water when you think about it a little more. Stuff like electricity, running water, trash and recycling, roads, parks, schools, public safety, the technology behind your fridge/oven/heating/AC etc. only exist because of decades or even hundreds of years of robust public investment. Without any of that, you wouldn't even have a house!

AdrianB1 4y ago
What is the relation between property rights and services? Paying for consumption versus having property rights is orthogonal.
- whakim 4y ago
  The relationship is that private property only exists because of a system that enforces it and provides many of the services that lend it value. Whatever you think of this system, the two are deeply intertwined.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    And, crucially, the relevant services all have easements that supercede your desires to do whatever you want on your property. You don't have the right to NOT have a powerline going down the street on your property, or a city sewer line, or a sidewalk, etc.
  - AdrianB1 4y ago
    So the next logical step would be that property tax to be extended over all your property, not just real estate. We already pay property tax on cars in Europe, but not yet on bank accounts, clothes on our back, collection of family photos, etc. Probably with you guys, it's already on the way.
    - anticensor 4y ago
      Cars are registered property, just like houses. Clothes and family photos are not. How would you tax them without registering titles for them?

scruple 4y ago

> If I want to collect old VW busses and park them in the front yard, I don't care what effect this has on my neighbors property value. This is my home. If you don't want to deal with living near other people, move to the country. I don't like that we have to have laws like this in society anymore than you do. But you're kind of ignoring Chesterton's fence here. I've lived next to places like you're describing, and I don't mean trash heaps like you see in rural parts of America, though I've lived next to them, too. I mean collectors who simply fall behind on preventative maintenance for mundane reasons. So I don't care until I'm forced to... Which is typically when the rats show up.

lovecg 4y ago
This argument is a strawman though. Reasonable restrictions are fine, but in practice you get neighbors arguing about what kind of tile you’re allowed to put on your porch roof. If you ever listen in on local city planning/design meetings it’s pretty illuminating.

rcpt 4y ago

> you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously Actually we have oil derricks in the middle of residential neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

munificent 4y ago
As far as I know, pumping crude doesn't produce the same pollution and nearby collateral damage that processing chemicals does. Source: Grew up in Texas surrounded by mostly harmless pump jacks and then moved to Louisiana in Cancer Alley.
- tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago
  Until there's an oil spill, fracking discharge, earthquake (from fracking), or refinery explosion like in Houston. Houston has both petrochem refining and chemical plants with people living in "sacrifice zones".
- rcpt 4y ago
  We have some refineries right up against homes in Wilmington and the bad parts of Long Beach. In either case, the fact that zoning laws aren't stopping this but are taken as seriously as laws of physics when it comes to apartments shows that they're mostly a scam
- epistasis 4y ago
  Just the wells themselves are prone to leaking lots of toxic gases, and a lot of the modern extraction procedures have additional risks too. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-03-05/deserted-oil-wells-los-angeles-toxic-fumes-cleanup-costs https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-03-05/deserte... Modern epidemiology also enables really accurate tracking of the increase in asthma and other health problems near wells: https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2021-06-02/urban-oil-wells-linked-to-asthma-and-other-health-problems-in-los-angeles https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2021-06-02/urban...
tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago
Yeap. "Gasland" is a good documentary

strawhatguy 4y ago

Yeah, no kidding, no residential zoning at all? Hard to believe it's CA, but good for them! This will vastly improve the housing situation, if CA has sense enough to keep it this way.

tigen 4y ago
Isn't this misleading? It's not "no zoning" it's specifically required to be low-income or whatever housing. Right?
- uoaei 4y ago
  Mandating one zone is like mandating zero zones in the "fish asks, 'what's water?'" way.

nemo44x 4y ago

Actually it strips power away from the people making us less democratic. What will happen is developers with political connection/money to get their people elected, will have fewer barriers to their profits now. This is a transfer of power from the people, that is democracy, to the oligarchy. > I don't care what effect this has on my neighbors property value. That is such an awful attitude and a big problem of what is wrong in the country today. We live in communities and communities agree to certain values. It's about well more than just you and what you want to do.

gorbypark 4y ago
I'm always of the mind that it's harder for developers to have connections at a state level compared to a local level. It's more believable that a local developer has connections to city council in a single city and the amount of palms to grease is much less. Moving up to state level (especially in CA) the amount of money / influence would greatly increase to be able to influence the new zoning regulators. Not saying it can't happen, but it would be more of an undertaking (imo).

jdmtheNth 4y ago

And when your street starts looking like San Francisco? You just abandon ship after encouraging this nonsense?

kevinburke 4y ago
San Francisco is a good case study in what happens when you don't build enough housing - people who were previously able to afford cheap apartments now can't and do all of their business out in the street. Other cities and states have worse problems with drug use but don't have problems with homelessness because housing is more affordable there.
- jdmtheNth 4y ago
  That's one way of looking at it, assuming you want to encourage needy people to take over your city. Or you could look at it the same way New York and Colorado are looking at it: https://www.voanews.com/a/new-york-mayor-says-no-room-in-his-city-for-migrants/6919855.html https://www.voanews.com/a/new-york-mayor-says-no-room-in-his...
  - kevinburke 4y ago
    I'd like people with substance problems to get help for their problems, and I'd like for everyone in the richest country in the world to be able to sleep with a roof over their head, instead of in the cold and rain.
    - jdmtheNth 4y ago
      I can absolutely agree with you on both of those things. Until everyone in North America has adequate food, shelter, and medical care, we need to insist that our children and country-people come first.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Yeah man I was shocked here in Texas on how much crap I had to go through with the city to build a small workshop in my backyard. It was absolutely ridiculous since it was a permanent structure (stone and wood with concrete foundation). Good for California and I hope other states follow suit. Austin has two failed attempts to set up rezoning in the past 15 years or so, millions of dollars spent on the plans that ultimately failed.

bwestergard 4y ago

"If I own the property, then it's mine." I'm assuming you are U.S. citizen and not super familiar with the common law; apologies up front if that isn't the case. Property law principles in the common law are vastly more complicated than this. There are all sorts of ways that your right to use real estate as you wish can be affected by past practices, hazy conventions, etc. Check out "easements", "mineral rights", "air rights", "adverse possession", and the sometimes elaborate processes of establishing title and specific property interests in particular jurisdictions. And many of those limitations are logically prior to U.S. specific legislation around zoning, restrictive covenants, etc.

TedShiller 4y ago

Wow that’s actually terrible news. Who wants more pollution crowding traffic and crime?

runnerup 4y ago

> you can't built a chemical processing plant in a residential neighborhood, obviously Lots of people disagree with this! There are tons of chemical processing facilities that pop up near my neighborhood, particularly rail car cleaning. Can smell a different chemical every day depending on what they’re spraying out of the rail cars. La Porte, TX Pasadena, TX Lake Jackson, TX There are both new subdivisions and new processing facilities going up all the time. ProPublica ran some big articles on it, absolutely skyrocketing cancer rates around here.

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