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The hottest trend in U.S. cities? Changing zoning rules to allow more housing
- thelastgallon 3y agoBerkeley's upzoning would be among nation's largest (darrellowens.substack.com) on going discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39414954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39414954
- 7e 3y agoBuilding more housing is like building more freeways. It doesn’t work. Within a generation, housing costs are back to normal Levels—but now everything is uglier, there is less nature, and the earth suffers. Urban jungles and tenement slums are not sustainable. Humans need a check to prevent them from overrunning the earth breeding. That check is habitat control.
- 0xBDB 3y ago"Building more housing is like building more freeways." Possibly. But what building freeways does exactly is itself not uncontroversial. The article in this HN thread isn't great, but some of the comments are at least thought-provoking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39353710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39353710
- aqme28 3y agoI don't believe that any of this is true. Building more housing does (provably) lower housing prices. And developed urban areas are more environmentally friendly than suburbs. People are going to live somewhere, and density actually has environmental benefits. But what is "habitat control"? I've never heard of that.
- 7e 3y agoLook beyond a five or ten year time horizon. More housing has been built continuously in the US for hundreds of years. Berkeley has existed for more than 150 yesrs. Did all of this building lower prices? No. It just encouraged people to have more children or to move into an area. Prices then move back up to the equilibrium point.
- tekla 3y agohttps://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/many-rural-americans-are-still-left-behind/ https://www.irp.wisc.edu/resource/many-rural-americans-are-s... Your point?
- aqme28 3y agoIf anything, building more housing reduces slums. edit: The parent comment was edited after my reply, so now mine is a nonsequitor
- jvanderbot 3y agoRemoving blockers to having more children and opening up more availability for people to move into their desired areas are good things.
- aqme28 3y agoBut we need people to have children. Discouraging people from having children by limiting the housing stock would be terrible for the economy and for people.
- analognoise 3y agoThe “Most Dystopian Point” award goes to… Worst infant mortality, no healthcare, infinite wars every 20 years, dual incomes required, forever chemicals, highly processed food, no mandated maternity leave, wealth disparity worse than the French Revolution, on and on and on. Maybe we SHOULD destroy the economy ?
- aqme28 3y agoI just think that depopulation via restricting housing would make things a lot worse than any dystopia we’re currently facing
- analognoise 3y agoThat’s an excellent point.
- bluejekyll 3y ago> habitat control. Not really, if you want to reduce the human population, ie lower the birth rate, it’s really about education: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3449224/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3449224/ Additionally, the problem we have is sprawl, and upzoning fixes spraw. After that we then have the problem of how people get around, and the reliance on the car in the US and other places is a major problem. Most urban downtowns are only unpleasant when they are mixed with dangerous levels of car traffic.
- debacle 3y agoI am at the center of this locally. We are seeing neighborhoods of houses be approved for 10 story housing buildings. In effect, we are glorifying building tenements when what we really need to do is change zoning laws to allow for smaller homes.
- falcor84 3y agoApproving building of additional homes would have helped 10 or 20 years ago. I suppose the metaphor is of ignoring the doctor when advised to reduce cholesterol and then ignoring again when prescribed statins, and then being surprised when you now need a bypass surgery.
- tsunamifury 3y agoThis is not true even in San Francisco. The population is barely now recovering from covid. This is entirely about cities needing to grow their payroll tax to overcome their losses in retail and CRE.
- whimsicalism 3y agoNo, it is about the exorbitant cost of housing in SF + the very real benefits from agglomeration
- snapplebobapple 3y agoyou need to do both but I think it's better for the smaller homes thing to come second because that has lots of negative outcomes if you implement that when there is a shortage (i.e. you supply a lot of tiny units that noone will want once supply and demand come back into balance from higher density and then you end up spending a lot of unnecessary resources demolishing/rebuiling/combining). My bigger concern around this higher density is uneven reconfiguration of the transportation corridors to accommodate more walking/cycling/non stupid transit (i.e. subway/lrt/trams and other forms that aren't sharing the road and therefore getting stuck in the car congestion). If you build much higher density and still expect everyone to get around by car, that's a disaster in itself.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoWithout expressing either I like the policy or not, it means they buying a house in those cities no longer means buying a house in a neighborhood with a certain feel. Historically changes happened, but we're confined to what the zone allowed. You have a quiet street? Street remains quiet, as there is only so much house that can be built next door. But with this the house next door can be torn down and a quadplex could be put in place. That is an extremely risky thing that home buyers need to consider when they're paying extra just to be in a certain part of the city.
- goodluckchuck 3y agoThe risk is exacerbated by the piecemeal why in which this is occurring. The authority will generally only rezone the quadplex’s lot and not the whole neighborhood, leaving your home with the costs of greater density, but without the value of less restrictive zoning.
- CubsFan1060 3y agoI see you are getting downvoted, but I think you are right. People spend a lot of money finding a neighborhood and home they like. If you build next to a huge open field, you need to assume it could become anything. But if you build in a neighborhood that is built out, you like the feel of, and then it suddenly changes... that's a scary prospect.
- Apocryphon 3y agoUnless you buy a home simply to rent it out to others, you need to be an active participant in its affairs. At the bare minimum, it means staying abreast in what’s going on. Any responsible homebuyer would have done their due diligence in at least asking the realtor what is the current trend of the local community, long before any papers are signed. Zoning law changes should never come as a “sudden” surprise, especially since they are universally a source of controversy.
- CubsFan1060 3y agoI'm going to guess you might be young? People in my neighborhood have owned their houses for decades. Are you saying that someone buying a house in 1988 should have foreseen all the changes in the following 35 years?
- andrewmcwatters 3y agoWoohoo! More apartments so we can expand the percentage of the population that can be permanently enslaved by rent! Yay! We’re doing it everyone!
- ethanbond 3y agoWhat? More housing means prices go down. You seem to be under the impression that apartments == renting and houses == owning, which is not true at all.
- andrewmcwatters 3y agoReally? That’s fascinating because there’s an explosion of apartments in my metro and rents have went… up! So I’m sure in whatever fairytale Econ 101 world you live in that’s the case, but not in the real world. The amount of housing deficit we have in the United States will never be aided by building more apartments.
- DoughnutHole 3y agoIf the demand for housing increases faster than the supply increases then yes prices will still go up. They just go up less than they would if supply hadn’t increased. Even the cities in the US that are building aren’t building nearly fast enough.
- mlrtime 3y agoIn desirable areas, the new buildings create new demand AND supply. It doesn't ever balance.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoWait. Im super confused. If building more housing doesn’t help with a lack of housing, what does? Genuinely asking. I know it’s more complicated than “just build housing bro” but I’ve never heard of a policy that says don’t build any new housing?!
- Apocryphon 3y agoBizarre NIMBYism (for HN) going on in these comments right now.
- bilsbie 3y agoReally bizarre! What’s going on?
- ryandrake 3y agoIt’s just contrarianism. Most articles are about how cities are not building housing so most of the time, HN commenters talk about how we need more housing. As soon as an article is about building housing, all anyone wants to talk about is NIMBY. Taking the article’s topic/argument and making your comment the opposite is a standard HN trope.
- HPsquared 3y agoTo contradict still further: I think it's a general law of comment pages. People who agree just read the content and nod silently, perhaps upvoting. People who disagree will voice their disagreement. So it looks like a constant vortex of contradiction and confusion. It's why "ratio" is such a big thing on Twitter: ratio of likes to comments, because comments tend to be 'negative' towards the post.
- zozbot234 3y agoPeople on the U.S. west coast are still asleep! So all the commenters you see are posting from their McMansions in the Midwest.
- mlrtime 3y agoWouldn't the NE be up now and replying with pro-building comments? Also, not everyone in the Midwest lives in a McMansion, your snide comments are not helpful. Is it possible that people don't agree with you?
- xyst 3y agoI am not a fan of adding ADUs. It’s not because it’s “ugly”, or “scared of change”. I think it doesn’t go far enough. A home upzoned to support 1 -> 2+ families in the sticks still means extra amount of traffic originating from the burbs. It partially fixes one problem (increasing housing supply should result in stabilized rent and home affordability). But problems such as reducing carbon footprint through reduced use of cars, dependency on expensive highways, ban development of new SFH to preserve environment, and supporting alternative modes of transportation (bike, walking, bus, train) are left untouched. With the impending single zoned commercial building crash, I was hoping we could get a massive push at all levels (federal, state, local) to provide incentives for converting these to mixed zone properties. for what it’s worth, it’s a small step in the right direction.
- zozbot234 3y agoYou need density if you want to encourage light rail or even bike infrastructure (such as dedicated bike paths or lanes). The two go hand in hand. Of course more mixed use would also help, gradually turning the suburbs into something more reminiscent of traditional villages or towns.
- namibj 3y agoBut for that the density reachable without elevators (if you're ignoring accessibility; i.e., 4~6 floors plus basement) suffices. And yeah, having the bottom floor be commercial is often effective. Even if it's just a GP's doctor's office. Look at pre-WW1 urban core neighborhoods in Germany, for example.
- mlrtime 3y ago>ban development of new SFH to preserve environment When you say this, do you mean across the US, or localized? I'm honestly shocked that some people are in the opinion that SFH should be banned nationally.
- whimsicalism 3y agoIt’s a view that is divorced from any sort of political reality.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago> It's no accident that throwing out the parking rules was vital to the Sundial's construction. "The elimination of parking requirements has been the most effective regulatory reform we have made," McMahan says. This is a really neat fact! Even if other areas don’t build hardcore, why not remove this regulation anyways? Let the market decide if they want cars!
- chasd00 3y ago> Let the market decide if they want cars! Be careful of what you wish for.
- paulgb 3y agoWhy? Worst case scenario is that the market decides it does want cars, but the burden of paying for space to store them falls on the people that want them instead of everyone buying/renting a dwelling.
- passwordoops 3y agoOr you end up with fist fights and road rage over limited resources. And it's very easy to say "limit access to cars", but it absolutely requires a build-up of public transit to make up for it, which usually goes beyond local zoning practice
- paulgb 3y agoI interpret “let the market decide” as also charging market rates for street parking, in which case the resources are only as limited as the market decides -- if more people want to park than there is room for, the private market can meet that demand by building garages/private lots. The High Cost of Free Parking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking) is pretty eye-opening in terms of how non-drivers end up bearing the cost of parking minimums.
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- lasean 3y agoI'm not sure existing cities can evolve themselves to fully solve these problems. There are Americans that want affordable housing in densely populated areas that are also car centric. Hard to get all of three of those requirements. There are other Americans who already have a home in their ideal neighborhood and don't want change. The two groups are just incongruent. Affordable housing is possible, but it requires a number of drivers: 1) Don't make policies that disincentivize developers. 2) Don't turn homes into financial assets. 3) Don't build the city around cars. 4) Don't romanticize the single family residence (SFR) home. This might require brand new cities to be built — where these promises can be set from the get go.
- lozenge 3y agoThat depends on how much power you give the locals. Sometimes the state level has power to disempower the local NIMBYs. Like with SB-9. https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/how-california-plans-to-turn-the-screws-on-nimby-cities https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/how-california-plans-to...
- lasean 3y agoGood point.
- whimsicalism 3y agoSpeaking of incongruent ideas, I think your #1 and #2 are contradictory. Financialization is an important part of getting markets to meet demand. If you can’t “speculate” on future demand, then developers will not be able to build houses in anticipation of future residents.
- lasean 3y agoThe government can both subsidize development with low construction loan rates and disincentivize owners from flipping homes for quick profits. There are places where capital gains rates on home sales are onerous if sold before ten years. Both can be true at the same time. The likely oversupply of homes in this scenario is what most people would reject.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoWhile allowing ADUs is all well and good, zoning has traditionally been excessively strict and often historically discriminatory, but there is going too far with land-use policy anarchy. Defenestrating essential regs like height restrictions or setbacks leads to subtle, long duration unintended consequences like eventual neighborhood ugliness and devaluation, unfair shadowing for months per year without direct sunlight, fire hazards, and blight. For example, without commercial and residential zoning, a convenience store or dollar store could decide to invade a residential only neighborhood, bringing quality of life issues like littering and loitering, ruining property values. On one hand, strict zoning is fair because everyone must meet an explicit set of standards. On the other hand, vague housing policies will lead to selective enforcement, new kinds of bias and discrimination, and unintentional variance leading to a decay of feng shui and community fragmentation. PS: So don't be Austin or Houston. ;o]
- blastbking 3y agoamazing, we need more housing supply