3 ms·

I'm not saying we should ban 4000 sq.ft. detached homes on large sprawling lots. They just shouldn't be the ONLY type of home being built. Give people options s

by foxyv 3y ago

I'm not saying we should ban 4000 sq.ft. detached homes on large sprawling lots. They just shouldn't be the ONLY type of home being built. Give people options so they can choose. In fact, if you want to have that beautiful home surrounded by nature and not suburban cookie cutter houses, then it's also in your interest to see that cities stay in the cities. Too many orchards and farms have been demolished to build miserable tracts of poorly constructed wood frame houses.

_uhtu 3y ago
Exactly this. People act like it's a "big government takeover" trying to make multi-family housing against peoples wishes. The real fact is it's the exact opposite. "Big government" policies were created forcing people to only build single family homes on massive lots. Current proposals are to remove those regulations, and ironically people see it as the government coming for them.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  When a large chunk of the middle-class is counting on their home value to facilitate retirement, they're rightfully concerned about urbanization of their neighborhood. I personally believe they're mostly wrong - urbanization probably won't harm home values. And done well, might improve the values even more.
  - trgn 3y ago
    I agree. Nice cities are just attractive places to be. Even for people who live in the single family homes near them. An expensive city is expensive everywhere, regardless the type of housing, > they're rightfully concerned Yeah for sure. A lot of the pushback against development is a gut feel concern, the fear of losing something, it's not rational. The "rightfully" part I guess is because institutions groom people in borrowing for single family homes, and specifically that e.g. Try financing a multi-family on the same favorable terms. Few people enjoy pensions at an old age, so you're kind of thrown for the wolves if you don't own a home. The system really is maladjusted.
    - alistairSH 3y ago
      When our son moved out and we decided to right-size our home, we went looking for condos, but there was very little available in our area, at least nothing that was 3 bedroom + priced in our range + located near the subway. We found one condo that had size and location, and while the purchase price was less than a TH across the street, the monthly condo fees were somewhere near $1000/month. That ended up making the monthly expense >30% higher than the TH across the street (which is where we ended up).
WheatMillington 3y ago
>They just shouldn't be the ONLY type of home being built They're not, as evidenced by the literally millions of apartments in existence.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  By area, SFHs are generally what's allowable. Here's Fairfax CO VA. Everything in yellow or green is largely zoned for SFHs (with differing # units/acre). https://fairfaxcountygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=e64b68aa834d46b0ad0e6cd4d831f843 https://fairfaxcountygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/i...
tpmoney 3y ago
Where do you live that 4k sqft homes are the only new construction? I live in a major metro area and sure in the outskirts and suburbs there’s plenty of McMansion developments, but there’s also a whole host of new townhomes and apartments. And the entire downtown is practically being rebuilt into massive multi story apartments. And this is hardly the center of YIMBY land.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  It's getting better now, but the OP could live in Seattle: [0]. Anywhere white on that map it was illegal through 2019 to build anything but a single-family home. Just an appalling waste of land. [0]: https://i0.wp.com/publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Screen-Shot-2022-01-23-at-10.24.37-PM.png?resize=1024%2C618&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/S...
  - TheGRS 3y ago
    Interested to see how it shakes out in Portland, we put in infill laws a few years ago and I've seen a handful of multi-family additions on previously single-family land, and even a handful of trailer or tiny homes setup on driveways (this was approved in the infill laws). And it does seem like nobody is super happy because the neighborhoods are losing a lot of their classic aesthetic. But IMO we need to let go of that eventually, otherwise everyone just has to move out to suburbs and fill that space instead (which is also happening).
  - tpmoney 3y ago
    I feel like this is part of the problem every time these housing affordability conversations come up. The problems are hyper-local, but the proposed solutions are advanced as if they need to be state or even country wide. A lot of "we" statements that don't actually apply to the audience. And to people in areas like where I am, or in semi-rural areas that are dying and the housing prices are falling, it just seems ridiculous and hyperbolic. And that isn't to say we don't have problems here. I have plenty of younger co-workers who are facing down where and how to afford living in this area as housing costs have grown immensely over the years. But "stop only building 4k sqft homes" isn't even remotely the right solution here, because that isn't the problem here. Imagine if we suddenly got a bunch of articles on HN about the "website affordability crisis" and it was a bunch of FAANG engineers and ex FAANG employees and want-to-be FAANG employees talking about how you can't build a reliable website for less than a few million in cloud services and monitoring and logging from Datadog and the like. Sure from their perspective of trying to build a FAANG scale service that might be true, but it would also seem insane to the rest of us who are wondering what's wrong with throwing up a few boxes in a colo center or even a few basic EC2 instances and a cloudflare proxy if you just want some affordable website hosting. Not every IT problem or company needs Google scale solutions, and not every community (or even community suffering from a housing affordability problem) needs Seattle scale solutions either.

by foxyv 3y ago

_uhtu 3y ago

Exactly this. People act like it's a "big government takeover" trying to make multi-family housing against peoples wishes. The real fact is it's the exact opposite. "Big government" policies were created forcing people to only build single family homes on massive lots. Current proposals are to remove those regulations, and ironically people see it as the government coming for them.

alistairSH 3y ago
When a large chunk of the middle-class is counting on their home value to facilitate retirement, they're rightfully concerned about urbanization of their neighborhood. I personally believe they're mostly wrong - urbanization probably won't harm home values. And done well, might improve the values even more.
- trgn 3y ago
  I agree. Nice cities are just attractive places to be. Even for people who live in the single family homes near them. An expensive city is expensive everywhere, regardless the type of housing, > they're rightfully concerned Yeah for sure. A lot of the pushback against development is a gut feel concern, the fear of losing something, it's not rational. The "rightfully" part I guess is because institutions groom people in borrowing for single family homes, and specifically that e.g. Try financing a multi-family on the same favorable terms. Few people enjoy pensions at an old age, so you're kind of thrown for the wolves if you don't own a home. The system really is maladjusted.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    When our son moved out and we decided to right-size our home, we went looking for condos, but there was very little available in our area, at least nothing that was 3 bedroom + priced in our range + located near the subway. We found one condo that had size and location, and while the purchase price was less than a TH across the street, the monthly condo fees were somewhere near $1000/month. That ended up making the monthly expense >30% higher than the TH across the street (which is where we ended up).

WheatMillington 3y ago

>They just shouldn't be the ONLY type of home being built They're not, as evidenced by the literally millions of apartments in existence.

alistairSH 3y ago
By area, SFHs are generally what's allowable. Here's Fairfax CO VA. Everything in yellow or green is largely zoned for SFHs (with differing # units/acre). https://fairfaxcountygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=e64b68aa834d46b0ad0e6cd4d831f843 https://fairfaxcountygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/i...

tpmoney 3y ago

Where do you live that 4k sqft homes are the only new construction? I live in a major metro area and sure in the outskirts and suburbs there’s plenty of McMansion developments, but there’s also a whole host of new townhomes and apartments. And the entire downtown is practically being rebuilt into massive multi story apartments. And this is hardly the center of YIMBY land.

Analemma_ 3y ago
It's getting better now, but the OP could live in Seattle: [0]. Anywhere white on that map it was illegal through 2019 to build anything but a single-family home. Just an appalling waste of land. [0]: https://i0.wp.com/publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Screen-Shot-2022-01-23-at-10.24.37-PM.png?resize=1024%2C618&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/S...
- TheGRS 3y ago
  Interested to see how it shakes out in Portland, we put in infill laws a few years ago and I've seen a handful of multi-family additions on previously single-family land, and even a handful of trailer or tiny homes setup on driveways (this was approved in the infill laws). And it does seem like nobody is super happy because the neighborhoods are losing a lot of their classic aesthetic. But IMO we need to let go of that eventually, otherwise everyone just has to move out to suburbs and fill that space instead (which is also happening).
- tpmoney 3y ago
  I feel like this is part of the problem every time these housing affordability conversations come up. The problems are hyper-local, but the proposed solutions are advanced as if they need to be state or even country wide. A lot of "we" statements that don't actually apply to the audience. And to people in areas like where I am, or in semi-rural areas that are dying and the housing prices are falling, it just seems ridiculous and hyperbolic. And that isn't to say we don't have problems here. I have plenty of younger co-workers who are facing down where and how to afford living in this area as housing costs have grown immensely over the years. But "stop only building 4k sqft homes" isn't even remotely the right solution here, because that isn't the problem here. Imagine if we suddenly got a bunch of articles on HN about the "website affordability crisis" and it was a bunch of FAANG engineers and ex FAANG employees and want-to-be FAANG employees talking about how you can't build a reliable website for less than a few million in cloud services and monitoring and logging from Datadog and the like. Sure from their perspective of trying to build a FAANG scale service that might be true, but it would also seem insane to the rest of us who are wondering what's wrong with throwing up a few boxes in a colo center or even a few basic EC2 instances and a cloudflare proxy if you just want some affordable website hosting. Not every IT problem or company needs Google scale solutions, and not every community (or even community suffering from a housing affordability problem) needs Seattle scale solutions either.