12 ms·

The long-awaited Friend Compound laws in California

156 points by simonebrunozzi 2y ago

cratermoon 2y ago
Why do I feel like this is going to supercharge short-term rentals like AirBnB and do little to ease the housing crunch?
- AstralStorm 2y ago
  Instead of high density housing this will do slightly higher density in low density zones. You cannot really increase density by that much with it, but you for sure can cut the yards... And parking space. I'm pretty sure this won't make housing more affordable by much. Or will even have an opposite effect. To build these houses a pretty serious investment or Amish-sized group is required. Who has that?
  - outer_web 2y ago
    I thought the post says one person buys the lot and then sells it to friends who individually fund the houses.
    - cratermoon 2y ago
      > I thought the post says one person buys the lot and then sells it to friends who individually fund the houses. One company buys the lot and then sells it to its own subsidiaries who individually fund the houses. I'm sure there are numerous ways to juggle the finances.
      - outer_web 2y ago
        Yup. Or it is bought by Friends LLC.
  - justonceokay 2y ago
    Additionally, what happens after 5 years when the first friend moves out? I see this complex as a terrible HOA-in-the-making since neighbors will be sharing more resources. Reminds me of when I was doing factory work and living in a punk house.
    - llm_nerd 2y ago
      Yeah the "friend compound" thing seems nebulous, and one of the stated benefits is specifically that it can be financed independently and resold to third parties. So basically it's just higher density housing and pretty soon it's just very close houses of random people with some sort of weird condo fees for the commons (surely there is shared walkways, etc), etc.
      - cratermoon 2y ago
        It may seem odd to people who grew up in the single-family detached housing world of the postwar US, but there are cultures and societies around the world even today where multi-family housing is common. See for example Casas de Vecindad, a typical form of housing in the US/Mexico borderlands for hundreds of years.
        justonceokay 2y ago
        Do they have HOAs?
      - throw272634 2y ago
        So like condos in the city.
    - wil421 2y ago
      You put an ad for more friends on Find a Friend Facebook groups or Craigslist. Maybe match makers appears to solve a gap in the market.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > but you for sure can cut the yards... And parking space. As if each of the people moving into the subdivided spaces still won't need parking. Now, you've actually increased the demand for parking. Where is that parking going to happen?
    - wmf 2y ago
      This stuff is only feasible in places that are served by transit which are pretty rare.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  This is for suburbia. There isn't massive demand for AirBnB in suburbia. There's such a massive shortage of housing that the small AirBnB demand is large relative to the supply of empty houses, but that's because a small number divided by a number very close to zero results in a large number. More supply will help a lot more than limiting AirBnB.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    It allows to subdivide lots down to 600 sq ft parcels. I can find endless examples in the core of every major California city, including San Francisco, where this is applicable, and could 5x or 10x the number of houses in single family areas[1]. San Francisco currently zones for a minimum of 4000 sq feet lots in RH-1 zones, and at least 1000 sq ft lot per residence in RH-3. Should it or would it? Probably not. But this weird image of the suburbs vs "the city" (someone else used the term "metro" which humorously includes the suburbs, but whatever) doesn't seem reality based. Doubly so given that the suburbs are car-centric, and plans like this are car-antagonistic. It seems to specifically exclude the suburbs, if anything. [1] This law only applies to multi-family zoning, which in SF is RH-3. Regardless, funny to see people saying this is some low density suburb thing when many of the cores of cities have zoning requiring significantly more land.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      > (someone else used the term "metro" which humorously includes the suburbs, but whatever) Not really sure where the humor is being found. There are areas where suburbs grew into their own cities that now blend back into the larger urban area they were once separated from. They are no longer suburbs, and it is now more than one city, so metroplex/metropolitan area is the term used.
      - llm_nerd 2y ago
        I was referring to someone saying "works for suburbs I'm guessing - I don't see how it helps out in metro areas?". A "metro area" is by definition the overarching container (often including multiple cities and the suburbs of those cities, such as the Bay Area metro area), most definitely containing said suburbs. So if something "works for the suburbs", it works for the metro.
- subpixel 2y ago
  You are correct - in fact the OG “bestie row” compound in Texas is already a glorified Airbnb. What all of this will do is fuel vacation villages for rich people to use a little and rent out a lot.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dmitrygr 2y ago
“Replacing parking” is going to cause all sorts of fun. Where will the cars go? And please spare me the tired “transit that is safe and not full of stabby hoboes will magically sprout out of nothing overnight” nonsense.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > Where will the cars go? Half of some cities' downtown space is parking. https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities/4162455-paved-paradise-maps-show-how-much-of-us-cities-are-parking-lots/ https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities... Every apartment complex in my area clearly has way, way more parking that needed - at no time of day are they more than 50% occupied.
  - jajko 2y ago
    In Europe generally all new bigger construction has most parking below ground, even 2-3 floors. Very few outside if any, normally just for quick drop off or services. I've even seen locals blocking a successful local bank trying to build a additional building and planning way too many of those - citing concern of too much added traffic in neighborhood. Not entirely sure if thats the best approach, but thats how how respect for laws and locals looks like. At the end, bank managed just fine despite that restriction.
  - lotsoweiners 2y ago
    > at no time of day are they more than 50% occupied Why is that? Is there more than one parking space per bedroom or do people not have cars?
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      America has eight parking spots per car. https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parking-spaces-for-every-car-heres-how-cities-are-rethinking-that-land https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parki... > Parking standards were created arbitrarily, without adequate data. Zoning laws usually require one parking space per apartment, one per 300 square feet of commercial development, and one per 100 square feet for restaurants. For context, a parking space measures 160 square feet on average, plus additional area for driveways and driving lanes, so an eatery’s parking lot may be three times the size of its dining area.
boringg 2y ago
This works for suburbs I'm guessing - I don't see how it helps out in metro areas? Where does this work best for? Buy and re-develop for friends?
- fckgw 2y ago
  Since this is California law, it helps tremendously in places like LA which were built as large suburban SFH neighborhoods but have long exhausted all free space. Building denser housing within existing SFH neighborhoods will help to alleviate the housing crisis.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    Anything but building significantly upwards, amirite?
  - outer_web 2y ago
    Exactly, rather than sending people farther and farther out of county, it lets LA's existing, sprawling suburbs look a tiny bit more like a real city.
- ebiester 2y ago
  Increasing density in suburbs is a giant win.
- aeontech 2y ago
  The second law adds ability to replace parking spaces with ADU's, which could be useful even in more denser metro areas.
userbinator 2y ago
[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  Are you thinking of leaving the state now, or did you already do it, or are you just trying to talk other people into leaving?
  - userbinator 2y ago
    Long ago, and have had friends do the same.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  This makes it easier to both move into & out of California. It'll make existing suburban lots more valuable because they now can be subdivided so existing homeowners can cash in and move on. But the new subdivided lots will be cheaper than existing non-subdivided lots, so it's also cheaper to move in. Win-win!
  - foogazi 2y ago
    It can't make lots simultaneously more valuable and cheaper to acquire Existing homeowners won't subdivide and leave. They will split their sfh lot and rent it out. Look at people investing into ADUs It will be cheaper in the sense that renting a room is cheaper than renting the house when looking at total outlay, but not when looking at sqft ownership We complain about housing being an asset and instead turn every lot into an investment opportunity
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      > not when looking at sqft ownership Which is a relatively minor consideration. Yes it's nice to have some garden space. But not when the garden adds $1M to the price of your house.
- outer_web 2y ago
colanderman 2y ago
As someone interested in "friend compounds", I'm missing what in either of these laws enables that specifically. They both just seem to provide for denser housing generally. (Particularly SB684 almost literally just seems to allow subdividing lots which couldn't be subdivided before.)
- tptacek 2y ago
  Yes, that's the whole subtext. These kinds of developments with multiple freestanding units on a single lot are generally disallowed by the previous generation of zoning and planning rules. Note how these changes are allowing "friend complexes" on lots zoned multifamily already.
ThinkBeat 2y ago
So a fancy trailer park basically? but one where relocation and moving can be more difficult? People get divorced, relocate for work, relocate for mental health,end up in jail, People end up hating each other, have kids and need space, get a raise a want space, and people die. How long does the friend structure survive? There will be people moving in and out just like any part of real estate. Do the original owners turn into landlords and rent out the homes? There would be an interesting dynamic if the homes were mobile, when you could move to a different friend compound if you wanted to leave. But again, all of this is solved in trailer parks. I am -not- being derisive of trailer parks. I am saying that this is a rich person's reinvention of it with some added attributes. Spending time studying the dynamics of a trailer park over time would provide lessons on mistakes not to make, and nifty solutions to problems not yet pondereed. (Yeah if you can afford a mini house on its own real estate in California these days you are rich)
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > So a fancy trailer park basically? Would you describe an apartment building this way?
  - rickydroll 2y ago
    No. Apartment buildings are little bricks stacked together into a larger structure. In the original example, individual houses are spaced close together, they have the feel of a trailer park. These two living environments have in common that they are one—to two-person places to sleep, cook, and watch videos. Everything else that makes life interesting has to be done somewhere else. There are no gardens, no workshops for CNC machines and 3d printers, and no space for outdoor recreational equipment like kayaks, paddleboards, bikes, etc. I can concede I am biased, and I'm blessed by being able to afford a property with a garden of about 2,000 square feet. I'm looking to expand it by another 500 square feet this year. My basement is just half full with my workshop and home lab; the other half is my partner's art studio. There was a recent discussion on HNN about developers who quit their jobs to start a farm or otherwise leave the tech world behind, but I do a version of that in the small. I am content to hang around the house and garden, relax outside, watch birds, and occasionally hike in neighboring State Parks.
Workaccount2 2y ago
The overall idea is pretty good, but I take issue the image that shows the $1M plot turning into $2.5M by building small homes. This makes sense in a vacuum (maybe) but in reality, the areas that get subdivided like this will become less valuable with each new division. There needs to be a feedback mechanism that prevents every lot from being turned into a bunch of micro-lots in a race to do what the image depicts before the area loses value.
- Maken 2y ago
  Isn't homes becoming more affordable an intended side effect of this legislation?
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    Yes, but you want a system that can dial in a level of affordability rather than a "rapidly multiply every home in an area by four" race to the bottom. I don't know the specifics of the bill, but if it's a 2.5x investment cheat code for the fastest actors, it's going to cause mayhem and hard backlash.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      If by "rapidly" you mean "over several decades". That's the scale at which neighborhoods turn over.
      - Workaccount2 2y ago
        By "rapidly" I mean on the span of a few years. If your neighbor subdivides their lot, the smartest thing for you to do is subdivide yours (after all, it will turn your $1M into $2.5M, no?). It will have a domino effect because the last house in the neighborhood full of subdivisions will have the lowest sale value (and the first house to subdivide will be the most valuable). The intent is good but the system needs a moderating factor to prevent runaway.
        2y ago
crmd 2y ago
In a friends/family compound that is subdivided, you need a covenant on the original deeds that controls what happens when a member wants to sell their lot, e.g. the existing members collectively have to approve the buyer, or have right of first refusal to buy back the property, etc Otherwise what starts as a family compound will eventually just become a “normal” neighborhood of strangers. Subdivided family compounds are one of the extremely rare cases where you actually want a deeded homeowners association.
- daft_pink 2y ago
  As someone that’s dealt with families trying to sell real estate owned jointly by several different families, owning real estate that requires all your friends and/or family to approve your sale sounds like a recipe for disaster.
  - KerrAvon 2y ago
    Yes. Even when all parties are directionally aligned and fundamentally agree on everything it can be a nightmare simply to get all the ducks in a row. But if I understand this correctly, this is just a way to allow for high density housing; there's nothing specific to friends / family here? A developer can buy a large lot and subdivide it to tiny, tiny houses. Doesn't sound pleasant to me, tbh, but high-density advocates gonna high-dense, I guess.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      I think it's more about making housing cheaper than being pleasant. Plenty of people live in apartments or condos, so I suspect there is a market for it.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Not much different than private equity that requires board approval to transfer. As long as the terms are in the operating agreement (or other ownership structure agreement), caveat emptor. (am member/owner in family friend's family farm)
  - 2y ago
logifail 2y ago
> To get this going, we had to buy 1 home, not 6 of them You had to buy land for six, though? This side of the pond buying (vacant) land to build one family home would run well into six figures (USD $$$,$$$ where the first digit is definitely a 2 and if you're unlucky it's higher still) - then you have to finance the house(s) on top.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Yeah, I think the article captures that pretty well. The infographic shows 4 lots for 100k each. In most cities it is close to impossible to find several lots for sale side by side.
  - Mountain_Skies 2y ago
    At the risk of sounding glib, the Detroit Land Bank has some amazing deals on adjacent vacant properties when you buy a property to rehabilitate. If a family wants to have their own virtual compound and can stomach the safety implications, buying a Land Bank house and adjacent properties would give everyone plenty of elbow room.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Im sure there are lots of places if location is not a concern. The author of the article is in the California bay area.
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      In my city, you can often find rows of houses for sale for $5-10k a piece from slum lords trying to exit the business. Tearing down the old homes would probably be expensive, but I think the city even has a program to help with some of that. Since you could effectively buy a whole street, the safety implications might not be as bad as initially assumed.
- wmf 2y ago
  They're talking about buying one lot and splitting it into 6 micro lots. That sounds ridiculously small to me.
ramesh31 2y ago
Now you get the privilege of paying a mortgage to live in a Hooverville.
- outer_web 2y ago
  I think for many the only alternative is renting. Having your rent go towards ownership is preferable in many cases.
  - foogazi 2y ago
    That's just one of many preferred outcomes - not the top one 1. Buy cheap sfh 2. Buy cheap condo 3. Rent cheap sfh 4. Rent cheap condo ... 20. Buy expensive micro-house Edit:formatting
    - outer_web 2y ago
      Speak for yourself. For me, buying is better than any rental options and a freestanding building is better than anything attached or in an HOA.
      - foogazi 2y ago
        Really ? You would buy vs rent under any circumstance ?
        outer_web 2y ago
        Of course not. There are plenty of circumstances that would change the order. But that'd be my 'all things being equal' ranking. I had hoped it was implied that I'd prefer to rent a non-haunted condo over owning a haunted mansion.
        meepmorp 2y ago
        Owning a home sucks, but it's still better than renting one.
game_the0ry 2y ago
Is it just me, or does this seem like a another example of how housing in CA is broken? The demand is totally insatiable. I grew up in the state, and am in the East Coast for now (which also has its own problems), but I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU. The whole concept of an ADU just seems like a bad sign for the market, not mention the increase in traffic bc more density = more people. You would think the market would normalize and people would move to other states, which is happening, yet people are contemplating making these mini houses. Yet another symptom of American standard of living decreasing -- younger people are just getting less with the same amount of money. That's the root of the problem.
- outer_web 2y ago
  Is insatiable demand equivalent to 'broken' housing? Seems like the latter is a pejorative and the former is the better of two possible problems. Considering people live in apartments and condos, what's the problem with an ADU (or tinyhouse as they called them years ago)? The density/traffic thing is not straightforward. Increased capacity will add traffic, sure. To the extent that capacity remains static and people can live closer to their commute destinations, you have fewer people taking longer trips and more people taking shorter trips (or other transport). Obviously both of these will be the case. As will people moving from high density housing to ADUs in the suburbs. Agreed on the standard of living issue.
- Daishiman 2y ago
  > I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU. People have different imagination from you > I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU. More density implies that services get built closer together. A corner store needs a high level of density to exist, but when it does it cuts down your trips to a large grocery store. I live in a dense city. I have a grocer half a block away, 10 coffee shops in a 5-block radius, etc. You have an extremely Americanized view of a fundamentally unsustainable housing mechanism; American car-dependent suburbs don't make any sense as the main source of housing.
  - game_the0ry 2y ago
diebeforei485 2y ago
It would be nice if the yards could face each other. So people could basically have a large open space that is private to the residents.
- defterGoose 2y ago
  That's what a Bungalow Court is all about. They're kind of a dying breed, but have previously been very popular here in LA County.
hexis 2y ago
The Californians yearn for a cult.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
njarboe 2y ago
In rural Colorado there is a law that makes subdividing lots under 35 acres very difficult. There are lots of areas in the mountains that have expensive housing. You are allowed to build one 15,000 sqft house but not ten 1,500 sqft houses on the 35 acres. Would love to have something like this in Colorado.
- fritzo 2y ago
  Where are those ten houses going to get water?
  - bmacho 2y ago
    Spring, well, rain-water, or water transported there on pick-ups
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      That doesn't really scale though. Once you have ten houses, you'll start thinking about how it really should be 100 houses and they should build a better road to service everyone and then you'll want power and phone and internet, and before long all of the natural areas are just subdivisions.
  - scarecrowbob 2y ago
    I just haul it on a trailer from the water dock.
- scarecrowbob 2y ago
  Same. I am living on about 40 acres in the 4 corners area and I'd really like to put in more infrastructure. Currently I have a bunch of non-permitted (built in the 90s) cabins together in one corner, running off of solar. I'm planning on building a septic and a cistern for this set of buildings and a larger, more permitted house on another part of the property this year. I could have 6-10 tiny houses on this property and not have folks seeing each other, and I have the cash to just put in everything necessary. As written, the codes are not friendly towards that idea. I am still going to put in some RV hookups, at least- those are much less regulated than dwellings. My neighbors certainly aren't in a position to do the kind of complainaing that would lead to more attention from the county, and I'm at the end of a long series of oil field roads. While I am an anarchist, I do understand the county's need to prevent folks from creating dangers to themselves and other folks. I just wish that everything didn't need to be massively profitable for some investors before variations on codes and planning could be grante.
rank0 2y ago
I like it. Honestly we need even more freedom. I thought this was AMERICA! Absurd that you couldn’t already do this.
josephpmay 2y ago
One thing that’s incorrect in the article: SB 684 only works on multifamily-zoned lots, but starting in July, it’s getting replaced by SB 1123, which works on “vacant or uninhabitable” single-family lots
caycep 2y ago
why not NY style row houses? you might achieve more density than a compound
simonebrunozzi 2y ago
This type of law, and its consequences, are really interesting to me. I used to live in San Francisco, but in 2020 moved back to Italy. Now we like to spend 2-3 months a year in the SF Bay Area, but we would hardly consider buying a house (and renting it out when we're away). Instead, a situation where we would be neighbors with a few "friends", it would make it much easier to consider the option.
cft 2y ago
Similar has been already tried in the USSR, it was called a Communal Apartment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment
- TheCoelacanth 2y ago
  That's not at all the same thing. They're subdividing the lot and building a separate house for each family, not just putting multiple families together into an existing large house.
morsecodist 2y ago
I do YIMBY advocacy and this sounds policy change sounds like a good thing but I am always struck that our zoning is so restrictive that when people come up with different styles of housing it requires a law change and we talk about it like the law change is giving us this new cool style of housing. What is really happening is the law has taken away this style of housing and someone has come up with nice branding for a denser housing style that seems less scary so they are able budge zoning laws the tiniest bit to allow more density, but only if it is in this cool new style that we are OK with.
alistairSH 2y ago
I'm pretty positive about the ability to subdivide and build smaller. But pushing this as a "friend compound" law is super weird. Are there really that many people who want a friend compound for their primary residence? Personally, I'd be hard pressed to think of more than 1-2 other couples with whom I'd want to co-develop property and even then only for a vacation home, not my regular house.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  Are you a churchgoer? Because they usually have a lot of families they know that want these situations.
  - toasterlovin 2y ago
    Yeah, exactly, we’ve talked about this a lot with friends from church and, IMO, this would be the best way to do it. It avoids the coercive danger of shared property and gives anybody the ability to exit whenever they want.
xrd 2y ago
The general consensus in everything I read is that it is easier to build in the south (like Florida or Texas). But, where I live now, Central Florida, the zoning restrictions are tight. Even putting in an ADU is a mess. I assume this is because people want to protect themselves from a double wide showing up next door. Sprawl is fine, but not next door. I see a lot of radical changes happening in the American West. I'm from Oregon where HB 2001 (https://www.oregon.gov/lcd/LAR/Pages/Housing-2023.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/lcd/LAR/Pages/Housing-2023.aspx) passed in 2023 and it and a few other laws now disallow any city with more than 25k people from blocking high density housing. I'm really curious to see if these things will work and if the pendulum will shift. I hope so.

Why do I feel like this is going to supercharge short-term rentals like AirBnB and do little to ease the housing crunch?

AstralStorm 2y ago
Instead of high density housing this will do slightly higher density in low density zones. You cannot really increase density by that much with it, but you for sure can cut the yards... And parking space. I'm pretty sure this won't make housing more affordable by much. Or will even have an opposite effect. To build these houses a pretty serious investment or Amish-sized group is required. Who has that?
- outer_web 2y ago
  I thought the post says one person buys the lot and then sells it to friends who individually fund the houses.
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    > I thought the post says one person buys the lot and then sells it to friends who individually fund the houses. One company buys the lot and then sells it to its own subsidiaries who individually fund the houses. I'm sure there are numerous ways to juggle the finances.
    - outer_web 2y ago
      Yup. Or it is bought by Friends LLC.
- justonceokay 2y ago
  Additionally, what happens after 5 years when the first friend moves out? I see this complex as a terrible HOA-in-the-making since neighbors will be sharing more resources. Reminds me of when I was doing factory work and living in a punk house.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    Yeah the "friend compound" thing seems nebulous, and one of the stated benefits is specifically that it can be financed independently and resold to third parties. So basically it's just higher density housing and pretty soon it's just very close houses of random people with some sort of weird condo fees for the commons (surely there is shared walkways, etc), etc.
    - cratermoon 2y ago
      It may seem odd to people who grew up in the single-family detached housing world of the postwar US, but there are cultures and societies around the world even today where multi-family housing is common. See for example Casas de Vecindad, a typical form of housing in the US/Mexico borderlands for hundreds of years.
      - justonceokay 2y ago
        Do they have HOAs?
    - throw272634 2y ago
      So like condos in the city.
  - wil421 2y ago
    You put an ad for more friends on Find a Friend Facebook groups or Craigslist. Maybe match makers appears to solve a gap in the market.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > but you for sure can cut the yards... And parking space. As if each of the people moving into the subdivided spaces still won't need parking. Now, you've actually increased the demand for parking. Where is that parking going to happen?
  - wmf 2y ago
    This stuff is only feasible in places that are served by transit which are pretty rare.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
This is for suburbia. There isn't massive demand for AirBnB in suburbia. There's such a massive shortage of housing that the small AirBnB demand is large relative to the supply of empty houses, but that's because a small number divided by a number very close to zero results in a large number. More supply will help a lot more than limiting AirBnB.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  It allows to subdivide lots down to 600 sq ft parcels. I can find endless examples in the core of every major California city, including San Francisco, where this is applicable, and could 5x or 10x the number of houses in single family areas[1]. San Francisco currently zones for a minimum of 4000 sq feet lots in RH-1 zones, and at least 1000 sq ft lot per residence in RH-3. Should it or would it? Probably not. But this weird image of the suburbs vs "the city" (someone else used the term "metro" which humorously includes the suburbs, but whatever) doesn't seem reality based. Doubly so given that the suburbs are car-centric, and plans like this are car-antagonistic. It seems to specifically exclude the suburbs, if anything. [1] This law only applies to multi-family zoning, which in SF is RH-3. Regardless, funny to see people saying this is some low density suburb thing when many of the cores of cities have zoning requiring significantly more land.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > (someone else used the term "metro" which humorously includes the suburbs, but whatever) Not really sure where the humor is being found. There are areas where suburbs grew into their own cities that now blend back into the larger urban area they were once separated from. They are no longer suburbs, and it is now more than one city, so metroplex/metropolitan area is the term used.
    - llm_nerd 2y ago
      I was referring to someone saying "works for suburbs I'm guessing - I don't see how it helps out in metro areas?". A "metro area" is by definition the overarching container (often including multiple cities and the suburbs of those cities, such as the Bay Area metro area), most definitely containing said suburbs. So if something "works for the suburbs", it works for the metro.
subpixel 2y ago
You are correct - in fact the OG “bestie row” compound in Texas is already a glorified Airbnb. What all of this will do is fuel vacation villages for rich people to use a little and rent out a lot.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dmitrygr 2y ago

“Replacing parking” is going to cause all sorts of fun. Where will the cars go? And please spare me the tired “transit that is safe and not full of stabby hoboes will magically sprout out of nothing overnight” nonsense.

ceejayoz 2y ago
> Where will the cars go? Half of some cities' downtown space is parking. https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities/4162455-paved-paradise-maps-show-how-much-of-us-cities-are-parking-lots/ https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities... Every apartment complex in my area clearly has way, way more parking that needed - at no time of day are they more than 50% occupied.
- jajko 2y ago
  In Europe generally all new bigger construction has most parking below ground, even 2-3 floors. Very few outside if any, normally just for quick drop off or services. I've even seen locals blocking a successful local bank trying to build a additional building and planning way too many of those - citing concern of too much added traffic in neighborhood. Not entirely sure if thats the best approach, but thats how how respect for laws and locals looks like. At the end, bank managed just fine despite that restriction.
- lotsoweiners 2y ago
  > at no time of day are they more than 50% occupied Why is that? Is there more than one parking space per bedroom or do people not have cars?
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    America has eight parking spots per car. https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parking-spaces-for-every-car-heres-how-cities-are-rethinking-that-land https://www.fastcompany.com/90645900/america-has-eight-parki... > Parking standards were created arbitrarily, without adequate data. Zoning laws usually require one parking space per apartment, one per 300 square feet of commercial development, and one per 100 square feet for restaurants. For context, a parking space measures 160 square feet on average, plus additional area for driveways and driving lanes, so an eatery’s parking lot may be three times the size of its dining area.

boringg 2y ago

This works for suburbs I'm guessing - I don't see how it helps out in metro areas? Where does this work best for? Buy and re-develop for friends?

fckgw 2y ago
Since this is California law, it helps tremendously in places like LA which were built as large suburban SFH neighborhoods but have long exhausted all free space. Building denser housing within existing SFH neighborhoods will help to alleviate the housing crisis.
- mindslight 2y ago
  Anything but building significantly upwards, amirite?
- outer_web 2y ago
  Exactly, rather than sending people farther and farther out of county, it lets LA's existing, sprawling suburbs look a tiny bit more like a real city.
ebiester 2y ago
Increasing density in suburbs is a giant win.
aeontech 2y ago
The second law adds ability to replace parking spaces with ADU's, which could be useful even in more denser metro areas.

userbinator 2y ago

[flagged]

amanaplanacanal 2y ago
Are you thinking of leaving the state now, or did you already do it, or are you just trying to talk other people into leaving?
- userbinator 2y ago
  Long ago, and have had friends do the same.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
This makes it easier to both move into & out of California. It'll make existing suburban lots more valuable because they now can be subdivided so existing homeowners can cash in and move on. But the new subdivided lots will be cheaper than existing non-subdivided lots, so it's also cheaper to move in. Win-win!
- foogazi 2y ago
  It can't make lots simultaneously more valuable and cheaper to acquire Existing homeowners won't subdivide and leave. They will split their sfh lot and rent it out. Look at people investing into ADUs It will be cheaper in the sense that renting a room is cheaper than renting the house when looking at total outlay, but not when looking at sqft ownership We complain about housing being an asset and instead turn every lot into an investment opportunity
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    > not when looking at sqft ownership Which is a relatively minor consideration. Yes it's nice to have some garden space. But not when the garden adds $1M to the price of your house.
outer_web 2y ago

colanderman 2y ago

As someone interested in "friend compounds", I'm missing what in either of these laws enables that specifically. They both just seem to provide for denser housing generally. (Particularly SB684 almost literally just seems to allow subdividing lots which couldn't be subdivided before.)

tptacek 2y ago
Yes, that's the whole subtext. These kinds of developments with multiple freestanding units on a single lot are generally disallowed by the previous generation of zoning and planning rules. Note how these changes are allowing "friend complexes" on lots zoned multifamily already.

ThinkBeat 2y ago

So a fancy trailer park basically? but one where relocation and moving can be more difficult? People get divorced, relocate for work, relocate for mental health,end up in jail, People end up hating each other, have kids and need space, get a raise a want space, and people die. How long does the friend structure survive? There will be people moving in and out just like any part of real estate. Do the original owners turn into landlords and rent out the homes? There would be an interesting dynamic if the homes were mobile, when you could move to a different friend compound if you wanted to leave. But again, all of this is solved in trailer parks. I am -not- being derisive of trailer parks. I am saying that this is a rich person's reinvention of it with some added attributes. Spending time studying the dynamics of a trailer park over time would provide lessons on mistakes not to make, and nifty solutions to problems not yet pondereed. (Yeah if you can afford a mini house on its own real estate in California these days you are rich)

ceejayoz 2y ago
> So a fancy trailer park basically? Would you describe an apartment building this way?
- rickydroll 2y ago
  No. Apartment buildings are little bricks stacked together into a larger structure. In the original example, individual houses are spaced close together, they have the feel of a trailer park. These two living environments have in common that they are one—to two-person places to sleep, cook, and watch videos. Everything else that makes life interesting has to be done somewhere else. There are no gardens, no workshops for CNC machines and 3d printers, and no space for outdoor recreational equipment like kayaks, paddleboards, bikes, etc. I can concede I am biased, and I'm blessed by being able to afford a property with a garden of about 2,000 square feet. I'm looking to expand it by another 500 square feet this year. My basement is just half full with my workshop and home lab; the other half is my partner's art studio. There was a recent discussion on HNN about developers who quit their jobs to start a farm or otherwise leave the tech world behind, but I do a version of that in the small. I am content to hang around the house and garden, relax outside, watch birds, and occasionally hike in neighboring State Parks.

Workaccount2 2y ago

The overall idea is pretty good, but I take issue the image that shows the $1M plot turning into $2.5M by building small homes. This makes sense in a vacuum (maybe) but in reality, the areas that get subdivided like this will become less valuable with each new division. There needs to be a feedback mechanism that prevents every lot from being turned into a bunch of micro-lots in a race to do what the image depicts before the area loses value.

Maken 2y ago
Isn't homes becoming more affordable an intended side effect of this legislation?
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Yes, but you want a system that can dial in a level of affordability rather than a "rapidly multiply every home in an area by four" race to the bottom. I don't know the specifics of the bill, but if it's a 2.5x investment cheat code for the fastest actors, it's going to cause mayhem and hard backlash.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    If by "rapidly" you mean "over several decades". That's the scale at which neighborhoods turn over.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      By "rapidly" I mean on the span of a few years. If your neighbor subdivides their lot, the smartest thing for you to do is subdivide yours (after all, it will turn your $1M into $2.5M, no?). It will have a domino effect because the last house in the neighborhood full of subdivisions will have the lowest sale value (and the first house to subdivide will be the most valuable). The intent is good but the system needs a moderating factor to prevent runaway.
      - 2y ago

crmd 2y ago

In a friends/family compound that is subdivided, you need a covenant on the original deeds that controls what happens when a member wants to sell their lot, e.g. the existing members collectively have to approve the buyer, or have right of first refusal to buy back the property, etc Otherwise what starts as a family compound will eventually just become a “normal” neighborhood of strangers. Subdivided family compounds are one of the extremely rare cases where you actually want a deeded homeowners association.

daft_pink 2y ago
As someone that’s dealt with families trying to sell real estate owned jointly by several different families, owning real estate that requires all your friends and/or family to approve your sale sounds like a recipe for disaster.
- KerrAvon 2y ago
  Yes. Even when all parties are directionally aligned and fundamentally agree on everything it can be a nightmare simply to get all the ducks in a row. But if I understand this correctly, this is just a way to allow for high density housing; there's nothing specific to friends / family here? A developer can buy a large lot and subdivide it to tiny, tiny houses. Doesn't sound pleasant to me, tbh, but high-density advocates gonna high-dense, I guess.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    I think it's more about making housing cheaper than being pleasant. Plenty of people live in apartments or condos, so I suspect there is a market for it.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Not much different than private equity that requires board approval to transfer. As long as the terms are in the operating agreement (or other ownership structure agreement), caveat emptor. (am member/owner in family friend's family farm)
- 2y ago

logifail 2y ago

> To get this going, we had to buy 1 home, not 6 of them You had to buy land for six, though? This side of the pond buying (vacant) land to build one family home would run well into six figures (USD $$$,$$$ where the first digit is definitely a 2 and if you're unlucky it's higher still) - then you have to finance the house(s) on top.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
Yeah, I think the article captures that pretty well. The infographic shows 4 lots for 100k each. In most cities it is close to impossible to find several lots for sale side by side.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  At the risk of sounding glib, the Detroit Land Bank has some amazing deals on adjacent vacant properties when you buy a property to rehabilitate. If a family wants to have their own virtual compound and can stomach the safety implications, buying a Land Bank house and adjacent properties would give everyone plenty of elbow room.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Im sure there are lots of places if location is not a concern. The author of the article is in the California bay area.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    In my city, you can often find rows of houses for sale for $5-10k a piece from slum lords trying to exit the business. Tearing down the old homes would probably be expensive, but I think the city even has a program to help with some of that. Since you could effectively buy a whole street, the safety implications might not be as bad as initially assumed.
wmf 2y ago
They're talking about buying one lot and splitting it into 6 micro lots. That sounds ridiculously small to me.

ramesh31 2y ago

Now you get the privilege of paying a mortgage to live in a Hooverville.

outer_web 2y ago
I think for many the only alternative is renting. Having your rent go towards ownership is preferable in many cases.
- foogazi 2y ago
  That's just one of many preferred outcomes - not the top one 1. Buy cheap sfh 2. Buy cheap condo 3. Rent cheap sfh 4. Rent cheap condo ... 20. Buy expensive micro-house Edit:formatting
  - outer_web 2y ago
    Speak for yourself. For me, buying is better than any rental options and a freestanding building is better than anything attached or in an HOA.
    - foogazi 2y ago
      Really ? You would buy vs rent under any circumstance ?
      - outer_web 2y ago
        Of course not. There are plenty of circumstances that would change the order. But that'd be my 'all things being equal' ranking. I had hoped it was implied that I'd prefer to rent a non-haunted condo over owning a haunted mansion.
        meepmorp 2y ago
        Owning a home sucks, but it's still better than renting one.

game_the0ry 2y ago

Is it just me, or does this seem like a another example of how housing in CA is broken? The demand is totally insatiable. I grew up in the state, and am in the East Coast for now (which also has its own problems), but I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU. The whole concept of an ADU just seems like a bad sign for the market, not mention the increase in traffic bc more density = more people. You would think the market would normalize and people would move to other states, which is happening, yet people are contemplating making these mini houses. Yet another symptom of American standard of living decreasing -- younger people are just getting less with the same amount of money. That's the root of the problem.

outer_web 2y ago
Is insatiable demand equivalent to 'broken' housing? Seems like the latter is a pejorative and the former is the better of two possible problems. Considering people live in apartments and condos, what's the problem with an ADU (or tinyhouse as they called them years ago)? The density/traffic thing is not straightforward. Increased capacity will add traffic, sure. To the extent that capacity remains static and people can live closer to their commute destinations, you have fewer people taking longer trips and more people taking shorter trips (or other transport). Obviously both of these will be the case. As will people moving from high density housing to ADUs in the suburbs. Agreed on the standard of living issue.
Daishiman 2y ago
> I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU. People have different imagination from you > I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU. More density implies that services get built closer together. A corner store needs a high level of density to exist, but when it does it cuts down your trips to a large grocery store. I live in a dense city. I have a grocer half a block away, 10 coffee shops in a 5-block radius, etc. You have an extremely Americanized view of a fundamentally unsustainable housing mechanism; American car-dependent suburbs don't make any sense as the main source of housing.
- game_the0ry 2y ago

diebeforei485 2y ago

It would be nice if the yards could face each other. So people could basically have a large open space that is private to the residents.

defterGoose 2y ago
That's what a Bungalow Court is all about. They're kind of a dying breed, but have previously been very popular here in LA County.

hexis 2y ago

The Californians yearn for a cult.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

njarboe 2y ago

In rural Colorado there is a law that makes subdividing lots under 35 acres very difficult. There are lots of areas in the mountains that have expensive housing. You are allowed to build one 15,000 sqft house but not ten 1,500 sqft houses on the 35 acres. Would love to have something like this in Colorado.

fritzo 2y ago
Where are those ten houses going to get water?
- bmacho 2y ago
  Spring, well, rain-water, or water transported there on pick-ups
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    That doesn't really scale though. Once you have ten houses, you'll start thinking about how it really should be 100 houses and they should build a better road to service everyone and then you'll want power and phone and internet, and before long all of the natural areas are just subdivisions.
- scarecrowbob 2y ago
  I just haul it on a trailer from the water dock.
scarecrowbob 2y ago
Same. I am living on about 40 acres in the 4 corners area and I'd really like to put in more infrastructure. Currently I have a bunch of non-permitted (built in the 90s) cabins together in one corner, running off of solar. I'm planning on building a septic and a cistern for this set of buildings and a larger, more permitted house on another part of the property this year. I could have 6-10 tiny houses on this property and not have folks seeing each other, and I have the cash to just put in everything necessary. As written, the codes are not friendly towards that idea. I am still going to put in some RV hookups, at least- those are much less regulated than dwellings. My neighbors certainly aren't in a position to do the kind of complainaing that would lead to more attention from the county, and I'm at the end of a long series of oil field roads. While I am an anarchist, I do understand the county's need to prevent folks from creating dangers to themselves and other folks. I just wish that everything didn't need to be massively profitable for some investors before variations on codes and planning could be grante.

rank0 2y ago

I like it. Honestly we need even more freedom. I thought this was AMERICA! Absurd that you couldn’t already do this.

josephpmay 2y ago

One thing that’s incorrect in the article: SB 684 only works on multifamily-zoned lots, but starting in July, it’s getting replaced by SB 1123, which works on “vacant or uninhabitable” single-family lots

caycep 2y ago

why not NY style row houses? you might achieve more density than a compound

simonebrunozzi 2y ago

This type of law, and its consequences, are really interesting to me. I used to live in San Francisco, but in 2020 moved back to Italy. Now we like to spend 2-3 months a year in the SF Bay Area, but we would hardly consider buying a house (and renting it out when we're away). Instead, a situation where we would be neighbors with a few "friends", it would make it much easier to consider the option.

cft 2y ago

Similar has been already tried in the USSR, it was called a Communal Apartment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment

TheCoelacanth 2y ago
That's not at all the same thing. They're subdividing the lot and building a separate house for each family, not just putting multiple families together into an existing large house.

morsecodist 2y ago

I do YIMBY advocacy and this sounds policy change sounds like a good thing but I am always struck that our zoning is so restrictive that when people come up with different styles of housing it requires a law change and we talk about it like the law change is giving us this new cool style of housing. What is really happening is the law has taken away this style of housing and someone has come up with nice branding for a denser housing style that seems less scary so they are able budge zoning laws the tiniest bit to allow more density, but only if it is in this cool new style that we are OK with.

alistairSH 2y ago

I'm pretty positive about the ability to subdivide and build smaller. But pushing this as a "friend compound" law is super weird. Are there really that many people who want a friend compound for their primary residence? Personally, I'd be hard pressed to think of more than 1-2 other couples with whom I'd want to co-develop property and even then only for a vacation home, not my regular house.

dyauspitr 2y ago
Are you a churchgoer? Because they usually have a lot of families they know that want these situations.
- toasterlovin 2y ago
  Yeah, exactly, we’ve talked about this a lot with friends from church and, IMO, this would be the best way to do it. It avoids the coercive danger of shared property and gives anybody the ability to exit whenever they want.

xrd 2y ago

The general consensus in everything I read is that it is easier to build in the south (like Florida or Texas). But, where I live now, Central Florida, the zoning restrictions are tight. Even putting in an ADU is a mess. I assume this is because people want to protect themselves from a double wide showing up next door. Sprawl is fine, but not next door. I see a lot of radical changes happening in the American West. I'm from Oregon where HB 2001 (https://www.oregon.gov/lcd/LAR/Pages/Housing-2023.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/lcd/LAR/Pages/Housing-2023.aspx) passed in 2023 and it and a few other laws now disallow any city with more than 25k people from blocking high density housing. I'm really curious to see if these things will work and if the pendulum will shift. I hope so.