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A look at Denver’s “Unlocking Housing Choices” plan
- throw-the-towel 5mo agoThankfully this article is about the zoning codes, not code as in computer programs.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> A developer could likely fit 3-4 nice cottage homes on that lot, sell them for $500-700k, and make a profit Denver takes 264 days to approve "multi-family or industrial projects with a valuation in excess of $1.5 million, such as a new apartment or office building, large additions" [1]. Construction loans in Colorado cost "8% to 13%" [2]. For a project with $1.5mm up-front costs, from land purchases to permit fees and legal costs, that comes to $87 to 141 thousand per project. This isn't as bad as San Francisco, where permiting delays alone add hundreds of thousands of dollars to housing costs. But in addition to upzoning, it's something to be considered, particularly since Denver seems to categorise practically all impactful residential development as "major commercial." [1] https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Community-Planning-and-Development/Plan-Review-Permits-and-Inspections/Average-Plan-Review-Times https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Of... [2] https://www.clearhouselending.com/commercial-loans/colorado/construction-loans https://www.clearhouselending.com/commercial-loans/colorado/...
- cucumber3732842 5mo ago>particularly since Denver seems to categorise practically all impactful residential development as "major commercial." This isn't an accident. They know what they're doing. Every municipality tries to do this to the extent they think they can get away with it because it's an end run around your property right. There's all sorts of residential exemptions and precedents and case law and courts and politicians tend not to be in a hurry to screw homeowners because there's tons of them. By classifying you as commercial it gives them a) all sorts of capricious authority to micromanage the pettiest of details and/or force you to expend money with no recourse except "haha, sue us peasant".
- Analemma_ 5mo agoIt's absolutely vital to homeowners that no new housing be built, to keep Undesirables from moving in, but they need to do it in a way which leaves no blood on their hands so they can continue to have their In This House signs with no cognitive dissonance. And this is how they get it: don't make it literally illegal to build housing, but make it economically impossible in practice. Then they can go "welp, nothing's getting built, I guess there's nothing we could've done", and as an added bonus they also get to say "looks like the free market can never fix our housing shortage!"
- nextos 5mo agoThis is happening in large parts of the EU as well. It's pretty mind blowing. Since the mid 2010s, the new build construction rate has slowed down to alarmingly low levels. A few years before that, there was an oversupply, yet they kept building. It's totally intentional. Unsurprisingly, affordability is so bad. In lots of major cities, a one-bed rental takes around 50% of a mid-career post-tax salary. You have become an indentured servant for whatever real estate fund owns your property. Lots of regulatory capture behind the scenes. Ironically, some parts of the UK, including Home Counties, are now much better than most EU, including Scandinavia, with lots of shared ownership and affordable housing schemes. It's really easy. Increasing the supply of homes, in particular first homes, and preventing predatory tactics to constrain supply.
- Schiendelman 5mo agoThis is why we must overturn zoning - governments should not have the right to tell you how much you can build. Then we have a shot of forcing permitting to be faster. Make the delay a taking!
- someguydave 5mo agoThe delay is a taking
- ethbr1 5mo agoWant to see what no zoning looks like? Find your nearest organic strip mall development road, then imagine that in a neighborhood.
- pessimizer 5mo agoThe premise is that the author is a libertarian, except that housing in the neighborhood they live in should be fixed at the price that they can afford, and that the character of the neighborhood from the point that they moved into it should be preserved. It's only real gentrification when upper-middle class YIMBYs get forced out.
- hn_throwaway_99 5mo agoExcept that's not what the author argued, at all. The author acknowledges that a lot of the gentrification is the result of zoning rules, and has only proposed what are primarily less restrictive zoning rules as a potential solution.
- 9x39 5mo agoEh, let's take their word for it: >But I’d like to see new homes sold at prices I could conceivably afford. Doesn't gentrification happen not from spontaneous combos of zoning rules but when someone with money wants to live somewhere, so they do? It's part of the golden rule: he with the gold makes all the rules, unless you can go asymmetric economic warfare and fire back with zoning & NIMBY laws.
- burlesona 5mo agoWhat I said is this is what I struggle with. In general I think too much regulation is what caused this problem. And the question on my mind is, from where we are today, is there a liberalization of the rules that would also help maintain a mixed income neighborhood, rather than the current trajectory (quickly becoming an uber-wealthy country club).
- tolerance 5mo agoThis may be a non-sequitur to your point—and what I'm reading as a put-down makes me less likely to read the fine article that I indeed have not (to the credit of the potency of the point that I hope I'm grasping). Between AI and whatever housing problems are being felt by co-founders and advisors and chairs at posh institutions, the flattening of the upper-middle class is a sight to behold.
- maerF0x0 5mo ago> Today, the neighborhood is mixed-income with a range of families from different backgrounds This is a good thing! Overall I think this is simply an outcome of NIMBYism, regulators over regulating to justify their existence, and a K shaped economy. There's nothing wrong with the market building what there is actual money in. No one should be forced to lose money to serve those who cannot afford the product. (That's the space of charities) Denver seems to have done an amazing job, relative to other places I've been, at actually adding a lot more housing. The market likely would be _worse_ had there not been so much built (and building)
- xg15 5mo ago> No one should be forced to lose money to serve those who cannot afford the product. (That's the space of charities) So, homelessness for the rest then?
- maerF0x0 5mo ago(That's the space of charities)
- harimau777 5mo agoAnd when the charities can't or don't?
- bicx 5mo agoPlans like this would be interesting to me if I believed it were possible to get all the necessary parties to agree.
- ecshafer 5mo agoFixing housing is incredibly easy: 1. Remove Zoning / Deed Restrictions / Parking Minimums 2. Remove Red Tape (Environmental impact assessments, time cap approvals to a couple weeks, at cost fees) 3. Land Value Taxes Watch as Gentrification suddenly goes away and infill development occurs. These complicated schemes are unnecessary.
- happytoexplain 5mo ago>Remove Zoning >Remove Red Tape (Environmental impact assessments I absolutely understand what prompts this desperation, but much like the desperation that prompted the election of Trump, it's very, very much more bad than it is good.
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoNope. I will f-ing yeet that baby along with the bathwater. Every idiot (they're not even useful anymore FFS, look at the results) says this based on abstract assessments of individual rules and laws. But in practice the overall effect of the system is that all those environmental assessments and stormwater permits and all the other things aren't even speed bumps for big business interests with lawyers and engineers on staff. Those interests can construe any evil as compliant and do so at cost. The rules are unscalable cliffs to "normal" people and businesses who can't justify paying mid four to low five figures up front for projects that might not even generate that much value.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- rexpop 5mo agoYou're saying regulation is a moat for monopolists?
- triceratops 5mo agoWhat's the problem with removing zoning? Which I interpreted, charitably, as "remove low-density zoning" and not as "let anyone build a lead smelter in their yard". (Also, a suburban area is probably not a lead smelting operation's preferred location anyway). Environmental impact assessments are great if they actually do what they say. But they can also be weaponized to block any new development in existing cities. Forcing suburban sprawl into less populated areas is a worse outcome if you want to protect the environment.
- djoldman 5mo agoA rare anti-Betteridge's law of headlines article. Yes, there are laws that, if passed, would stop or slow or even reverse the increasing price of real estate. Would they pass? Hard to say and probably not quickly. As has been repeated many times: it's in the financial interest of people who own property to increase their property's value by constraining supply via zoning/building codes, and they usually have a good amount of influence in the local politics that determine these rules. The solve is fairly straightforward: allow absolute maximum density so long as it is built safely. You'll get tall apartment buildings pretty quick. Then everyone can go to the schools and enjoy the low crime and fast fire response. But that isn't allowed because incumbents don't want it. There's not much new about this... it's the same story all over the US.
- hn_throwaway_99 5mo ago> it's the same story all over the US. At least some places are different: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47433058
- cyberax 5mo agoNo, it's not. Austin's population growth has been at _best_ stagnant. And I made a prediction that it had actually decreased. We'll see once 2025 ACS data is released.
- AuthAuth 5mo agoYou cant just 4x every plot because that would destroy the ultilties that have been allocated.
- armenarmen 5mo agoI have never considered this nor have I heard it brought up before. Good point!
- AuthAuth 5mo agoI am only aware of this because we actually ran into the problem. We started allowing more subdivisions and densification in our city and the waste water infrastructure got quickly pushed to its limits now we have to halt construction while the new water infrastructure is upgraded to accommodate for the massively increased zoning density.
- tpm 5mo agoThat's interesting - naively I would expect the wastewater infrastructure to be overbuilt enough to manage larger than normal rains, which are usually several times over typical household wastewater production.
- gucci-on-fleek 5mo ago> naively I would expect the wastewater infrastructure to be overbuilt enough to manage larger than normal rains, which are usually several times over typical household wastewater production It depends on the city—some cities do indeed handle rainwater with the normal sewer system, but most have an entirely separate system for rainwater [0]. But either way, if you pave more roads, you're always going to have more rainwater to deal with, regardless of which system of pipes you use. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_drain#Combined_sewers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_drain#Combined_sewers
- tpm 5mo ago
- thcipriani 5mo agoI'm down with killing restrictive zoning laws. But removing regulation has not historically been a great curb for the uber-wealthy.
- rr808 5mo agoAgreed, the biggest boom towns have been in the South where restrictions are low and profits high, leaving some really ugly suburbs.
- triceratops 5mo agoBut they have cheap housing. I'll take ugly suburbs over people sleeping on the street.
- rickydroll 5mo agoBut I suspect you'll find ugly suburbs and people sleeping in the streets.
- triceratops 5mo agoLos Angeles, whose population is only 50% higher than Houston, has 25x as many people who are homeless (75k vs 3k). If people couldn't afford food because there wasn't enough food grown, no one would think handing out food stamps would work. It's silly to think that doesn't work for housing. 1. https://www.governing.com/housing/how-houston-cut-its-homeless-population-by-nearly-two-thirds https://www.governing.com/housing/how-houston-cut-its-homele... 2. https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=1051-lahsa-releases-finalized-2025-homeless-count-results-after-hud-review https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=1051-lahsa-releases-final...
- nullocator 5mo agoThese may be accurate and real, but I also wonder if this might partially be because Houston sucks in terms of lived experience for the homeless so they tend to end up elsewhere? Texas has a recent and storied history of just busing people out of state or into other cities for people it deems are problematic or they don't want to deal with. So it would not surprise me if some of the stats are cooked or they've partially swept the problem under the rug.
- rr808 5mo agoThere are millions of homes that are super cheap and no one wants to live there. I think we missed a real opportunity for WFH to allow people to move where things are more affordable, rather than having everyone live in mega cities and complain of high prices.
- mrDmrTmrJ 5mo agoIf you're curious, why this scenario hasn't panned out. I'd highly recommend you read: The Triumph of the City https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healthier/dp/0143120549 https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-City-Greatest-Invention-Healt...
- rickydroll 5mo agoI suspect that book was written with an extremely optimistic view of urban spaces. My experience in urban spaces has been depressing, isolating, cement, and asphalt. You can't do anything without somebody sticking their hand out asking for money. I'm glad I'm living on my 10,000 ft² lot with multiple fruit trees, multiple vegetable gardens, berry gardens, bird-friendly bushes, and neighbors who are a good distance away from me. The only thing I would change is to reduce the light pollution so you can see six-magnitude stars from the backyard. Now, if somebody wants to buy the property and convert it to a dense housing space, after I'm dead, great, I won't be in a position to care. But right now, I very much care about getting rid of lawns, building bird-friendly habitats, and growing plants you can eat.
- bobthepanda 5mo agoFor the most part, remote work ended up with people moving to already desirable remote communities, and exporting the housing crisis there without solving anything for the expensive metro areas.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- cheesecompiler 5mo agoNo because gentrification is a side effect of private property, not insufficient technology.
- MattDamonSpace 5mo agoHe’s talking about legal codes, read the article before commenting ffs
- bawolff 5mo agoIs gentrification a bad thing? Neighbourhoods change, some get richer and some get poorer. That is the way of things. Both poor and rich alike need somewhere to live.
- beej71 5mo agoI guess I haven't seen neighborhoods get particularly poorer for some time, unless we're counting the tent cities.
- verteu 5mo agoMany places like this in the Rust Belt or Appalachia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Un...
- dfxm12 5mo agoThe poor should get to share in the benefits of the improving community too, instead of having to move out, probably further from work, friends, etc. There are ways to control for this, of course, so it doesn't have to be so. Honestly, the poor get screwed over systemically in so many ways, I wonder where this ranks in relation to the others.
- hibikir 5mo agoNo, we can't. Once could lower the rate of increase of housing prices (and, more realistically, land values), but "gentrification" isn't really just about pricing, but a change in preferences: Areas close to urban centers had low prices because people wanted to live in deep suburbs, far away from city crime and bad schools. Now they are desirable, and thus people far more affluent are going to bit outbidding the communities that live there anyway. So the gentrification is inevitable, and IMO any attempts to stop it are bad: Nobody has right to a character of the neighborhood, whether we are talking a Mexican American community or people that want racial covenants in their subdivision. The entire idea is just straight out illiberal in the broadest of senses. It's true that the gentrification process speeds up when there is no building, as those differences in preferences mean existing tenants are competing with even richer people, and would have to move even further out, but the change in preferences still exists, and thus the gentrification is straight out unavoidable. Besides, in almost every place where we have serious housing problems, the small changes proposed here are insufficient. When the land is expensive, the normal behavior everywhere is to redevelop plots to the maximum economically viable density. Turning 1 house into 4, which would sell for 500k each, doesn't make sense when the possibility of an apartment building is there. Single stairway apartments turn those 4 cottage homes into 16 3-4 bedroom units. If one is simplifying permitting anyway, why not simplify it for that density, and get far more out of the same land. Those 4 new cottages, now new, would not get redeveloped again for another 30, 40 years, so they would become difficult to afford really quickly. That's why you don't see many places actually attempting this low key densification, as it's way too much work for what you get.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoRights != Desires. Desires are much more relevant in day-to-day politics. Rights are less frequently up for question.
- em-bee 5mo agowell actually... the city of vienna mandates that 2/3rd of any new housing is subsidized. so instead of controlling the price all over, you control the price of a part, and make sure that every neighborhood has room for low income families. in other words you enforce mixing. singapore is another city with a lot of subsidized housing.
- Johnny_Bonk 5mo agoVery curious about what tools or platforms are used to make the visual housing figures with highlighting like you see in strategy 2 figure. any tips much appreciated
- burlesona 5mo agoI’m pretty sure those were drawn in SketchUp
- Johnny_Bonk 5mo agohavent used sketchup as much but i wonder if they have like stock templates, will have to look
- katekatezzz 5mo agoThought it was something like using computer programming to save the market lol
- iandanforth 5mo agoHuge fan of zoning reform, however I'd love to see equal effort in lending reform. The availability of multi-million dollar mortgages on 30 year terms means that we all get poorer. Getting people into owned homes is a dream left over from the Clinton era that has warped into an ever expanding pool of debt and over sized buildings. Developers will build to the limit of what people can afford (and slightly beyond), and that is defined by mortgage policy. The harsh reality is that as long as you're supporting a system where a 1k sqft house can cost 300, 400, 500k you're not helping anyone who isn't in the business of lending. The only way to reverse the trend is to limit the pool of available capital and bring the sale value of property down.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> limit the pool of available capital How would you do this? > and bring the sale value of property down Can't happen without causing a lot of pain. In large part due to the debt. Holding prices flat in nominal terms is the best-case outcome; holding them flat in real terms the most likely one. Either, however, beats real appreciation. (For what it's worth, I'm a homeowner with a jumbo mortgage.)
- cyberax 5mo agoThe answer is "no". That's because WE DO NOT HAVE a housing crisis. And yes, I'm not crazy. We have 1.1 housing units per family right _now_. We likely will have the record number of housing units per capita within about 2 years just due to the current pipeline of new housing. These numbers are easy to verify. Why are we talking about housing then? That's because we have a JOBS crisis. The only available good jobs are concentrated in a dwindling number of dense areas. And making it easier to build makes the jobs crisis even worse. Don't believe me? Look at Vancouver, BC. They did everything: automated transit, soul-crushingly depressive high rises near transit stations, (de-fact) prohibited foreign ownership of housing, streamlined permitting. Guess what happened? If your guess is "plentiful cheap housing" then make another guess.
- cman1444 5mo agoThis is the first time I've heard of this locational jobs crisis. Where did you learn about this? I would like to read more about it
- cyberax 5mo agoThere is not a lot of good literature, actually. I'm not saying anything even remotely factually controversial. Housing units per household: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=15tRv https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=15tRv It's also not controversial that major job density increases are happening in a few select metros: https://www.route-fifty.com/workforce/2019/06/job-density-report-brookings/157862/ https://www.route-fifty.com/workforce/2019/06/job-density-re... or if you look more broadly, that smaller cities in the US are dying out. I simply arrived at a different conclusion: we don't need to continue deepening this death spiral by "building more".
- cman1444 5mo agoThat st louis fed link doesn't seem to show any clear trend to me. Looks like we're actually on a downturn after a peak. Regardless, I don't understand what your proposed solution to this supposed "jobs crisis" is.
- milkytron 5mo agoI live in the Denver metro and have worked on zoning code in other municipalities. This is actually the first I've heard about the "Unlocking Home Choices" plan. This proposal seems like an improvement overall. Some of my thoughts: > The second concept is to incentivize retention of existing buildings by allowing substantial new construction behind them. Basically, let people cash in on their backyard. This is a significant expansion of the accessory unit rules we have today, and the city’s concept art suggests that it would allow backyard cottages larger than the existing homes (a big change). This is interesting and I wonder how it would change neighborhood dynamics. I'm not opposed at all because it enables more potential housing options. We have a few of these in the neighborhoods I frequent, but from what I've heard, it's somewhat cost prohibitive in the current form to be worth building one. If this helps make ADUs (maybe the ADU would become the original structure in this case), then that seems like progress. > The third concept is to allow more units if one unit is deed-restricted to be permanently “affordable.” This is basically the same logic as the first proposal — let developers sell more square footage if they do something residents want: in this case, deed-restrict part of the square footage to be priced below market rate. This would be helpful for allowing current residents with lower incomes than the newcomers to stay in the neighborhood without taking away an existing dwelling unit from the market. Deed-restrictions kind of concern me, but this seems like a decent compromise to prevent displacement. > What I don’t see in any of the proposals so far is streamlining and expediting permitting for developers who pursue the path the city wants: more, less expensive homes, rather than fewer, more expensive homes. Indirectly, the removal of parking minimums from the zoning code should help with this. I think there was also a change to allow single stairways in the zoning which creates a bit more incentive for developers and potentially eases the permit process.
- ipnon 5mo agoMy neighborhood in California added plenty of these and it didn’t change the vibe of the neighborhood at all. It’s a great YIMBY solution because it satisfies both the pro and anti development crowds.
- happytoexplain 5mo agoRight - the vibe of the neighborhood matters. More than the word "vibe" implies.
- woeirua 5mo ago"ideally, a property owner should be able to walk into city hall and leave with a permit the same day if they’re building the kind of housing that the city explicitly wants to see built." Hear, hear! Finally someone gets it. Same day permits for all high density housing projects. BTW, the NIMBYs are definitely going to fight the cottage homes tooth and nail otherwise. "Where will all the new cars go???"
- burlesona 5mo agoOne nice thing: Denver has already repealed parking requirements, so, they don't have legal standing to complain about it.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- xnx 5mo agoPage title is "Can we code our way out of gentrification?". The use of "code" is confusing for HN, but "gentrification" is a useful red flag about the content.
- exabrial 5mo ago> If units... "affordable housing"... Stop. Trying. To. Fix. Prices. The only way to "fix" prices is to increase supply, which the plan does really well otherwise! This was the subject of extensive proof in a recent HN thread, where shockingly... the only thing that moved the needle was... shockingly... increasing supply. No matter of "well yeah, but we can do it differently this time" will fix it. You can only increase supply. Its the only lever you have.