[Scott_Sanderson]

I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning.

Single unit is the most expensive and least efficient zoning rule. Getting rid of it would bring housing costs down.

Ever visit a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan and wonder why we don't have that? It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!

[colpabar]

>Getting rid of it would bring housing costs down.

You answered your own question. Housing costs coming down is a good thing for people who need housing, but it's not really a good thing for people who own valuable homes, and people who own valuable homes tend to have much more political power.

[neura]

I feel that's mostly true, but there may be many other similar factors. If you make "affordable" housing ("for who?" is the correct question), then you have more people that can't afford to spend as much, while pushing out the people that spend more.

Someone else stated it simply as "undesirables", which I think is the quick summation of your statement and other similar reasoning. It all comes down to "I get that people need a place to live, but they can find that somewhere else" or "we've got a good thing going here (for me, the politician)".

[ajmurmann]

Zoning usually gets decided on on a very local level. The people who show up to community meetings tend to be older, white home owners who don't want the value of their home to go down. Fear of "undesirables" of course also likely plays a role and when I've heard it in person, even that gets wrapped in fear of that bringing down home values and schools.

[cudgy]

Perhaps more white owners show up in majority white neighborhoods, but what evidence is there that white owners disproportionately show up to these meetings? I assume you can provide it based on this comment.

[ajmurmann]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/nimbys-do...

[tr_user]

Do they own valuable homes or do they own valuable land? I can see the land value increasing because it is now rezone-able and you can build multiple units worth on it.

[arbor_day]

Cities don't vote, people do.

I own a single family home in the Palo Alto. If I wanted to living in a city like Paris, I would. I like it here.

I don't care about the price of my house, since I do not plan to sell it this decade. I care a TON about my neighborhood. I love that my neighborhood is quiet, not crowded, and has easy parking. I will vote against any proposals or elected officials who represent me that would make that worse.

I get I represent NIMBY-ism, but these tradeoffs are real. I often see people strawman them like there are easy/obvious solutions to shared problems. There aren't.

[MoosePirate]

This is why the only real solution is to not have total local control of zoning.

Given the choice, many will vote to restrict what other people around them can do with their property to benefit their own interests - financial, quality of life, etc. While externalizing the costs (higher housing costs, pollution, etc) across a large number of people who aren't allowed a vote. Hoping people will do otherwise isn't going to get results.

But given that the zoning impacts have just as big an impact on the low-paid worker who has to commute hours to the local hospital to work, it is entirely reasonable to allow those impacted parties a vote by moving zoning away from total local control up to a larger level. Recent legislative steps in CA are a move in the right direction, but need to go much farther to create more meaningful changes.

Basically, if you want a quiet neighborhood with large plots of land, you should be required to bear the full cost of that, rather than voting to externalize the majority of those costs across the larger population.

[arbor_day]

FWIW, I am happy to pay a premium for the living situation I want. I do that today across high housing costs / taxes / cost of local goods/services. I'd happily support paying for other externalities (e.g. carbon taxes).

[sershe]

The premium would be really large though. The difference is only in degree between current zoning and something like "I have a nice view from my window and therefore my neighbors should not be allowed to build up the 2nd floor or plant trees in a way that would block it, and nobody should be allowed to build tall buildings in downtown between me and the mountains". The current zoning just happens to be status quo. Both unreasonably restrict what others can do with their property, and the only fair way to really "pay the premium" to enforce either is to buy the land (or at least, pay some large fraction of market rent, to offset the loss that owner incurs by not e.g. building and renting out more units). Well that or NIMBYism, which is a nicer name for regulatory capture, i.e. corruption.

[ceeplusplus]

The easy solution is that your quality of life should not infringe on the rights of millions of people to housing that doesn't cost 90% of their monthly income to pay for. And the state is going to drag local cities kicking and screaming to where we need to go, like it or not.

I make well into 6 figures a year and I can't buy a shack in Fremont because of people like you.

[hellisothers]

Without knowing them exactly I imagine property owners actually do have rights in this situation. Where does the right “to housing that doesn’t cost 90% of their monthly income” come from?

[ipaddr]

It's more afforable compared to an apartment in New York where a townhouse can set you back 15 million.

Density isn't the issue demand is. You want to live in a place everyone else does.

At 1.3 million on average you could buy 100a property on prime farmland or you could buy an apartment in New York or a house in Freemont. Wanting Freemont to be zoned like New York property would probably make it more popular with new hot properities and it will price you out further. The truth is there are a lot of people making more money who want housing in Freemont.

[ceeplusplus]

Funnily enough buying a house close enough to work in NYC is actually cheaper, because Jersey City is viable and NY/NJ don't have Prop 13 to inflate property values. I could buy a 5bdr luxury home in a nice area with great schools in NYC in one of the outer boroughs or a high end luxury new construction in Jersey City. That same cash gets you a shack in a shitty part of the East Bay.

> make it more popular with new hot properities and it will price you out further

It's a common NIMBY misconception that adding more supply increases prices. Basic economics says this is obviously wrong.

> The truth is there are a lot of people making more money who want housing in Freemont

I'm pretty sure my income puts me in the top 10% of income in the Bay and definitely top 1% nationally. You're saying that less than 10% of the population should be able to purchase a starter home (what I mean by a shack). Do you not listen to what you're saying?

[ipaddr]

Average price in Freemont is 1.3 million.

Top 1% nationwide is: 538,926 Top 10% in bay area: 534,600

If you make only 100k with no savings or partner you might be priced out of that 6000ft average home. Most people will buy as a couple, have a down payment and get help from parents which puts you at a disadvantage but it is still possible.

No idea if a 5 bedroom NJ home is equal to a 3 bedroom 6000 ft home in Freemont. Not sure one location has more value. I would choose Freemont over NJ.

[ceeplusplus]

I see you are out of touch with the housing market. Zillow doesn't give an average but most of the homes listed in Fremont there are above $1.3M, more like 1.5-1.8M if you want something bigger than 1200 sqft. If you filter by >1500 sqft everything starts at 1.5M+. So no, there's no 6000sqft "average" home, these are all starter homes averaging 1.5-1.8M. Then factor in that most houses get 100-200k over asking price during the insane bidding process.

> If you make only 100k with no savings or partner you might be priced out of that 6000ft average home. Most people will buy as a couple, have a down payment and get help from parents which puts you at a disadvantage but it is still possible

Do you listen to what you're saying? A top 10% earner in the region needs to buy as a couple and get help from parents to afford a _starter home_? So everyone else that's under the 90th percentile is just screwed?

> Top 1% nationwide is: 538,926 Top 10% in bay area: 534,600

90th percentile income in 2018 in the Bay was $384k [1]. Someone in the top 10% of incomes should not be struggling to afford a basic home with 3 bedrooms in a mediocre area.

[1]: https://www.thecalifornian.com/story/news/2020/01/31/bay-are...

[jandrese]

It's a tough problem to solve when you need to house 70,000 people per square mile (similar to Manhattan) in order to not leave people on the street, but also not allow more than 6,000 people (San Francisco) per square mile.

[itissid]

> my neighborhood is quiet

I have lived in areas with only single family dwellings(Tempe AZ, density 5,203 people per square mile.) and in areas with high rises(Hoboken NJ, density 41,038 people per square mile) and I can attest that most noise is from the cars on the main roads of the city, which largely depends on urban design, e.g. Hoboken has only 2 main arterial roads(Washington Street and Observer Highway) which excludes most of the noise from the interiors.

> not crowded

By what metric? I can walk my dog outside easily, travel easily in the train to manhattan, and get reservations to any restaurant on the day in Hoboken. I don't think most places are as crazy crowded as Manhattan (Brooklyn, Queen and Bronx are much lower density) where the dynamics are different because work and tourism.

Are most single family zoned places in California work building heavy areas and touristy destinations?

> easy parking.

I can find parking for ~200$ per month here. So it is kind of expensive, i'll give you that.

[arbor_day]

I think my use of "quiet" and "crowd" was not very clear. For me quiet is the absence of hustle and bustle.

When I down my street, I'll see at most 1-2 people out and about. To me, that's a more relaxing environment than even the best urban environments where I'll see dozens of people.

Unless I live next to a major road/highway, the occasional car noise is less bothersome to me personally than noise from people. To me car noise feels like white background noise, but voices trigger some active part of my brain.

I'm not arguing that's a completely rational way to feel / belief, but it totally how I feel.

[tablespoon]

> I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning.

People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.

> Ever visit a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan and wonder why we don't have that? It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!

You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of [realistic American] zoning. It's too expensive. You'd get flimsy modern cookie-cutter buildings and maybe some brutalist concrete hulks.

[ProfessorLayton]

>People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.

Then those people should buy a single family home and the single family homes around them and keep them that way.

>You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of zoning. It's too expensive. You'd get flimsy modern cookie-cutter buildings and maybe some brutalist concrete hulks.

The current restrictions that have created suburbia are already yield expensive, cookie cutter and flimsy housing, so even if your arguments were taken at face value (Which I disagree with), nothing changes for the worse.

[tablespoon]

> The current restrictions that have created suburbia are already yield expensive, cookie cutter and flimsy housing, so even if your arguments were taken at face value (Which I disagree with), nothing changes for the worse.

I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is denser housing would get us "a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan..." It's false advertising.

The only thing you'll get with density is density.

[RestlessMind]

> Then those people should buy a single family home and the single family homes around them and keep them that way.

That's what we did. Now people like you are saying me and my neighbors are NIBMYs and want us to change.

[ProfessorLayton]

>That's what we did. Now people like you are saying me and my neighbors are NIBMYs and want us to change.

You bought a single family home and all surrounding single family homes around it? If that's the case, no one is asking you to change anything. They're literally your backyards and you can choose to not build any further. If your neighbors don't want to build more units, they should be free not to as well.

What needs to change is neighbors restricting housing units on property they do not own. No one is advocating for completely abolishing all zoning, but the current approach isn't working as housing prices skyrocket everywhere that housing production can't keep up — often because of zoning restrictions.

[anamax]

> >People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes. > Then those people should buy a single family home and the single family homes around them and keep them that way.

And when they do (as an upstream commenter has done), they're attacked by the good people who blame single-family houses for what's wrong with California.

This thread is an example.

[jandrese]

Ah yes, the famously laissez faire zoning policies in cities like Paris, Copenhagen, and Milan...

You don't get beautiful walkable cities if you let people just do whatever they want wherever they want. If you do that you get Houston Texas.

[skrbjc]

Agreed, if you look at Alameda, CA it is a town with many beautiful victorian homes. In the 70s and 80s they were tearing them down as fast as they could and building ugly apartment buildings in their place. Then they changed the laws so you couldn't tear down the old homes and now many of them are restored to their beautiful original state.

[Maarten88]

> People like to live in single family homes and live next to single family homes.

People like living in walkable neighborhoods with public transportation more, as proven by housing prices, but those are mostly illegal to build.

Also I think that society is now much more complex than the single family American dream of the past. And the US should wake up to the reality that in their society the poor are subsidizing the rich in almost everything, especially in housing.

[CorrectHorseBat]

>You won't get a beautiful city like those with any kind of zoning. It's too expensive. You'd get flimsy modern cookie-cutter buildings.

Are you claiming those cities don't have zoning?

[tablespoon]

> Are you claiming those cities don't have zoning?

I'm claiming modern construction isn't very beautiful. If you drop single family zoning for something denser, you're not going to get something like those beautiful cities that were cited above. It's false advertising to suggest that denser zoning would give us another Paris (at least not the parts people are referring to when they bring it up). You'd get McMansion Hell, 4-Plex Edition or The Concrete Hulks of Shanghai (e.g. https://aurelien-marechal.com/block#1).

I suppose you could have a zoning code that mandated "building them like they used to," but that would be too expensive.

[Maarten88]

There are many examples in the world of successful new city developments. I used to live near Java Island in Amsterdam, a newly developed neighborhood which is very densely populated (60.000 people per square mile) and quite popular. There are modern versions of traditional canal houses, which most people think look very nice. It is not inexpensive anymore, however.

I think in the US there are some comparable developments, where they also try building walkable neighborhoods with high density, having shops and restaurants mixed in. But that is still very rare in the US.

[CorrectHorseBat]

Ah, like that. Cities like Paris do still look like that because of such zoning laws, so it's not exactly impossible. IMO modern construction can be beautiful too, it's cheap (be it old or new) construction that's ugly.

[bitcuration]

It won't matter, apartments in Manhattan and London are not necessarily cheaper than single house in LA. Zoning is a way to make more property tax and will have nothing to do with low income affordable housing in the expensive area. It's the demand and supply, so long as there are enough wealth pour in the district the price will keep hiking.

Hint: wealth gap is your answer.

[wwweston]

SB-9 / "ADUs Everywhere!" passed last year at the state level effectively makes all property legally 2-3 unit.

Some people really want to live in lower-density suburban environments, though. I can't say I blame them, because the absolutely overwhelming majority of apartments/condos are strictly inferior in a number of ways. Sound transparency through walls / floors alone is a significant issue. Smells and ventilation too. And it's nice to have outside space you have access to / control over. Sure, units could be built to standards that mitigate those problems... but that costs money.

> It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!

More "costly" than illegal, if the LA neighborhoods I'm familiar with are any indication -- there's plenty of 3 story urban buildings with parking underneath (including one I recently moved out of), but of course that's a whole "floor" that could have been housing units, and the owner wants to recoup that with higher rents. $4250/mo for 2 bd last I checked.

[mullingitover]

> I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning.

Give it time. The state government is hobbled and regional fiefdoms have far too much sway. That's slowly changing.

The state is in the middle of planning the long-term Regional Housing Needs Assessment. Regions across the state are responsible for coughing up realistic plans to meet the growth targets. If they don't come up with realistic plans to meet those targets, not only can they lose their precious single family home zoning, they can lose their zoning privileges entirely. There are even plans in the works for local governments to have state oversight officials appointed for them to completely take over their housing policy. Get your popcorn.

[wdr1]

> I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning.

It has. California has passed SB9. It allows up to four units to be built on a current single unit lot.

https://focus.senate.ca.gov/sb9

https://www.homestead.is/helping-homeowners-understand-sb9

[skrbjc]

The article does suggest that housing density doesn't really solve the problem and that we should be more OK with letting "urban sprawl" happen.

Personally, I think we need both. Let the urban areas increasingly densify and let the people who want larger single family homes move into those types of developments that are farther out of the city centers.

Some people just don't want to live in apartment buildings, and as someone with a young child, I much prefer having my own home with a yard and parking space and garage for projects than living in an apartment building and parking on the street or in a garage. But when I was younger I wanted to be closer to restaurants and the like.

CA should invest heavily in opening up more land for housing developments and equipping them with schools and shopping close by, with transit for commuters, while prioritizing density projects in the urban centers.

[verve_rat]

Hopefully working from home is here to stay and gets wide spread adoption. Then we won't need to increase city density again and again. Smaller new towns with single family homes and nearby schools and shops, maybe a community co-working centre. If the population doesn't need to commute for work then the housing doesn't need to be in the city. Lots of smaller towns.

Replace some of that water intensive agriculture with small towns for people to live in.

[cudgy]

Build cheaper housing farther outside of town where the land is cheaper and provide a bullet train to transport people into the expensive land areas. It might take time for the train to be built, but these areas have had decades to solve the problem while frittering away trying to build a few, token, and small small low cost housing projects. There really is no other solution for many areas like San Fran and New York … the land is simply not there and displacement of current landowners is expensive, impractical, and ineffective.

They need to bite the bullet … train … or some other effectively fast transport.

[kelvin0]

A funny, yet very well researched video on that exact same topic of Zoning nonsense. Entertaining AND informative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc

[bitcuration]

Unlike most places in the rest of world, California has plenty land space, there is no reason to think of California like Hong Kong, Tokyo or Mumbai, that'd be ridiculous.

Obviously housing cost is the tips of iceberg, and the result of state policy, resemblance to the development path often seen in middle and south America.

[xwdv]

Keeps out undesirables.

[deathanatos]

Yes, "undesirables", like young adults (millennials, ugh) trying to afford enough space to do society degrading things like building a home office or gasp starting a family.

/s lest someone Poe's Law on this.