
The Great American Single-Family Home Problem - pdog
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/economy/single-family-home.html
======
leggomylibro
People are selfish; if they make a big investment and you're about to reduce
its value, they will fight tooth and nail. Any conversation about 'right',
'wrong', 'moral', it all goes out the window.

It really sucks that so much of peoples' value is often tied up in a single
property. It would be a gobsmackingly terrible investment decision, if you
didn't need shelter to live reasonably well.

So let's be clear. These people are being incredibly selfish, and that is
reprehensible. But they also don't really have a good alternative that
wouldn't lose them a lot of money in a time where, if they're not in the class
that owns multiple houses, they're already struggling. And that is sort of
ameliorating imo.

~~~
ajross
> But they also don't really have a good alternative that wouldn't lose them a
> lot of money in a time where, if they're not in the class that owns multiple
> houses, they're already struggling

These people are _property owners in Berkeley, California_. While I'm sure
yarns can be spun about the difference between asset value and cash liquidity,
this is just not an impoverished class, sorry. They've seen their property
values go through the roof, then the trees, now through the first cloud layer
into the open sky with eyes toward low orbit. Arguing that they don't have an
"alternative" is a little spun.

To wit: cry me a river. Build those homes.

~~~
leggomylibro
Yeah, I feel you. But I also feel for people who have worked their whole lives
to build towards a comfortable retirement, put their lives' worth of sweat and
tears into that, and then had it pulled out from under them.

There's a hyperbole to express on both sides, but I can understand why people
who are worth $1-5 million and are past their 50s might feel threatened by
this sort of development.

They aren't in a particularly marginalized position, but they are probably
frightened about the rapid change and possibly out hundreds of thousands of
dollars plus time they don't have.

I agree, build those homes and reduce the power of small groups to put up
large barriers, but I also understand where the residents are coming from to
some degree.

~~~
morgante
> There's a hyperbole to express on both sides, but I can understand why
> people who are worth $1-5 million and are past their 50s might feel
> threatened by this sort of development.

They can sell their house and live a life of luxury virtually anywhere else in
the world.

I have a hard time sympathizing with such people. They're not out
anything—they're amongst the most privileged people in the country.

Sure, I understand where they're coming from. That doesn't mean they have my
sympathy. I _understand_ why billionaires advocate for lowering their own
taxes—that doesn't mean I give them an ounce of sympathy.

------
ProfessorLayton
I live in a neighborhood built in the early 40s in the East Bay, and is marked
red in the NYT article.

This crisis is one of those "You reap what you sow" moments caused in large
part by institutionalized racism. It is not hyperbole, I have seen the old
covenants included with my parent's house, also in the East Bay, that
literally said no POC could live there. These covenants are of course now
invalid, but thats where zoning comes to into play.

The rules now latched on by NIMBYs, such as minimum lot sizes, low lot
occupancy, low heights etc. were precisely implemented to keep POC from being
able to afford to move into largely white suburban neighborhoods. Depending on
the racial composition of certain neighborhoods, they would be zoned to allow
denser development, or restrict them to SFH. All this combined with lending
practices where banks "redlined" neighborhoods that were deemed too full of
POC has brought us where we are today, even in the progressive Bay Area [1].

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/books/review/richard-
roth...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/books/review/richard-rothstein-
color-of-law-forgotten-history.html)

~~~
DoreenMichele
_Of the first 67,000 mortgages insured by the G.I. Bill, fewer than 100 were
taken out by non-whites._ *

It is a figure that makes me want to throw up, and I'm not even black. I feel
like this country owes blacks (as a group) probably a few billion dollars in
some sense. Barriers to home buying for African Americans constitutes actively
preventing them from creating savings and financial security. Homeownership
has historically provided half or more of the value of the nest egg for most
ordinary (aka not rich) Americans.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I._Bill)

~~~
GiorgioG
> I feel like this country owes blacks (as a group) probably a few billion
> dollars in some sense.

This might come as a surprise to you...but this country has exploited many
people (immigrants, non-whites, etc.) over the course of history - if the
country had to pay for all the wrongs, we'd be bankrupt.

~~~
throwaway0255
> ...but this country

Every country.

Every time this conversation happens, everyone acts like the US is the only
country that was ever involved in the slave trade. Almost every nation,
including majority-black nations, were guilty of this. Many of them are still
engaging in it to this day (there are more slaves right now than there have
ever been at any point in history, and relatively few of them are in the US).

What's most exceptional about the US on this subject isn't that we have
exploitation and slavery in our history, but that we fought a civil war (with
more casualties than any other war in American history) in part to end slavery
and that today we're further ahead of virtually every major nation on the
planet in terms of race and gender equality.

~~~
jessaustin
To be fair, the slave markets most in the news _today_ only exist because USA
killed Qaddafi after we made a deal to leave him alone once he gave up all his
bad weapons.

Yes, I know, he was a bad guy so the good guys (who the hell is _that_?)
didn't have to be ethical toward him, by good old American cartoon-character
standards. _However_ , he wasn't selling thousands of migrants into slavery so
that's something. Also, his continued existence after giving up his weapons
had inspired others like DPRK to slow their nuclear roll. After we shoved a
bayonet up his ass, they changed their minds...

~~~
Wohlf
Don't forget the UK and France are just as culpable if not more so with Libya.

~~~
jessaustin
One supposes you refer to Bernard-Henri Levy, but in general UK and France
don't visit the loo without asking USA permission. The war pigs found a useful
idiot in BHL, but they don't return his calls anymore.

------
ryandrake
I guess I need to be the contrarian again, but unless I was forced to due to
financial woes, I would never again willingly live in dense urban housing. Or
dense suburban housing. Or even these "townhomes" which is really just a nice
upscale-sounding word for "apartments".

I've lived enough of my life sharing a wall or two with neighbors. Smelling
their soup. Listening to them have sex. Wondering if their meth cooking was
going to burn down our whole building. Having to go for a long walk to find
some green space for a kid to play in. Having everyone knowing when I'm coming
and going. Screw that.

Let me keep the option of living in a single family home. Build more of them
so I'm not confined to a tiny few 1960's-era neighborhoods. I'm fine with
having to pay through the nose for a little privacy and a backyard, given the
alternative. Go build your apartments and town-homes over in apartment-land.
Being able to reach out my window and touch my neighbor's house is NOT a
selling point.

~~~
ng12
That's totally fine and dandy. I encourage you to do so.

What I don't suggest is moving to a dense urban area and then complaining
about it being a dense urban area.

~~~
ryandrake
But that's what all this YIMBY stuff is: People wanting to drive bulldozers
into existing suburban neighborhoods with 1/2 acre lots and single-family
homes, and urbanize them with apartments and townhomes.

But you got yourself a deal: I won't argue for building single family homes in
downtown San Francisco (really, who is?) and you don't argue for building
apartment complexes in Tracy and Gilroy.

~~~
ng12
Who's talking about bulldozing Tracy? The article is about a three-unit condo
in the already dense Berkeley/Emeryville area.

~~~
ryandrake
To use two extremes. Berkeley is probably somewhere in the middle with some
single-family areas and some more urban areas.

~~~
abritinthebay
Only due to the hills and the older homes. Berkeley is an urban area, full
stop.

It just doesn’t want to acknowledge that due to NIMBYs

------
pcurve
You cannot just take all the single family home zones and subdivide them into
3, because the infrastructure needs to expand with it. If you're familiar with
Edgewater, NJ, you know what I'm talking about. There is one main road that
runs through this town, and you're essentially trapped if something happens to
that road.

Seoul tried to address by going to outskirts of the city where land price was
much cheaper and essentially built high rise clusters with parks, stores, and
modern amenities. They took the, "build it and they will come" approach, with
good success. Now some people in city center are kicking themselves in their
undeveloped, old residential zones with tight ally.

It took well over 10 years to fully build out subway systems, but you have to
start somewhere (literally and figuratively).

------
danans
This sort of thing happened to friends in Berkeley who wanted to add a second
floor to a home they bought in a neighborhood already full of 2 story homes.
The main neighbor opposing also had a 2 story home, but felt that the proposed
second story would take away the visual privacy of their own backyard. The
friends prevailed but not without a lot of delays and added costs.

In the end they asked that neighbor why they did it, and turned out that the
neighbor obstructed just because they could, as a sort of last stand for their
generation in the neighborhood.

On the other hand, places like Portland have made the opposite mistake of
extreme (vs incremental) upzoning [1] which also causes housing market
problems.

1\. [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/9/revisiting-
what...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/9/revisiting-whats-the-
matter-with-portland)

~~~
diN0bot
this article made the author’s point more clear to me
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/30/spiking-a-
ris...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/30/spiking-a-rising-tide)

incremental zoning increases is important for actually realizing developments.
or at least that is the argument.

------
optimusclimb
> Other objections were particular to Berkeley — like a zoning board member’s
> complaint that shadows from the homes might hurt the supply of locally grown
> food.

Bay Area housing woes summed up in one sentence.

~~~
Justsignedup
When a statement so stupid is argued, you know you have a major problem...

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
It depends on the priorities of the people living there. If economic growth
maximization for corporations is your priority, then high-density housing is
incredibly important.

If, however, your priority is greenhouse gas emission control and mitigation,
then solid locally grown food production would be seen as more important.

~~~
davidw
If you want to curb greenhouse gas emissions, you want to fight sprawl and all
the huge car commutes it entails. The easiest way to do that is to allow
denser living - including daily necessities withing walking or biking
distance. When I lived in Italy, we had withing walking distance: kids
schools, grocery store, a few cafes and bars, a barber, a pastry shop and a
few other things.

A few urban gardens do not a serious supply chain make: better to preserve
real farmland outside of cities.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I prefer my sprawl and an electric car over dense urban living.

The US has an enormous amount of farmland (915 million acres; two thirds of
all land is farmland) [1], able to provide food for many times our current
population. The problem with housing is "What do you want to be near, and how
much will you pay to do so?" Try mandating or financially incentivizing remote
work to employers, thereby disconnecting geography to income before dictating
housing density. San Francisco's problem, for example, is that too many people
want to live in the same place. You will never be able to satiate demand to be
there (similar to how more roads begets more traffic).

[1]
[https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resou...](https://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2012/Online_Resources/Highlights/Farms_and_Farmland/Highlights_Farms_and_Farmland.pdf)

~~~
davidw
There's room for everyone is kind of the point - live and let live and all
that. Some places would still be suburbs, some still very rural.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
If there's room for everyone, then why are there locations where it costs
$3k/month for a studio apartment? What do you think causes such insane prices?

~~~
s73ver_
There's room for everyone in the country as a whole. Hell, there's room for
everyone who currently lives in California in California as a whole. The
problem is that too many people want to live in certain smaller parts.

~~~
closeparen
It turns out that in the modern economy, life is sustained by proximity to
other people and productive economic activity, not dirt.

That we'd all fit if the dirt were evenly divided among us is irrelevant.

------
joejerryronnie
How about legislating a carrot rather than a stick - e.g. every housing unit
within a given radius gets an annual $1000 rebate on their property tax if
new, affordable housing is built within their neighborhood? As it stands today
there is no perceived short-term benefit for home owners to support new
development. No matter how many well heeled YIMBY groups sprout up, they will
always be far outnumbered by local homeowners.

~~~
asabjorn
It is actually not correct that homeowners in SF outnumbers renters. 65% of
the population are renters.

Because of prop 13 property taxes are also fixed and decreases to nothing as
the property depreciates over 29 years. Prop 13 in effect removed much of
homeowners incentive to support policies that promote development.

~~~
afarrell
But many renters are opposed to increasing housing stock, no?

~~~
MBlume
Hardly any renters in San Francisco are market rate renters. Market rate
raters are the only ones who directly benefit if the market rate comes down.

~~~
asabjorn
Not necessarily. Life situations change so a rent control tenant might need to
find a new place or people they love might need to. For instance

* get children

* get grandchildren they want to be close with while their child can’t afford to live next door because of inflated rents caused by housing shortages

* become old and need to live in a building adapted to their needs

*their friends might move away because of high housing costs

Reducing prices solves these problems.

~~~
MBlume
Oh, I totally agree, rent control makes it hard to move and that's terrible,
we should have many more market renters and we should build enough to keep
market rates reasonable. I'm just saying the political coalition isn't really
there.

------
davidw
Join your local YIMBY group! There are so many extremely polarized, "trench
warfare" issues in politics. I feel this is one where there's room for real,
bipartisan progress.

[https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-
regula...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-regulations/)

"Reforming local land use controls is one of those rare areas in which the
libertarian and the progressive agree. The current system restricts the
freedom of the property owner, and also makes life harder for poorer
Americans. The politics of zoning reform may be hard, but our land use
regulations are badly in need of rethinking."

~~~
ProAm
YIMBY should be YIYBY

~~~
jimktrains2
And NIMBY should be niyby, what's your point? That decisions affect many
people with different ideas?

------
tabeth
I don't see how this problem can be solved in the short-run with anything
other than money. Just buy out the entire neighborhood, raze all the houses,
put up huge complexes and bake in the price of the beforementioned behavior
into the new rent.

Doing this a house at a time is a fruitless effort. The neighbors will crush
you -- rightfully so (why shouldn't the people who own propery have a say?).
It sucks, but it seems like that's how it is.

EDIT:

The only interesting thing here is that people are so fixated on just a few
spots in this country. You'd think the natural conclusion of this would be
employers going to the cheaper areas and this problem would solve itself.

~~~
ohazi
> It sucks, but it seems like that's how it is.

But maybe not how it should be? You own your plot of land... I don't see how
it's reasonable for you to claim any control over how other owners use their
plot(s) of land, within reason. If a building proposal fits within the current
zoning, the default should be approval. I don't think it's reasonable for
neighbors to be able to kill a project over shadows on their vegetables.

~~~
tabeth
The problem with this is that zoning is inherently political. Even if it fits
into the "current zoning" the neighbors will just change it.

~~~
TomV1971
That’s exactly what we did in our neighborhood: change the zoning to disallow
structures with more than one story.

~~~
njarboe
You changed the rules after you got yours. Good for you.

------
mjevans
Zoning laws more like Japan's would be useful here...

(former submission)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540845)

[http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-
zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

My take on staying low impact would be to encourage single-story //above//
ground development, and require underground spaces for each building
(potentially shared), including parking.

~~~
clairity
building underground is much more expensive (developers like to say 10X more,
but that's probably a gross exaggeration to make us feel sorry for those poor
developers), but i'm all for building parking underground in urban areas, even
potentially for single family homes. put a good chunk of powered
transportation underground and you could create more green space (for people
and pets, to walk, exercise, play, bike, etc.).

to make that happen, cities should price in the cost of street parking (one of
the externalities that developers try to take advantage of, in their arguments
about the high cost of parking ordinances). for instance, require every car
parking on the street to have a neighborhood permit (many municipalities do
this, but not widely). price the permits progressively. make each additional
permit per household more expensive. use the funds to maintain both roads and
public green space.

as LA did in the 50's(?) in downtown bunker hill, on major thoroughfares, you
could have two levels of streets, one at ground level and one underground.
underground streets could have direct access to underground parking
structures.

in higher density areas, you could even build single family homes on _top_ of
mixed-use, multi-story buildings. it wouldn't be quite the same, but for many,
it would be the best of both worlds.

ps - i saw the japanese zoning article the first time around and thought it
was intriguing.

------
Clubber
All of this could be solved if most companies embraced remote workers. I mean
how old fashioned does it seem for a tech company to require most employees to
move everything they own so they could waste weeks of the year driving back
and forth to a building and mostly sit by themselves not talking to anyone the
vast majority of every day?

In 100 years, it will seem as silly as archaic as making your own clothes
rather than buying them.

~~~
doctorless
There is value in face-to-face conversation, and while software solutions like
Google Hangouts help bridge the gap to some extent, they don't eliminate it
entirely. There may be some advantages to yield with VR, but even at its
current state, it can't replicate the real world. It's likely we'll start to
see direct neural interfaces before we actually have means to replicate the
face-to-face aspect that remote work sorely misses out on.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, there is value, but IMO, it's nowhere near what it costs directly in
dollars not only the employer, but all the employees. I mean they are
essentially doubling everyone's salary in the big SV companies, just so they
can meet "face-to-face," on rare occasions.

~~~
usaar333
From my experience, remote work can easily be less than half as productive as
non-remote work (if done over many weeks). I doubt every valley company is
wrong in trying to maximize same office time.

~~~
badpun
I have similar experiences. Try to have a design whiteboarding session
remotely...

------
joejerryronnie
I guess the bottom line is that homeowners are never going to stop fighting
growth in their neighborhoods and are never going to be swayed over to the
YIMBY viewpoint. And people who can't afford housing are going to continue
trying to implement measures that might make housing more affordable for them
and will never give credit to the NIMBY viewpoint.

This is not a problem that can be solved by piecemeal legislation or random
lawsuits. It is also inextricably tied to effective mass transportation and
needs regional planning, legislation, and funding over the next couple of
decades. We should be designating major swaths of the Bay Area as urban
corridors with high density housing, world class rail service, and highly
incentivized job centers. We would also need to overpay the existing residents
in the path of these new urban corridors with either shiny new digs in the
luxury high rises or well above market buyouts.

We need a regional leader who can articulate and sell this vision to all the
residents and politicians of the Bay Area, not just the young, professional
city dwellers. The approach has got to be a win-win investment that every type
of person sees some benefit with (even if that benefit is "great, focus all
the city folk to those corridors and stop bugging me about changing my
neighborhood").

~~~
junkscience2017
Whenever people fantasize about some mysterious fourth "regional" level of
government in the Bay Area, it is always assumed that this plays to their
advantage...that someone from San Francisco will hold sway over the suburbs
and impose their will.

But San Jose is larger by population...if you propose that this same layer of
government instead be centered in San Jose, all of a sudden people lose
interest.

If three levels of government can't get anything done, how will four help?

In any case this "regional" government already exists in the form of transit
agencies, utilities, waste and water districts, etc....I see very few people
clamoring to give the bureaucrats of BART any more power.

~~~
TulliusCicero
You don't seem to understand. The point of a regional authority is that it
could play fair and spread the necessary changes. Most people in the bay area
agree we need more housing already, they just want it in a different
neighborhood or different city, hence the use of the term NIMBY. But when
almost all of the cities push the problem onto someone else, nobody does
anything. A regional authority could spread out the development appropriately.

~~~
stinkytaco
I think OP understands fine: a regional government will be unpopular unless it
benefits you. SF has money and influence, San Jose has population. Oakland and
Santa Clara will simply reject this out of hand since it's less likely they
will be adequately represented. If the issue wasn't so highly politicized,
then sure, it's a great idea, but ultimately it will fall victim to the same
problem local governments have.

------
DoreenMichele
_Around the country, many fast-growing metropolitan areas are facing a brutal
shortage of affordable places to live, leading to gentrification,
homelessness, even disease._

Nice to see someone say that there is an actual connection between insane
housing prices and homelessness. Most discussions of homelessness frame it as
if it is merely a personal problem, like people on the street are merely
junkies and losers and not in any way, shape or form victims of something gone
bad wrong with the fabric of society. And most discussions of housing problems
in the US don't really acknowledge that this issue is pertinent to the folks
on the street.

------
jseliger
If you're interested in this issue, Vox has a good explainer on it:
[https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-
explained](https://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained).

This problem has substantial costs throughout the U.S., too:
[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/new...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/new-
hsieh-moretti-paper-land-use-restrictions-economic-growth.html) : "Using a
spatial equilibrium model and data from 220 metropolitan areas we find that
__these constraints lowered aggregate US growth by more than 50% __from 1964
to 2009. "

------
tnt128
This might be an unpopular opinion here. It seems a general sentiment here in
HN is that building more houses will result in a lower home price.

I'm not so sure if that's always going to be the case. Increased supply could
very well turn San Francisco into cities like Hong Kong or New York - More
houses but just as expensive.

If you think the current San Francisco as a small bucket full of water, will
increase the size of the bucket stop the water from being full? well, that
will depend on out how much water out there that wants to flow in right? If
there are more water wants to come in than the size increase, you will just
end up with a bigger bucket full of water.

~~~
closeparen
I don't understand. Are you asserting that the set people who are willing to
move to San Francisco and pay $X/mo grows and shrinks with San Francisco's
housing supply? By what mechanism?

Certainly the set of people who are willing to move to SF and pay $Y < $X is
larger, but then SF is not "just as expensive" anymore if it achieves rent $Y.
If rents start to rise up towards $X again, then the pool of people willing to
move here shrinks accordingly.

~~~
closeparen
I thought about this some more... maybe the price dips slightly in the short
term, which lets a few more engineers in. These incremental engineers take the
tech industry over an inflection point, meaning it’s now ravenous for
engineers and paying them enough for rent $Z > $X. Is this what people mean
when they say they’re concerned that more housing would not lower the price?

------
TheAdamAndChe
I would care about this issue more if it wasn't just a handful of cities in
the country experiencing economic growth. However, there are probably hundreds
of cities in the midwest declining while the remaining jobs continue to be
centralized.

Instead of finding ways to pack more people into those handful of cities, why
not spread the economic development out a bit? That would improve quality of
life for the people of an area while reducing regional inequality at the same
time.

~~~
closeparen
Because we don't have central planning in this country. There is no public
policy lever that makes Google and Facebook happen in Detroit and Cleveland
instead of Mountain View and Palo Alto.

Housing is such a clusterfuck because we've decided to centrally plan where
people live (claiming they should be uniformly dispersed over the country)
while leaving in place a system of economic growth that overwhelmingly tends
towards centralization.

~~~
dredmorbius
No reason that couldn't be the case, and there's some history of that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_\(economics\))

------
sillypog
Berkeley recently made it easier to build accessory dwelling units on a
residential lot [http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/03/20/new-laws-make-even-
ea...](http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/03/20/new-laws-make-even-easier-build-
backyard-cottages-berkeley/). I think people are pricing this in when they're
buying property in Berkeley now - people who have the cash to invest in
building these structures are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more
than the next best offers if the property has a good sized yard.

Sonja Trauss sure gets mentioned in a lot of articles for her work at the San
Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation. No surprise to see she's running for
Supervisor now.

------
myroon5
"Kurt Caudle, a neighbor of 1310 Haskell, grows tomatoes, squash and greens
outside his back door. He worries that denser development on the adjoining lot
could obstruct sunlight for his garden."

Oh, the horror!

~~~
TomV1971
As an outsider, it’s easy to dismiss this.

But now think if you happen to live on just that one plot of land in the
street, right next to the development, that will now be in the shadow of the
new building.

Would you be happy about it?

I wouldn’t, and neither would you.

~~~
mywittyname
It doesn't matter if he's happy about it. The owners of the land are doing
what they are legally entitled to. Right to light is repudiated in the US.

If having a garden is a high priority for him, he has several options. He
could buy the plot of land from the developer for $1.4MM or he could move to
an area more amenable to gardening.

~~~
TomV1971
In the context of a belittleing “Oh, the horror”, it’s perfectly acceptable to
argue that he has he right to not be happy about it.

~~~
myroon5
It's fine to be unhappy. The distinction is whether or not you use your slight
dissatisfaction as reason enough to take away their rights as a property
owner.

------
rb808
Yeah I'm on the side of the residents that have lived there for a long time
and want to keep it low density single family.

Surely they have more rights that people moving to the bay area. If they want
to keep things as they are that should be all that counts.

Yes replacing these suburbs with medium or high density housing will
temporarily reduce prices and allow more people to move there but why should
current residents have to sacrifice their lifestyle?

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Do you feel the same way about national or state level immigration?

> If they want to keep things as they are that should be all that counts.

I'm of many minds about both your original statement as well as, to me, the
obviously related immigration issues. There's no obvious right answer, to me.
Conflict is inevitable!

------
scythe
When I first started reading about housing affordability, I was all for the
kinds of upzoning this article (among many others like it) is advocating.
Today I still believe it would be an effective approach to improving housing
affordability, but some recurrent gaps in logic have started to bug me, so
today I avoid the debate rather than take part, or rather stand on the
sidelines and cast aspersions, like this:

\- there's a lack of deep investigation and analysis into why people prefer
single-family neighborhoods so strongly; the few articles that do go into the
social and psychological picture tend to be ultra-leftist and include such
themes as "anti-privacy" which I'm obviously against

\- the debate over housing types is tied to the debate over transportation
types, and there's no representation for people who agree modern houses are
too big but still prefer to own a car (even if we don't use them all the time)

\- the whole conversation is pretty much set up and run (on both sides) by
people who aren't severely affected by any of the policies they're advocating,
and who will be able to afford the lifestyle they want regardless of what
policy passes, even if it might force them to take two annual trips to Jackson
Hole instead of three

\- truly unique ideas have a tendency to get lost in the fray, like even if
you run the one of most popular blogs in urban planning and propose a solution
to housing prices in (e.g.) Portland [1], the typical voter will never ever
hear about your idea, nobody will ever turn it into a workable policy or
perform a serious analysis of what it might do, and legislators won't give it
a moment's thought, so why are we even posting about this (I'll throw in my
$0.02 -- green roofs should count at least partially towards open space
requirements)

\- the fact that some people just don't like certain kinds of people,
motivated by race, religion, lifestyle, politics, aesthetic sensibilities, or
even vocation, is always bubbling beneath the surface

\- it's not clear how we're going to modify political, legal, and educational
systems so that if people ever DO accept sensible growth policies, they're
doing it because they understand it will improve their lives and not because
they've been threatened or bribed or shamed into genuflecting in the presence
of economists

1: [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/30/spiking-a-
ris...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/10/30/spiking-a-rising-tide)

------
Chiba-City
Think schedules, skills and resources against relocation patterns and not just
proportions abstracted from schedules. Think of the housing industry as a CPU.
Think of babies as data coming across buses and switches. Never forget
mortgage deductions were never states of "American dream" grace but subsidized
and still subsidize wealthier purchasers. Tons of Americans purchased and are
still purchasing depreciating "Levittown" type assets all over the USA. We are
not just cutting ribbons for bad purchases. All the policy details matter
where and when they matter. Rentals are just as important as purchases. Many
Americans move quite frequently and do not enjoy corporation relocation
bonuses.

------
ZainRiz
So what's stopping the Bay Area from growing out onto uninhabited land instead
of trying to pack the existing areas even more densely?

~~~
cobbzilla
The uninhabited land you speak of is:

* mountains: expensive to build on, definitely not a good place for affordable housing

* water: in the past 100+ years there has been substantial build-out onto the Bay. Any further encroachments are met with stiff resistance.

* far: to get past the above 2 difficulties, you're looking at an hour+ to get to SF. Things are (relatively) affordable in Sacramento, if you're willing to deal with that commute.

It's a beautiful but cursed geography, this SF Bay area.

And then there's this, from the article: "Neighborhoods in which single-family
homes make up 90 percent of the housing stock account for a little over half
the land mass in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles metropolitan areas", so
there is an understandable urge to increase density in some of those SFH
areas.

------
hellofunk
> The house at 1310 Haskell Street does not look worthy of a bitter
> neighborhood war.

That often happens to people unfamiliar with Haskell.

------
baron816
Why is it that people think new construction needs to be affordable? Of course
new construction is going to be expensive, it's new. You can still increase
the number of affordable housing by only building "luxury" apartments through
filtering. Rich people move to the new apartments, then less rich people move
to their apartments...and so on.

------
perseusprime11
I never understood the density issue. If remote work becomes a default hiring
practice, this will not be a problem. Nobody is going to fight to stay close
to work. I see this in Manhattan, people struggle commuting from
NJ/Connecticut/PA to come to the city for work. Why not address it in a
different way?

~~~
pascalxus
Remote work is extremely difficult to get. There are few remote positions
available.

~~~
krisroadruck
^^ So many companies are managed by people that seem to absolutely require you
to be butt-in-seat or else they assume you will turn into an island or not get
any work done, despite all evidence to the contrary.

About a year ago I decided I was going to stop moving around the country
chasing opportunities and move to a place I actually wanted to live, assuming
I'd be able to get reasonable remote work. My salary fell from $180K to $60K
because it was impossible to find suitable remote work after 6 months of
looking and I got stuck at a local small-time outfit. Hell just take a look at
the "Who's Hiring" post on the homepage, even in the tech space remote work is
basically non-existent.

~~~
perseusprime11
That’s really sad state of affairs. Thank you for sharing your story and good
luck with your gigs.

------
afpx
There is another whole side to prices, and that is demand. Decrease the
demand, and you decrease the prices. I haven't researched the issue in depth,
but what I did research seemed to show that demand has at least as much effect
on prices as supply.

So, how do you decrease demand? For one, prevent non-citizens from purchasing
property. That is common in the rest of the world.

But, if you're not a fan of that, you can still decrease demand by encouraging
growth in other urban areas - give out grants, economic development, tax
incentives, education funding, infrastructure funding, etc.

And, if that doesn't work, then just make high-demand areas less attractive.
Some of that would just work out naturally as wages increase and services
become more expensive.

I respect the NYT, but I can't help but wonder if the building and development
industry influenced this.

~~~
ktothemc
The author is a homeowner whose parents have also owned a house in Noe Valley
kitty corner to one of Airbnb founders. He’s a massive beneficiary of the
status quo system who also happens to think that it needs to change given that
more and more Californians are being born every day and that we should change
our land-use and infrastructure to be even more inclusive, not less.

------
varelse
Well, given the Trump tax plan has passed both houses, I expect it to affect
any state with high taxes, be they income (California/NY) or property (Texas).
Who needs a double-taxed carrying cost like this? House prices will likely
drop IMO.

------
_ph_
I am wondering why there are no laws forcing cities to add residental capcity
for every new job created/office building built. It should be obvious, that if
the number of jobs in a city grows significantly, you have to have more
residental space, or you will have a real estate price hike and a traffic
problem at your hand. In many places, building permits could be limited to
mixed office/appartment buildings, or alternatively, the permits should be
possible only if the city can show corresponding residental developments (it
would be up to the city how much they would charge the office space developer
for this).

------
acover
Zoning and housing development affect a large portion of household spending.
Municipal elections typically have terribly turnout.

Would a prize for tweeting your photo at polling place improve turnout? Change
policies?

~~~
asabjorn
In the bay area renters vote in lockstep with landlords/homeowners. Breaking
that by helping educating renters on how developers interests largely align
with theirs and that landlord/homeowner interests often doesn't is by far the
biggest impact we can make. In politics it is all about the coalitions.

------
jpao79
Its much more likely about the degradation in the quality of life if you were
not thinking about moving in the near future than improving your investment.
Its likely not about the one bungalow getting converted to 3 townhouses its
the 10 more bungalows on the same block (that already has minimal parking)
that will get converted once the first 3 townhouses sell for $1.5M each.

And then your house will get re-appraised for higher and your property taxes
will go up, all while you were busy planting tomatoes.

Here's an example of what happens when there is a rapid increase in density in
a formerly suburban town with minimal transit options:
[https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/12/02/traffic-
mess-...](https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/12/02/traffic-mess-
gridlocks-palo-alto-for-hours)

'The number of exhaust-spewing vehicles lined up in front of Downtown North
and the Crescent Park homes was stunning, even to residents who endure heavy
traffic in those neighborhoods.

"Last night was similar what happens most weeknights on Middlefield, just on
steroids and over a wider area. There were double lanes of traffic on the four
blocks of Middlefield north from about 3:30 to after 7:30 p.m. I did not see
exactly when it cleared," said John Guislin, who has been working for years on
traffic-calming measures along Middlefield.

"I had planned to go out to do errands but was completely blocked from leaving
my driveway. Remember, Middlefield has two lanes in each direction, so backing
out is extremely difficult because even if a car in the curb lane stops for
you, the center lane can't see you until it's too late." he said.'

Silicon Valley VCs and YCombinator need to encourage growth where there is
existing mass transit and the infrastructure/city services can support 20
story residential. They should definitely look south toward San Jose (BART,
High Speed Rail).

Watch this PBS news hour segment starting at minute 7.
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ever-growing-tech-
giants-h...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ever-growing-tech-giants-have-
changed-the-pace-and-price-of-life-in-silicon-valley)

------
ilaksh
Here is my current thinking as an alternative to regular large single family
homes: [https://i.imgur.com/7Gx4MMb.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/7Gx4MMb.jpg) . I
explain the picture at the bottom of this comment.

My take on this is to compare the types of proposed lot layouts in the article
where they have three almost normal sized buildings per plot instead of one,
with the "tiny house" concept. If people aren't aware, "tiny house" is a
really interesting concept that you may want to google. I would argue the
sustainability of tiny homes is more of a plus than a primary reason for most
people really, but since people are sustainability-minded and for practical
purposes, some of these homes do not have wet toilets and instead have
composting toilets.

The reason people are going for tiny homes is because of the lack of
affordable "normal-size" housing. So, if people are willing to buy a house
that is actually tiny and does not have a flush feature, maybe the next step
up is a quite small but not tiny two-story house that has normal features like
flush toilets.

\----------------------------------------------------

Details on picture:

So I have been thinking for awhile along the lines of the article, but my
buildings are two stories, fairly small but not quite "tiny", and have more
space between them, which is explicitly dedicated to something like
permaculture in order to be more sustainable. They are built with space-saving
furniture and designed somewhat similarly to tiny-homes, except they have two
full floors.

As noted in the picture, I am proposing much more living space than is
available in tiny homes.

The permaculturish part means that the landscaping is designed to produce
food. So the large circles on the picture are dwarf fruit or nut trees, the
smaller circles berry and nut bushes (like American filbert for example). The
rectangular strip is something like walking onion or maybe another perennial
like yam. Around the entire property is an artificial raceway stream/pond with
paddles to keep the water moving. This artificial stream/pond is used to farm
a few fish. There are also one or two chickens on the property to produce
eggs.

The furniture can be things like wall beds that convert to sofas for
downstairs, wall beds that convert to desks for upstairs. The construction
would use SIPs and HRV/ERV. The raceway pond could also have a pipe at the
bottom for purposes of geothermal cooling/heating for the buildings. The
buildings would have solar panels on the top of course.

------
dmurthy
Having grown up in a large single family home that was built in the 60's, I've
enjoyed great freedom thanks to the privacy in the large garden surrounding
our house. After marriage I moved cities and live in a small duplex with a
really tiny private garden and a common community space. I must say I do not
miss the space of the large independent house. The need of the hour today is
functional living for everyone.

------
rukittenme
Replace state and/or federal income taxes with a LVT (land value tax). Its
egregious that a single family home in downtown Portland cost $5000 a year in
property taxes. You'll deduct that amount in interest every year. Its
essentially free for people to take up space.

------
conanbatt
If you are truly interested in the moral and economic arguments around this
topic, i strongly recommend Progress and Poverty from henry george from before
the 1900's.

With that in your arsenal you understand that this is a political issue.

~~~
dredmorbius
The more appropriate as George was from and writing about San Francisco, in
large part.

~~~
conanbatt
"Land in New York is more valuable than in San Francisco; and in New York, the
San Franciscan may see squalor and misery that will make him stand aghast."

------
CodeWriter23
Talk about treating the symptoms. The root cause is the sprawl of business
insisting on locating themselves in The Bay Area / Silicon Valley. Want to
solve the housing problem? Limit commercial space.

------
biztos
> What [the press] says is important usually isn't.

Really? I know a certain President who emphatically agrees, but in my
experience what the more serious parts of the press say is important very much
is.

------
yuhong
The fun thing is that it increased adoptions of EVs in the short term. It is
easier to design a building for them in the beginning than to add it after it
is constructed.

~~~
astrange
Is putting in a 240V outlet that hard? It seems easy if the house has room to
park next to it.

Meanwhile in San Mateo County, everyone parks on the street for free when that
land should be just as valuable as their $2 million houses.

~~~
yuhong
I am talking about apartments not houses, which was my point.

~~~
cesarb
It's still not hard, one can use apparent ducts and sockets (instead of
embedding both in the walls and ceilings). The main difficulty with apartments
is social: since the garage is a shared space, it has to be approved at a
meeting.

------
conanbatt
A rental-proportionate value tax might make all of these problems dissapear.
As time passes I find Henry George's idea to be better and better everyday.

------
anovikov
50 units a megaproject? Several thousands in one building would be a
megaproject. 50 units is what's considered a boutique low-rise development in
Europe.

------
rubidium
HN really loves their housing problems of california (or new york) articles...

I'm surprised everyone's not tired of the same news over and over again.

~~~
el_benhameen
I pay the same absurd rent over and over again, so no, I’m not tired of
talking about how it’s a problem.

~~~
dbkelly
And it sounds like you are quite willing as well as able to pay that high rent
over and over again. If it was really so unaffordable and so absurd, you'd be
living in a more affordable area.

------
hudibras
As an aside, I love how the one picture of the new construction just randomly
includes a guy zooming by in the foreground on a cargo bicycle, as if the
photographer didn't sit there for a while waiting for one to go by so he could
snap his picture. Gotta throw all the Berkeley stereotypes in there while you
can, I guess.

~~~
pzone
Waiting for 15 minutes for a cyclist to go by is pretty minor in terms of what
a professional photographer will go through to snap a good picture.

------
branchless
Tax land and smoke the boomers out their oversized houses.

Voila.

------
thomas_howland
Single family homes are historically how populations insulate themselves from
the consequences of the policies the NYT advocates. On a macro scale, they're
a defensive architecture. They make your neighborhood expensive enough that
the population is (by selection) wealthy enough to ensure sufficiently low
crime rates and sufficiently Good Schools, with enough geographic buffer to
survive natural population movements.

~~~
astrange
Single family suburbia was partly created to spread out the population in case
of nuclear attacks, but mostly so you wouldn’t have to see any black people.

------
eecc
Right, American Sprawl has to be put out of its misery. The Nuclear Family -
as in born under the angst of MAD - and it’s millions of little castles and
fake porticos is over, but beware the European madness of the likes of
Courbusier, the banlieues, and the speculative investments aiming at stuffing
millions with expensive mortgages and lifetime obligations.

~~~
Turing_Machine
> Right, American Sprawl has to be put out of its misery.

Don't want a single-family suburban home? Don't buy one.

Your tastes are not those of others, and you don't get to tell them how they
should live.

~~~
davidsawyer
I would argue that is it still in everyone's best interest to curb sprawl.
Taxpayers are still paying for highways and infrastructure to go out into
suburbs where we could instead be spending it in a more efficient manner: in
an urban environment. I could go on and on about the negative externalities of
sprawl (pollution, obesity, etc.), but money is typically at the top of the
list of motivating factors for the voting public.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"Taxpayers are still paying for highways and infrastructure to go out into
suburbs"

You mean highways that go to where they want to go?

"could instead be spending it in a more efficient manner: in an urban
environment"

Well, we could be spending it all on barracks where we all sleep in bunks and
eat in military-style chow halls. That would be even more efficient, right?

"Efficiency" is not the primary purpose of human life. It's probably not even
in the top ten.

~~~
dradtke
The real problem is that people don't realize how expensive all that
infrastructure actually is: [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-
real-reason...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-
your-city-has-no-money)

The suburban lifestyle needs to be subsidized in order to be sustainable, but
good luck getting people to keep up with proper infrastructure investment.
Even cities are failing at it
([https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-
system-failure-delays.html)), but suburbs have even more infrastructure to
maintain with a much smaller tax base.

~~~
Turing_Machine
> The suburban lifestyle needs to be subsidized

All infrastructure is subsidized, including the lifestyle so beloved by young
urban hipsters with no children. So?

Lafayette, Louisiana is in trouble because it had an oil boom followed by an
oil bust.

And the idea of dividing up regions of the city by whether they "make a
profit" or not is, to be blunt, just goofy. Yeah, revenue is generated in the
industrial and business regions of town rather than in the residential
regions. That's...unsurprising.

To expand a bit, imagine a block that has a branch of Bank of America, five
apartment buildings, a small park, and a clinic operated by a non-profit.

Using the exact technique shown in your article (but on a smaller scale), the
BofA branch would have a huge green spike, while all of the others would be
red.

By the "reasoning" in the article, everyone except BofA should have their
taxes raised.

Umm... no.

