
Urban Housing Solution That Has No Good Name - curtis
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/cities-housing-accessory-dwelling-units/550616/?single_page=true
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Zak
It seems like the problem here is overregulation.

Not the sort of regulations that require sufficient egress options or that
housing be constructed in a way that's somewhat resistant to burning down, but
the sort of regulations made in the name of the "preserving the character of
the neighborhood" or "nobody should have to live in X (safe and healthy)
conditions". The motivation for many of these seems to be wealthier people not
wanting to see, or at least live near poorer people.

~~~
pxeboot
That is definitely the motivation where I live.

People seem to be willing to spend a lot of money to live closer to others
with similar economic status. Where I live, you can spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars more for an almost identical house in the 'wealthy' parts
of town.

~~~
wincy
We just moved out of a ranch style 980 sq. ft. house that we sold for $45,000.
My wife's friend and her family just moved to a house that's about the same
size, built around the same time (maybe a little smaller because it has a
garage), and it cost $150,000 in a nicer neighborhood.

I will say we really tried to give the old neighorhood a chance, most of our
neighbors were great, but there was one family of renters that consistently
was outside shouting and getting hauled away by the police, eventually
culminating in a teen shooting off a gun (that looked like an assault rifle,
we later found out it was 'only' a .22 rifle) into the air and screaming as
another car peeled out and drove away, while my wife was talking to her mother
on the phone on Mother's day. My two year old daughter was playing in the
front yard, and it was right then we decided we had to move.

So after that we moved to a $250,000 house in a much more affluent part of
town, the most expensive we could afford, because what else were we supposed
to do? Before we had our daughter, we didn't really mind, but once you put
kids into the equation you become substantially more risk averse.

~~~
madengr
That’s what is happening with a lot of my millennial coworkers. Once they have
kids, they move from the hip area of town, to the bland suburbs with decent
schools.

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tootie
I don't get it. How many urban areas with housing crunches have people living
on property with enough room to build another house on? This seems like it's
100X less efficient than apartment buildings which every densely packed city
is already full of.

~~~
dwater
Most East Coast American cities have neighborhoods that were built 100 years
ago as suburbs because it was impractical to walk to downtown that are now
considered inner city. Other areas of the country do as well, but I'm only
speaking to my own experience in the Mid-Atlantic. These neighborhoods are
higher density than modern suburbs but much lower density than downtowns.
People like the character of these neighborhoods because they seem to offer a
good mix of being centrally located but still quiet and pleasant. The people
who live in them try to keep that character through zoning and NIMBYism. This
is a compromise to preserving what the residents like while allowing slow
increases in density. A reasonable next step would be to allow duplexes and
triplexes up to a certain density like 2 per block or something. That way the
neighborhood could develop over time without causing the outrage that tends to
accompany a developer getting a variance to throw up a modern boxy 4+ story
apartment/condo building in an otherwise 1-3 story neighborhood.

~~~
88
In the UK lots of homeowners make marginal increases in density with loft
conversions, extensions, garages converted into bedrooms, 'beds in sheds',
etc.

The areas where this happens the most (typically low density suburban housing)
really need razing to the ground and replacing with much higher density
apartment buildings.

To my mind, homeowners investing more money in these properties is only
decreasing the likelihood of that ever happening.

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hprotagonist
the very best experiences i’ve had as a renter have been in these sorts of
situations.

every time, my landlords became my neighbors. we exchange christmas cards,
even years later.

if nothing else, this is a fundamentally more human way to live in community
than, say, a hollow condo unit administered by a board and designed so that
you’re basically not supposed to know who the other tenants are.

~~~
twobyfour
Yup. I've been a renter my entire adult life, and have lived in both owner-
occupied and corporate-managed buildings. (Here we don't have granny flats,
just the other rooms or floors of a townhouse that's been divided into
apartments.)

The former care a _lot_ about keeping their properties in good condition
(after all, they live there, and typically the home is part of their nest
egg). I've never known an occupant landlord to ignore a leak. Keeping the
building pest-free is as important to them as to you. They want to maintain
friendly relationships with the people they share walls and floors and
ceilings with, and put time and effort into selecting tenants (your neighbors)
who will be considerate.

I've ended up becoming good friends with most of those landlords as well as
with the other tenants in those buildings. One elder landlord has become like
an uncle to me. I've always been reluctant to move from those apartments until
forced to by unrelated circumstances

The latter care about upkeep and maintenance only to the degree that it will
keep the apartment rentable. Between tenants, they'll patch over any visible
issues. When selecting tenants, they care only about the likelihood they'll
pay rent on time, won't smash the walls with sledgehammers, and won't cause
frequent law enforcement visits. You'll get neighbors who are loud or rude or
steal your packages from the mail room. They pay lip service to pest control,
and if you're lucky they'll cover the cost of sending an exterminator out once
a month (better hope you're home to let them in). I've never wanted to stay in
such an apartment once my lease was up.

~~~
bluGill
I think it is more the other way: a nearby landlord can keep track on how his
property is being used and take action early before there is a problem. If a
tenant is likely to be caught in the act of destroying the place that are less
likely to do that. Sadly as every landlord knows many tenants will not pay
their rent and then destroy their apartment.

This is also helped by nearby landlords probably are small enough that equal
opportunity laws don't apply. Stereotypes on the appearance of bad renters is
true enough to be useful even though it is often wrong and always immoral.

~~~
twobyfour
The occupant landlords I've known have been very picky about their renters,
conducting extensive interviews; whereas management companies literally only
do a background check and a financials check.

And they've been orders of magnitude more responsive about problems with
utilities, plumbing, appliances, etc. They care. And they form human
relationships with their tenants. It's not just about "having an eye on you".

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logfromblammo
So... increasing the housing density in urban areas solves a lot of housing-
related problems?

It's almost like this is a workaround to city government bodies routinely
preventing the construction of more efficient housing solutions, using a
loophole in the NIMBY rules.

The solution is almost always to build more housing units, and then to stack
them on top of each other whenever you run out of open land. You can call it
"densification", but that's not a particularly cromulent word.

~~~
taneq
It's a perfectly cromulent word to describe the act of embiggening the number
of houses per unit area.

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aphextron
These are very common in the East Bay (they are called "inlaw" units). They
haven't solved anything but allowing property owners to live for free, while
desperate renters pay their mortgage to live in a garden shack. Many have
highly inadequate or nonexistent heating/electrical/plumbing and yet charge
equally or more than a brand new apartment. You don't get a mailing address or
any utilities in your name either, which makes it impossible to establish
residency. I honestly question how the practice is even legal.

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efaref
London has loads of dodgy landlords cramming people into sheds in their
gardens. It's not a solution, it's a terrible symptom of the problem.

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chao-
Garage apartments have long been a standard feature in Houston, enabled partly
by loose regulations and a lot of historical houses in what were once surburbs
but what are now very central. Like what dwater described, but without the
NIMBYism. Even though housing is already cheap in the city, you can be
downright skinflint and still get one of these in a walkable neighborhood.

Newer opportunistic building is tearing down many of the historical homes,
however, and the upper-middle class townhome colonies being put in their place
lack this feature.

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doubleBacon
In Toronto they're known as coach houses.

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astura
I've heard it called "house hacking" in landlord circles.

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potatoman2
Laneway houses.

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bovermyer
I think I'll stick to my original plan: buy a decent house in the Midwest, and
avoid the coasts like the plague.

