
Things that are illegal to build in most American cities now - oftenwrong
https://twitter.com/CascadianSolo/status/1204306278173958145
======
gerbilly
>Bunkhouses/Roominghouses/SROs,

I read somewhere that the lack of rooming-houses significantly contributes to
homelessness.

They fill a gap between an individual apartment and your car or the street.

It's too bad these aren't allowed any more. I know those populations can be
hard to live with, but it's better than having them live on the street.

~~~
pharke
It could even be the driving cause behind the cycle of homelessness, mental
and physical health problems and addiction are often the result of or severely
aggravated by living in such deprivation. It's nearly impossible to get a job
without a fixed address and proper facilities for daily hygiene. I'd imagine
that a communal living environment would also have pro-social effects since
there is an expectation to keep yourself and your space clean and meals would
take place in a shared eating area.

As others have pointed out, rooming houses weren't only for the dispossessed.
They were a low rung on the ladder for young people trying to make a start,
for people between jobs or starting over in a new city, for the vulnerable
escaping bad marriages, for new immigrants and the elderly without support
systems. It's interesting that this list closely mirrors the precarious stages
and situations in life that can often lead to homelessness.

~~~
chrisdhoover
There was a long essay in the New York Review of Books way back in the mid
‘90’s that argued the point. SROs and casual labor are essential to combat
homelessness.

We lost SROs but we also lost casual labor. Business are criticized for not
providing full time positions with benefits. The idea that someone could walk
in and get day work helps folks who really don’t want to or can’t work full
time.

~~~
Ancalagon
I mean, I would argue casual labor should be fazed out because corporations
lobbied to make benefits (specifically healthcare) tied to employment. You
can't have your cake and eat it too, if we want a flexible workforce then
life-necessities cannot be tied to permanent employment.

~~~
Digory
Life necessities became tied to permanent employment because of income and tax
policy, not some corporate desire to control heath-care.

~~~
zanny
The tax code is totally corporate dictated and to their interests - the huge
bias against self employment is evident of that, whereas in a more competent
economy policymakers would acknowledge the strong growth potential of
incentivizing small business creation.

~~~
Digory
This was policy makers dictating to corporations, not the other way.

It was a product of (1) intense focus on wage freezes during the labor
shortage of World War II, and (2) the growth of unions, which focused on
winning concessions from management, not government.[0]

I agree it's a terrible policy. Corporate management now accepts and exploits
it. But it was _not_ a decision by 'capital' to spite labor or self-
employment. It is the consequence of 'progressive' tax, regulation and labor
policy.

[0][http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/67493CA6B8...](http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/67493CA6B837EDF285257B160048DD49?OpenDocument)

------
jhallenworld
I own and live in a two family house built in 1924. It's one step up from an
English row house in that you have windows on all sides. These, and New
England "triple-deckers" are pretty good. In Worcester MA you could buy an
1890/1900 triple-decker for $30k in the early 90s.. if only I was smart enough
to buy one then.

These are wealth generators in that renters are paying your mortgage.

My grandparents lived in a Queens NY row house (until 1970s white flight). I
have early memories of it, was a cool house. It had lots of fireplaces,
varnished wooden gates, wall sconces and shared back courtyard. My parents
lived in a 1950s single family house, but we gen xers rediscovered cities.

New houses around Boston are mass Lego block low rise apartments. They all are
corporate owned, which means they are expensive, and the rent goes up
automatically, but they sometimes have nice ammenaties.

SROs: I want to live the way Sherlock Holmes did. Mrs. Hudson cooked, cleaned,
answered the door.. did people really live like this in late 19th century
London? How much was the rent?

~~~
JCharante
I was kinda shocked to see Worcester mentioned here in the top comment. I and
some other students are currently paying $4350/mo for one of these triple
deckers that you mentioned.

I really prefer the zoning laws and building style present in Hanoi. Our house
is five stories tall, and some of our neighbors have houses with six stories.
Although they are not very big per floor (they may only have 2.5 rooms per
floor), they are very space efficient which allows for tons of amenities to be
within walking distance.

~~~
mc32
I'm not sure what houses look like in Hanoi but if they are kind of like the
3-5 storey houses in some parts of East Asia those are not great designs.
They’re like twenty feet wide and forty feet long with steep stairs connecting
the floors. To me the layout is awful. It wouldn’t be bad for one off where
the lot was oddly shaped but to have that as a default for attached homes
isn’t great.

~~~
Aeolun
Twenty feet wide and fourty feet long is like 6x12 meters per floor.

That’s as big as my entire house, and we can fit 4 rooms, a kitchen and a
bathroom in there.

2.5 rooms per floor would be the height of luxury.

Why do you say these are terrible?

~~~
lazyasciiart
I would say it because I've spent time on crutches, I have a parent in a
wheelchair and another one that just wouldn't have the energy for a staircase
much of the time, and staircases are a pain in the neck with small children
and make it harder to move appliances and large items of furniture in and out.
As a default form of housing, living across four floors is actively excluding
many people with disabilities and massively reduces the ability of aging
seniors to manage unassisted living.

~~~
Aeolun
These sound like complaints against any house with stairs. I think that
disqualifies like 95% of all stock regardless.

I think we’d find that the number of people that need single floor apartments
fairly closely follows the available supply.

~~~
zip1234
If the first floor apartment had ramp access then wheelchairs could get in.
Elevators are another option but somewhat expensive.

------
whiddershins
That first one, the single family homes with a shared courtyard?

We need more stuff like this! Backyards in Brooklyn used to be treated more
communally (before my time) which created a large shared space safe from cars
where children could play.

Now I just stare out my window and watch people basically never go in to their
yards.

What a horrible waste.

~~~
dhimes
I have a hunch it's the bit about the parking that is illegal. To be honest,
the whole post rubbed me wrong- like an industry shill or something trying to
start some grass-roots anti-building-regulation discord.

~~~
chrisco255
Uhh, have you heard about the housing affordability problem in many states?
The zoning regulations have created cookie cutter cul-de-sac neighborhoods
that have contributed to unnatural sprawl. It's very difficult to even
innovate in housing and commercial design due to these restrictions.

~~~
big_chungus
In Houston, the same thing has happened without zoning. Have you perhaps
considered that there is a massive market for "cookie cutter" suburban
housing? HOAs have also largely taken the place of zoning, on a hyper-
localized level. Furthermore, lots of other stupid rules apply, aside from
zoning, that limit the ability to build new housing.

~~~
shkkmo
That market was deliberately stoked by FHA and mortgage lending restrictions.
The thread itself points out that these issues are not soley the result of
zoning.

> While single family zoning was reserved for homeowners (read: White), multi-
> family housing was seen as being for renters, (people of color).

> State, federal, and local governments all conspired to limit homebuying and
> lending to whites for decades.

~~~
big_chungus
You're not providing any causal link. You are effectively positing that a
whites-only neighborhood will spontaneously organize into suburbia, but an
integrated one will not? Would you please provide some evidence or background
reading to support that?

~~~
chrisco255
I won't speak to the race issues but as a former realtor I dealt with FHA
loans and they have asinine restrictions on them. I had to get local ordinance
exceptions on a number of issues to get a loan approved for some buyers. It
was a mess. They required certain lot sizes and certain dimensions. And while
FHA has lost its luster a bit over the decades, it used to be a much more
common type of loan, as it was one of the few ways to buy without putting a
lot of money down.

------
exabrial
How to solve the housing crisis: get the government out.

Nobody should be forced to have an electrical outlet in the garage for an
electric car and the government has no business requiring that.

This is just my favorite example of thousands of silly regulations that are
put in place to keep the poor from becoming owners.

No poor person can afford a Tesla, yet:
[https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095076_ca-to-
require-n...](https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095076_ca-to-require-new-
buildings-to-be-wired-for-electric-car-charging-stations)

~~~
CalRobert
I upvoted you, but it's not black and white.

The government prevents someone from opening a lead smelting plant next to a
school (hopefully). They also force homes to have two exits from every room in
case of fire, etc.

But they also discovered manufacturing housing scarcities and _also_ making
massive, lifelong loans available for housing are a GREAT way to keep your
population working really hard to just barely keep a roof over their head.
Want to work part time and pursue art? Want to stay home and watch your child
grow up? Too bad, there's 10 more people who'll outbid you for your house, so
you have to design your life around income maximization.

These scarcities are created with zoning, parking minimums (maybe the most
horrible part), green space (aka yard size) requirements, ridiculously large
streets, density restrictions, etc.

The escape is to leave the city and work remote (honestly it's amazing what
having no mortgage and no rent does to your sense of agency) but that's an
option open to rather few people, and probably not for long as it becomes
normalized and wages adjust as a result.

~~~
kljoiutr
> They also force homes to have two exits from every room in case of fire,
> etc.

That can't be true? That makes 90% of existing homes illegal to build again.

~~~
CydeWeys
It's not true, but not for this reason. 100% of old enough buildings couldn't
be built again in exactly the same way. Codes evolve over time.

~~~
CalRobert
Why isn't it true? My understanding was rooms where people are likely to sleep
require two means of exit (e.g. door and a window).

------
habosa
Is there any possible way to break the American addiction on housing as the
primary investment / wealth for a family?

As long as existing homeowners are incentivized to drive up the price of their
home, none of our housing supply woes are likely to change. And who can blame
them? For most people their house is worth more than all their other
possessions and investments combined.

Besides the incentive issue, the fact is that most increases in home value are
not created by the homeowner. They're created by the city who provide streets,
infrastructure, security, etc. They're created by small business owners who
make a neighborhood attractive to live in. They're created by nearby employers
who bring in wage earners who create demand. The new bathroom the homeowner
puts in is a minor matter. Yet all of the value (minus property taxes where
applicable) is captured by the private home owner.

~~~
cheriot
> As long as existing homeowners are incentivized to drive up the price of
> their home, none of our housing supply woes are likely to change.

I'm not sure it's that logical. If you own land and tomorrow it's upzoned to
allow more density, the value increases immediately. Once the density creates
enough foot traffic to support cafes and restaurants in a walkable space the
value goes up again.

People are stuck on the idea that urban means blight so they need to zoning
rules to keep out "the riff raff".

------
xrd
It looks like the author might be in the NW. I'm curious whether they would be
optimistic about the zoning changes ([https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-
single-family-zoning...](https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-single-
family-zoning-law-effect-developers)) here
([https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Measures/Overview/HB...](https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2019R1/Measures/Overview/HB2001))

~~~
davidw
Yes, he's from Oregon. HB 2001 is good news, but we need to allow for more
variety, and it'd be wonderful to also allow light commercial by right, so
that, say, you can walk to a corner store instead of getting into a gas
guzzling SUV just to do something people in many countries can do on foot.

~~~
Legogris
> allow light commercial by right

Is this a US-specific term? What does it mean? (Only really found
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_light))

~~~
davidw
"By right" means that you can just build it without having to apply for any
specific exceptions, go through hearings, etc...

"Light commercial" means things like small corner stores, barber shops, local
restaurants, stuff like that. There are legit reasons to not want, say, a
tannery right next to housing.

~~~
Legogris
Ah, right, indeed. Related to the thread, I don't see how banning "#5
Live/work units of ground level retail and second and third story housing"
makes any sense. These can be a game-changer for local town life.

~~~
dsr_
The only bad thing about them is that they tend not to be accessible for
people who have difficulty climbing steps... which is fine as long as there's
lots more available housing which is accessible.

I lived in an apartment over a specialty supply company one summer; it was a
great bicycle commute to work, walking distance to a supermarket, and nobody
was actually in the ground floor at the times I was home, so they certainly
didn't care if I played music loudly or thumped furniture across the floor.

------
dragonwriter
No citations are provided to support the “most American cities” claim, and
many of them are common even in the places best known for anti-development
NIMBYism, so I suspect that their association with the thread title is
frequently inaccurate.

~~~
maxsilver
Yeah, this tweet-complaint list is simply not true. SRO/Tenements are
obviously not legal (for good reasons, imho). But the other examples in the
tweet thread are legal in most cities, and these get built all across the US
_literally every single day_.

In my small-ish Michigan city alone, we have multiple examples of #1, #3, #4,
#5, #7, and #8, all of which have been built this decade. The same is true in
Minneapolis, and Portland, and Seattle, and Chicago, and others.

~~~
zip1234
I think you are missing the point if you think the author implies that they
are completely banned. They are obviously not all banned. The issue is that
they are banned in certain places. Most cities strictly regulate where you can
build different things and have restrictions on setbacks and parking for all
of those things. In my midwestern town, I could not tear my house down and
build an apartment. It is zoned for 'single family 2nd density residential.'

------
duelingjello
Anything to make new housing as expensive and complicated as possible so
NIMBYs don't have more housing inventory to attack their valuations or more
neighbors too close to them. The consequences of this selfishness are more
expensive rents, more expensive housing and more homelessness.

------
PascLeRasc
There's something really beautiful about streets without setbacks like this
[1]. I can't put my finger on what it is but they're all over Amsterdam and
Japan, and they always make me so happy to walk though. Does anyone know what
it is about these?

[1]
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELaN6w_UUAAQbOC?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELaN6w_UUAAQbOC?format=jpg&name=medium)

~~~
Kungfuturtle
No cars?

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

More seriously, my guess is that you enjoy those streets because there's so
much more character to them. They are generally part of an older, more storied
urban core, so the streets are more imbued with a "there"ness of the
community.

Contrast this with the experience of walking down a recently-gentrified
street.

------
sharpneli
Rowhouses are de facto banned almost everywhere in US? It’s relatively popular
way of living in Finland. It’s something between a highrise apartment and your
own house.

I’ve always wondered why US seems to lack those and that neatly explains it.

~~~
Frondo
I spent some time in Philadelphia, where nearly all of the housing in the city
core is rowhouses or apartment buildings. It's _fantastic_. It makes a dense,
walkable city, and people still get the amenities of their own house with a
little tiny backyard (big enough for a fire pit or grill). Also better for the
environment when heat doesn't radiate off all four sides of a house.

They've been building some of what they call row homes in the PNW, but these
are still detached houses (no adjoining walls). It's better than it used to
be, you can fit three houses on the space formerly reserved for one or two,
but go the extra mile and connect 'em together.

~~~
burfog
I think you really should have enough room for scaffolding. How are you going
to take care of a wall that is physically touching your neighbor's wall? That
wall ought to get inspected at least. It might need paint. If one house starts
to collapse onto the other, then both have problems. You're also at a higher
fire risk, even if the walls in the middle can't burn, because embers can more
easily go from one roof to the other.

~~~
drewbug
Yeah, the Philly MOVE incident led to 64 other buildings burning.

~~~
Frondo
I think the scope of that fire is better attributed to: the police dropped _a
bomb_ from a police helicopter on the home where people were living, and it
was a poor neighborhood that may not have had firewalls between dwellings.
I've seen fires there where the shared walls are brick, and those firewalls do
work.

~~~
ceejayoz
They also deliberately didn't put the MOVE bombing fire out.

------
ChuckMcM
At least in the bay area the retail on the bottom, housing on the top is now
quite commonly built. There are new units in Mtn View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara,
and San Jose. And maybe if the courts don't stop it, Cupertino :-)

------
monksy
> 5 Live/work units of ground level retail and second and third story housing.

> The US often doesn't allow inclusionary zoning like this unless development
> is denser.

4+1s are fairly common now. Most new development in chicago has this.

~~~
asdff
They are popping up everywhere in LA. A lot of parking is still required,
however, which ups the builds cost and moves those businesses and apartments
into another economic class. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but the only
places cheap enough to buy and raze are places currently occupied by the
working class, who will still have their jobs in town but will end up with
longer commutes to affordable neighborhoods.

------
fnord77
> #2 Bunkhouses/Roominghouses/SROs, which have multiple people sharing a room,
> or individuals getting small rooms, with shared kitchen and bathroom spaces,
> for short to medium term living.

Aren't there a few startups doing this and marketing them as communal living
for young techies?

~~~
wahern
SROs don't _have_ to use communal bathrooms. A family member lives in what's
classified as an SRO, but in the ritzy Cow Hollow neighborhood. It's a tiny
unit but has its own bathroom, including shower, and a very tiny kitchenette
(sink, no stove). It's probably smaller than most of the more modern SRO'ish
units that have recently been built around SOMA, even though some of those
rely on communal spaces.

Other than the size of the units, it's a typical apartment building--office
workers, teachers, retail workers, and even a dentist with a house in Marin
who keeps a unit so he doesn't have to commute during weekdays. It was
probably built in the 1940s or 1950s, before zoning laws stopped construction
of such buildings.

------
greggman2
It would be nice to know the why's for each of these laws. I'm sure some
seemed at the time, or maybe still do have legit reasons.

Houses, or rather apartments with a shared kitchen and maybe shared bathrooms
are still a thing in Japan.

There are "share houses" of which maybe the most famous/notorious is Sakura
House that has many locations and caters to visitors.

There's also [https://www.social-apartment.com](https://www.social-
apartment.com) which is targeted more at locals. I've thought about joining
one for the social aspect. I think there would be a market in other countries,
especially if there was an activity director making sure events happened. I
didn't know it would be illegal in the USA.

There are also high end apartments that have an activity "roof top". A friend
lives in one. The rooftop has a restaurant, live entertainment, indoor and
outdoor areas, a pool, and rooms you can reserve for private parties.

Tangentially, lots of old USA movies show characters living in boarding
houses, having a room to themselves but sharing meals. Seems nice in the
movies. No idea how it was in real life.

~~~
nikanj
Mostly: Poor people live in these, or even worse, poor black people.

Most of the zoning laws were not written recently, and they do carry a heavy
burden of being both anti-poor and racist.

~~~
gerbilly
> Most of the zoning laws were not written recently, and they do carry a heavy
> burden of being both anti-poor and racist.

It's not accidental either, they were written that was as a neutral way of
implementing racist policies.

Just like the war on drugs was a smokescreen for Nixon to attack the hippies
and peace protestors.

------
gpvos
Key sentence:

 _> Said bans were put in place largely for racial reasons._

------
thorwasdfasdf
The problem with all these regulations is that it completely stops all
innovation. Imagine what the internet would have turned out to be if, from day
one, it was heavily regulated as housing. Imagine if every company or every
developer had to get a permit before building any website and every website
had to look a certain way with certain margin. We'd be nowhere.

Housing, desperately needs permission-less innovation (completely
regulation/zoning free). Maybe not everywhere. But, come on, CA has 163,707
square miles, can we just carve out a couple of those, even if it's just 100
or 200 or so (with enough economies of scale to attract serious VC money), in
an area that has no NIMBYs, for build whatever you want and let builders and
innovators innovate. We can take what's working and slowly apply it other
areas.

At the current rate, the way things are, we're never going to see any progress
in housing.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
People should pay for the costs of the negative externalities they impose on
others, something that seems to be missing in the town you imagine. This is
one thing I think YIMBYs constantly miss. "Build, build, build!" and when
someone criticizes they say "you're just afraid to lose money on your house,
housing should not be an investment" and I think that captures part of it, but
it's not just that a $800k house is now worth $700k, it's that the entire
character of the house is changed when it's in the shadow of a skyscraper for
6 hours a day. In this case the homeowner has not just lost money, they may
have lost what made them desire the house in the first place - a calm
neighborhood, a sunny garden, a beautiful view, easy parking, a neighborhood
populated by similarly wealthy individuals. Now you probably take issue with
at least one of those, but there are others that are perfectly reasonable and
until YIMBYs confront the massive negative externalities they wish to unleash
on people they'll continue to look on in disgust as entire communities show up
to their council meetings and shout and howl and kill YIMBY proposals.

~~~
zozbot234
Agglomeration economies lead to _positive_ externalities on balance, not
negative ones. And YIMBY isn't arguing that one should build skyscrapers next
to single-family houses. One can increase density in a rather gradual way, and
a few skyscrapers here and there don't even give you a density advantage
compared to building a far greater number of mid-rise and high-rise buildings.

~~~
danudey
This is very true. Vancouver has a huge housing issue because the main options
are single-family homes (which are inaccessibly expensive) and ~20 storey
condo towers (which are also inaccessibly expensive).

Then you end up with people opposed to densification because they only way
that we can get sufficient density is to take this one small space and build
20 storeys of housing on it. If we wiped out one single-family neighborhood
and replaced it with mid-rise residential with ground-floor commercial, it
would be much more of a _neighborhood_ and fit a lot more people sustainably.

Instead, they fight against any densification and argue that a three-storey
walk-up is going to "change the character of the neighborhood" (because people
who can't afford to buy homes will be able to live in their neighborhood) and
now everyone is screwed (except the people who own).

~~~
lawnchair_larry
That is definitely not why Vancouver has a housing issue. We all know why
Vancouver’s housing market is distorted.

------
nullc
Most by what metric? A great many cities in the US permit most (all?) of these
things.

None of them are popular to build now, however, where they are allowed.

~~~
dredmorbius
Examples?

------
wang_li
The setbacks complaint seems mainly to be that locals can't privatize, or
otherwise restrict usage of, public spaces.

~~~
jessriedel
How does having my house near the street on my lot restrict public usage of
the street?

~~~
cannonedhamster
The sidewalk. And the street right of way extends beyond just the physical
street in most places.

~~~
jessriedel
This comment is pedantic. Yes, there are special regulations about homeowners
in some areas having to place and maintain sidewalks along their property. (In
other areas, they are owned and/or maintained by the city.) That's very
distinct from setbacks, which prohibit construction for a depth much further
than the width of the sidewalk.

------
biesnecker
For what it's worth, I recently bought a new-build condo-ownership model
townhouse in Silicon Valley that is effectively a row house. Six units in a
building, three stories each. It's not quite the same, but it seems to be cut
from the same mold.

~~~
asdff
How is the shared wall? I used to live in an old brownstone sorta place and
that thing was like a tomb in terms of noise.

Now I live in new construction which is timber framed, cheap drywall, and
cheaper california insulation, and I can tell what specific video game my
neighbor is playing along with his bowel schedule. Once this lease is up I'm
running for the oldest heaviest looking building I can find.

~~~
biesnecker
Remarkably good. We were worried too but we hear almost nothing through the
walls.

------
text70
Houston is one of the only cities in the US that I know of that does not have
any zoning laws. All of these would be possible to build with zero-lot lines,
no commercial or residential zones, and no height restrictions to speak of.

~~~
lurquer
This is a myth.

Enormous chunks of land surrounding the three airports have actual zoning.

The rest has de facto zoning. It just isn't called zoning. This is why Houston
looks pretty much like any other city with zoning.

A lot of what can and can't be built is covered by deed restrictions, which
are enforced by the city. (i.e., a developer may put a restriction in the deed
stating that only residences can be built, and no commercial activities.)

In addition, there are gazillions of 'land-use' ordinances that control the
height of buildings, lot size, parking, etc.

While it would be kinda neat -- as an experiment -- to see how a city would
develop without zoning, Houston sure as heck isn't that example.

[https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-
heard-h...](https://kinder.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-
houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of/)

[edited to supply link]

~~~
InitialLastName
> While it would be kinda neat -- as an experiment -- to see how a city would
> develop without zoning, Houston sure as heck isn't that example.

It seems to me that Houston is a great example of that experiment: in the
absence of a formal centralized zoning system, the vacuum of limiting who can
build structure x in location y is filled by informal and labyrinthine
arrangements.

~~~
lurquer
Indeed. This idea always comes to mind when I hear people wonder out loud what
a true 'anarchist' society would look like... I privately answer, "Pretty much
exactly like what we have now."

~~~
antognini
Reminds me of a famous essay in the anarchist literature: "Do we ever really
get out of anarchy?" by Alfred Cuzán

[https://uwf.edu/media/university-of-west-
florida/colleges/ca...](https://uwf.edu/media/university-of-west-
florida/colleges/cassh/departments/government/cdocs/II.A.1.-Cuzan-1979-Do-We-
Ever-Really-Get-Out-of-Anarchy.pdf)

------
jcomis
#2 does not seem to be true in some cities. There are a lot of new "pod"
apartment buildings with shared kitchen facilities. There's one right across
the street from me in Denver.

~~~
jessriedel
Sure, housing regulations are hyper local, so there will be exceptions. The
fact that some many localities have converged on banning the same stuff is
still remarkable, and evidence that it's being driven by the same forces
rather than being a tailored response to details of a particular community.

~~~
lolsal
How is that remarkable? Local governments governing locally sounds completely
normal to me.

~~~
jessriedel
Local governments are widely acknowledge by political scientists to be be
lower quality than national governments, believe it or not, and to have
significantly less oversight. The argument for giving them huge power to
dictate what people can and can't build on private land is that local
regulations can be more tailored to local details. But if all the local
governments are, e.g., setting high minimum plot sizes, this is not them
responding nimbly to local details; it's just a way to keep out poor people.

~~~
korethr
> Local governments are widely acknowledge by political scientists to be be
> lower quality than national governments

Since you're invoking authority here, I'm gonna say [Citation Needed].

> But if all the local governments are, e.g., setting high minimum plot sizes,
> this is not them responding nimbly to local details; it's just a way to keep
> out poor people.

Or, it could be as simple as a locality copying what seems to have been
successful in other nearby localities, with not enough people speaking up with
compelling evidence to the contrary.

Believe it or not, not everything bad that happens to poor people happens out
of malice directed their way. Sometimes, bad shit happens to poor people,
because, being poor, attempting to change conditions to make less bad shit
happen would further strain their already stretched-to-the-limit resources.
And there's one resource that anyone who wants to participate in local policy
making _must_ spend without exception, one which those struggling to make ends
meet will tend to have the least of: Time.

There is no Machiavellian mustache-twisting involved in keeping the poor out;
the poor never show up to give their input on the policies that might
adversely affect them. It's kinda hard to even know about the 90 day advance
notice postings in town hall when you're working 2.5 jobs to keep food on the
table and the heat on during the coldest winter months so you don't freeze,
and the public bus routes you rely on don't even go near city hall. Never mind
having the time to think about the Nth order effects of such proposed policies
to figure out if they'd adversely affect you, or then getting down to city
hall for the planning meeting to give the council or committee your 2 cents. I
mean, some localities are better than others about giving all of their local
socioeconomic strata sufficient advance notice and a fair chance to provide
input, but there's a limit to what's reasonable. Eventually, time for input
and comment will have to be ended so a decision can be made, otherwise nothing
would ever get done.

If the above sounds sucky and unfair, well, you're right. It does suck and it
is unfair. But if you want the conditions of the poor to suck less and become
more fair, you're going to have a hard time being effective if you are too
quick to ascribe results to malice.

------
toomuchtodo
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1204306278173958145.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1204306278173958145.html)

------
subject117
Cronyism. Outlawing building types like these hurts middle and low class
individuals. They take advantage of the public by citing “safety” reasons but
really this just lines up the pockets of larger real estate developers and
their political cronies. I imagine it is more correlated with left-leaning
cities but wouldn’t be surprised to see cronies on the right too

------
Dan_JiuJitsu
I think a lot of this is due to people in the neighborhoods not wanting the
neighborhoods to change. It's this way in the USA precisely because of citizen
control. Single family home neighborhoods are some of the nicest places to
live in America. Why shouldn't the people who have invested in the community
get to decide how the neighborhood evolves?

~~~
imtringued
That would be perfectly okay if they didn't invite more workers to their
cities.

------
StillBored
There is also the building code related things, you can't build a texas
dogtrot, or in many cases middle eastern compound style houses (thick walls,
high concrete fence) anymore either. Never-mind outhouses, despite them being
all over parks/etc these days under the name "composting toilets".

------
irrational
Come to the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. Tons of new rowhouses. Live/work
units are increasingly common.

------
klyrs
A family friend was the proud owner of the last outhouse in Boise city limits.
All things considered, I'm not too shocked at this omission...

Also it's illegal to build chicken coops in many cities. Not sure how common
that one is, though

------
tingletech
I don't think you can build new trailer parks in most of the U.S.

------
gok
Minimum housing size regulations (which is really what the source is about)
has similar impact to minimum wages. It gives lower middle class people bigger
homes / higher wages but increases homelessness / unemployment.

~~~
Gibbon1
Maybe I'll try and find the talk again. But saw one where the speaker showed
slides of various housing units. They varied from a very nice looking art deco
style apartment in Redwood City at something like 220 units per acre. And
single family homes in Los Vegas built and zoned for 4 units per acre.

------
ascari
Meanwhile most of these are what you get in England

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rambojazz
What a sensationalized title. These are urban regulations and they exist in
every city.

~~~
degosuke
I'm on edge whether the title is sensationalized or not... It does state the
fact that it is illegal to do these. I would even see it as a better
reflection of the current status then perhaps stating "Urban regulations
prevent building these types of buildings."

------
faissaloo
When there is so much regulation there is a point where the only real law
becomes "have you sufficiently annoyed someone"

~~~
mywittyname
Most zoning laws are the result of a group of politically-connected
individuals saying, " _they_ shouldn't be able to do _that_ " and using their
influence to stop such behavior.

Some are really just there to ensure that developers don't cheap out on the
stuff in the walls in order to cut costs. But I don't think people are really
complaining about requirements for the species of wood required for framing or
the number of electrical outlets per square foot.

------
vorpalhex
Some of these were removed from zoning because they weren't fantastic housing.
I've been in a bunch of those old boarding houses (several existed near my
university) and they were relatively terrible structures with minimal privacy
and universal rodent issues.

~~~
aero142
But they were cheap. Which is a really great thing when you are broke but
still want to go to college.

~~~
wolfram74
If the health situation is bad enough, it's just making externalities via
health risks for everybody those residents interact with, since they're now
vectors for whatever diseases crop up.

~~~
danShumway
Unless the health risks are greater than those for homelessness, we shouldn't
care.

Absent additional research, my prior is that homeless disease vectors are
_probably_ worse, since people in that position have fewer shelter options
from the elements and more direct exposure to the public.

Houses don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than what we have
right now. I mean, even in a bad situation... there are rats on the street.
It's very difficult for me to imagine someone in that condition looking at a
house and saying, "no, the street is cleaner."

Maybe there's an extra perspective I'm missing.

------
Legogris
> Said bans were put in place largely for racial reasons.

Is this really true for all of them? I see in the thread that

> Said bans were put in place largely for racial reasons.

Some of the ones who are not NIMBYism or the above I can absolutely see how
they could be motivated in an effort to slow down/hinder certain socioeconomic
dynamics.

> #2 Bunkhouses/Roominghouses/SROs, which have multiple people sharing a room,
> or individuals getting small rooms, with shared kitchen and bathroom spaces,
> for short to medium term living.

In a poor environment and/or when housing is scarce, these easily become hosts
for abusive or exploitative relationships between landlord and tenants or
shitty housing.

> #1 Bungalow Courts. Single family homes with shared walls and a communal
> courtyard. And no car parking requirement.

Aka gated societies

EDIT: Downvoters, why? Care to reply? Is this question ignorant or irrelevant
to the conversation? I'm not defending any of these or claiming that they
actually have the desired effect.

~~~
BryantD
I don't think this is an insane question. My take:

#1 -- gated communities are way bigger than a bungalow court and are much
easier to isolate from the community around them. I think this correlation is
a misapprehension. Here's a highly renovated example:
[https://seattle.curbed.com/2018/4/4/17200290/pine-street-
cot...](https://seattle.curbed.com/2018/4/4/17200290/pine-street-cottage-for-
sale-rsl)

See how it faces the street like any other house, but there's a little private
shared area in back? It's not self-contained like a gated community can be.

#2 -- yep, there's the potential for abusive relationships. There is no rental
model that works without strong protections for tenants and, yes, landlords.
So that problem isn't inherent to rooming houses. However, the power
relationship is usually tilted towards the party with more money and that's
likely to be accentuated in this type of housing. You gotta be careful.

