
Eating Jell-O with Chopsticks - oftenwrong
https://granolashotgun.com/2019/05/27/eating-jell-o-with-chopsticks/
======
oftenwrong
I see this as hacking the overbearing regulation of the built environment.

More about the "stealth triplex": [https://granolashotgun.com/2017/07/17/the-
stealth-triplex/](https://granolashotgun.com/2017/07/17/the-stealth-triplex/)

Building an outdoor kitchen setup: [https://granolashotgun.com/2018/05/08/the-
mangiapocalypse/](https://granolashotgun.com/2018/05/08/the-mangiapocalypse/)

>A garden hose attached to a spigot and a galvanized bucket work wonders as an
outdoor sink. Camp soap made for outdoor use is garden friendly and nontoxic
so waste water can be used to irrigate fruit trees. I hasten to mention that
an outdoor sink plumbed with a pipe would have set off a cascade of government
regulations and prohibitions. But a garden hose and a bucket? No problem. Why
ask for trouble with the authorities?

Building a backyard cottage: [https://granolashotgun.com/2017/06/14/the-
bitter-suite/](https://granolashotgun.com/2017/06/14/the-bitter-suite/)

>I attempted to build a granny cottage in the back half acre behind the main
house. I hired a local architect who walked me through the legal parameters.
Then I decided to do the rational thing instead. Nothing. The numbers didn’t
add up. It wasn’t even close. So I reverse engineered what was legal as-of-
right without permits, fees, or inspections. 120 square feet, no more than 12
feet tall, no electricity or plumbing. Full stop.

~~~
AWildC182
I know a guy who worked a purchasing project for garden hoses. They're made
out of so much low grade regrind I would never use them for
drinking/cooking...

Also, they breed bacteria like crazy when left in the sun.

~~~
chrisdhal
As a kid growing up in the 1970s drinking out of the garden hose was
considered normal. We survived.

~~~
tntn
Ditto, but late 1990s instead of 1970s. I survived (so far) as well :)

~~~
yellowapple
Same here, early 90's. I actually liked the taste of the hose water from my
childhood home more than any other water I've ever drank.

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frenchie4111
This is an interesting post. I don't think the title does it justice, I
wouldn't have opened it if I wasn't sitting on the toilet and the all the
other links were purple at the time.

~~~
dang
You're right about the title, but when a substantive post like this one has a
whimsical title, we prefer to leave it intact. By whimsical I mean indirect
and playful and not using any obvious internet tricks. Leaving it is
respectful to the author, and I think it's good for the HN front page not to
reveal itself completely without a bit of effort.

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sxates
I'm currently in construction on the lower level of my house in Oakland, which
will be split in half and include an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) that we'll
be able to rent out.

There are two ways of doing this in Oakland, and presumably most places - the
Legal proper way, and the not-legal way. Most seem to be the latter.

But we wanted to do things right. Oakland has a housing shortage and we have
more square feet than we need, and we were renovating the house anyway. And
according to the city, they're trying to encourage ADU's to help with that
housing shortage, so we went that way.

But that means we're subject to a whole new set of zoning and construction
regulations. Originally I wanted to keep a (locking) interior door between the
main house and the ADU so we had the flexibility of having it as a guest room
or literal mother-in-law suite if we weren't renting it. Zoning shot that down
- ADU is required to be completely separate space.

Oh and that 'separate space' is quite literal. Separate HVAC, separate
electrical, separate sewer plumbing to the lateral with separate cleanout, and
1-hour fire rated separation on shared walls and ceilings.

Some of that makes sense and I'd want to do anyway, but it means a simple
400sq. ft. 1 bedroom ADU in an existing building is about a $100k buildout.

The previous owner rented the downstairs space as it was - not legal, no real
separation from the main house, shared everything. That was pretty much free
for her.

I wonder if there's a middle ground somewhere. A 'legal' way to dense up our
housing but without the great expense of rebuilding it from the inside out
first. This seems like something that we'll be seeing a lot more of in the
future, but I can't imagine most people will want to spend what I'm spending
to do it 'legally'.

~~~
rayiner
I don’t understand how you Californians put up with so much government. It’s
not even good government. It’s not like you can point to great public services
and whatnot to make up for it.

~~~
HarryHirsch
If you are renting to a roommate and the guy knocks over a candle or falls
asleep smoking in his bedroom you notice straightaway and can escape or try
and put out the fire. But if you live next to a studio apartment and the
fellow sets his kitchen on fire you may not notice until it's too late for
you. Proper fireproofing is absolutely essential in multitenant units. There
is nothing wrong with Oakland insisting on proper code, especially after that
warehouse fire a few years back.

NYC seems a bit more permissive towards not-so-legal landlords, and every few
months the NY Post reports a building fire with really avoidable casualties.
From circumstances you suspect out-of-code rentals.

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ww520
For my old house, the previous owner had built out the basement unit
beautifully, with a full bath, large full bedroom, and large living room, and
9' feet ceiling that made it look like a normal living space. When I bought
the place, I was thrived. It's like a separate unit. But I checked the city's
plan, the build-out was not in the plan, so it was built illegally.

Years later when I sold it, I decided to go through the process to bring it up
to code. It was a painful and onerous process. Dealing with the city planning
department and to be compliant with the regular building code plus the city's
own petty codes made me wish I didn't start the process. At various stages of
the process, I was at the point of fuck-it and just gave up. Finally got it
done after 9 months and extra money. I can certainly understand why people
just do it without following the regulation.

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euske
I'm not quite following the article. Why can't people build a duplex like that
today? Which part of it is illegal? I think it has something to do with a
zoning law, but I'm not very familiar with the concept. (I live in Tokyo.)

~~~
robertnealan
Zoning restrictions are far more restrictive in the United States than in a
city like Tokyo, where the government has largely only enacted laws preventing
specific cases that would be considered very harmful (opening a heavy
industrial businesses in a residential neighborhood for instance).

In most of the US most land in smaller cities are zoned for single family
housing only. This often means you can only build a house for one family (no
duplexes) with arbitrary restrictions on a variety of other things (minimum
lot sizes, maximum house sizes relative to lot size, required setbacks from
property lines to the house, etc).

In the event you are able to build a du/triplex it's rare you'd be able to
convert any part of it for business use unless the land was already zoned for
multi-use, where they allow mixing of residential and commercial uses.

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0xffff2
I find the author's dismissiveness towards kitchen space interesting. Granted
I cook a lot, but are there really so many people that cook so little that
they would have no problem not having a stove at all?

~~~
padobson
With the pervasiveness of Uber Eats, Door Dash, et al, I'm starting to think
there should be an AWS for food.

Imagine some sort of central, industrial-scale kitchen that makes dirt-cheap
prepared meals and uses the aforementioned services delivers them to your
house, hot, at meal time.

Could economies of scale drive the cost below $5/meal? $2?

If we can obviate server rooms in office buildings around the world, what
would it do to make the kitchen an extravagance rather than a necessity?

Or maybe the laundry room is the right target for obsolescence. Most cities
already have industrial scale laundries for hotels. Could Uber and Lyft
partner with them to eliminate those two giant appliances in our homes, and
let us have the space back for our ham radios and stamp collections?

~~~
0xffff2
There are already a handful of laundry services operating in the bay area.
They're all roughly an order of magnitude more expensive than doing it myself
even as a renter.

Likewise, the overwhelming cost of food delivery services is in the "service"
part. Even if you could make the meal for $2, I would still end up paying $10
for a $2 meal, and while it definitely possible to make a nutritious and
reasonably palatable meal for $2, it's never going to compare to the $10 meal
I can get just by walking down the block to my local taqueria, much less what
I can make myself.

~~~
thrower123
When I was living alone as a bachelor, I crunched the numbers and decided it
was kind of stupid to do my own laundry rather than drop it off at the
laundromat for their wash-and-fold service.

Doing a load of laundry coin-op would cost me about $2/$3 a load. Plus the
cost of detergent, fabric softener, and dryer sheets. And the aggravation of
going to a grungy, depressing laundromat, waiting around for the washer to
run, running the dryer several times because things wouldn't get dry, and then
folding it all and lugging my baskets home.

When I was in an apartment that did have hookups, but no laundry machines,
buying a basic washer and dryer ran about $1000, unless I found some ticking
time bomb of a used set on Craigslist. And then there is the water and
electricity costs. Not to mention the hassle of either abandoning them or
having to drag them off somewhere else when I moved.

In contrast, I could drop off a huge barracks bag full of laundry at the
laundromat once every two weeks, and they would weigh it up, charge me a
dollar a pound, then I'd go off to work and pick it up at the end of the day,
perfectly washed and expertly folded. Just in the amount of time saved at
drudgery, it was worth it, besides the fact that they did a far, far better
job than I would do myself.

~~~
kelnos
The difference between you (and me) and an unfortunately large number of
people is that they don't have the luxury to trade money for time, even for
seemingly trivial things. Spending $3 and two hours at a laundromat might be
the only option, as $5-$10 for a service can often be out of reach.

~~~
zrobotics
That's $3/load+drying. When I worked as a mechanic that is what it cost me to
wash work clothes (didn't want them in my washing machine). I did the same
thing--it would cost me ~$20 and 2 hours sitting at the laundromat, wash and
fold service was 28. Even for someone making minimum wage, $4/hour is pretty
poor value for time.

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peterwwillis
The zoning laws are just ridiculous. It shouldn't be illegal to live in a tiny
house, or to have mixed-use dwellings, or build more dense, efficient spaces
that cost less. There's a good reason why these laws came into practice, but
there's also good reason to make exceptions. But it's also impossible to
change them without a couple million dollars and an army of lawyers.

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deckar01
This kind of zoning is pretty much unenforceable. There is no good way to tell
the difference between guests and customers. Some people have noisy guests
that bother their neighbors. Some people make loud noises cutting wood and
doing personal projects with heavy machinery in their garage. Money exchanging
hands is not the problem.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Some people make loud noises cutting wood and doing personal projects with
heavy machinery in their garage. Money exchanging hands is not the problem.

I assure you there are plenty of people who think that loud noises, odors and
"unsightly projects" are an issue even if no money changes hands. These people
have far less leverage over tenants than they do over property owners so they
seek to ban tenants

The zoning you speak of is enforceable enough. It doesn't need to be
enforceable 100%, just enough to make the risk/reward not worth it. Remember,
a large part of the busybodies motivation is "neighborhood character" (or some
other shit like that). They don't care if you break the rules so long as you
do so in a way they find agreeable. They want the power of arbitrary
enforcement so they can screw you if you have tenants that throw loud parties
(or whatever). It just so happens that it's easier to get draconian
punishments attached to the zoning code than it is to get them attached to the
petty crap the busybodies care about so they get rough proxies for the stuff
they care about prohibited via the zoning code.

~~~
orclev
I'm pretty sure that was the point he was trying to make. The excuse often
made for why rental properties aren't allowed is that tenants are often noisy
or cause other problems. He was just pointing out that that can be a problem
for owners as well, so whether it's a tenant or a owner that's being noisy is
immaterial.

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strommen
Abolish single family zoning.

It's terrible for the planet, terrible for economic and racial equity, and
terrible for our mental health.

~~~
ars
> and terrible for our mental health.

If I had to live in a multi family home I would completely go insane. I don't
know about you, but I need space in order to function.

People are not livestock, to be packed in as tightly as possible.

That said, the types of multi family houses in this article are fine by me -
they have lots of space around them.

~~~
alistairSH
Generally, the change would allow single-family homes. But it would not
REQUIRE single-family homes.

A typical development pattern might be something like... \- all single family
homes to start \- area gets popular (property value goes up), a few SFH are
replaced with duplex or small apartments \- area gets more popular, more SFH
removed, mid-rise apartments begin to appear, small-scale retail appears

Etc.

Of course, this requires that NIBMYs aren't allowed to control other people's
property. And the zoning and codes that do exist are enforced so you don't end
up with a SFH next to a gas station.

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closetohome
This must be really specific to NH, because I don't find any of the laws or
problems he talks about familiar.

~~~
SECProto
I have experience with half a dozen cities around Canada, and they all have
similar zoning issues to those described.

