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.
It's not the problem here in Minneapolis. Over 10 years ago they lifted the restriction on Auxiliary Dwelling Units and defined what they are and how they may be built (the regulations, which seem reasonable).
I want to build one on my property but it'll cost me a ton. I think that's the problem.
The regulations in Minneapolis don't seem so reasonable to me. For instance, if the property is ever not owner occupied you are supposed to remove the unit. If you want two units then that is straight out. You still can't build over a single story if it's an accessory structure. I'm assuming it doesn't change the amount of unbuilt square footage you need, though thankfully they did relax parking requirements. They haven't been popular here at all, and while they are expensive to build, I think they are also pretty regulatorily constrained.
I've thought that if anything ever happens to our garage and I need or want to rebuild, I might look into an ADU. But probably I'd just try to get the property upzoned or otherwise get an exception instead of working inside the current regulations.
A quick google search suggests that while there are some concerns about housing affordability in Minneapolis, there isn't the sort of housing crunch that would make constructing an ADU rapidly profitable like it might be in San Francisco. If I implied the regulation was the only thing keeping people from building ADUs everywhere, I apologize for being unclear.
Minneapolis is not as bad as SF, for sure. But it's the worst it's ever been in more than 30 years. We have the most severe housing crunch, affordable or otherwise, in living memory.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The underlying principle is incremental upzoning. By rezoning neighborhoods to just the next incremental higher density level (Single family homes to duplexes, triplexes, SFH+ADU), you allow for housing supply growth in a way that doesn't rapidly change the neighborhood character, and incentivizes households to participate in the growth, rather than just large developers.
It also can result in a more stable appreciation of land values than going from SFH zoning to large apartment zoning.
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.
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.
It's a political compromise. Seattle has a huge housing crunch, and not coincidentally, half the city is zoned for single family housing. Upzoning single-family housing all the way to apartments is politically difficult, but ADU's (we call them "mother-in-law apartments" in Seattle) are an easier sell.
ADUs aren't necessarily just separate structures. English basements/garden apartments with separate entrances also count (and are also banned in many jurisdictions), and for many cities, rowhouses/townhouses with ADU potential make up a large share of the housing stock. DC and Boston are prominent examples.
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.
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.
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.
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".
On the other hand one of my childhood memories is waiting ahead of an African American family to view an apartment. The landlord said can you please "just say you are going to take the apartment on your way out". And this was in Jackson Heights, NY, historically known for its diversity.
I now own two rental properties and I have them both under management. I would like to think that I wouldn't discriminate against someone with a minor mental illness, or single mother with kids, or an immigrant that isn't from my parent's country, etc. and I am glad I will never find out.
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.
In many places the NIMBY lobby is trying to prevent ADUs. In response, last year California outlawed the practice of municipalities summarily banning ADUs.
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.
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.
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.