Yes.

If you believe that no town homes should be built in the U.S. than you might not qualify as NIMBY.

But if you believe that town homes shouldn't be built next to you that's the definition of NIMBY. Of course every instance has a long list of reasons why next to them is especially bad, character of the neighborhood, parking issues, infrastructure, etc....

But the end result of everyone fighting increased density in their neighborhood is we have a less density (bad for environment) and more expensive housing.

The irony is that density means more people, more homes, more availability.

That means more jobs open up and makes the place more lively. More desireable.

That means the house property value will go up.

They are thinking "will this make the property value go down in the next 5 years"? vs "will this make the property value skyrocket in the next 10 years".

We are catering to short-term gains at the expense of long-term.

Many NIMBYs aren't purely financially driven. What they want is for their neighborhood to stay exactly as it was when they moved in, with the same type of people, and same amount of traffic.

Bay Area has plenty of this type. Many of them already have had property value skyrocket (50K -> 2M is not uncommon), so they can just have both (high property values, and preserve their neighborhood exactly as they want it).

Honestly I think this would be fine. The problem is they allow FANG to build giant offices, which brings new 400k-income jobs and bids up the restricted supply.

I think they should be forced to choose one or the other. Keep their SFH and say no to FANG, or accept townhomes and condos to balance out the new jobs.

This is also in part due to tax revenue. Because of Prop 13, residential units in CA generate very little property tax revenue (revenue which doesn't grow much until the property changes hands, which is unpredictable). Commercial units don't have this problem, so municipalities can depend on a decent amount of property tax, with predictable increases over time.

Prop 13 applies to commercial property too, I'm pretty sure.

I think commercial property just doesn't burden the city. A Google office has private security, a fire suppression system, and doesn't house kids who need to attend the school district.

Commercial property does burden the transit systems (LOL for CA) and roads. The road issue is pernicious because they take up enormous amounts of real estate to begin with and are extremely difficult to expand after the fact. This is one of the primary arguments against building high-rise housing in SoCal. Neither the transit systems nor the roads are able to deal with the additional people. The roads probably never will at this point--there is no room to expand them. Yet the transit systems are woefully underdeveloped for the size of the population and would take years to catch up even if the local politics supported them.

I see a lot of this from People on Nextdoor. They see their favorite landmark demolished to build yet another block of apartments and condos. I've seen a sporting goods store gone, a furniture store gone. A bowling alley was saved but it will be built around. Some places I've seen low density industrial being replaced with housing. Some people fear that at the end it will just be housing and big box stores left.

That’s only true up to a tipping point when poor people move in. Parts of Detroit are a great example where poor people are diving down the value of houses around them.

People essentially want to be surrounded by people of almost exactly their economic class to somewhat richer. To rich and stores they can’t afford to stay ie gentrification, to poor and you have to move ie white flight.

I'm not sure what parts of Detroit you're talking about, I can't think of a single neighborhood that is struggling with that problem, blight and abandonement? Sure.

Blight is a direct result of people in the area being to poor to afford to maintain infrastructure.

As to driving prices down, some houses in good condition are selling for ~25-50k which would be worth more basically anywhere else in the US.

That's not because a bunch of poor people moved into the neighborhoods. That's because the middle class moved away or lost their jobs.

It’s not just a question of the middle class moving away, people die which means you need more people moving in. As soon as the mix of people moving in starts to include less affluent people it eventually gets dominated by them simply because their are more people as you move down the income curve.

The transition within a city is rarely about some specific employer shutting down. The more general case is homes age and different areas become attractive over time. You can find areas where nearly identical homes where build across a wide area, yet one community falls into disrepair while another becomes desirable simply based on school zoning.

Honestly, Detroit had nowhere to go but up. The city was so poor that even a decade ago downtown was a hot mess where there was virtually nobody there after 6 PM.

I think you have it exactly backwards the cost goes down due to the area being a less desirable location allowing the poor to afford the houses there. If you analyzed the situation better it is extremely likely that there is an underlying cause that isn't poor people moving in. The economic situation in Detroit has been shit and getting shittier for years now leading to the people who are more capable and therefore able to command a higher salary to tend to move elsewhere.

A house that a doctor and a lawyer are competing to buy is going to be go for more than the one an auto mechanic and a fireman are competing for.

It is a little bit of both, at least when it comes to maintaining a local public school’s rating. People will oppose lower income housing to prevent the children of lower income people from attending the same schools, which might cause the school’s rating to go down. Which would then be downward pressure on the price of the land.

Every real estate website has school ratings for each house listing because it is such a sought after amenity.

It also means you can get walkability and nice things like shops and leisure activities without having to buy a car and drive literally everywhere.

Maybe. If zoning is fluid and organic, you might get those. And they are nice things that many people value.

But, in existing zones? Maybe not - you'd have to convince people to change residential to commercial/retail. And changes to parking minimums, which always seem to screw up projects (they almost always require more parking than a "free market" would dictate).

That also means "those people" can walk into your neighborhood, and many are motivated not to let that happen.

I lived in an area that, for years, refused to let an old railroad track be converted into a trail because it would connect a working class area of the town to an upper middle class area via a miles-long footpath.

That needs a commitment to commercial space on the first floor and underground parking for tenants so that surface parking is available to customers without the need for massive lots. Builders who want to extract maximum profit with the cheapest construction won't go for it.

So, the status quo has to change. Not an easy job, but the rest of the world shows how it can be done.

More homes and more people doesn't necessarily make an area more desirable. Many people prefer space, privacy, and quiet. Those things are more important to them than property values.

That is fantastic for retirement but 80% of people who live in Urban areas value above all else seemingly proximity to jobs which are driven themselves by the proximity of many people which is often driven by the proximity to desirable features like ports.

Retirement isn't the issue. Most people who live in suburban areas today close to live in low density areas. They don't want their neighborhoods to become urban regardless of what that would mean for proximity to jobs and other desirable features.

Stop trying to tell people what they ought to want. Not everyone agrees.

Not the parent, but upthread we're talking about density and zoning in cities, not in suburban or rural areas. I get that people who want to live in a suburban or rural environment have different priorities, and they're free to set building policy to achieve those goals.

But it feels like (in SF at least) we have people with conflicting goals: they want to live in a city, but they want their experience to be similar to suburbia.

I want to live in a city and for it to actually feel like an urban environment! I want to walk everywhere for my day-to-day needs, and take transit for everything else. I want to sell my car and rent one only for the times I want to leave the city. But we're in this weird middle state where that often doesn't work. My guess is that the only place in the US where it really does work is NYC, and then maybe even only really in Manhattan.

>My guess is that the only place in the US where it really does work is NYC, and then maybe even only really in Manhattan.

It's probably the case that it's the only place in the country where it's considered perfectly normal as an adult not to own a car even if you have plenty of money.

There are--especially given Zipcar/Uber/etc.--other cities where people can get buy without owning a car, especially if it's a young post-college lifestyle. But it probably requires organizing your life around not owning a car to a certain degree.

"[T]hey want to live in a city, but they want their experience to be similar to suburbia". I would agree for all quadrants except the northeast quadrant. That is the most dense for population and mass transit. There is a real urban vibe in northeast quadrant.

I have been told that central Washington D.C. and Chicago are also very transit and pedestrian friendly. It is not a requirement to own a car in those places.

>who live in Urban areas value above all else seemingly proximity to jobs

Many jobs are in the suburban areas near metros rather than in metros themselves. SV is somewhat unusual in that a large swath of suburban area is as expensive or more expensive than in the city itself. This isn't the case with a lot of cities.

Look at any typical city in North America, your priciest neighborhood likely has low density.

People tend to work away from where they live (at least for high paying jobs) and prefer having ample space at home therefore I don't think higher density would increase property value as you stated.

The priciest neighborhood ($2MM+) in my city is low density and full of mansions for sports stars and execs for of all the local F500 companies. But the next tier in price ($1MM-$2MM) is actually pretty high density housing abutting downtown.

Once you get into the $500-$1MM range density falls again, as these are the McMansions in suburbia. Density keeps dropping as price goes down until you get into the slums territory, which are basically the pockets of urban blight that haven't been redeveloped yet.

Can you share the city name? I'm curious to learn more.

You're looking at one half of a normal distribution and seeing "more is less" (more money is less houses per square meter), and you're reacting to someone looking at the other half of the normal distribution and he's seeing "more is more". You're both right, just not looking at the entire picture.

When I worked in New York City, there was a stark contrast between senior management. Some lived very rich & urban -- West Village single family townhouse or Upper East/West side high rise, and others lived in a huge suburban home in Greenwich, Connecticut or Long Island. It was a weird mix. I could never figure out why they chose one over the other.

You are probably looking at price per home, not price per acre.

> They are thinking "will this make the property value go down in the next 5 years"? vs "will this make the property value skyrocket in the next 10 years".

Not even. Near here, there was a proposal from the city to increase middle-density housing.

They hired economic forecasters. Their projection, that property values would "decrease" from 13% YOY increases (we are in one of the highest increasing cities in the country) to 9% YOY.

In other words, you'd still see your home value _increasing_ 53% in five years (versus 84%), not decreasing...

... and people still acted like the city wanted to shoot their first-born in the streets.

Exactly. Parents bought a house in relatively scarcely populated area. Then 10000 neighbours moved in. Now they own the largest property in the neighborhood. Guess what that does with the price...

Not everyone cares about greed-driven financials (houses as "investments") nor wants to live in a "lively" place. I'll take my peace and quiet, thanks...and my stable property values and town size.

No. People always say density helps availability, and price increases are due to the denser areas being more desirable.

The major factor driving housing inflation is restricted supply, which is relative to demand. Demand is created primarily by jobs. The difference between jobs and employed residents (with overhead for non-working family members etc) drives the imbalance. If demand was being met, prices would plummet.

This factor is orthogonal to overall density. The Bay Area is expensive because there is not enough housing for the jobs. If San Jose became as dense as SF, it would not help anything, unless that growth was focused primarily on housing. But San Jose already supplies net housing and SF supplies net jobs. These are not small imbalances either; they are both 6 figures in 2008 ACS commute data. (Unfortunately that dataset seems to be compiled very infrequently, but I doubt things have changed much other than density increasing.)

What if you're someone who thinks building stack-and-pack residences is the incorrect response for an investor-manufactured housing shortage?

Then your thoughts are incorrect.

Portland, Ore. is facing a huge housing crisis because single-home zoning prevented increasing density. Without the ability to create more housing on existing land, there is a shortage. It's that simple. They recently passed a law allowing more dense developments, and that will create more supply. There are currently 10 apartment projects in flight in the city, so there is no cabal conspiring to not build housing as you suggested.

Unfortunately, current homeowners love the shortage because it is increasing the value of their homes in ways we haven't seen since ... ever. Which is incredibly short-sighted because the economy will stall without housing, which will crater the boom. Moreso because if they sell, where are they going to move in the same town? They would need to sell and leave town to someplace cheaper. It is amazing to me how many people don't think one more step ahead.

Yes, I’m familiar with that narrative. Perhaps it is reality in _Portland_and_handful_of_other_places. In that case, you’re actually specifying the different case of solving a real housing shortage, not a manufactured shortage.

I routinely take 3-mile walks through my neighborhood in NE Los Angeles. There are at least two homes on each block that are unoccupied. The nearby stack and pack developments don’t offset the inventory sitting idle.

If I understand your argument correctly, you are making an un-evidenced claim that a cabal of housing developers are conspiring creating a housing shortage despite the biggest housing boom in the US since post WW2, while also claiming single-dwelling zoning as the root cause is somehow just an anecdote?

No, I'm making an evidenced claim. I have observed this with my own eyes. And you're moving the goalposts.

I'm saying by taking inventory off the market by buying houses and leaving them vacant, investors are contributing to the housing shortage. I'm pretty sure collectively controlling a small percentage of the market, investors can cause an increase in the cost of housing, per the law of supply and demand.

it doesn't take some kind of cabal to do the incentivized thing, plow millions/billions into properties and don't bother with the hassle of renters when the amount they increase is far more than you would have gotten from rent before you flip them.

Vacant houses do not match the behavior of private equity investors. PE will rent out houses and viciously profit maximize at every step.

Vacant homes from "investors" are almost certainly older residents that have moved, or passed away and left it to kids that haven't figured out what to do, or just owners in the area that have locked in low property taxes and don't want to bother with the hassle of renters.

These are precisely the small-time landholders that benefit the most from stopping apartments from being built, because the source of their investment games is entirely from scarcity.

And the cure is precisely to take away their ability to limit housing by building what you call "stack and pack."

Handwave much?

I would like to engage constructively, but I'm not sure what you doubt, and you seem to be holding me to a far different standard than you hold your own comments to.

Here's the behavior of PE firms when it comes to renting houses, they rent them out and charge for everything:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/magazine/wall-street-land...

As for the vacancy rates, how do you know the homes are vacant, and what is the proper vacancy rate? These can be looked up in from Census ACS estimates, though I hear that the Post Office sometimes has better data.

I would say that a healthy vacancy rate is at least 7%, possibly higher.

I'm quite familiar both with Vancouver's and Oakland's vacancy taxes, and have endeavored to get them enacted in my town. Not because it will solve any housing problem, but because it's a nice revenue stream for various much needed services, and it eliminates one way that people try to wriggle out of the need to build more homes.

If anything, Vancouver is solid evidence that vacant homes are not the problem, despite so many current homeowners being desperate to use them as an excuse not to build more homes. In Vancouver, the tax provides a small income stream, but has changed nothing at all structurally. And that's in combination with the foreign purchaser tax.

The one solution is to start building what people want, what you derisively call "stack and pack", in sufficient numbers over a long enough period of time to satisfy everyone's desire for housing.

We are not off the mark by 10% in the amount of homes needed in LA or the Bay Area, we are 30%-50% off or more. We have been under building for decades now.

Portland has an Urban Growth Boundary [1] that makes it very difficult (de-facto illegal) to build new housing on undeveloped land. That is a major cause of the housing shortage, but it was passed by people like you who wanted it to artificially densify the city. Current homeowners who want to maximize their house's value would be in favor of keeping the urban growth boundary (it restricts the supply of houses) and encouraging high density projects (if apartments can be built on a lot, it makes it more valuable), which coincidentally is the status quo in Portland and other cities on the west coast. You may personally hate sprawl for various reasons, but there is a reason why the sprawling cities of the South and Midwest are cheaper than the densifying cities of the PNW, despite many of them having larger populations. Building apartments and tearing down houses lowers the price of apartments and raises the price of houses; it's simple supply and demand. Repealing both zoning regulations and the urban growth boundary would result in a free market, but don't be surprised if people make lifestyle choices you don't approve of and the suburbs sprawl outwards in such an environment.

[1] https://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/2020/02/24/U... Anything outside the yellow line can't be developed without a massive legal fight.

> Building apartments and tearing down houses lowers the price of apartments and raises the price of houses; it's simple supply and demand.

Do you have evidence of this? I would think increasing the supply of housing would have a downward effect on all housing. Sure, if you're really set on a SFH and there are fewer of them, you'll have to compete. But I think people who want a SFH want a SFH _neighborhood_, and there's an unanswered question to what extent different types of housing can substitute for one another.

The value of _land_ may increase with zoning because development rights are still in limited supply, and the profit opportunity for a developer has gone up. But I don't see many SFH owners clamoring to let their neighbors on both sides be replaced with 5-over-1.

The housing market is not perfectly fungible. A three bedroom house is not replaceable with a studio apartment, and building a studio apartment would only lower the price of houses if there were a lot of people living in houses who would prefer to live in such an apartment. Generally the reverse is true, as more Americans aspire to own a house than live to in an apartment. This survey[1] shows this; look at the difference between live in city and want to live in suburb versus live in suburb and want to live in city. It's not a perfect proxy because many cities have houses and many suburban areas have apartments, but it should give you a general idea. This means that building houses may lower the price of apartments because there are people living in apartments who would prefer not to be. Once they move out, they open up a spot for someone who wants to live there. Three bedroom apartments are much less frequently built than 0-2 bedrooms (the smaller the floor plan, the more tend to be built), but there are still many intangibles like owning the land underneath your building and physical separation from neighbors that lead some people to prefer a house over an equivalently sized apartment/condo.

In addition, many suburban areas are not exclusively single-family houses; they already contain a mixture of apartment buildings and commercial areas, so I dispute your point that single family home buyers insist on exclusively single-family neighborhoods. In most suburban areas I've seen, the apartment buildings tend to cluster together, often near a commercial area, so if you're deep in a sea of houses it's unlikely that your next door neighbor will sell to a developer. People may not be excited if their next door neighbor sells to a developer who plans to build an apartment complex, but that doesn't change the value of their lot, which has increased because the developer is willing to pay more for it if they can build bigger buildings on it.

I was talking about a market with no rules restricting what can be built, and in such a market the neighbor has no say, so their personal opinion is irrelevant. The guy I was arguing with wanted restrictions on housing types he liked to be repealed, but wanted restrictions on housing types he didn't like to be enacted, and I was trying to point out that hypocrisy. Building houses versus apartments is a balancing act governed by demand, but market distortions like banning one type of housing or another can cause an undersupply of certain types of housing, which leads to an increase in prices for the type of housing that is undersupplied and for the substitute it's would-be buyers end up using.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/245249/americans-big-idea-livin...

Didn't say it was perfectly fungible, just fungible enough that a significant enough increase in other types of supply might bring down SFHs. Either that or the true value of a SFH in a no longer housing constrained San Francisco really is $2.5 million.

If you believe that SFH buyers do not insist on SFH neighborhoods (whole cities are not neighborhoods), and should welcome denser zoning because it makes their lot more attractive for redevelopment, go circulate a petition for this among SFH owners and see how far it gets.

You're thinking far too narrowly on SF. In SF, there are people sharing a rented house and treating it as de facto apartments, so my argument still holds. Outside of college towns, that is normally a rare thing, so it isn't applicable for most metro areas that haven't been frozen in time for decades. The Bay Area is a terrible example because they've banned ALL types of housing, not just apartments. They have an urban growth boundary and haven't upgraded their infrastructure to support their growing population, which means that for a given commute time, people must live closer to work than they would with better infrastructure, which increases the number of bidders for each property near offices. I suspect though that even if enough apartments are built in SF so that single-family homes become single-family again, the price of a house there will still be millions. For example, look at the Upper East and West Sides of New York, where there are townhouses worth millions to tens of millions, just like there are in SF, but they are surrounded by massive apartment buildings. Those townhouses are also protected by zoning (In the local government's words: "R8B contextual districts are designed to preserve the character and scale of taller rowhouse neighborhoods."), and they'd be worth even more if a skyscraper could be built there. You could argue NYC still needs more apartments there, but the value of that townhouse's land would still be high, as the developer who wants to build another skyscraper with hundreds of units can afford to pay far more than all but the very richest potential homeowners. A regular New Yorker who wants a house, while they may be priced out of Manhattan, still has the option of moving to New Jersey or somewhere on Long Island and commuting in, as NYC sprawled in addition to building up. If they want to stay a homeowner in Manhattan (or a San Francisco) then they have to outbid the developers.

To your other point about insisting on SFH-only neighborhoods, in large parts of the country, there are apartment buildings and large commercial areas spread between and in single family neighborhoods, and that hasn't stopped people from buying houses there. I wasn't arguing that they all should support higher density zoning, just that it is in their financial best interest to do so. Another major problem is that because the Bay Area has refused to build anything for decades, it has decades of unmet (or to use urbanist language "induced") demand for houses, apartments, roads, transit, etc. that has to be met before prices and congestion will start to go down. To maximize housing affordability you need a mix of sprawl and density with appropriate infrastructure for the type housing built, and if you only do one type of growth you will have many people who are unhappy, which is why in another comment in this thread I accused the YIMBY urbanist of being the same as a NIMBY SFH owner, just with a different preferred housing type. The Gallup survey I linked earlier shows that there are more people currently living in cities (presumably in apartments) who wish to live in suburbs or rural areas (presumably in houses) than the reverse, so there is an unmet demand for "sprawl" and options like remote work.

My major point if a SFH owner in SF was purely motivated by money, they would welcome development on their land and wish to limit it on others'. Many of them aren't though, and they aren't lying or using euphemisms when they say they want the character of their neighborhood preserved. I hear tons of arguments that they are opposing multi-family housing because it would lower their property values, and that just doesn't make sense. A San Francisco with an apartment built for everyone there who wants one and no other changes would most likely still have million dollar houses, though the rent of the apartments would be less.

That's great. I really appreciate the growth boundary. It is one of the reasons I like Portland. That's not at all what I'm referring to. In fact, my position, is that removing the single-family zoning restriction is a good thing. That works against sprawl.

> people like you

I think you may have been triggered by poor reading comprehension and gone off in a fit of ignorant rage and assumed I thought sprawl was a good thing.

My reading comprehension is fine. I'm well aware you're an urbanist who hates sprawl and cars and loves density and transit. You need to work on yours, because I never said that you like sprawl (in fact, I said the exact opposite: "You may personally hate sprawl for various reasons"), only that urban growth boundaries raise the cost of housing and that "NIMBYs", if they were motivated by increasing their property values instead of concerns over the character of their neighborhoods, would support policies like urban growth boundaries and upzoning because they result in a reduction in the supply of houses and an increase in the potential land usage value. You argued that they loved a shortage of housing because it increases property values, and I pointed out that the reality is more nuanced.

How are you any different that the someone who doesn't want an apartment building built because it would change the character of the neighborhood? Both of you support policies that increase the cost of housing in the hopes that everyone will live the lifestyle that each of you prefer. You prefer multi-family housing and want people to live in it, and support policies that make it expensive to live in single-family housing. The hypothetical NIMBY (who is, as mentioned previously, not someone who is purely interested in maximizing their house's value) prefers to live in single family homes and wants it to be expensive to live in multi-family housing. I'm sure you'll reply with some handwavy thing about sustainability and externalities, but the NIMBY can similarly bring up crime, noise, congestion, and other issues with dense living. There is no difference other than which housing type the two groups prefer.

I would be less hostile if urbanists like yourself would just admit that they want to force everyone to live their prefered lifestyle instead of hiding behind bogus economical and questionable environmental arguments. If you truly just wanted the option to rent apartments then there would be no need for policies like urban growth boundaries. Removing both the zoning rules and the boundaries would allow for housing that people want to be developed, but what would you do if your neighbors make the "wrong" choice?

> I would be less hostile

You've been nothing but hostile in this discussion (and apparently from your history, many others). Also you literally edited a comment to deny a claim you made. Just stop.

You edited a comment to change your reply from being an attack based on something I did not say to including an actual argument, and I have not edited a comment beside grammatical changes/minor clarifications and my argument is consistent. Just stop commenting if you can't address my points or hold a discussion.

I think if you are using derisive terms like "stack and pack" for apartments then you are probably precisely the investor that is manufacturing the housing crisis.

Apartments create greater affordability, they allow for designing cities with lower carbon impact than single-unit homes, they allow better community, more connections, cradle-to-grave living, they allow people to survive without having to get in a car to do any task during the day. They are fantastic. I would live in a "stack and pack" home in an instant if they were allowed in my community.

try living in one. they are great maybe from age 24-29. they typically cost more than a mortgage in my area. you don't talk to people when you are that close. I find the greater the distance between neighbors the better the relationship.

I am right at the end of your range and noticing similar trends among my similar-aged peers. We all talked of condos a few years ago, but the single family home with room to breathe and quiet is overtaking our previous desires. I am still conflicted due to my hate of commuting, but the more I read about and experience the downfalls of busy-area living (noise pollution, air pollution, inability to change much about the property, etc) the more I feel the desire to buy straight up acreage in Wyoming.

I also see a lot better community with less people, and I'm sure there are many reasons for that.

I lived in a few recently, after living in a detached house, and my experience was not as you describe. The buildings housed all ages and we were all friendly with each other, and if someone was in the shared outdoor space, a neighbor would quite often come to join them. In the building before that, there was no shared space, but everyone was friendly, no different than the detached house place where I live now.

Which isn't to say anybody should be forced into a multi-unit building and mixed-use neighborhoods. But as you point out, prices for these types of settings are often higher than detached homes, indicating that they are under supplied and more people want them then are currently allowed to live in them.

Your points are true, and I’m in favor of building more housing, however the single family home has traditionally been a financial boon for lots of Americans, and having to pay for rent every month vs keeping some of that value in your mortgage is hard to discount.

I guess I’m just saying there should be cheap smaller houses and condos in cities too, not just rental places.

It's weird, people say the same things whether it's condos or apartments. Where I live, they will typically be derided as "luxury condos" despite being less than half the price of detached homes in the area.

(One of my more heretical opinions is that homes and land shouldn't be considered investments, and should perhaps not be a method of wealth building, as it turns every person into an investor whether they want to be or not. Which fuels regular people to take control of the local political processes that block new homes with talk of "luxury condos" and "stack and pack." If we are going to do something like this I'd favor a sovereign wealth REIT that redistributes the wealth more evenly and removed the financial incentive to be anti-competitive in land use decisions. That, or tax away all profits from speculation on land gains.)

How can investors decrease the supply of housing?

By backing policies and politicians that constrain the expansion of public and affordable private housing in the face of an increasing population. Or by purchasing homes they do not intend to use as a primary residence.

An investment property still has people living in it?

I've never heard of investors lobbying against social housing (in the UK at least).

Forcing investors and developers to provide "affordable housing" arguably makes the problem worse. I.e. it makes it harder to make a profit and therefore disincentivises building new homes.

> An investment property still has people living in it?

Investment properties don't always turn into occupied rentals; sometimes they turn into vacation/secondary homes, airbnbs, &ct. They can also end up vacant if the dwelling is being used purely as an investment vehicle or if the landlord is uninterested in lowering rent in response to market forces, although it's hard (for me, a lay person who doesn't want to spend more than a couple minutes googling) to know if those are significant quantities of homes or just a rounding error.

>I've never heard of investors lobbying against social housing (in the UK at least).

I don't know how UK politics works, but in the US, large investment banks and lobbying groups pour huge amounts of money into our political system, and individual investors also happen to be voters. For example, the last CA ballot measure which would've improved housing justice somewhat (2020's prop 21) saw heavily-financed opposition from landlord associations.

>Forcing investors and developers to provide "affordable housing" arguably makes the problem worse. I.e. it makes it harder to make a profit and therefore disincentivises building new homes.

I don't really have opinions about whether you should force developers to provide affordable housing in new developments, since I think trying to wield market forces to fix social problems has a poor track record in general. If you (well, the government, civil society, whatever) want to incentivize building new affordable homes, you should just build them yourself.

Without knowing more, it sounds complicated: denser infill housing is good in so many ways. Mixed use, with commercial on the ground floor and housing above is even better in many situations, but not all developers do that kind of thing. So it kind of depends on what the alternatives are and what the housing situation is like where you live. There are places where "the perfect is the enemy of the good" in terms of what gets built.

Commercial is critical for '15 minute neighborhoods': https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/9/6/7-rules-for-cre... - but without the density to support local commerce, it's tough to justify it.

But I don't think 15 minute neighborhoods are likely what your angry neighbors had in mind, so most likely just NIMBYism.

Where I live now is planned to be a 15 minute neighborhood. I moved into one of the first new developments of many, all residential, all within a 5-10 minute walk of a train station.

There are about 1000 housing units being built, and there has been zero commercial development. It's great that they are building dwelling units here all around transit, but the only businesses that already exist are industrial, a gas station, and a dollar store. Commercial land owners have been refusing to sell to developers as they watch their land value increase. It's a real shame, but it does seem better than what existed before and the area certainly has potential.

Yes, this is what NIMBY means. "I am ok with more housing, just not by me."

The specifics will vary in every case, but in every case it will be some argument on why THIS is not the right place to build more housing. For every possible value of this. Areas that don't have extremely local control over zoning do a better job of combatting this.

This is kind of textbook NIMBY although it is possible taking away the commercial zoning could make the area too light on commercial activity.

But one of the main contributors to housing shortages is that areas have been overly permissive with commercial zoning (since they don’t have residents, city expenditure is low) which causes imbalances in the amount of jobs:people in an area. That in turn not only increases prices but increases traffic as some portion of people must be commuting from afar to fill those jobs.

Bingo. Balance is way more important than density. It should be mandated by state law. Doesn't need to be per-city; you could have a system to trade jobs vs housing with neighboring cities or something.

A major irony is that California is approaching this all wrong. The "let Scott Wiener build whatever he wants" laws are in some cases being used to make the problem worse. See: Vallco Mall redevelopment plan, more jobs than housing.

I had to laugh at “the most dense development”. 400sqm is absolute luxury in Europe, and plenty of space for a massive detached house with a garden and garage. A house on the high end here sits on less than 150m2 (northern europe).

> 400sqm is absolute luxury in Europe, and plenty of space for a massive detached house with a garden and garage. A house on the high end here sits on less than 150m2 (northern europe).

Just how "massive" can that house be with a garden (say, 35sqm) and a garage (36sqm)? You can probably build a fine house in the remaining 330sqm, no doubt, but I'd hardly call it "massive". Maybe "generous".

OTOH, it might be a point-of-view problem: I'm in South Africa, with a 700sqm building on a 2000sqm plot, in a nice area near the train/bus stop, near all amenities.

It's definitely a point of view problem. We currently own a 90sqm, 3-bed house in the UK and it's not small by any measure here. On this street there are definitely smaller houses than this and people live here with families just fine. Also quite a wealthy area not a dump.

From that point of view, 400sqm sounds positively like a mansion to me. Sure, would love that much space, but I have no idea if houses this large even exist anywhere nearby to buy, I've certainly haven't seen any.

Exactly. The largest homes around here are barely above 200sqm, and cost 2-3 million. Most houses have two or three floors though.

Yes. But birthrate is only half in the Europe compared to the U.S.

And what does that have to do with anything? The USA would need 3 billion citizens to rival the density of the Netherlands.

Or are you implying you need a 500sqm house to raise two kids?

"Everybody" opposed it except I imagine the process did not gather the input of the fifty families who could live there.

To me, the issue depends in large part on the context: What kind of area are you in? Rural? Urban? And what is the availability of housing and the economic diversity of the neighborhood?

I don't think it's useful to try to determine if some loaded, politicized, pejorative term applies by definition.

The developer used a Variance to change zoning rules.

Many Bay Area (I only know this market)counties will happily acccept the fee (upwards of $1000), and 99.99% of the time the Variance is not granted. I truly believe counties count on the fees for revenue.

I 've noticed a slight lightening up though.

Gavin Newsome made it much easier to build certain structures. He made in-law units (ADU) easier to build.

What happened is wealthy people took advantage of the laws, and added extra feet to their already huge house. These ADU will not be rented out to low income, or even strangers. The wealthy found a loophole, and used it to remodel their homes. Oh yea, their is still a lot of kissing town officials ass in order to build anything.

Neusome also mandated new apartments, and reasonably hosing, to be built. It is a great move. He slashed a lot of red tape. It's still a pain though. You will have town officials arguing over siding, window placement, gardens, exactly whom will be living in the ADU.

NIMBY's are alive and well in my county. Just about everytime we want to build a homeless shelter; homeowners scream, and officials listen. (Towns are panicking now over homeless. The homeless camps are getting bigger, and Thurston Howell III does not like looking at them. The Supreme court gave the homeless some rights though. Cops can't just harass them to move quite as easily as they did in the past.)

I have watched towns/counties harass homeowners who want to build since the 80's. (I was going to buy a cabin, and I knew the foundation would need to be replaced. Half the cabin was sitting on a redwood stump. I just wanted to put a foundation in, and it wasen't possible due to zoning.)

I don't like our building system. They make the process rediculiously expensive, and complicated (remember you, tge architect, the contractor, will be going to many meetings with town offivials begging to remodel, or build. They love saying no.

It's become a disensentive for middle class homeowners to remodel.

I currently have one fear over new residential building. It's water in the Bay Area. This drought does not feel temporary.

I woukd like to see apartment complexes build adjacent to 101, but the water shortage needs to be addressed.

At this point, I only trust care about very low income, and the homeless. I have never seen so many people without a roof over their heads.

Congratulations, Central Planner! It sounds like individuals and markets almost won.

lol, that’s not even that dense. We have SFH here in the Bay Area just like that. Lots of places where people have 4000sqft lots with their relatively normal houses.

> I wonder if the opposition would be classified as NIMBY

If a protected classification like gentrification or environmental impact can be found, then it isn't NIMBY anymore.

Say for example, if the town homes projected to be priced higher than the neighborhood, there is a gentrification angle. Density often requires some environmental impact review. For example, a change in development density might have significant water runoff impacts that require a retention area large enough to make the development economically unviable.

I think finding a potential habitat for an endangered species is the strongest reclassification from NIMBY because it doesn't require any change to existing structures, mostly freezes things in place and has regulation from redundant inscrutable jurisdictions and the support of outside organizations that are generally successful and seeking new cases to work on.

Yes lol.

For one thing, the zoning was probably there because the local NIMBY opinion.

> Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it.

Why? That's kind of an important point.

For example, unless this is NYC or similar, 49 townhomes is going to need a minimum of at least 110 parking spots (just to hold the occupants alone, assuming no one ever has guests ever). A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per townhouse.

A lot of builders outsource their pollution to the local neighborhood, especially on infrastructure (parking, water, sewer, electrical, natgas, etc). It's a common reason to opposed development, and it's a good one.

It's usually done to save cash, and it saves literally just pennies. (Parking on these projects, for example, is always less than 6% of the total cost. Cuts to sewer and electrical are less than 12% of total cost). Builders do it anyway, builders will generally build the literally shittiest thing code lets them get away with -- they'd build buildings that fall apart in the slightest breeze, if it were legal to do so.

This is why zoning rules, building codes, and the large piles of regulations are so important.

> The project would have been the most dense townhome development in 4 counties.

Ok, that means it would likely carry the highest prices per square foot in 4 counties, which means it would immediately make that neighborhood the most expensive neighborhood in 4 counties. Could that be a reason it was opposed? Density isn't free, it's a form of financial pollution that the other residents will mostly have carry the burden of. Not everywhere is California, not everywhere gets free unlimited property tax lock-ins. If you built a luxury townhouse next to a generic house, their taxes will spike 200%+ to cover your luxury development, and all nearby rents would spike in a similar way against nearby renters.

I get that California and San Francisco specifically is it's own unique terrible experience. But here in the Midwest, generally speaking, locals are pretty reasonable. You can get away with building almost anything you want, so long as you don't screw over the locals. (And I mean that quite literally, we have almost 100 new developments here in our small city, including the worlds gaudiest ugliest castle monstrosity -- zoning never stops builders ever, you can build anything you want anywhere you want, as long as you don't hurt too many people)

What is actually happening in most cases, is that some sort of builder wants to screw over all residents, residents rightly complain, and then those residents get labeled "NIMBY". The only time a project gets cancelled is when it makes residents bleed so much, they push back hard. And even then, local residents only win that fight about ~40% of the time.

If you can only build dense housing in the places where there are no few jobs and few people it doesn't help much. The fact that the locals are by definition negatively impacted by new development is a great reason to take virtually all say away from the locals.

Anyone who is already a home owner will find that increasing supply of homes a necessary function of the society decreases the value of the asset in which they have parked most of their wealth. Even when it increases the value you can't get them on board. Look at your own logic.

> my taxes will spike 200%+ to cover your luxury development

You aren't covering the cost of their development they are actually increasing the value of your property. For your taxes to spike 200% they would literally have to triple the value of your property. It's like they are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bags full of hundred dollar bills over your fence and you are complaining about income tax.

Presumably if someone did something like build a crack house and halved the value of your property you wouldn't thank them for halving your tax bill!

Basically for any given project locals have interests that are almost always out of alignment with the rest of society. The some people in aggregate elect your state wide officials but at least those folks are apt to think and plan based on a broader perspective than the locals whose attitude is universally "I've got mine"

This is both the worst timeline and the worst most selfish nation.

> It's like they are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bags full of hundred dollar bills over your fence and you are complaining about income tax.

They aren't throwing dollars over the fence, they're throwing debt over the fence.

Sure, my property is on-paper worth more. If I cash that out, I just have to spend it all (every other house got more expensive by an equal amount, and I have to live somewhere). And the new person who buys it now has to cover all that extra debt directly in their mortgage, they get soaked too!

Property values are not real wealth, it's not real money. It's fake. Coastal folks can treat it like it's real, because they can play markets against each other, they can depend on moving to some "low COL" area as their cash-out-to-real-money exit strategy. Those of us in low COL already (or who can't play markets, because they have to stay here for family/work reasons) don't have similar luck, the chain ends here, there's nowhere left to go.

> Presumably if someone did something like build a crack house and halved the value of your property you wouldn't thank them for halving your tax bill!

I would thank them, actually. Property should depreciate. It's the only way housing will ever get affordable for real humans again. I don't expect to get every dollar I paid for a house, back again. No one should.

> locals have interests that are almost always out of alignment with the rest of society.

Locals are the "rest of society". Locals don't all own property, half of our locals rent. Locals who own, still often have kids who need to buy houses, and they want them to be able to afford to live near them. The selfish behaviour seems to be coming entirely from developers or 'urbanists' who think if they just keep ignoring the ramifications of their actions, they can strongarm society into accepting forever-increasing housing costs. Why you paint "Locals" with that brush, when Locals carry every penny of those increased costs, I have no idea.

The utility of your argument relies on it being something burdensome like a 200% increase but in fact if your property went up by 200% for building a complex it would in fact be extraordinary not only for the nation but for your area as well. If your 200k house for example went up to 600k you could in fact sell it and have a money fight with hundreds of thousands of dollars of real profit in your new living room even after you paid off the capital gains especially when the first 250k single or 500k married couple is tax free.

When you reduced the projected change in price to a more reasonable increase like 10% your argument about not being able to move to a lower col area becomes true because everything has gone up equally but it is hard to argue that the increase has greatly burdened your life to the point that people ought not be allowed to build on property they own.

For example locally if assessed value went from 200k to 220k my taxes would increase 16 per month. 400-450k would net me a cool $41 per month.

Looking at actually realistic figures makes it much harder to justify constraining housing supply which negatively effects all of society in order to optimize your tax bill.

> but in fact if your property went up by 200% for building a complex it would in fact be extraordinary

It's not, at least in the us. In the past nine years, my house went from a real-world value of ~$90k (2012), to now being worth ~$240k (2021), despite wages being mostly flat. This is not uncommon, most homes in this or any nearby city have posted somewhat similar gains (plus or minus 10%). This property specifically, recorded it's highest jump ($40k over a single year) in the year after they built luxury apartments in the lot directly behind it.

And that's not a NYC / SF / Chicago / Seattle / Austin type hip place. It's just generic small-city Midwest nowheresville. A place with no restrictions on housing construction whatsoever, and has entire neighborhoods of new development in the past decade to prove it.

> If your 200k house for example went up to 600k you could in fact sell it and have a money fight with hundreds of thousands of dollars of real profit in your new living room

You are not getting it. No, I literally can not do that. If my house went from 200k to 600k, then every other house has also gone up a similar amount. If I sell my house to cash out, my family is homeless, I don't have a "new living room". And if I want a "new living room" to live in, I have to give every single dollar of that 600k back, for some new property at similar high prices. It's not real money, it's debt that I happen to be holding in my hands in paper form, and the future occupant of my house is now on the hook for.

Californians simply can not seem to wrap their head around this. They just assume the money is real, because "move to the south or the midwest" is always an option for them, so they can cash out and keep a bunch of it. Some of us already live in these places, and don't have a magic "high quality housing at cheaper-than-my-home-market rate" place to escape to.

> justify constraining housing supply

Literally no one is arguing to constrain housing supply. Blocking a shitty luxury development never constrains housing, it frees it to be used for real housing.

Fighting against Poisoned Milk sales is not "justifying constraining milk supplies". Fighting against cost-raising developments for private equity firms is not in any way "justifying less housing". You can want more housing and not want everyone's rent to spike, these are not in conflict in any way.

To be clear housing went up 18% per year for 9 years which is materially different than a housing development causing your house to go up 200%. Teasing out the effect would involve looking at similar areas with different development profiles and would be complicated by the fact that the luxury development is more likely to be built in areas that have themselves recently become more desirable..

Whatever you discovered assigning all growth in your property value to that singular event is clearly erronious. As you mentioned all houses in urban areas have gone up substantially. If we assign 10% of that effect to adjacent luxury development we would conclude they had added 15k to your property value. Of course tax calculations vary by state but lets go with WA for a for instance.

It costs you about $12 a month if you save monthly towards your annual property tax. If we assign 20% to the presence of the luxury development which is almost certainly too much it cost you closer to $25 a month.

The truth is certainly underwhelming.

>They just assume the money is real, because "move to the south or the midwest" is always an option for them, so they can cash out and keep a bunch of it. Some of us already live in these places, and don't have a magic "high quality housing at cheaper-than-my-home-market rate" place to escape to.

Yeah, it's absolutely disgusting.

> Property values are not real wealth, it's not real money.

I don’t know, having $100k+ more in equity than a couple years ago it acts like having an asset with real monetary value when I go to a bank looking for credit, having a big effect on both the amount of funds I have access to and the terms on which I can get them.

It’s not liquid like cash, so there is more work to take advantage of it, but its definitely real.

> It's like they are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bags full of hundred dollar bills over your fence

Surely you realize that's not how it works. If the appraisal value goes up, the only receiving any money is the government from their increased tax collection. The owner didn't receive a penny.

The developer wants to build the densest housing in four counties with little parking, and nobody has asked the real question: is this planned as Section 8/affordable housing? It sounds like it. Section 8 is guaranteed income for the landlord and probably a headache for the neighbors, especially if they had no poverty in the area before. A very similar situation happened in my rural village, where a developer decided some commercial property would make a great spot for dense, low-income housing; the village fought it and got called racist by the courts, who forced the village to rezone and the village council to undergo racial sensitivity training.

I guess the other option is that poor people should just be homeless?

The social services costs will be higher than the tax base. City planning involves carefully balancing priorities. If the community is made up of 100 rural homes introducing 100 townhomes used for section 8 property incomes creates chaos.

The developers building the complex are going to be insulated from having low-income housing in their vicinity.

I don't believe you. Civil court judges don't have the authority to order elected politicians to undergo racial sensitivity training. Citation needed

I hope they appealed that ruling. Elected or appointed judge?

Where do you expect poor people to live exactly?

In the big city where they currently live. The rural village I'm in now has a 7% poverty rate, while the nearest big city has a 21% poverty rate. The big city would like to redistribute its poor to suburbs and rural areas and redevelop ("gentrify") the land the poor used to occupy. Poor people don't suddenly come into existence ex nihilo: they exist and live somewhere now. They just need to move into the countryside because the urban real estate is worth too much for them to live on it.

The standard answer has a convenient acronym: NIMBY.

In places that can support additional social services not available in remote communities. The poor are being kicked out of cities.

> Ok, that means it would likely carry the highest prices per square foot in 4 counties, which means it would immediately make that neighborhood the most expensive neighborhood in 4 counties. Could that be a reason it was opposed?

Artificially constraining expensive housing isn't a good thing. If the demand is there in the first place, doing so just means that the people who are interested will insteaad buy or rent existing homes that could have otherwise gone to lower-wealth families.

> Artificially constraining expensive housing isn't a good thing

Again, this isn't California. This is the Midwest. We have gentrification problems even in cities that are still losing population. And we've never constrained housing, for our cities that are slowly growing, many have built more new units than residents for years now. Most cities have no meaningful housing shortage here, but every city currently has a housing market manipulation problem.

> If the demand is there in the first place, doing so just means that the people who are interested will insteaad buy or rent existing homes that could have otherwise gone to lower-wealth families.

Or you could just reduce demand. Perhaps Pension Funds shouldn't be allowed to buy housing at all. Make them invest in something that doesn't hurt citizens. That would reduce prices instantly, without requiring the construction of fake-unusable for-equity-firms-to-hold-only housing.

In what world does it make sense for real humans to have to compete with private equity firms or pension funds for housing? Real humans are constrained by their incomes (incomes that famously haven't grown in decades), everything else is not.

I'll do you one better maybe people that don't intend to live in them at least half the time shouldn't be able to buy a second home.

I agree 100%

>A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per townhouse.

A realistic approach in the face of coming climate doom would be max 0.5, for the people that really need cars as primary transport due to disability etc.

In theory sure, but that's not realistic, it just induces sprawl.

Great, you manage to artificially limit parking. So the new housing development moves another 10 miles outside of town, to get away from your artificial limit, and now their mowing down a cornfield out there instead for their build, so they can get the parking residents actually need.

If cities want to be a solution to climate change, they have to let people actually live in them. That means, they have to care about the price points of developments (they can't just keep deflecting and saying "luxury housing lowers prices in 50+ years when it trickles down") and they have to care about supporting residents actual transportation needs. (they can't just hide behind "everyone will bike or whatever").

Everytime they deflect on either of those, another farm or forest gets razed instead.

^ So accurate!

Los Angeles is suffering from this. Towers and towers of expensive apartments left empty at 4000+/mo meanwhile the homeless population grows and the population on the border of homelessness grows.

Traffic increases as people move out of the city center and need to commute in and then those people are taxed through congestion charges or tolls and provided with no, or tremendously expensive, parking.

The whole effort seems to conspire against exactly what made the city a city. Dense, mixed zoned, mixed class living

I’m not opposed to people who want to live out in the boonies, but given the extra cost of infrastructure to service them, they should have to pay for the privilege.

They never do though. It’s always the poor neighborhoods close in that subsidize the rich people in the suburbs.

There is no extra infrastructure cost.

Longer roads, longer sidewalks, longer water and sewer pipes. Longer electric and phone cabling. Of course it costs more.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Towns in the boonies don't fund themselves the same way as cities, nor do they provide the same level of public utilities and services. Many small towns only provide electrical service and basic copper phone service--no water, sewer, high-speed internet, etc.

> Longer roads, longer sidewalks, longer water and sewer pipes.

Digging a trench for that new pipe out in boonies over a dirt field can be done in an afternoon by one guy with a backhoe. Putting in the same length of pipe underground in Manhattan will probably take a decade and astronomical amount of money.

When you live in the boonies, utilities are provided for by the local municipality. Water is usually well water. Waste goes to a septic tank.

There is no additional infrastructure cost placed on cities. You are just plain wrong.

The suburbs in my area are all served by the local city. I’m not talking about rural areas.

Ah, your original comment said "boonies" which denotes rural areas far outside of a city.

Parking minimums should not exist, for about 1000 reasons. For further reading on the topic, check out 'the high cost of free parking'. They are a failed experiment from the mid-20th century.

Many places are switching to parking maximums instead of minimums.

I think they exist because in reality, people start parking in driveways (blocking in people that may need to leave home for, say, work/school) or worse - they double-park or loiter in ever more congested circular drives around the neighborhood looking for parking.

49 parking spaces for 49 houses seems like a disaster in anywhere other than the densest of US cities. Surely most houses have at least 2 drivers?

5 Acres is 2 Hectares, so that's about 25 houses per hectare. Typical new housing estates in the UK is about 25 hours per hectare, with minimum of 3 parking spaces (including a garage if given) for a 4 bed, and 2 for a 3 bed.

Even that number of spaces is too low - especially when one is a garage (which nobody uses to park their car)

What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

If you require large amounts of parking everywhere and commensurately large roads, everything ends up so spread out that car based transportation seems like a necessity. It’s a self perpetuating cycle. If you don’t require so much land to be dedicated to cars you can build things denser and lower or even remove the need for personal cars.

I think one car per household is fine for townhomes assuming most are 2-3 bedrooms. A lot of families only need one car.

It's just not like that in reality. There is a townhouse neighborhood near me with 1.25 spots per house, and it is a disaster. A lot of places are occupied by people with roomates, not families. It's the kind of place where most people need a car for their job- work trucks abound, people drive uber or doordash, etc. Not everyone takes a laptop to the office every day. The roads are nearly impassable, people park 1km away. I knew someone trying to run a small business out of their home there (piano lessons) but there was nowhere for customers to park. There is bus service there, but they reduced the number of routes due to insufficient usage.

Yeah, there is for sure a chicken-egg problem here. If the existing public transportation isn’t good then people will just not have enough parking. If everything is still spread apart, or there aren’t sidewalks or biking infrastructure, there won’t be walking or biking to the office or work site.

Although I will say, living in a neighborhood with very little parking, I am sure people who insist on owning a car anyway will think it’s a disaster too. But I love it because everything is close by and I can get around through a variety of non-car methods. But to get to that point takes time.

> What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

Any part of the US where a street of townhomes would be more dense than the existing status quo is not one of these areas.

In my city (Milwaukee Wi) there are plenty of areas with single family houses, less than 10 units/acre with 0-1 cars per house.

It’s not that uncommon in the US, especially in poorer areas

> What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

That's in very dense urban cities. Given the numbers in question (low density 10 houses/acre) that's not going to be the case.

This really depends on too many variables of the surrounding area. There are places this could work, but I would argue there are more areas where this would not.

> What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

Sure, if they live near public transportation. I would vote down a dense housing development of it didn't have access to public transportation

So, what? What business is it of the local government? Why can't we just let consenting adults make their own personal decisions about the details of the housing and parking they choose to live in?

Some people may only need limited parking. Some people may not need any parking. Maybe they're making a mistake and will regret it. Maybe not. Maybe nobody wants that, in which case the developer will pay the cost. Who cares! This is how freedom works. Can we please just stop ramming regulations down people's throats. "Well, no trust me. I'm from the zoning board and I know you're really gonna need two parking spots."

Imagine if we had a clothing board, and anytime a company came out with a new apparel style they had to get approval. "I just don't think anybody wants shorts that far above the knee. Permission denied". Just let the market decide, for God's sakes.

Because there are external costs. The “consenting adults” narrative is false. Not enough parking means people living there will use street parking in nearby areas affecting the residents of those communities. This happens all the time.

This line of dialogue is a very strong demonstration of how car-centric transportation model leads to a perverse anti-social urban development mindset. Unused parking is quite literally the least productive and least attractive use of land, I simply can't fathom seeing it as attractive.

If the discussion was about high density living then sure. It's not, it's about 10 houses per acre, that's decidedly low density - lower than the tipping point where people don't own cars.

Sure, I'm saying it's a mistake for governments to have planned to support such districts in the first place (by building wide roads with on-street parking, the highways to connect the district to the productive parts of the city, presumably lots of car-oriented policy in other parts of the city to keep density low for the sake of traffic, keep parking high for the sake of those in low-density districts, etc).

This problem only exists because street parking is heavily subsidized at below market rates. In urban cores, street parking is often 90% cheaper than garage parking.

True, but again, if there exist people who currently rely on street parking and your solution is to raise prices so that new residents could compete for street parking then this still affects old residents. Gentrification is an externality too.

I am not saying we should stop doing everything that has externalities -- clearly we can't do that. It's just important to know that these transactions are not "between consenting adults" that dont affect others. Just because an owner of some land, some developers, and some perspective tenants agree on something doesn't mean it wont negatively affect a bunch of other people. And ignoring a bunch of other people entirely is not the correct choice.

The market doesn't decide, and everyone suffers. Ban people from storing their vehicles on public property and you're fine, but until that happens you're stuck with the externalities.

Oh and stop low density housing like this being built in cities.

The real disaster (environmental and economic) is that so many places regulate parking so strictly rather than being more market-oriented and allowing people to figure out how much they want.

https://www.planetizen.com/features/113459-perils-central-pl...

If nobody was allowed to park on public land, that could work

Certainly in the UK it's common for people to expect to own an extra 50 square foot of land for a car or two, usually abandoned to block the pavement. This impacts everyone, especially those of us who don't drive.

It's not really market oriented, it's tragedy of the commons oriented, as developers will build the cheapest thing they can on the premise that new residents can use existing parking, resulting in a reduction of value for others utilizing those commons. By not having parking minimums, it allows developers to pass those costs onto surrounding residents. There are townhouse neighborhoods near me with nearly impassable streets, people crossing 4 lane roads, spreading into surrounding areas, having to walk over 1km to their home from their parking due to insufficient parking minimums. Everyone sees it is a giant problem now, but it is too late to fix. These minimums are there for a reason.

The solution isn't to build more parking, its to reduce the need for car trips. Improve transit and support commercial development in the neighborhood.

The fact is that we're in a housing affordability crisis. We need builders to build "cheapest thing they can" right now because housing is insanely expensive in most urban areas. Parking minimums make housing more expensive, and the fact that people are buying these homes is saying something important: housing is more important than parking.

Yes parking is nice, and there are costs associated with not having a dedicated parking space for each person. But those costs pale in comparison to the costs we pay for having a severe housing shortage. The economic costs, the costs paid in rents, the costs paid in health.

There isn't a world where you can have it all. But its clear that we need more housing, not more parking, and there is an unavoidable trade-off between the two.

Improved transit works in megacities because of rapid transit but in this case they might add a bus route or the bus might come every 1/2 hour. You still do not have the scale to make public transit work unless you turn this place into an actual city.

You can't improve the transport until you start building high density housing, that's not 10 units per acre.

10 units per acre is 1 house per 5k sqft lot--this is plainly single family detached housing. No one in that zoning is having parking issues. When you start talking about 35duc then you start having parking issues--but at 35duc, you're totally within the realm of being able to justify more frequent bus service for a town with 200k+ people. But if you're in a small town with very progressive density allowances like that, then the solution is simple: improve zoning to encourage more neighborhood commercial. No need to worry about transit in that case.

But 10 units per acre is what was being proposed with just 1 parking space per dwelling. That acre is not going to get increased commercial (not enough customers in walking distance, no parking for people driving in), or transit (not dense enough)

Go for 35 per acre sure, you don't need 70 parking spaces then, because (assuming it isn't literally 35 units in the middle of suburbia) you get commercial and transit (people still got to get to work - maybe in WFH stays around that will change)

I'd be interested to see the land use code where this 10 duc with one allowable parking spot is going. This must be a HUUUGE townhouse to go there if its only permitted to fit one car.

is it 1 car garage or literally, a garage with no driveway? if a link to a specific example was mentioned above in this thread i missed it

Another solution is robotaxis. If ridehailing becomes easily affordable You will have your nice neighborhood back. Robotaxis can pick you up in a minute and go to park and recharge in some distant multi story parking.

If you have an area dense enough to have reliable uber then perhaps it works, but uber (and taxis in general) fall down with families with young children - the kind of people buying low density housing being suggested

That is a science fiction fantasy, not something we can plan on in any reasonable time frame.

The issue is that in areas with sufficient parking, on-street parking has few restrictions; maybe you have to move your car every few days and might have a scheduled street cleaning that you need to move for, but you don't need to obtain a permit or feed a meter or worry about where guests might park.

If you put a building with insufficient parking near there, users of that building are likely to park on the nearby streets and that reduces the utility of the street parking for the existing residents; either they may no longer be able to find parking readily, or they need to manage permits, etc.

It's different if you build in an area that already has tightly restricted parking. If you move into a downtown LA building without enough parking for your vehicles, you're not going to be able to find a free spot nearby and you won't reduce the utility of your neighbors.

It's impossible to take a "market-oriented" approach to parking when street parking exists. Either you remove the street parking, you regulate the space somehow, or you have a tragedy of the commons that pisses everyone off. In context, it sounds like the developer was obviously planning to take advantage of existing street parking to reduce the number of spaces built; it was, as described, the densest development in the area, at a below-normal spaces-per-unit for such an area.

>Minimum of 3 parking spaces for a 4 bed in the UK?

This is certainly not my experience, unless you are counting on street parking and even then, that's a stretch

I'm only thinking of new developments

I'm thinking 5 bed sorry, yes 2 spaces for 3/4, 3 spaces for 5 - at least in my local authority.

Given that almost always one of those is a garage which almost never has a car, reality is tons of on street parking (or rather on pavement parking)

What if that development was walking distance to transit? I live in SF Bayarea suburb in a SFH with a wife and a elementary school aged kid. We have 1 car that is parked in our driveway(on our property). For everything else there is a commuter train within 10-15minute walk and uber within reach.

Limited parking does incentivize non-car-oriented lifestyle. Im all for it.

> Limited parking does incentivize non-car-oriented lifestyle. Im all for it.

No it doesn't, it incentivizes parking arguments and a tragedy of the commons, and creates people who will vote for policies that will convert public land into parking spaces.

I would prefer to reduce on street parking, and increase on street cycle lanes. It sounds like you would too.

By only providing 1 parking space per dwelling you end up with an increased demand for on street parking.

I'm all in for subways everywhere but do you feel as comfortable getting in a rush hour car after covid? I'm starting to think subways and megacities might not be the safest way to live.

I do actually feel safe getting in public transit while covid’s ongoing, and I’m in Tokyo (and taking two of the busiest lines in the world as part of my commute - Chuo and Yamanote).

At this point it seems obvious to me that having windows open, everyone wearing masks, and everyone shutting up, is sufficient to make public transit safe. Because if it wasn’t Tokyo would be in a _much_ worse situation. I fully admit I don’t have rigorous data to back this up, but I kind of can’t see how it could be otherwise.

I feel perfectly safe using public transit. 36,120 people died in traffic in 2019 in the United States. When there isn't a pandemic going on and I'm getting the annual flu vaccine, I feel pretty darn safe compared to driving

But there is an ongoing pandemic going on we can't go back to 2019. The new delta variant makes the vaccine weak. What are the chances this mutates again and again? It doesn't seem like a healthy approach for humans anymore.

The US has notably low public transport usage, yet has one of the highest death rates in the world

Singapore has high barriers to car ownership and has one of the lowest.

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...

Another example that cars take too much space. Public transportation is the answer.

and bikes