MoCo Housing Strategies effect on MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd add that in the past decade+ we've been building many more apartments than SFH. As a result SFH have become unaffordable to the middle class. Our county is attracting very rich and very poor people. We need to build middle class housing and I think this plan offers to build a little of it.

It will decrease the number of SFHs, which will drive up the costs even more.

We have a huge surplus of apartments in MoCo. And an undersupply of SFHs.

Eliminating SFHs is not helping the middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

A triplex is a basement apartment plus two above-ground apartments and fits within the 2.5-story envelope. 2x2s are also apartment substitutes. A lot of land will be available for apartment/condo construction, and some will be built. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t suppress starts on large projects, so at least some of the units gained through upzoning will be offset by large projects not built. In addition, the mere possibility of more units entering the market through small projects may make big developers less likely to build big projects. These are the hearts of our downtown cores, so if there’s a slowdown in production, it’s not just the housing market that will hurt.

Those are projects of very different scale, with different developers and different investors.

If it impacts large-scale projects at all, it would be because increased housing stock has reduced housing prices. That by itself would be good news.

DP. 19-unit stacked flat apartment structures would be administratively approved under the Attainable Housing Optional Method without public hearing by having only to ensure that the average size of apartment units is 1500 square feet. Those units, replacing detached single family structures within 500 feet of a corridor, would be much closer substitutes for units in large-scale structures. Those pushing the plan don't like to talk about that.

Increased housing stock that might reduce price pressures can be achieved with currently available pipeline, encouraging the building of higher density in areas currently zoned for that (typically much closer to Metro, with plenty of lots underbuilt vs. that existing density) and greenfield development farther out. All that without undermining the existing supply of detached single family homes, which remain the most imbalanced with regard to supply and demand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

A triplex is a basement apartment plus two above-ground apartments and fits within the 2.5-story envelope. 2x2s are also apartment substitutes. A lot of land will be available for apartment/condo construction, and some will be built. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t suppress starts on large projects, so at least some of the units gained through upzoning will be offset by large projects not built. In addition, the mere possibility of more units entering the market through small projects may make big developers less likely to build big projects. These are the hearts of our downtown cores, so if there’s a slowdown in production, it’s not just the housing market that will hurt.

So parking for 1 house would become parking for 5 houses.

A lot of housing doesn't come with dedicated/assigned parking spots.

But the cars have to go somewhere..we have 1 Group house on our street which already complicates things.

[Anonymous]

Here is what the county executive had to say about the (non)affordable dense housing that the planning board and council are trying to promote. Plainspoken and honest about the misinformation currently being pushed:

https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2024/09/montgomery-co-exec-elrich-says-initiative-pitched-as-promoting-affordable-housing-is-misleading-and-a-fraud/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very little of this thread seems to be about the effect on MCPS.

The main effect of this on MCPS is that the gap in the capital budget will get even bigger because impact fees are set below seat costs and because the Attainable Housing Strategy proposed setting some impact fees at zero. If you like overcrowded schools, this is your strategy.

The capital budget does not need to come from only impact fees. We paid for schools long before impact fees.

So person A pays for impact fees through price of purchase in 2024 in the amount of X (and we'll generously assume that X actually covers the related need) while person B pays one half of X when they purchase something similar in 2025. The other half of X has to be made up from general funds, which come half from person A and half from person B (presuming similar levels of income), so person A ends up paying 1.25X while person B pays .75X.

Except that the developer of the property captures some of that discount from relatively fundamental microeconomic principals at the time of sale -- person B doesn't save the whole amount of the lower impact tax. Maybe half of that. So person A pays 1.25X (X at purchase and .25X in income tax to offset the lower impact tax of the B unit), person B pays X (.75X at purchase and .25X for the income tax offset) and the developer pockets .25X (remember, MoCo only gets 2X from all sources, here).

Developers would getting an indirect but obvious subsidy to their bottom line from residents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

A triplex is a basement apartment plus two above-ground apartments and fits within the 2.5-story envelope. 2x2s are also apartment substitutes. A lot of land will be available for apartment/condo construction, and some will be built. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t suppress starts on large projects, so at least some of the units gained through upzoning will be offset by large projects not built. In addition, the mere possibility of more units entering the market through small projects may make big developers less likely to build big projects. These are the hearts of our downtown cores, so if there’s a slowdown in production, it’s not just the housing market that will hurt.

So parking for 1 house would become parking for 5 houses.

A lot of housing doesn't come with dedicated/assigned parking spots.

But the cars have to go somewhere..we have 1 Group house on our street which already complicates things.

How so? Are they taking spots that you own?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

A triplex is a basement apartment plus two above-ground apartments and fits within the 2.5-story envelope. 2x2s are also apartment substitutes. A lot of land will be available for apartment/condo construction, and some will be built. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t suppress starts on large projects, so at least some of the units gained through upzoning will be offset by large projects not built. In addition, the mere possibility of more units entering the market through small projects may make big developers less likely to build big projects. These are the hearts of our downtown cores, so if there’s a slowdown in production, it’s not just the housing market that will hurt.

Those are projects of very different scale, with different developers and different investors.

If it impacts large-scale projects at all, it would be because increased housing stock has reduced housing prices. That by itself would be good news.

I’m not suggesting capital would shift to multiplexes. I’m suggesting that demand is constant at a given price and the small apartment projects would draw demand from the large ones. Big developers definitely are aware of the competitive environment and avoid projects where there’s competition for consumers.

That would be a good sign. That would mean we're driving prices down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd add that in the past decade+ we've been building many more apartments than SFH. As a result SFH have become unaffordable to the middle class. Our county is attracting very rich and very poor people. We need to build middle class housing and I think this plan offers to build a little of it.

You seem to be equating middle class housing with SFH. That doesn't work. The land itself makes that infeasible. Higher density is the only way to make housing affordable for the middle class.

There also is plenty of space for greenfield to increase housing stock and affordability farther out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Marc Elrich's interview WTOP is a good summary of the many problems with the Attainable Housing Initiative. In short this is not about affordable housing. If you can't read this, just read the following snippet:

Anne Kramer: If this becomes a proposal that the county council considers, if I understand this correctly, you don’t have the power to override it. So what other alternatives are there then?

Marc Elrich: Well, there are no other immediate alternatives. The council is going to make a decision about what they’re going to do. I think this whole dismissal of what people think about their neighborhoods is kind of stunning. This is a place where we pride ourselves, and everybody comes here. People discover great neighborhoods they want to live in. The idea that the council can just decide at random that people can build by right things, that the master plans, that people moved into the neighborhoods thinking they were going to have that, they don’t have that anymore, is kind of shocking.

If this was done for a reason, where you could say, ‘We have to do this to get affordable housing. This is the only way we can get affordable housing.’ I’d think differently about it, but this is a fraud the way they presented it. There’s no other word to use for it.

https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2024/09/montgomery-co-exec-elrich-says-initiative-pitched-as-promoting-affordable-housing-is-misleading-and-a-fraud/

Wow, I like Elrich as a person but this is preposterous. Fraud? Wow. He's basically saying the county doesn't have the authority to make zoning changes, which is false.

He isn't making the case that they can't do it but that they shouldn't. Which is true.

The fraud he references is in the dishonest justifications the council and planning have put forth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

You haven't looked at the map that shows what a mile from any rail station (Metro, MARC and Purple Line) looks like, have you? And you haven't seen the more recent mockups / commentary at work sessions between planning and the council describing just how big that small scale could be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

A triplex is a basement apartment plus two above-ground apartments and fits within the 2.5-story envelope. 2x2s are also apartment substitutes. A lot of land will be available for apartment/condo construction, and some will be built. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t suppress starts on large projects, so at least some of the units gained through upzoning will be offset by large projects not built. In addition, the mere possibility of more units entering the market through small projects may make big developers less likely to build big projects. These are the hearts of our downtown cores, so if there’s a slowdown in production, it’s not just the housing market that will hurt.

Those are projects of very different scale, with different developers and different investors.

If it impacts large-scale projects at all, it would be because increased housing stock has reduced housing prices. That by itself would be good news.

I’m not suggesting capital would shift to multiplexes. I’m suggesting that demand is constant at a given price and the small apartment projects would draw demand from the large ones. Big developers definitely are aware of the competitive environment and avoid projects where there’s competition for consumers.

That would be a good sign. That would mean we're driving prices down.

Not necessarily. If prices can hold steady at n new units then the small projects may make up all of n. If prices would go down at n+1, then the big developer doesn’t build the additional unit. Also, plannings assumptions about price were based on current market rates for new apartments, so you could have steady prices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very little of this thread seems to be about the effect on MCPS.

The main effect of this on MCPS is that the gap in the capital budget will get even bigger because impact fees are set below seat costs and because the Attainable Housing Strategy proposed setting some impact fees at zero. If you like overcrowded schools, this is your strategy.

The capital budget does not need to come from only impact fees. We paid for schools long before impact fees.

And it doesn’t come only from impact fees! It comes from impact fees, recordation tax, and GO bonds. We’ve had impact fees for more than 30 years and before that we had proffer. I don’t know why you’re so opposed to the county capturing part of the value it adds to land through taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some coverage of the meeting at BCC

https://moco360.media/2024/09/26/zoning-changes-major-opposition-at-bethesda-listening-session/

Not good coverage, poorly representing the concerns shared at the session.

They are spouting the same nonsense they did when they were working on the Bethesda Downtown Plan and the Woodmont Triangle. All we are seeing is the few affordable apartments (the oft derided Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing) and small or mid-sized houses being torn down to make way for low income housing and McMansions. Bethesda is becoming more split between government subsidized low income MPDUs and huge homes.

This is what voters want. Our local politicians have been targeting the middle class for the past 10-20 years.

Our ‘leaders’ have been slowly but surely squeezing out the middle class in MoCo.

Allowing developers to build duplexes or triplexes offers an alternative to McMansions.

What's your plan to build housing for the middle class?

There's also tons and tons of unused land further out.

Where the infrastructure needs would be even greater. How does that make sense?

Some infrastructure is cheaper, such as roads, is cheaper. Some, such as schools, is much more expensive.

Like most infrastructure, the amortized per seat cost of new school builds in greenfield areas is lower than that of the expansion of existing structures that would be required with added density in built-out areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

A triplex is a basement apartment plus two above-ground apartments and fits within the 2.5-story envelope. 2x2s are also apartment substitutes. A lot of land will be available for apartment/condo construction, and some will be built. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t suppress starts on large projects, so at least some of the units gained through upzoning will be offset by large projects not built. In addition, the mere possibility of more units entering the market through small projects may make big developers less likely to build big projects. These are the hearts of our downtown cores, so if there’s a slowdown in production, it’s not just the housing market that will hurt.

So parking for 1 house would become parking for 5 houses.

A lot of housing doesn't come with dedicated/assigned parking spots.

But the cars have to go somewhere..we have 1 Group house on our street which already complicates things.

How so? Are they taking spots that you own?

No but I live on a small narrow street. Two cars can not pass if cars are parked on both sides. Most people have a 1'car driveway. The group house has 5 cars and 2 commercial trucks so they use up an extra house or two of street parking. If there was more than one house like that, it would be quite difficult to drive down the street if a second car was coming the other way .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

A triplex is a basement apartment plus two above-ground apartments and fits within the 2.5-story envelope. 2x2s are also apartment substitutes. A lot of land will be available for apartment/condo construction, and some will be built. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t suppress starts on large projects, so at least some of the units gained through upzoning will be offset by large projects not built. In addition, the mere possibility of more units entering the market through small projects may make big developers less likely to build big projects. These are the hearts of our downtown cores, so if there’s a slowdown in production, it’s not just the housing market that will hurt.

So parking for 1 house would become parking for 5 houses.

A lot of housing doesn't come with dedicated/assigned parking spots.

But the cars have to go somewhere..we have 1 Group house on our street which already complicates things.

How so? Are they taking spots that you own?

No but I live on a small narrow street. Two cars can not pass if cars are parked on both sides. Most people have a 1'car driveway. The group house has 5 cars and 2 commercial trucks so they use up an extra house or two of street parking. If there was more than one house like that, it would be quite difficult to drive down the street if a second car was coming the other way .

This is what we have experienced in our neighborhood as well. We have several group homes that have multiple cars/trucks/work vans that park in the street. There is one group home on our block that has 2 minivans, 2 large work vans, 1 pick up truck and 3 sedans. There is not really enough room for all those cars. We have had times where it is difficult for the school bus to get down our street. Or difficult for the garbage trucks to make it down. They even extended out the driveway, but we still end up with multiple vehicles parked up the street. Also, because there is not enough room, they park VERY close to people's driveways.