Reply to MOCO - County Wide Upzoning, Everywhere

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Twitter thread has great debate on this. This is what’s coming and so blah compared to past builds.
https://t.co/h7csmWmcJ7

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Did you actually read the whole thread?  The author says that zoning is the problem....[/quote]

Don’t be ridiculous. Developers would still build this cheap trash if zoning allowed them to build it elsewhere. We don’t need to encourage them to ruin all of America with this junk. They are absolutely terrible to live in. There is no soundproofing, the smell of your neighbors marijuana flows readily through the wall into other units. It should be illegal to build apartment buildings unless they are made of concrete. 
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Just reading the thread that was posted.  This is what it says as one of the causes:

"In American cities, very little land is legal to build multi-family homes on. In San Jose, 94% of residential land is single-family only. Zones where multi-family homes can be built are sparse and thus extremely competitive — only the biggest developers can compete.  Once these developers have the plot, they economize. They squeeze the building right up to the boundaries, and build on a scale that small, local developers can't afford. Then they save more money by copy-pasting the designs in every city they operate in."

"zoning laws benefit the scaled developers."

"When America restructured around the motorcar, people moved out to the suburbs and commuted in via the new highways.

"Retail was relegated to operating where people drive rather than live — again because of zoning."[/quote]
This is all facts. Suburbs are an abomination in human culture. You know when parents tell their kids it’s bad to stay in their rooms all day playing video games? Suburbs are like that but for adults. [/quote]

Then why do people keep moving to them? And why did you?[/quote]

Because that's where most of the housing in the US is?[/quote]

Oh, okay. Got it. They’re an “abomination” but contain most of the housing in the US. And people voluntarily choose to live there. Logic checks out.[/quote]

Most of the housing in the U.S. is in suburbs because for 70+ years, a long list of federal, state, and local policies has subsidized housing in the suburbs and discouraged anything else. Please learn some history.

And yes, it is logical that most people live where most of the housing is.[/quote]

That the weird urbanists think that housing exists in suburbs only because of exogenous policy decisions and not because there is demand for it shows just how disconnected from reality they are.[/quote]

That you are unaware of 70 years of history shows just how disconnected from reality you are.[/quote]

Is it even relevant?  It’s successful because people want to live there and actively choose to live in a suburban environment.  They moved there specifically because it’s restricted to single family homes, because that is what they want.  How childish and selfish do you have to be to decide that it should change because you don’t like it?

Yes, people should have housing, no it doesn’t have to be wherever you decide it should be.  The sense of entitlement that YImBYs show is embarrassing.[/quote]

[b]Did everyone living in a suburban environment actively choose to live in a suburban environment? Yes. They had a limited range of options, and from among that limited range of options, they chose the option that worked best for them.[/b]

Did everyone living in a suburban environment move there specifically because it's restricted to single family homes? Absolutely not. What an absurd claim. For one thing, the suburban environment has always included multi-unit as well as single-unit housing. A lot of your Montgomery County neighbors live in townhouses, garden apartments, and big multi-unit buildings. Some of them even live in duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes! For another thing, who are you to say why everyone who lives in a suburban environment lives in a suburban environment? You are not everyone. Everyone is not you.[/quote]

[b]So you admit that people live in the suburbs because they want to (i.e., there is demand for it), not because government policy forced them to. Great.[/b]

Why you feel the need to make the suburbs more like a city and give people even fewer options is beyond me. Except as the other person said, it’s your religion.
[/quote]

I mean, yes, I admit that people are voluntarily living in the suburbs. Suburbs are not forced labor camps. That goes without saying, doesn't it? However, your idea seems to be: if you live in a SFH in a suburb, that means you love everything about your suburb exactly the way it is right now, and you don't want anything to change. And that idea is just wrong.

I don't think allowing duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes would make the suburbs more like a city, and it's a fact that it would give people more options, not fewer.[/quote]
[b]
And those who want a SFH neighborhood will get screwed.[/b]  And those who remain will lose the opportunity to grow their wealth through their SFH.  Owning a unit in a quadplex is simply not going to create wealth for its owner.[/quote]

Yes, it's true, people who want to live in an area that consists only of housing that is single-unit housing will have fewer areas to choose from.

The way I see it, the primary purpose of housing is housing, not wealth-creation. But it probably helps that I'm not afraid of renters.[/quote]

Okay.  You admitted that this policy will screw the middle class and upper middle class as it will reduce their opportunities to generate wealth through SFH ownership.  The rich are far less reliant on their homes for wealth.  [b]Home ownership has been pitched for decades as a means to create family wealth for retirement and other purposes.[/b]  Rather than expand those opportunities to more residents, this policy reduces them.  Owning a condo or quadplex has not been shown to create wealth.  [Former owner of several condos here.]

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Please consider the idea that this is bad housing policy.

[/quote]

As much as it might be bad housing policy, you can’t get around the fact that land is an asset with a fixed supply. It’s going to appreciate, especially when you [b]artificially limit the developable supply[/b]. My land will almost certainly be worth more than what I paid for the land and house by the time I sell. [/quote]

I assume this means "regulate land use"?

You know what artificially limits the developable supply? Zoning most of the county so that the only housing you're allowed to build on it is single-unit housing.[/quote]

I never said zoning didn’t limit the development potential. But there’s no question that upzoning will also increase the revenue potential for every piece of residential land in the county, which will also increase its value, [b]making SFH even less affordable[/b]. We’re so lucky to have you advocating for affordable housing with your mastery of market economics. It would have been a tragedy if you had dedicated your skills to NIMBY causes. [/quote]

On the one hand, there will be lots more housing built for people to live in, in locations where housing should be built according to county housing, transportation, and environmental policies. On the other hand, there be fewer detached oneplexes than currently, and it might cost more to buy a detached oneplex in some parts of the county. I'm ok with that.

The NIMBYs seem to be doing just fine making the case against NIMBYism for themselves.[/quote]

Finally you realize and agree that you’re making housing more expensive. You may be ok with that but I’m not. [/quote]

There are many, many types of housing. Detached single family houses are not the only type of housing.[/quote]

What happens in the SFH market affects pricing for other types of housing more than you think. The shortage of SFH is almost certainly driving rents up right now. If you don’t believe this then you don’t believe your own theories about luxury apartments driving down rents for Class C apartments. [/quote]

Well, I certainly agree that the shortage of [u]housing[/u] is driving up rents right now. But I don't agree that "housing" means "SFH". They're not synonyms. And, of course, as others have mentioned upthread, in many parts of the county right now, there are a lot of "SFH"s that are actually MFH. I sincerely do not understand this fetishization of the SFH. Maybe it's because of the demographics of the people who live, or are believed to live, in the SFH - and, conversely, the demographics of the people who don't.[/quote]

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