Urban Housing Solution That Has No Good Name
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Not the sort of regulations that require sufficient egress options or that housing be constructed in a way that's somewhat resistant to burning down, but the sort of regulations made in the name of the "preserving the character of the neighborhood" or "nobody should have to live in X (safe and healthy) conditions". The motivation for many of these seems to be wealthier people not wanting to see, or at least live near poorer people.
I want to build one on my property but it'll cost me a ton. I think that's the problem.
I've thought that if anything ever happens to our garage and I need or want to rebuild, I might look into an ADU. But probably I'd just try to get the property upzoned or otherwise get an exception instead of working inside the current regulations.
People seem to be willing to spend a lot of money to live closer to others with similar economic status. Where I live, you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more for an almost identical house in the 'wealthy' parts of town.
I will say we really tried to give the old neighorhood a chance, most of our neighbors were great, but there was one family of renters that consistently was outside shouting and getting hauled away by the police, eventually culminating in a teen shooting off a gun (that looked like an assault rifle, we later found out it was 'only' a .22 rifle) into the air and screaming as another car peeled out and drove away, while my wife was talking to her mother on the phone on Mother's day. My two year old daughter was playing in the front yard, and it was right then we decided we had to move.
So after that we moved to a $250,000 house in a much more affluent part of town, the most expensive we could afford, because what else were we supposed to do? Before we had our daughter, we didn't really mind, but once you put kids into the equation you become substantially more risk averse.
You could just say rich people don't want to live within walking distance of poor people.
It also can result in a more stable appreciation of land values than going from SFH zoning to large apartment zoning.
See: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/12/the-power-of-...
The areas where this happens the most (typically low density suburban housing) really need razing to the ground and replacing with much higher density apartment buildings.
To my mind, homeowners investing more money in these properties is only decreasing the likelihood of that ever happening.
every time, my landlords became my neighbors. we exchange christmas cards, even years later.
if nothing else, this is a fundamentally more human way to live in community than, say, a hollow condo unit administered by a board and designed so that you’re basically not supposed to know who the other tenants are.
The former care a lot about keeping their properties in good condition (after all, they live there, and typically the home is part of their nest egg). I've never known an occupant landlord to ignore a leak. Keeping the building pest-free is as important to them as to you. They want to maintain friendly relationships with the people they share walls and floors and ceilings with, and put time and effort into selecting tenants (your neighbors) who will be considerate.
I've ended up becoming good friends with most of those landlords as well as with the other tenants in those buildings. One elder landlord has become like an uncle to me. I've always been reluctant to move from those apartments until forced to by unrelated circumstances
The latter care about upkeep and maintenance only to the degree that it will keep the apartment rentable. Between tenants, they'll patch over any visible issues. When selecting tenants, they care only about the likelihood they'll pay rent on time, won't smash the walls with sledgehammers, and won't cause frequent law enforcement visits. You'll get neighbors who are loud or rude or steal your packages from the mail room. They pay lip service to pest control, and if you're lucky they'll cover the cost of sending an exterminator out once a month (better hope you're home to let them in). I've never wanted to stay in such an apartment once my lease was up.
This is also helped by nearby landlords probably are small enough that equal opportunity laws don't apply. Stereotypes on the appearance of bad renters is true enough to be useful even though it is often wrong and always immoral.
And they've been orders of magnitude more responsive about problems with utilities, plumbing, appliances, etc. They care. And they form human relationships with their tenants. It's not just about "having an eye on you".
I now own two rental properties and I have them both under management. I would like to think that I wouldn't discriminate against someone with a minor mental illness, or single mother with kids, or an immigrant that isn't from my parent's country, etc. and I am glad I will never find out.
It's almost like this is a workaround to city government bodies routinely preventing the construction of more efficient housing solutions, using a loophole in the NIMBY rules.
The solution is almost always to build more housing units, and then to stack them on top of each other whenever you run out of open land. You can call it "densification", but that's not a particularly cromulent word.
http://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy-research/AccessoryDwellingUnits...
Newer opportunistic building is tearing down many of the historical homes, however, and the upper-middle class townhome colonies being put in their place lack this feature.