Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Your examples really undercut your point.

> homeowner (me) can't install a duplex addition for a home zoned duplex without turning the front yard into a 4-car parking lot. It doesn't matter that I have one car and could decide to only rent to people with one car, the driveway would need to fit four cars instead of the current two.

Once it is a duplex it is a duplex. You cannot make those assurances for the next homeowner, or the one after that. Even you yourself aren't obliged to stick to your self-imposed rental limitations. Your argument essentially boils down to a hypothetical (that extra cars won't always be needed) but ignores that zoning laws are designed for the common case (that extra cars will scale with number of dwellings).

> if you want to have a home-based day care business, zoning sets a max number of kids that can attend. In California, this is 14 kids. It doesn't matter if your home is 1,500 square feet or 5,000 square feet, whether you're in the middle of downtown SF or in a rural area, or whether you have 2 parking spaces or 20.

So a property not designed to hold a large number of people, isn't allowed to hold a large number of people. That seems reasonable. Just from a fire-safety perspective alone it makes a lot of sense to require custom-built commercial facilities after a certain number of kids.

Plus parking (drop off/pick up), noise, pollution, and so on.

> You should be able to do whatever you want to your property if it doesn't really hurt anyone.

I agree. But all of your examples hurt someone else.

>But all of your examples hurt someone else.

In the case of the parking, how is someone else harmed as long as they are aware of the parking before any purchasing/leasing decisions are made? Signing up for any paid service fiscally hurts someone, but the vast majority of people have no problem as long as there is full agreement on the extent of that harm before signup. Only when the harm is hidden in fine print or not disclosed at all is it an issue.

I guess to say it another way: you should be able to do whatever you want to your property if it doesn't really hurt anyone without their consent. As for what constitutes consent, that is an entire planet of canned worms waiting to be opened.

In many if not most places, the amount of street parking is at least sometimes less than the number of people who'd like to park on the street. If owners add more housing units without enough parking for the people who would move in, street parking becomes even more scarce. This hurts (or, at least, adversely affects) people in the neighborhood.

So if I'm understanding your argument, by only adding 2 and not 4 parking spaces, there is the possibility that a future owner may decide to buy the house and at some point decide to use up more street parking due to the lack of available parking, thus hurting the neighborhood.

If this is correct, then I see a few problems.

First, the actions of the home owner at the time the street parking is being used are the one causing the harm. If I put up a bill board criticizing a politician, and someone upon seeing it decides to engage in politically motivated violence, I am not responsible for that harm as there was a free willed human intervening between the actions and the harm. There is a legal term for this but I forget it for now.

Second, the idea that using parking spaces counts as harm. If so, wouldn't this mean that all use of parking spaces is causing harm? And if the argument is that use under the rules doesn't constitute harm, then that should also apply in this case and the home owner is only causing harm if they are not following the rules of the public parking spaces, something which there should already be a remedy for at the time the rule is broken.

Second part two, if we continue with the idea that use of public parking spaces is a harm, I think we would see a number of negative consequences that are not agreeable with our modern sensibilities.

Third, wouldn't this mean that building a parking lot with only 4 spaces can also cause harm as it is possible for a house to have more than two cars. How does one determine what level of harm is justified enough to be banned, as I find the level of harm between 2 and 4 parking spaces to be so small that I doubt it is actually the exact level of harm that justifies banning something.

Third, this is assuming a new variable which wasn't in the original argument. Thus if this is a road without public parking, this example wouldn't constitute harm. So even if we accept the argument as justified, it only applies to some cases and thus the overall law is still not justified in other cases. While we don't normally formalize a sentence such as 'this law is justified' any further, I think if we were then the formalization would be far closer to 'this law is justified in all cases' 'this law is justified in some cases', as in the latter case we would say the law is unjustified in some cases and generally considered it an unjust law.

> Once it is a duplex it is a duplex. You cannot make those assurances for the next homeowner, or the one after that.

I don't think that is true, or at least it doesn't have to be true. First, imagine a world where instead of "you need four parking spots if you want a duplex," the law was more flexible and said something like "the # of cars registered to an address cannot be greater than the # of parking spots at that address." That would solve the problem but also allow the duplex owner to rent to at least some subset of tenants instead of not being able to rent at all. Second, my understanding is older houses are grandfathered in, so if I owned a duplex built 50 years ago that wouldn't pass duplex code today, I would still be able to use it as a duplex without bringing it up to code. That means there are already duplexes with two parking spots that are legal, but I just can't have one if I build it today with more modern, safer building methods. (IANA real estate laywer, but this grandfathering is my understanding of how zoning law works.)

> So a property not designed to hold a large number of people, isn't allowed to hold a large number of people. That seems reasonable. Just from a fire-safety perspective alone it makes a lot of sense to require custom-built commercial facilities after a certain number of kids.

I understand the need for some requirements, like fire safety. That's very important and there are separate rules for that. But California requires something like 35 indoor sq feet per child in a home day care facility. That means you can have 14 kids in a 1,000 square foot home, but can't have 15 kids in a 3,000 square foot home. These laws are very blunt instruments.

> the law was more flexible and said something like "the # of cars registered to an address cannot be greater than the # of parking spots at that address."

Your original complaint was that your property rights were infringed. Now you're arguing that they should be able to infringe one kind of property right (vehicle ownership) in order to satisfy another (property ownership).

Plus that restriction would be trivial to work around. Just register the vehicle with a friend/parent/PO Box/a registered business/etc.

> That means there are already duplexes with two parking spots that are legal, but I just can't have one if I build it today with more modern, safer building methods.

So your argument for improving your property rights is to take property rights away from other properties that got grandfathered in, potentially evicting people in those duplexes? Isn't that the type of infringement you were arguing against?

> I understand the need for some requirements, like fire safety. That's very important and there are separate rules for that.

There are. But these rules are also for that. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

I'm not saying any of the things you're attributing to me.

1) What vehicle ownership infringement are you talking about? All I said that if I have two parking spots and own one car, I should be allowed to rent out half of the duplex to someone who also has just one car, and without having to build two additional parking spots in order to specify an arbitrary law. I would understand not being allowed to rent to someone with 3 cars if I only have one free parking spot, as that would infringe to some extent on my neighbors.

2) I absolutely don't want to take property rights from people whose properties are grandfathered in. I want more property rights for everyone, not fewer. And I don't know why you thought I was suggesting evictions. I'm suggesting that unless there is a safety issue, then new properties should have similar rights as well.

1) Let's let the number of street parking spots in a city be equal to 10. Currently your new duplex would keep that number 10, assuming 2 cars per household. Under your plan, that would reduce the number of street parking spots to 8, assuming the same number of cars per household. Of course now that the law has been changed, more people want to build duplexes, to take advantage of thier property. 4 more duplexes are built in the city. Now you have zero street parking spaces remaining. So where do new vehicle owners park? They have to pay. So your new rule has transferred what was previously a public expense to a private expense. Basically upping expenses on vehicles for others is ownership infringement. It would be similar if someone built a factory next to your house which used up 99% of the water in the city and then said..."how am I infringing on water usage? I paid for it." Well, yes but no one else can use water now, or you have upped the cost of water for the neighborhood.

2) People often use cars to generate income through being able to drive to work.

The mere existence of a house on the other side of even a fairly big town can affect the fire safety of your house, because it affects the likelihood that emergency responders in the area will be overloaded by an excessive number of fires or medical calls.

Everything is interconnected.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com