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Comment by anm89 | Hacker News Reader

I have spent the last year trying to open up a cafe and small space where I could build custom motorcycles. I think on paper it is the kind of project that people would say brings life to a city but the city I live in seems like they have designed their zoning laws to be as stacked as possible against someone like me opening up a business that does not fit a cookie cutter mold of some other existing business, at least not without hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay lawyers and architects.The building I want to use could be moved into tomorrow without a penny of changes.

I had a realization while going through the process that this is the thing that causes our cities to be so drastically inferior to european cities which were designed before zoning laws were in vogue.

I get that I don't want a power plant or steel forge next to my house, but that's not what we are talking about here. I can't put a cafe (literally an espresso machine and a few tables and chairs) in a structure in residential neighborhood without a huge investment in lawyers and architects and likely installing 70k worth of elevators and a 30k sprinkler system in a two story 3k sqft building and even then, if a single person on the review board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

And then surprise surprise, all of the things open in the city are chain restaurants which everyone complains about backed by large corporation who have huge budgets for construction, and architects, and lawyers and palm greasing so our cities slowly morph into this.

It really sucks.

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> I had a realization while going through the process that this is the thing that causes our cities to be so drastically inferior to european cities which were designed before zoning laws were in vogue.

Zoning laws are in fact an American invention, and they were originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work[0]. Their actual impact on the quality of a city was kind of besides the point; the only goal was to hurt racial out groups. Viewed from this lens, it isn't terribly surprising that zoning laws haven't done a great job at making American cities good places to work & live; that's not what those tools were designed for.

0 - https://fee.org/articles/the-racist-history-of-zoning-laws/

I loathe zoning laws, but they were not "originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work"; that was one application, but not the whole story. Zoning was more about protecting rich neighborhoods full of mansions from a 'blight' of apartment buildings.[1] Single-family house zoning is what differentiates North America from other regions.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1287cxr

"Protecting propety values" has been code for "keep out undesirable minorities" for a very long time, in the US.

I didn't say "protecting propety [sic] values", I said "protecting rich neighborhoods". If you'd like more details, I'd recommend reading the book, it is very detailed and well-written.

Well, it's code for "keep density low" and "keep traffic out of my property while I go generate traffic on other people's property". The results are the same though.

Property values often increase from increasing density (ie, replacing my five-million-dollar mansion with a twenty-million-dollar apartment building on the same lot). The zoning doesn't necessarily protect property values as such, so it's an important distinction.

I couldn't read much at the link, so looked up about the book. Found this line in a review fairly relevant.

>Hirt deliberately spends little time on racism, partly because it's too easy a target and too obvious.

https://www.planetizen.com/node/74628/book-review-zoned-usa

Zoning has been applied against Chinese immigrants, as well as other minorities, but it was also used in many relatively racially homogeneous areas. Again, I strongly disapprove of zoning (and many other city planning activities), but I don't think racism was really 'responsible' for zoning, and I don't think that calling all bad policies 'racist' is a good idea.

The start of many US zoning laws was based on racism though. No one is saying every zoning law was racist, or that racism is the sole reason they are bad, but their origin is undoubtedly tied to racism.

Like many policies, their origins are complicated, and subject to 'bootlegger and baptist' type motivations.[1] Going back to my first post in this thread, I was saying that zoning laws were not "originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work", and I stand by my comment.

As a bit of an aside, I find it disturbing how political debate is becoming pure sophistry, where winning the day is dependent on proving that the other side is racist. Zoning is bad, whether or not it's racist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists

>As a bit of an aside, I find it disturbing how political debate is becoming pure sophistry, where winning the day is dependent on proving that the other side is racist. Zoning is bad, whether or not it's racist

Such an odd reply to my comment of

>No one is saying every zoning law was racist, or that racism is the sole reason they are bad

Yes, but you're arguably still doing the same thing, just slightly more indirectly.

>The start of many US zoning laws was based on racism though. No one is saying every zoning law was racist, or that racism is the sole reason they are bad, but their origin is undoubtedly tied to racism.

Here, there's the pretty explicit connotation of "racism created zoning laws", and that's only a mental step or two removed from "zoning laws are racist because racism created them". I do think that nickff's comment was pulling from the current argumentative zeitgeist as well though.

>Here, there's the pretty explicit connotation of "racism created zoning laws", and that's only a mental step or two removed from "zoning laws are racist because racism created them"

Mental steps I did not make as I don't know they are adequately supported by historical data. I mentioned this in the post.

> they were not "originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work"

Right, its was also Black people: https://www.asu.edu/courses/aph294/total-readings/silver%20-...

What's the relevance of what you cite to OP having trouble clearing a commercial venture to apparently serve food, beverages, and test out vehicles with combustible engines?

My sister's chocolate shop requires state and local duplicate inspectors, fire inspectors and health inspections. She's required to install 7 sinks (minimum) because she serves food. She has to have handicapped parking spot, for a walk-in business with exactly 1 parking space. She has to undergo regular 'training' in food handling. All to serve boxes of chocolates and a latte.

It's part of the one-size-fits-all regulation that states and cities adopt to 'streamline' their rules.

A friend of a friend was a baker, and to get approval to bake on her own property, she had to buy a trailer with a kitchen in it.

I have a hard time believing that a trailer parked outside on a gravel pad is safer than the domestic kitchen of one of the tidiest people I know. Things like this gives "rules are rules" a flavor similar to "boys will be boys" for me.

> Things like this gives "rules are rules" a flavor similar to "boys will be boys" for me.

Not having rules is also how we wound up with exploding food trucks.

The main problem is inflexible bureaucrats--and I don't have a good solution to that. Their continued employment depends on not fucking up enough to get bad press--not on getting anything accomplished.

And, to be fair, a lot of people are trying to pull a fast one on inspectors. So, default "no" is not automatically a bad starting position.

The main problem is people who are scared of life happening when they're not looking. They are the ones that created the inflexible bureaucrats.

The law in many places, especially the US, has become a contemptible thing.

> The law in many places, especially the US, has become a contemptible thing.

And, yet, I have a friend who is an HVAC inspector for institutions (office building, care facilities, etc.).

The stories he has of everybody trying to cheat the system are appalling. Nobody seals the HVAC properly until he shows up and fails them. Nobody isolates the rooms (these are CARE FACILITIES with contagious diseases) until he fails them. And then the times he has just basic stupidity (intake in a closet, intake next to garage or other combustion/carbon monoxide source, etc.) are beyond numerous.

He has had only one case where he didn't immediately fail the building for absolutely gross violations of code.

So, you can complain about the building codes, but the norm is that most of the people building are bad actors and the law is only thing keeping them even remotely in check.

Straw man. Surely care facilities deserve extra attention. But the average shop?

Its the 'one size fits all' that's the entire issue.

But sure, inspections are very valuable. And some kind of discretion would be great. Instead we have a 2" rule book.

Is there any part of the US left that wants business?

It smells like regulatory capture whenever the barrier to entry is set to a point where it's almost impossible for small players to enter the market.

For this reason I think it makes sense to have a cutoff (or maybe several) for businesses under a certain size to operate in a lazies-faire environment with only the essential regulations to be accountable to. Regulation of business is important in a lot of cases, but if you really want to encourage innovation you need to carve out a space where people can grow up to the point where they can really contend with all that complexity.

I like this idea. But, what I see happening with this structure is businesses growing up to the cut off and not taking any further measures to grow. For some businesses that will be just fine. Not everybody wants to grow a multi-million dollar business. For those that do want to grow this becomes something like the welfare cliff.

Unlike taxes/benefits, I don’t think you could scale regulations linearly - at some point there has to be a cliff. I wonder if a solution could be a time-offset cliff. I.e. regulations apply five years after hitting a revenue threshold, at which point you either grow past the cliff or fall under it.

An alternative is changing requirements to recommendations allowing businesses to compete on equal ground. The recommendations become a guide to making a consumer friendly business. Let the business decide if they want to implement recommendations to reach a broader market.

Some requirements, that protect the commons, are necessary. Things like "you can't dump gasoline in a river".

Requirements necessitate enforcement which costs the citizens money and compliance which costs businesses money. Money that could be put back into the economy instead of evaporating in the government machine.

So? It takes a billion dollars of funding to get an IPO, but it is still extremely popular. A business is not like a single employee.

Anyway, its simple if have regulations step up with growth over many small steps, as they already do today.

I'm not sure it's regulatory capture. I'd say most of the times it's death by a thousand cuts.

You have a place that has obvious hygiene issues, e.g. only one sink and everything is done there. Then some people got sick because that place was just careless.

Now you have people clamouring "how could this happen?" "something must be done!" and a new regulation is put in place, and in isolation, it's not necessarily stupid.

Repeat this many times, and you have the situation s people are talking about here.

The existence of the TSA disproves this theory. The public didn't clamor for 1000 rules. The bureaucracy is self perpetuating and captures by special interests.

Building codes and zoning laws are, in part, a way of increasing the barrier of entry for new businesses. This benefits established businesses at the cost of reducing the number of new businesses.

Licensing, permits, insurance, and complex tax codes are also often used for this purpose. I hope we find a better balance between protecting the consumer, and creating an environment where new and unique businesses can flourish.

I agree with you, but also think that these regulations are about protecting incumbents from business model innovation. The rules mean that existing organizations don't have to bother with finding better ways to serve their customers; they can just keep plodding along without fear.

In one town a WalMart was able to go up after years of resisting any sort of development. They used 3 layers of shell companies to buy up the parcels of land and then re-sell them to each other in a maze of county filings until Wal-Mart finally was purchased the sum of the parcels so they had the land to build. Then they sent an army of lawyers and immediately began suing the shit out of the local leadership that was resisting them. A friend, a developer, built a retail strip adjacent to the new Wal-Mart. He didn't have the resources of Wal-Mart despite already being wealthy. He ended up just having to line everyone's pockets in order to get his permits. Yes, that's right, good old fashioned bribes.

Obviously this is just one narrow example, but it just goes to show things still work this way in some parts of the US.

I hate to say it but you probably should have just bribed them.

There's enormous pressure to favor high-capital development projects like big box retail in America, and tons of developers working on the fringe of local politics to keep it that way.

> but it just goes to show things still work this way in some parts of the US.

That’s how it works on the East and west coast in my experience. You have to make the right “donations” to the right “campaigns” or police associations, etc etc.

There's this giant city smack dab in the middle of the country too, you know.

I specified where I’ve had experiences.

>Obviously this is just one narrow example, but it just goes to show things still work this way in some parts of the US.

There's a long dead Greek guy who had a famous quip about laws and corruption that's relevant to this kind of thing.

Were you referring to this quote from Tacitus?

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."

Yeah. That's it. I would have sworn it was one of the Greek philosophers who said it.

The American regulatory landscape is a death-by-a-thousand cuts that ends up serving to entrench established businesses. Most of them seem reasonable when looked at in isolation, but they add up to an insurmountable burden for most would-be small businesses.

It's absurd to expect a local cafe to spend $70k to become accessible for a tiny fraction of the population. That investment, and the maintenance fees it generates, will likely never balance out. On the other side of the coin, if the disabled community will never spend enough money to justify the cost of installing accessibility features in a cafe, do we as a community just accept that? It seems like something that ought to be handled with tax incentives to those opting to provide accessibility. People smarter than me have thought about this, and it's no accident that they landed on the option that makes it possible for Starbucks to have less competition.

right. It's 5x the budget to set up the entire rest of the cafe.

I see why the food truck phenomenon is (in part) so popular and widespread. I thought it was mainly from the excessive costs of getting a brick-and-mortar kitchen off the ground in general but wow, I'm glad I never tried to startup a restaurant.

Are you familiar with Moto in Hudson, NY? They are almost exactly this business model. http://www.motocoffeemachine.com/

Obviously every town/city's zoning is different but you may want to try to see if they're willing to discuss the process they went through.

There's a place in Atlanta that's very similar as well!

Brother Moto - https://brothermoto.com/

No, I wasn't familiar, and after seeing that website I'm still not familiar with them at all.

> YES! WE HAVE NO WEBSITE! IT'S ON PURPOSE. YOU WILL HAVE TO DROP IN OR CALL US, LIKE IT'S 1975 OR SOMETHING.

So, it's not something good to link to.

We also have a similar place in Lyon called Kargo Kulte: https://www.instagram.com/kargokulte/

No experience with the Motorcycle shop, but the coffee is excellent.

> and likely installing 70k worth of elevators and a 30k sprinkler system in a two story 3k sqft building and even then, if a single person on the review board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

Your complaint is that your new business has to not be a fire hazard or completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

I get you on the fact that zoning laws can get pretty wonky, but these requirements here seem pretty reasonable to me.

> completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

One of my favorite coffee shops is a little hole in the wall in the basement or an old brick building.

Despite the fact that to get to the shop, you need to go down a narrow set of exterior stairs, the owner was required to put in a wheel-chair accessible bathroom. It's a small space and the bathroom is nearly as big as the seating area.

It's an asinine requirement.

The owner looked into moving to a different spot a block away, which would have been on the main level. He backed out of that when the city told him he needed to install a grease trap to meet code. This despite the fact that nothing he sold contained any sort of grease or oil that would make it down the drain.

Zoning laws and HOAs are great in concept. But they tend to get taken over by the Delores Umbridge [1] types who love nothing more than punishing people for violating stupid rules.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Umbridge

Zoning laws and HOAs really aren't great in concept, but they're also not the same thing as disabled access laws and environmental regulations.

Alright, well lump them all together.

There are ways for laws and regulations to be thoughtfully applied, and there are ways for them to be abused by people who enjoy causing other people pain.

When the regulatory burden is so heavy that only people who have already "made it" can even play, then government has gone too far.

San Jose, CA had a streak of ADA torts that resulted in small businesses closing shop : https://sanjosespotlight.com/access-v-abuse-crema-coffee-in-... https://www.ktvu.com/news/times-up-san-jose-deli-closing-its...

FYI, Crema moved a few blocks away and is still open.

Is it the requirement that is asinine, or the fact that the ADA allows grandfathered exceptions for parts of buildings that are unrenovated?

I'm not sure what possibly could make more sense and be more fair than "if you change it, the changes you meet have to be up to current law" Would it make more sense if we made people raze their entire pre-ADA buildings to renovate anything at all?

> He backed out of that when the city told him he needed to install a grease trap to meet code. This despite the fact that nothing he sold contained any sort of grease or oil that would make it down the drain.

Also, building codes aren't necessarily for the way you plan to use a building, but for the way a building can be used.

> or the way a building can be used.

"can be" means "isn't"

Regulations have to be applied to some measurable standard to be effective. Exceptions based on unmeasurable promises basically guarantee a toothless regulation.

A bathroom stall big enough for a wheelchair is also big enough for someone who can manage the stairs but needs assistance with the toilet. Regulatory requirements can have justifications beyond the most apparent one.

> A bathroom stall big enough for a wheelchair is also big enough for someone who can manage the stairs but needs assistance with the toilet.

And as someone with young children, I think it's a great bathroom. But the truth is it could easily be half the size that it is and still be a perfectly nice bathroom.

sure, and as someone who values inclusion all thing equal. I'm not interested in spending 70k+ to cater to either. It just doesn't make sense for this structure.

> if a single person on the review board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

This probably sucks.

and secondly, why do you need an elevator for a 2 story building which will basically be used for a cafe? It's not a freaking life saving emergency service where you need people to provide access to every part of building.

In my opinion an elevator never counts as a disability device. In case of fire they are not safe to use in general, leaving those who need them trapped.

I agree that the disabled need access to everything, I don't have a solution to the problem.

Well, if we specifically talk about a cafe then I do see that it's problem if the owner can build the cafe only on the second floor. Even in that case it's a simple math to decide if it's worth spending 70K$ and make it accessible to disabled people. It should be left entirely to the owner to decide. City should not force him to install it. And it's entirely the cafe owner's problem not the disabled person's problem unless it's the only coffee shop on the street.

This is not within the rights of the owner to do. It is illegal for a business to discriminate against disabled people in the US, and this means renovations must reasonably accommodate the disabled. This is not a rule from the city, this is US law.

Maybe it's different in different states. I lived in a 3 storey apartment in MA without any elevators. If a person is bound to wheelchairs then there was no way for that person to get into the apartment.

Federal law is the same in all states. Maybe your apartment building was built before 1991?

https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/d...

Yes, I think it's older than 1991. If its law then I wonder why they did not build ramps to provide entry to at least the first floor. Elevator is definitely out of question without tearing apart the entire building.

If the building was construction prior to 1991, the construction wouldn’t have been subject to ADA requirements because the ADA did not exist then.

I agree and I am sure the apartment owner makes a hell lot of money than a cafe owner. If they (govt. and apartment owners) really cared about disabled people they could have easily added ramps to the buildings in last 30 years. They are probably just taking advantage of loopholes.

It’s not a loophole. The ADA simply doesn’t require people to add accommodations unless construction or renovation is taking place. It was a very intentional provision.

I don't want to drag this, but 2 years ago they installed new steps outside all buildings in the complex. Basically replaced old precast concrete steps with new precast concrete steps. Probably that doesn't qualify as renovation and doesn't need inspection or approvals.

3 story or less residential apparently doesn't need an elevator.

That's what I believed till today!

These are also building codes, not zoning laws. They're both regulations, but the public policy justifications are much different. (The waters are often muddied by defenders of restrictive zoning using spurious health and safety arguments.)

True although I'm fighting both.

How can you call it completely inaccessible when presumably most of the seating is on the first floor?

It's all on the second floor up a single stair case.

Quite literally, yes. You're asking for a level of safety and accessibility to be provided that locks basically anyone without access to $300k+ out of going into business. It's not like the building has those accessibility and safety features now. Why should it matter if it doesn't have them when this business opens?

> completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

Completely inaccessible to a mobility-disabled person without help.

However, I live in one of those European cities that has kind of quirky small places, sometimes inaccessible to a mobility-disabled person. I also got a good friend who is heavily disabled. Two weeks ago we set up to meet up in one of those places, and when I arrived, a few minutes too late, he was already sitting inside. How? one of the people there helped him get in.

Almost all places are normally accessible mobility-disabled persons, if you only dare to violate the impersonal principle upon which many cities are designed.

If you design relying on others to constantly do the right thing, you eventually find they will get tired of it and not do so. No one has to constantly help your disabled friend, and some may resent it.

That’s quite a cynical view of human nature.

Then the ones who don't want to help a disabled person, can design their place to be accessible without help (and perhaps at the same time explain their motivations so that I'll know to never visit their venue).

In other words, you got slightly confused. I didn't say that all places should be not accessible to disabled people. If I make a place I'd definitely try to make it accessible. However, I did say that if someone can't make such a place, they'll have to take into account that the human thing to do is to personally help disabled people get in it.

If they won't do it I'm sure socially media would know how to handle them.

> completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

>>Completely inaccessible to a mobility-disabled person without help.

Same thing.

No, read again.

So where should we draw the line? An 170 year old existing building should never be used for anything because it's not handicap accesible? I can't run an espresso machine that would be perfectly acceptable to use in the same structure for residential reasons but it is magically a fire risk once it is zoned commercial?

Sorry but that does not hold up under scrutiny.

Your 170 year old building can still be used even though it is not handicap accessible.

But construction or renovation of that building done in 2020 has to meet the laws of 2020.

Which destroys the appeal of the building in the first place

If the plan was to build a new "traditional style" building, would the fact that a wheelchair ramp breaking the style/appeal of the building be a reason to bypass accessibility requirements?

The title of the article is "Why Every City Feels the Same Now". If someone is going to build a new traditional style building, they can't complain about why every city feels the same.

The building is ready to use as is. Nothing needs to be constructed.

You’re not modifying the property or the way it is being used at all?

This “building in a residential neighborhood” is already configured for use in commercial foodservice?

Or is it a residence now?

I literally want to install a single espresso machines and have some pour overs and french presses and set up tables and chairs. There is already a commercial grade dishwasher and fridge that the current tenant installed. I would have to install a grease trap to meet regulation which also is nonsensical given that I'm not cooking here but at least that is reasonably priced.

As far as I'm concerned none of this is "build out" more like furnishing.

The problem is preventative maintenance seems to fall under the ADA, or at least no one has challenged it.

I can see both sides. On one hand if no one was forced to do anything many people may never be able to leave their house. On the other, Hardvard was sued and took down a bunch of freely provided lectures because they had no tractable way to caption them.

Mixing light industrial with commercial restaurant in a single building / space sounds like a nightmare to get approved.

You can't be doing welding, metalworking, spray painting, and dealing with gasoline, oil, and other industrial solvents in the same space as food preparation.

Yeah I understand why there are rules to protect workers, the environment, disabled customers, city aesthetics and more. But it does end up making it a huge barrier for anyone to do anything. I'd like to think I'd do a good job starting a small business but the rulebook is so huge it seems insurmountable.

May be the only reason for those barriers is to control growth? If it's too easy to get permissions for building stuff then you'll see new cafes popping up on streets everyday.

That sounds fucking awesome!! I could actually have options other than Starbucks and the random overpriced coffee art place. Holy shit, I would pick that town 100x over

> I get that I don't want a power plant or steel forge next to my house, but that's not what we are talking about here.

Reflecting for a bit, I don't know what you're talking about here.

Either you could get the permit to start a garage, or you couldn't. I don't understand why it's relevant that you'd have a cafe next door.

If on the other hand you're describing some kind of hybrid shared space where food, drink, and combustible engines come together then that is way beyond "doesn't fit a cookie cutter mold." Just off the top of my head safety and noise come to mind.

That reminds me of this case in SF, where someone spent 4 years and $1M just trying to get approval to convert their laundromat into an apartment building.

https://reason.com/2018/02/21/san-francisco-man-has-spent-4-...

I've seen a couple of shops that have an open doorway to the shop next door, and in fact I know some anecdotes of people skirting blue laws (which I suspect have bigger teeth than the things you're dealing with) by opening two shops next to each other.

That arm's length separation may help you with the health dept too.

One big issue is we Americans are very picky about what rules they choose to obey. Highway speed limits are for entertainment value but parking availability is written in blood.

If you actually want to try to change it, you are welcome to come hang out on r/CitizenPlanners.

Nothing takes the past away like the future. What is currently is not what has to be tomorrow.

Move to Houston where they are extremely lacks on zoning. I visited there and you can tell that its all intertwined.

And sometimes, industrial buildings near residential ones just blow up[1]. I'm generally against zoning and excessive regulation and in fact that Houston business had been fined for safety non-compliance before. But that is quite a BOOM! I can't find if there was a final verdict from the investigation but it was initially thought to be a leaking propylene tank ignited by a spark from faulty electrical.

1: https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2020/01/31/live-aut...

Corona would have ruined the coffee side of the business, so you probably dodged a bullet.

What you're describing is gentrification. And yes, it's dehumanizing... to all but the gentry. But until we place another golden idol ahead of Capitalism, the natural gradient of life will forever serve the current idol -- the pursuit of personal profit above all else.

If anything, I would say the Espresso/Motorcycle cafe is the actual gentrification here, which is being stopped by zoning laws. Not that I'm against it, I love the idea, but that is the kind of hipster nonsense (that I love) that sounds like gentrification.

Is the definition of gentrification here just new things moving in? I don't see how a coffee/bike repair shop moving into a neighborhood is somehow a bad thing.

A unique cafe like that is early phase gentrification, which most communities and individuals don't object to. They don't like it when tech/finance bros move in and want a Starbucks because it's easy to order from an app on your way to the subway. But once it starts it isn't a process you can really stop.

This is so laughable. Ok So what should be done with this building you know nothing about, in the neighborhood you know nothing about to make this "acceptable" for your personal utopia?

I wish people like you got your wish and had to live in a world of your own design (free of gentrifiers and capitalism and cafes) and suffer the consequences of the hellscape you'd create out of good intentions and ignorance.

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