Also voters are often given lots of say, people who don’t want density get entrenched and vote for local leaders who are like minded.
In mathematical terms, you're stuck in a local maxima, and to get to a higher global maxima you need to descend the gradient a little bit and put up with some short-term pain.
Failing infrastructure can have disastrous impacts. It's not somewhere where you can afford to move fast and break stuff. There is no alternative to competent government here, no easy way out.
Things can get built fairly rapidly in many places if all restrictions are removed. You can definitely move fast and break things.
Unfortunately, these days exactions are also abusively imposed to offset the supposed costs of "gentrification" and other unquantifiable social phenomena, and sometimes the dollar value of such imaginary costs conspicuously set so high as to make a development financially unviable. This is how cities like SF force developers to include below-market-rate units or to make cash contributions to low-income housing projects, even when a project is not actually displacing any pre-existing tenants.
If we charge fair property tax to homeowners, based on the actual present value, municipalities will be able to afford the infrastructure improvements.
That is the very essence of gentrification. If you want to destroy more communities of color in the Bay Area, this is how to do it.
The negative side effects of Prop 13 far, far outweigh any benefit to poor people (most of whom are renters priced out due in part to Prop 13!).
[1] Corporate approach to keeping 1970s tax rate on large land lots: a) the property should be owned by a specific corp. b) corp has board of directors controlled by original owner c) deal made to sell the land d) new owner slowly replaces the BoDs as to not trigger a "corporate change". e) new BoD is fully controlled by new owner and corp now sold (with land assets). Due to prop13, that land is still taxed at original ownership rates.
"These bills will not require developers to invest in infrastructure improvement, rather only provide bare-minimum parking, avoiding costly entitlements. How will the current infrastructure — water, sewer, gas, roads — support the increased population? Who will make the necessary infrastructure investment?"
[1] https://padailypost.com/2021/03/19/guest-opinion-sb9-sb10-th...
So we could keep out black people: https://www.kqed.org/news/11840548/the-racist-history-of-sin...
Folks have come up with reasons more palatable to folks in the 21st reason. Some of those reasons may be valid, and some of those folks honestly believe those reasons are why we have zoning. I'm not going to call them racist, but that article makes a compelling case single-family zoning was originally due to racism.
Its basically like the show Supernatural except with the twist that Dean and Sam Winchester had to hunt demons but also had to escape white only neighborhoods and sundown towns every episode, because they were black.
That kind of perpetual threat alongside a different non-race related plot isn't portrayed often.
SFH has existed heavily in New England, Canada, Iowa, pretty much every where in North America in spots where there are very few black people. Even heavily black neighborhoods like Baldwin Hills (aka Black Beverly Hills) historically had quite a bit of single family zoning. I think if that thesis was true you'd see large historical discrepancies with SFH in different states but you really don't.
I grew up in a suburban white town next to a city that was 95% white and our town had a lot of NIMBYs who prevented condos from going up. I do no think it was because they were cool with 95 white people moving in but scared of 5 non-white people. I think they just knew that it was bad for property values (for supply/demand reasons) + property taxes (for budgetary reasons) and were selfish.
The only reason I push back on this is because I don't think its helpful. I live in LA and the most common cited arguments against SB9/SB10 was that it would hurt "middle class minorities in south LA" and the representatives of these areas all voted against the bill (presumably because their biggest donors are black+hispanic+white landowners in these areas)
No, it was the first in the US, as described in the article I linked. I agree it's not the only reason, but I think it's important to mention the racist origins every time someone gives another reason for single family zoning.
[Edit: I originally said first in North America. I misremembered what the article said. Changed to US to match it. Wouldn't surprise me if first in North America were also true though.]
This was also a reason used to keep blacks and minorities out of predominately white neighborhoods. Many people believed that bringing blacks into a neighborhood would devalue their homes. Once a black person moved into your neighborhood - "there goes the neighborhood".
It was a self-fulfilling prophesy because once blacks moved into a neighborhood, all the white families would move out ( white flight ) which caused housing values to collapse since there were so many more sellers than buyers.
On the flip side, it's why gentrification increases home values. As blacks/minorities are kicked out of the neighborhood and it becomes more white, it attracts more whites to move in. More buyers than sellers. Gentrification is the exact opposite of the white flight phenomenon in america.
That article hardly proves that SFH was primarily a tool for racism. It only says the first Bay Area SFH law, in Berkeley, was championed by a guy who didn't allow property to be sold to blacks. This is not compelling evidence for SFH being a channel for racism in any subsequent cases across different cities.
I don't think it's necessary to provide references here. The history of housing discrimination is well researched and just a quick google search away for you. I know this is HN and the culture is to require proof, but seriously, some people just need to educate themselves, because otherwise they aren't receptive to listening.
You're underselling it. The first US single-family zoning law, not just first in the Bay Area.
Yes, maybe all of the subsequent single-family zoning laws that spread across the US were for totally different reasons than the first one. Personally I find that unlikely.
...because that would be absurd.
If there are possibly valid reasons, shouldn't we instead discuss those?
That's a matter of opinion, but since you asked me: no. Every discussion of single family zoning should start with its racist origins and go on to consider the negative racial and socioeconomic effects it's still having, and to hell with parking and the other selfish, greedy, petty, short-sighted, and/or misguided reasons for denying folks affordable housing.