Hacker News Reader

Comment by pkdpic | Hacker News Reader

When I first moved to Sacramento from LA I saw multiple attempts to build high density housing projects seemingly get delayed by neighbors occupying admittedly beautiful and restrained early-20th century single family homes.

Most notably somebody bought and bull-dosed Dimple, an amazing used music / movies / clothing store near the original Tower Records location, with the intention of putting a multistory housing development there. That was years ago and of course its still just a huge crumbling concrete lot fenced in with barbed wire.

But since pandemic restrictions lifted we've seen a ridiculous number of 3-5 story housing developments going up all over midtown. It's honestly shocking and so far they look beautiful intermingled with the overgrown trees and houses built in the early 1900s.

We've got our problems in Sac but it feels like a vision of the future of California. I hope I start to see this with the same frequency more when I visit the bay.

View on HN

Got any street view examples? I'm always interested in urban success stories.

To me 3-5 stories is the sweet spot for density most cities should be aiming for. You get plenty of people in a given area without it feeling crowded. 3-5 story buildings are among the cheapest to construct since you can use pretty run-of-the-mill techniques and materials to maximize the square-cube law per dollar. It's dense enough to make investment in mass transit really viable without really straining city services like water and sewers. Plus it avoids the "Manhattenification" suburbanities seem so terrified of any time the word density is hinted at.

I've seen convincing arguments that 3-5 stories is also about as far as you can go and still be "connected" to the neighborhood. Anything taller and you might as well be walking through a portal to another world.

Where I lived in Brooklyn, the limit (and most common height) was 12 story. I did not feel any visible difference in "connection" and IMHO connection is more about community institutions which drive the connections.

I can give several examples of what I think were the connective tissue of the neighborhood: We had an awesome food cooperative https://www.foodcoop.com/, a playground, a fro-yo place with outdoor seating, a YMCA, and numerous cafes. These days there is a recreation center.

Now, there is a different problem -- housing is expensive. When you have a huge mortgage, you spend more time at work, more time worrying about work, and less time enjoying life. That isnt the fault of the buildings, it is more about restrictive housing policy and multi-decade-ZIRP.

I like 3-5 story buildings for aesthetic reasons, but my anecdotal experience is that taller buildings don't preclude personal connections: I grew up in a ~16 story building that was built in the 1930s, and had lots of connections with my neighbors, their children, etc.

4-5 stories is typically the maximum before an elevator is required by code/overwhelmingly desired.

You can compare the relative success of low-income low-rise developments vs. the notorious high-rise projects that were universal failures

A big problem in the US is we don’t allow tiny elevators, except in pre-WWII buildings that already have them. In Spain I’ve seen new 4 story flats with 1-2 units per floor with a small 2-person sized elevator. In the US that elevator would need to be much larger, as it needs to fit a stretcher (despite the fact that if the elevator wasn’t there, the stretcher would be taking the stairs anyways). But because a single elevator in the US takes up so much space they cause floor plans to get really weird and it makes it difficult to justify the expense.

The apartment that my friend lived in is stereotypical. It had probably 300-400 units over seven floors. Not a 5-over-1, but similar design. Cloistered hallways with balconies facing exterior or to interior pool/parking garage areas.

In that building there were two elevators - one "normal" for US standards and one oversized, presumably for moving.

I don't think it's unreasonable to have such a setup for a large building, particularly with how large furniture and beds can be.

In that size range you can open the window on the top floor, identify people at ground level and even have a conversation even if it means yelling.

I grew up in a 15-story apartment in Seoul - every day there's a stream of students walking to schools and back, passing along stationery shops, snacks, barber shops, groceries, and what not. Even now, when I visit the place (my parents still live there), I feel much more connected to the neighborhood than my current suburban single house could ever be. Here you take five steps out of your door and drive away, because there's nothing interesting within walking distance. There's no sense of a "neighborhood."

(To be fair, the noise was always an issue, and in my current place, it feels really nice to be able to do jumping jacks and play the piano at 9pm. So there's that.)

Good share, I had the same feeling visiting Taiwan and then coming back to California.

But yeah when I was in LA and had to start going to therapy because the neighbors in our orwellian apartment building were making so much noise I was having week-long panic attacks the therapist told me he grew up in S.Korea and people would stab their neighbors over noise regularly.

He was a great guy but that was kind of his only advice? That stuck with me.

Yep the noise was always an issue, and from what I've heard it's actually getting worse because construction quality is going down. (In the old days, Korea didn't have much experience in construction, so they compensated by pouring a generous amount of concrete and steel, or so I've heard. Now they know exactly how much they need, so walls are getting thinner and thinner.)

A sad state of affairs.

I'm not sure about connected, but I do like being able to walk the stairs to the apt, being able to open a door to a balcony. Its also less instrusive to the neighborhood than a tower which overlooks everyone.

Well what were those arguments? There are unconvinced respondents here.

I think it was in one of the other volumes of the set that includes A Pattern Language, I'll have to try to dig it up.

It mainly had to do with being "disconnected" with the street once you were more than 5 floors up if I remember correctly.

5 over 1 construction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1

It's awesome, it should be everywhere.

That's fantastic and yeah that's exactly what I'm seeing in Sacramento!

I live in one, it isn't that awesome. Lots of noise from neighbours, but the worst thing is the big fire hazard. The risk of fire means there is a lot of sprinklers everywhere which regularly get damaged and leak everywhere. Usually every 2-3 years in our building a sprinkler pipe will get broken or leak will appear and destroy a few units.

The issue with the modern apartment building noise, in my estimation, isn't wood construction (which is commonly blamed), but ducts. The double-loaded corridor requires extra ventilation per fire code. The demand for central air conditioning implies ducts. A properly designed double-stud wooden wall can have a Sound Transmission Class higher than 60, but a small hole in a wall can cut the STC by as much as 30. The presence of a large void in the wall (duct) could severely reduce the efficacy of the sound insulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transmission_Class#Sound_...

The apartment buildings I've lived in without central A/C (in Atlanta and San Francisco) were consistently quieter than the ones with central A/C. Underfloor radiant heating and wall A/C units might be a better way to design apartment buildings. Removing climate control from the access corridor and letting it vent to the outside would reduce the need for sprinklers and complex ventilation. This is slightly less energy efficient, but apartment buildings are already way more energy efficient than houses, and anything that makes apartments more livable can increase the efficiency of the whole society by increasing people's willingness to live in apartments.

You shouldn't be sharing any air with you neighbors, so I doubt ducts are to blame. You can build highly sound-proof timber-framed walls, but most people don't because it's more expensive. Like everything in modern construction, the cheapest permissible option usually wins.

> The apartment buildings I've lived in without central A/C (in Atlanta and San Francisco) were consistently quieter than the ones with central A/C.

When were the units built?

> You can build highly sound-proof timber-framed walls, but most people don't because it's more expensive. Like everything in modern construction, the cheapest permissible option usually wins.

Especially when reduced cost is the reason mid-rise wood construction became popular in the first place.

I don't think it's about sharing air. It's about the duct being in the wall at all.

You can puts ducts in a soffit so they don't necessarily need to be inside the walls. I've lived in two apartments with ducts inside soffits. Both were still very loud.

A soffit must necessarily pass through the wall. Unless it is well-designed, it could cause the same problem.

It passes though a wall, but not necessarily a wall you'd share with a neighbor typically. For instance, in my apartment we had an in-unit air handler with soffits running long the ceiling. We could hear every step on neighbors made. Most building codes require fire separation between units, so you generally wouldn't have duct work running through walls like that as it'd be a path for fire to spread.

How old was the building? Currently I'm in a noisy building — it was built in 1890, before rock wool was invented, to say nothing of fiberglass. It definitely tracks that floors tend to be worse than walls (especially bad with Euclidean zoning that encourages low ceilings and thin platforms).

The building was built in the 90s. Ultimately, the construction was very cheap.

>When were the units built?

1962 (Atlanta) and 1978 (San Francisco).

I think the issue is that the people building wood apartments aren’t the same people who care enough to ensure there are no small holes in the wall.

Actually its a good thing about our condo is independent heat pumps per unit so everyone gets their own air handler and ducts. Its expensive to replace each one individuall though.

Likewise - I've lived in these 5 story things and in proper high rises, and there is no comparison. It's likely that the 5 story buildings could be built to the same standard as a high rise, but there is little incentive for the builders to do so, and instead they're absolute lowest bar of quality.

Just the elevator speed makes a huge difference: I could get to floor 18 of the most recent high rise I lived in quicker than floor 3 of the mid rise.

yeah—I feel like this is something that can be solved by code modification to expect better. 5-over-1's are already min/max'ing code, so if they're fire hazards, then we should expect cities to rein it in. Safety shouldn't be what makes 5-over-1s fail.

I would like to live in one instead of my current situation but the noise is what is concerning. Newer units should be more quiet than past buildings. I don't know what modern building techniques they use, if any, for sound isolation. Are there airgaps? I'm guessing no concrete slabs between floors? To me it seems like it's the difference between a high rise hotel/apt where it's like a tomb in the room and a smaller building that uses less expensive/more robust material and you can hear much more from the outside and your neighbors.

I'm sure it varies a bit, but generally not good in my experience. Except between the ground floor (usually retail, lobby, parking, etc...) and above everything is wood, no concrete slabs. They typically use the cheapest, least sound isolating materials so neighbor noise, both through walls and floors, is very noticeable. It's a bit jarring because they are modern and not usually low cost, but isolation is much more like the smaller building since they share more construction techniques with a cheap two-story row apartment.

> and not usually low cost

> they share more construction techniques with a cheap two-story row apartment.

Low in cost, high in price, builders love it.

I discussed this issue a bit with someone who worked for a company that focused on affordable housing, and he told me a "joke": what's the difference between a regular condo and a luxury condo? The price.

Yeah I lived in one (in the Domain in Austin) and one thing that bothered me about the noise, was that I would hear it from the unit above me through my side wall. That is, if they played loud music or talked loudly, it sounded like it was coming from the side, not from above. (Specifically, the side that was the end of the building and didn’t adjoin another unit. I was on the first floor.)

I've seen multiple condos in San Francisco in 5 over 1 that have perfect sound insulation, generally they're on busy streets though (and thus you don't really want to live there).

In most buildings there is no concrete between walls but floors have a ~1 inch layer of lightweight-concrete, I think for fire resistance, its not solid so you hear every footprint.

I've lived in multiple of them, and they were often about the same or better than more "traditional" apartments in the area. Usually way lower energy costs than the traditional units. About the same amount of noise for a given build quality, it mostly depended on who lived in the neighboring units.

There were sprinklers in every apartment I've lived in. Building codes in my area require them in any structure with multiple households sharing the structure. Townhouses, apartments, commercial buildings, etc. all have sprinklers everywhere. It doesn't matter if its a high rise or a duplex, if it was built since like the early 90s its got sprinklers.

IIRC sprinkler systems are just code now for all residential construction. Even new build single family homes must have them.

How new? I've never seen a sprinkler in a SFH, including one I was in built ~2018-2019.

https://www.dalkita.com/sprinklers-in-single-family-resident...

> Surprisingly enough, sprinklers have actually technically been a requirement in all single family homes per the International Residential Code, since 2006. Regardless of home size, location, or construction type. IRC 313.2 states:

    R313.2 One- and two-family dwellings automatic fire systems.
     An automatic residential fire sprinkler system shall be
     installed in one- and two-family dwellings.

> Period. It's just simply required. Only exception is for alterations or additions to existing building without sprinklers.

Your link seems to suggest the opposite above that quote.

> They base the need on distance to nearest fire house and nearest credible fire hydrant.

So there are obviously situations where SFHs do not need automatic sprinkler systems.

Most of my subdivision was built after 2006; none of the homes have sprinkler systems but there are also fire hydrants every 5 or 6 homes so I imagine that has something to do with it. The fire house is also a ~90 second drive down one street (at the speed they'd be going).

Possibly... and also the next bit:

> So, why don’t we see every newer house since 2006 with sprinklers? Because most jurisdictions amend their local codes to delete this requirement. Only CA, MD, & Washington DC now keep this requirement.

> Most jurisdictions delete this requirement for various reasons, but the obvious one is the uproar it causes from citizens, builders, etc , because with this new requirement, comes increased cost.

So while its in the building code, local codes may relax that.

California code requires this when the SFH is 3,600 sqft or larger.

https://library.qcode.us/lib/temecula_ca/pub/municipal_code/...

There’s some massive variance in 4-over-1 and 5-over-1, with newer units very much built to a price.

I lived in one in Boston that was 4 total floors, actually all steel framed (so not really a 3-over-1), polished concrete floors in every unit, and built to the tune of $55M for ~150 units. Was intended to be condos, bottom fell out in 2007/2008, so it was rezoned to apartments. Dead silent in the over 8 years I was there. I must’nt of been the only one that thought it was good — there was a notable rapper as my next door neighbor, and a Stanley Cup winner in another hallway on my floor. I moved in when the market bottomed out, and paid like $1700/mo for years (moved out when it went up to $2450). I think it’d be ~$4000/mo now.

The newer ones though? I’ve heard of sub-$20M costs for similar number of units. They leak not because of the sprinklers, but because the general waterproofing and roofing is beyond awful, and just cost-cutting everywhere. I talked to some maintenance folks that had been to several new ones owned by the same company as the $55M one: “They don’t build them like that anymore. If they did, we wouldn’t be dealing with constant problems.”. Talk up your maintenance folk — they’ll be more than happy to vent about your building’s issues.

So the issue is building things to a price, knowing some people will pay because the vacancy rate is one of the tightest in the country.

It's also a matter of information asymmetry. Most potential renters or buyers don't have a good way to check for construction quality and interior noise levels. Even an independent pre-purchase inspection doesn't tell you much beyond really obvious problems. Customers aren't willing to pay more for higher quality because they can't easily determine quality, so most developers will go with the cheapest possible option and then slap on some granite countertops to make it look nice.

This could be addressed through stricter building codes. But that would drive up construction costs at a time when we already have a housing shortage in many areas.

Another fix would be to independently measure noise isolation and report that, so renters can actually make decisions based on it, and builders would have an incentive to include it, since they could more reliably charge more for it.

Someone should do that with good branding. Sorta like carfax. Call the Zillow Report or find a similar firm. License the standards and a saas interface to Inspectors to have another revenue stream (or maybe more broadly to contractors). Then it could become a defacto standard, especially if you get in with real estate agents.

It would be nice if they could make them look good. The examples in that article are hideous. Sad that beautiful towns will have to take in such awful architecture because it's relatively cheap to construct and will get the builder through warranty. But it isn't based in any historical standard, just a post-modern hellscape. Especially that one in NJ - it's just the worst thing I think I've ever seen.

They should at least make the facades respect a standard sort of like how they do in England and parts of Europe.

I agree in part but it doesn't take much design-wise to make them blend in smoothly from what I'm seeing. At least when theres a lot of trees around maybe?

Anyway the real postmodern hellscape kinda seems like its the homelessness thing more than the too much housing in walkable mixed-use zoning thing.

But again, I hear you on the architecture.

Yeah the first one in Austin was nice to see the semi-mature trees. Makes a huge difference and one of the reasons living in an old town with mature trees (and a well financed program to plant and maintain) is so awesome. Walkable things are awesome. And it's even more awesome when you're walking into a denser part of town that actually has nice looking buildings that don't look ridiculous.

Build but build smart and build beautifully. A beautiful environment is super important to the mental health of a community. We should surround ourselves in beauty.

It's especially bad if affordances for green space aren't taken into account. New York City, for all its problems, has done an excellent job of ensuring that there are trees and parks basically everywhere, combined with generally wide sidewalks, which makes the endless rows of 3-5 story apartment buildings feel comfortable to inhabit.

Personally I think they look pretty good.

The really ugly buildings, at least in San Francisco and Oakland that I'm familiar with, are where they take a single family house and chop it up into a bunch of little apartments. It's such an illogical abomination. From the outside you have a bunch of doors stuck in crazy places, kind of a "shanty town" vibe. From the inside all the rooms are weirdly shaped and extra plumbing is stuck in where it doesn't make sense.

It reminds me of the old joke about C++, that it's like designing an octopus by nailing extra legs onto a dog.

Anyway, I would like to see all of those replaced with something-over-1 apartment buildings.

Oh no I completely disagree. SF has some of the best dense architecture IMO. Duplex/triplex/etc townhomes give density without having big overwhelming buildings. It means you don’t have big stretches of road without variance or entrance in the building you’re walking against. It also often gives garages and small backyards which a lot of people want.

I will agree that it means there’s a lot more individual maintenance required with more facade space having more owners. So poorer neighborhoods look… poorer.

They are garbage, and ought to be banned.

Its one thing to not like a style yourself, its quite another to say nobody else should be allowed to have it either.

It's probably possible to build a quality 5-over-1, but I haven't seen it. Poor-quality insulation, cheap sheathing and poor sound insulation inevitably leads to fast depreciation.

Still, if 5-over-1s were banned, you'd just see the next cheapest option built to similar standards. The issue is quality control, not the architecture itself.

Yeah, I'd ban them by making quality standards high enough to eliminate them. Politically connected contractors working through YIMBYs will never let that happen.

Why do you assume to know best about what should be everywhere? This thread gives examples of how this is the only level of density that is even being allowed, but why cheer that? People, when left to their own devices, have generally preferred something like von Thunen rings, rather than a single level of density. Letting such decisions play out organically ought to be the default position, unless you have some very strong non-aesthetic reason to do otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_von_Th%C3%BCne...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_zone_model

> People, when left to their own devices, have generally preferred something like von Thunen rings, rather than a single level of density.

Citation please. The US can’t be used as an example because zoning laws have enforced strict single use zones for many decade. When you look at Europe which never had such zone if laws, you don’t find clear cut zones, or such clear cut concentric rings of density.

The Seattle area is full of them. I've also been seeing 5 over 2 over 1 (?) where there are 2 floors of parking sandwiched between the housing and stores. One floor is for residents, while the other is for guests and shoppers.

> I saw multiple attempts to build high density housing projects seemingly get delayed by neighbors occupying admittedly beautiful and restrained early-20th century single family homes.

There is plenty of space to build high(er) density housing in Los Angeles if you know where to look [1]. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to fight tooth-and-nail against NIMBY types to build 5 over 1s next to SFH when you've got way better options. This is true for almost every city in America too. Urban infill needs to be prioritized to boost density. Everything else is inefficient at best and wasteful and unnecessary at worst. You cannot have cars and have density. It's a contradiction.

[1] https://la.curbed.com/2018/11/30/18119646/los-angeles-parkin...

CEQA lawsuits come from everywhere, not just neighbors. That's part of why they're so vexatious. Advocacy and lobbying organizations push hard against CEQA reforms as they regularly abuse CEQA to fight developments they oppose for reasons having little or nothing to do with the health of natural ecosystems, or even anything to do with the neighborhood.

What changed to the planning process to make this work all of a sudden?

Capital flight. CA (the state) is bankrupt and they need the tax money from these properties.

What? No. Everything about this short comment is wrong.

Wealthy people are staying in California, it's lower income people that can't pay rent and are leaving.

The state's finances have had many years of huge surpluses, when these 3-5 stories were being built. This year's deficit is a tiny fraction of the magnitude of 2022's surplus.

Second, the state doesn't see any money from new developments. Property taxes fund county and city budgets, not the state.

Finally, despite property tax going to local governments that approve or deny housing, increased tax revenue is almost never part of the decision, and to the degree that tax revenue has come up for residential approvals, it's usually a negative because residential housing is viewed as likely consuming more city budget in services than it generates. Instead, government officials fast track hotels, retail, and other types of land use that generate lots of tax revenue.

Doesn't the state get its pound of flesh from new home sales and resale? I know this can be offset by purchase of a similar home but has anyone calculated how much it is in terms of the state budget

Do you have a source showing that lower income people are the ones who are leaving or are you guessing?

Bloomberg has pretty convincingly argued that it is actually the middle class (the upper-middle class particularly), those who can afford rent and pay the highest tax load to states, who are leaving places like CA and NY. New York has all but admitted that is the case, too:

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-02-16/new-yo...

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-31/states-wi...

* https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-mayor-eric-adams-ce...

* https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-remote-work-eric-a...

My data comes from a detailed analysis from the LAO, but back in 2018.

https://everythingsouthcity.com/2018/02/california-legislati...

It follows trends over the past decades in California where for emigration internal to the US, California loses more residents to other states than it gains, and overall population growth comes from international immigration.

If there were actually a change in this trend, I wouldn't doubt it, but I wouldn't believe the change unless I saw it from an actual analysis, not from the narratives that the media pushes in terms of fuzzy, sloppy news articles about feelings that get published in the main steam media.

The churn of news articles it based on the vibes of journalists, typically their friends and social circles.

For example, note the shift from terms headlines; people are leaving "high tax states" for "lower cost", but it's little known that "high tax" California is actually lower tax than Texas, except for those who are very wealthy.

Trends on mobility of people have changed a lot post-pandemic. I wouldn't put much faith in any data from before 2021.

By the way, in 2018, the NIMBYs were still getting their way, so that isn't exactly relevant to the current discussion. At the time, CA was importing a middle class from abroad and losing poor residents. Currently, the importation of that middle class has slowed down a lot, and the existing middle class appears to be moving away. Supposedly, the lower-income bracket also isn't moving around as much because it's harder.

You aren't going to get a decade-long analytical post-mortem of this trend until... about 2031. The news stories are what we have, and their underlying data (which you can probably find in FRED if you search enough).

Also, I don't know what you consider "very wealthy," but if the line is "people for whom total tax burden in CA is higher than total tax burden in TX," your definition of "very wealthy" is at a much lower income than most people will think - the break-even point is less than $100k of income for many people.

It’s not so much the planning process it’s literally that small enough developments are exempt from CEQA as of 2018 until 2023. So as long as you’re building below a certain threshold nuisance environmental lawsuits can’t be brought anymore.

Yeah and I believe they lifted zoning restrictions before covid as long as something like 20% of the units are low income? Somebody might check me on that.

And often it's not even as much an actual lawsuit, but the mere threat of one. The lawsuit doesn't have to be successful or based in environmental reality to stop projects, it merely has to delay construction long enough to force the builder to go get a different loan, pay for the frivolous legal defense, and in the meantime labor costs have risen resulting in having to redo all the planning work around the budget, pro forma, etc.

CEQA lawsuit threats would disappear if they were resolved in a timely manner, say 30-60 days. Instead, a multi-year delay will kill projects.

Yes. CEQA lawsuits are generally inconclusive initially and the first step of the lawsuit is that the builder has to conduct more expensive environmental studies. The studies may result in easy to implement solutions or small environmental impact but there is no liability on the potentially anonymous lawsuit bringer so even if the builder eventually wins they are out the entire costs of the court fight the entire costs of doing the additional assessments and the entire costs of delaying the project.

humans are a migratory species.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com