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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

A recent Reason magazine article described Hawaii’s emergency suspension of zoning regulations as “YIMBY martial law” which is exactly what the entire country needs to crawl out from under its economy-choking housing crisis. A developer who proposes housing that meets basic health and safety criteria on a site within city limits that is already surrounded on three sides by other developed parcels should walk out of the permit office with over-the-counter approvals. They should not face five years of process and appeals. The only way to counteract the trends of this article is to build!

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Yep, exactly this. All the barriers to entry are decreasing the supply. The only way to fix it is get rid of them in a dramatically big way.

Politicians like to point at foreign investment, empty houses, immigration, anything except acknowledge and fix the real problem.

Rate of population growth (migration) is the demand side of the "real problem". And a slower rate of growth seems to have more benefits than fast growth with reduced building restrictions.

Migration is a very minor contributor overall. Longevity and birth rate are the main drivers of the housing crisis. Boomers squirted out the largest generation ever and then forgot to die.

Intercity/ interstate migration is a huge contributor to the pressure in major US cities. If NYC or SF were 1/4th the cost I would move there immediately, but the value would be marginal at this point.

SF has only enjoyed positive net domestic migration for one single year in living memory. Domestic migration is absolutely not a driver of housing costs in San Francisco. Over the last 40 years San Francisco has consistently failed to build enough housing for its endogenous population growth due to longevity and births.

Arguably the housing supply shortage is a better problem to have than a population shortage problem ie Japan. The supply shortage can be amended with construction. The population shortage ... not so easy. There are many problems with a declining, aging, shrinking population. Particularly the distribution in the economy between the retirees that need to be taken care of and the workers in the economy that contribute to the economy. Many western countries would face similar problems if not for immigrations since birth rates are falling.

I've heard this taking point often, but from the perspective of a resident in Japan (rather than an investor) is really not leading to observable negatives for the people... Housing and land prices are lowering, wages are increasing, and investment in working environments and labour savings technology is high... Maybe the worst is yet to come, but at the moment it looks like an overall benefit for the majority.

That’s the ultimate nimby. Don’t even think of living or working in my city.

May cities that pursue that strategy suffer the exodus of people, wealth, and jobs that they deserve.

Sounds good, but who gets to decide what's allowed? Is a 60 story building next to single family homes OK? No? What about 20 stories, or 5? I'm conflicted myself about this.

Copy Japan's zoning wholesale and solve all those problems

Awesome if you can get an area to agree to this. Is there anything close in the US? Houston maybe?

> Awesome if you can get an area to agree to this

Which part of "martial law" is unclear :-) The whole point is to abrogate local powers.

Or someone/some company/government should look into building a new city somewhere in America. Avoid the NIMBYs entirely. Kind of like what Culdesac Tempe is doing but bigger.

Maybe if Culdesac Tempe turns out to be successful someone may attempt this.

But no one wants to live in Houston because it’s city planning is a mess.

Houston is second fastest-growing metro in U.S., census data shows, with post-COVID population surge

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/...

Houston itself is losing people, even if the area is gaining.

Huh, I was going to dispute that statement, but it seems to be somewhat true. I’m actually pretty surprised by that. Interested to see if the historical pattern of growth resumes in the next couple years, or if city population has more or less maxed out at this point.

The Houston area has a huge amount of sprawl potential. If you are into living in that area, then why not just contribute to more sprawl?

Because there are lots of non-sprawl-y parts of city of Houston, and I don’t particularly care for the sprawl, and I’m surprised so many people are in fact picking the burbs.

Anywhere where land values are high enough to support a 60 story building really shouldn't have single family homes.

Maui?

There's nothing remotely near 60 stories on Maui.

Plenty of people would want to live there if there were housing. Why not build more?

Here in Minneapolis the 2040 plan set up standards for where bigger buildings can go, and it’s mostly based on transit and busier arterial street corridors.

Buildings have been going up pretty quickly and none of them seem particularly out of character but density will increase a ton.

More info here[0], when looking at the map the numbers next to Transit and Corridor correspond to number of stories allowed without a variance.

On the whole I think it’s a pretty reasonable plan without ending up with a skyscraper in the middle of single family housing (which we also eliminated as a zoning restriction, any property in the city can now have three dwellings on it).

[0]: https://minneapolis2040.com/implementation/built-form-regula...

It would seem like it should be a simple rule like you can only go 1 step up. Like if it’s 50% single family you can only go 6plex but if you get over 50% 6plex then you can go 5 story etc

Let's see how it works out for Lahaina before we rush out and start more fires.

Why? Do you believe there is a way to replace housing in Lahaina without building any? Do you believe that the 14000 households destroyed in Butte County, CA by the Camp Fire five years ago, who are scattered to the wind because California refuses to permit any new construction, are not enough of a precedent?

The obvious way to replace housing in Lahaina is to rebuild what was there. Zoning regulations wouldn't need suspending.

They definitely should suspend permitting to expedite the process, whichever way they choose to go.

https://www.hawaiibusiness.com/hawaii-building-permit-delays...

> Zoning regulations wouldn't need suspending.

A common belief, but throughout America the zoning regulations prevent the construction of that which already exists.

We are getting lost in semantics. Your original comment was clear in its intent, YIMBY martial law and "housing that meets basic health and safety criteria on a site within city limits that is already surrounded on three sides by other developed parcels".

I responded with a viable alternative: free instant permit to rebuild what was there before (regardless of current zoning). You are proposing something much more radical.

I'm not opposed to doing something crazy in Lahaina like a building free for all. I'm saying don't declare it a success and start promoting it elsewhere before it is even started, let alone a proven success.

California doesn’t want building near the tree line because those houses keep getting burned down. It’s not like Florida, where you can constantly rebuild on the beach with subsidized federal flood/hurricane insurance in play.

I am not suggesting building anywhere near the tree line, but the state of California should have stepped in and deleted the entire zoning code of Chico after the Camp Fire.

The places that burned down, maybe we shouldn’t rebuild those, or let a free insurance market determine if the rebuilt housing can get insurance or not. Zoning is one of those things that prevents you from building near the tree line or building too much when you have to rely on septic, etc…

There is very little evidentiary basis for your statements. Zoning demonstrably allowed the creation of Paradise, which should not have been built, and strangled the growth of Chico, which should be ten times as large with a bullet train to Sacramento every 20 minutes.

There is a lot of grand father clausing in zoning where what could be built 50 years ago is no longer allowed.

Chico’s growth is strangled by a poor economy, not by zoning. The bullet train might help with that, but people won’t invest in a poor housing market since they have better things to do with their money.

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