In California, you can now sell your ADU

Yah, but this is different from when we have a separate marketplace of these units. They're going to end up unbundled from the nearby house pretty quickly.

In Seattle, ADU/DADU are built in Single Family House zone, you can tear down a single family house, build 1 main + 1 ADU + 1 DADU which is total of 3 without zoning change, then you can sell all 3 of them as Condos, require buyers share something like water bill.

Townhouse has to be build on the areas that are up zoned by the city.

There may be a small causal arrow where homelessness causes some addiction or mental health issues, or a very small arrow where addiction or mental health causes some to be homeless, but the bulk of the problem is high housing costs.

It is not always like that. I met people who are homeless and living in the car, they don't have mental health, substance or addiction problem. They are homeless because they couldn't afford the housing cost (including apartments).

The homeless crisis is a direct result of the housing rising costs. Los Angeles and San Diego in Southern California have increasing homeless population due to housing cost. I remember 12 years ago, LA downtown have a smaller homeless popultion and they are usually out of the way. I visited my friend this year who lives in LA and homeless people are in every block of downtown which is barely a thing 12 years ago. This is the result of the housing cost crisis.

You might be wondering why the homeless couldn't move to somewhere else? The thing is they can't because metropolis cities have a better social services they can provide for homeless populations and larger access to facilities within a block than a suburban or rural cities. Majority of them don't have access to transportation that they can afford.

30 years ago, the homeless are a result of mental health, substance abuse and addiction crisis. Now, that changes because of other factors such as rising housing costs which is a bigger factor.

> A large body of academic research has consistently found that homelessness in an area is driven by housing costs, whether expressed in terms of rents, rent-to-income ratios, price-to-income ratios, or home prices. Further, changes in rents precipitate changes in rates of homelessness: homelessness increases when rents rise by amounts that low-income households cannot afford. Similarly, interventions to address housing costs by providing housing directly or through subsidies have been effective in reducing homelessness. That makes sense if housing costs are the main driver of homelessness, but not if other reasons are to blame. Studies show that other factors have a much smaller impact on homelessness.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...

From what I read, the fetishization comes from already homeowners who want to have their cake (a house) and eat it too (making it an asset that appreciates). Since voting is non mandatory in USA, voters tend to skew old and/or homeowner, both of which like to maintain the status quo, hence favoring policies that keep it.

They blame politicians, etc. for the results of the planning profession over the past 50-70 years.

Perhaps the planners are right, but then my question is, what do planners actually do?

So, 51% vs 49% ? That's still half of the people wanting houses.

I agree that regulations are to blame, and most of the voters vote against housing, because people in the us who vote are mostly the boomers, who are mostly homeowners, hence increasing the value on their home.

Why is your neighbors smoke entering your house ? In my country, everyone cooks highly aromatic food, and even then I can't tell what my neighbors are cooking....let alone smell their vape or cigarettes.

Why can you hear pounding bass from our neighbor ? Sound isolation is a solved problem. The thin-walls problem is one I've experienced only after I arrived in the US.

Not sure why lack of a yard is a problem at all. What is a yard, except empty green grass ? If it is a communal space to host events, then lots of condo towers have common downstairs areas that can be reserved for free. If it is a garden, then you can easily have patio gardens. Hell, I've seen more gardens in apartments back home (since home cooking is the norm), than I have in yard in the US. If is a backyard, ie. ourdoors private space, then large patios facilitate the exact same outdoors privacy. If it is a playground, then you'll be pleased to know that most apartment complexes in Asia have playgrounds. And guess what? It comes with the community you need to actually form a team to use the playground.

It would be one thing if every time I visited the suburbs, if I saw yards being a communal source of activity, happiness and personality that people claim they are. On the contrary, I find that it is miles upon miles on completely empty plots with consistent green grass that has not been stepped on for days.

My current apartment in downtown US city has a massive common lounge area and a massive rooftop with a view of the city. We have a large enough patio and I have never heard sounds from my neighbors because it uses bricks rather than dry-wall. (And I live in the THE SPOT for young rich spoiled 20-something). It does everything you get from an SFH, but better. (assuming similar capital investment)

This comment is literally the point I was trying to make, thank you very much, I couldn't ask for a more typical american answer.

If you want to live in a city, and not pay sky high rent, these are going to be some small issues you will have to work with. I say small, because the alternative is not having housing, or paying half of your salary in rent/mortgage.

The bass is solved, have the HOA or condo board apply fines for loud noises, which grow exponentially with each infraction.

Lack of your own yard? Go to a park, I lived in Vancouver in an apartment, and I had a ton of parks nearby, same in other cities I've lived in.

Having a house in a city is luxury, not a need, a home is a need, but that can be an apartment.

"Selling" your ADU would either require dividing up the parcel (which I am guessing is nontrivial in most places) or somehow itemizing improvements on the parcel so that the ADU owner can pay taxes for their unit separately from the main home on the property.

No reason to figure out a solution to any of this when housing isn't much of a problem there.

There is nothin "wrong" or "right" about free market economics bc there is no concept of morality in free market economics. It is what it is.

But it is the clearest of signals of what is going - US standard of living has peaked and is going down.

> Wouldn't this possibly incentivize more ADU building thus supplying more housing units to the market?

Is that trend that benefits me? I do not think so, I do not want to live in a ADU nor do I want one on my property, nor do I want to live in a community that has ADUs.

As is this absolute canard "the real issue is affordability." Well obviously. But where does the unaffrodability come from? What gives landlords and home sellers the power to price far above average incomes?

It's a shortage of housing. If there was enough housing they simply could not price at unaffordable prices, because there would be no buyers.

The simple inability to see this is like some Jedi mind trick that landlords and real estate interests have played on the populace. We need to fully reject any ideology that has been saying that there's enough housing, because it's a bad and harmful ideology.

I may get a few hundred thousand from inheritance, but even that feels really unfair. Society shouldn't operate that way.

"Whoa, hold on; we should change the law on that last point!" I hear you saying. And I might even agree, but unless/until we do, grandma is doing the obviously sensible thing by not selling while she's alive.