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Comment by oramit | Hacker News Reader

The incredible thicket of state, county, and municipal rules all layer and combine to make housing incredibly difficult to build. It's the technical debt of the material world.

Seriously, look up your local zoning rules. It's not "you can't build a chemical plant next to a preschool" like it's so often portrayed. It's minimum size for the lot, max square footage of the house based on lot size, max/min frontage, height allowances, max garage sizes, minimum number of trees, number of windows.... etc.

It really just goes on like that, and then to top it off, you can be totally compliant with code and still not be approved. Either because of local incompetence (building permits stuck "in review" for years) or because of local opposition.

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Many of the zoning rules you list, and far many more that you don’t, exist for valid reasons. Those reasons may not be as obvious as the chemical plant/preschool rule, but that doesn’t mean they’re not just as valid.

I live near a cove that comes off of the Chesapeake Bay. We have many of those zoning rules here for environmental reasons. Water movement and erosion are huge concerns here. Rules that affect density, frontages, trees within 100’ of the water…they are all necessary for the common good of the entire area.

We actually have a case on the other side of the neighborhood. A guy bought some land near his property for cheap. It’s not zoned for development because much of it is wetlands. He thought he could pressure the local zoning board to rezone it so he could make a handsome profit reselling it to a developer. As part of that effort, he diverted a creek and filled in the wetlands…and now several houses in the adjoining neighborhood flood (and there are legal repercussions for our entire neighborhood).

This is exactly the kind of Motte-and-Bailey argument the commenter you are replying to is talking about. Sure, you can justify some of the regulations, much like you can justify not allowing a chemical plant next to a school, but there are, in many places, hundreds to thousands of such rules and the vast majority of them are _not_ that important. How does not wanting houses to flood relate to setbacks, minimum square footage, lot size, etc. requirements? Literally no one is saying "get rid of every single development regulation". So bringing up one of the _extremely_ small number of regulations that are worth having does not address the argument about the _hundreds_ that are not worth having.

> …hundreds to thousands of such rules and the vast majority of them are _not_ that important.

And you base that on…?

> How does not wanting houses to flood relate to setbacks, minimum square footage, lot size, etc. requirements?

Here, minimum lot sizes are based on public/private water/sewer. We’re on well water so we need room for the well. We’re on public sewer, however, so we don’t need room for a septic tank.

As mentioned in other comments, minimum lot size also relates to infrastructure requirements. Here, it’s not as simple as just widening the current road or building another road through the narrow parts of our peninsula.

Setbacks are also related to stormwater management. Tree protection requirements, again, stormwater management and erosion control.

> Literally no one is saying "get rid of every single development regulation".

But you think that there are only an “_extremely_ small” number of valid regulations. You and the other comment I replied to seemed dismissive of specific rules that are vital to the survival—not just value, but physical survival—of my neighborhood.

Don’t the many zero setback cities invalidate your setback argument? They’re not drowning in stormwater - clearly it can be managed in a number of ways.

Why not admit to yourself that you just like exclusionary land use regulations, and are comfortable with the impacts on the cost of living, increased commutes, etc.?

It’s not your neighborhood under threat, it’s your status quo.

> Don’t the many zero setback cities invalidate your setback argument? They’re not drowning in stormwater - clearly it can be managed in a number of ways.

This means nothing without knowing the specifics of the local geography and ecosystem.

> Why not admit to yourself that you just like exclusionary land use regulations, and are comfortable with the impacts on the cost of living, increased commutes, etc.?

I’m not denying that our current zoning is exclusionary. It absolutely is. It’s excluding developers who want to sweep through and enshittify the place for a quick profit without regard to long-term viability.

> It’s not your neighborhood under threat, it’s your status quo.

In our case, the status quo many of our rules are meant to protect is, “the peninsula still exists and remains accessible by land,” so it’s both.

Curious, are you allowed to place an RV on your property, hook it up to your sewage system, and sublet it?

What about an ADU in your backyard? What about tearing down your house and build a triplex?

Or has your peninsula achieved the platonic ideal of density as it is now? If so, you must be very lucky to live in such a place.

I definitely listed the most egregious rules first. Those silly and overbearing laws exist though and have the same force as entirely valid ones like keeping trees along the coast to avoid erosion.

In isolation each rule is defensible (to varying degrees), but when we step back and look at the whole, we've created a regulatory environment that is hostile to development at every step. It's death by a thousand cuts. Big government through a massive collection of tiny rules.

Therein lies the real problem and why this keeps getting worse. There's no political will (probably because there's no political reward) in doing that sort of systemic analysis of the rules. What is actually essential? What is nice to have? What would be great but increases costs so much that it's not worth it?

Sure - zoning laws are often a good thing! But you also have zoning laws like this regarding SRO units: https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/01/09/micro-apartments-coul...

Do you think zoning rules like this - that Washington state is currently trying to change - exist for valid reasons? I really don't see a good reason, other than `NIMBY-ISM`.

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