Comment by ThinkBeat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThinkBeat | Hacker News Reader

So a fancy trailer park basically? but one where relocation and moving can be more difficult?

People get divorced, relocate for work, relocate for mental health,end up in jail, People end up hating each other, have kids and need space, get a raise a want space, and people die.

How long does the friend structure survive? There will be people moving in and out just like any part of real estate.

Do the original owners turn into landlords and rent out the homes?

There would be an interesting dynamic if the homes were mobile, when you could move to a different friend compound if you wanted to leave.

But again, all of this is solved in trailer parks.

I am -not- being derisive of trailer parks. I am saying that this is a rich person's reinvention of it with some added attributes. Spending time studying the dynamics of a trailer park over time would provide lessons on mistakes not to make, and nifty solutions to problems not yet pondereed.

(Yeah if you can afford a mini house on its own real estate in California these days you are rich)

The "group of friends or families living together" is probably the least likely application of this legislation. It main goal seems to be increasing the housing density of residential areas, so investors can buy a single plot of land, develop the property, and sell up to ten houses. Which I guess is the intended purpose, giving investors a more socially productive way to get profits than speculating with limited pre-existing real state.

>So a fancy trailer park basically?

Don't trailer parks rent the land? Here it sounds like they sell the land:

>Step 3: Sell the new lots to friends

This is a response to decades of poor planning in an appropriately compromised way. Ideally, big chunks of low density California should be bulldozed and be rezoned to be more like Paris or Amsterdam, but this will have to do.

Work with what’s there.

> So a fancy trailer park basically?

Would you describe an apartment building this way?

No. Apartment buildings are little bricks stacked together into a larger structure. In the original example, individual houses are spaced close together, they have the feel of a trailer park.

These two living environments have in common that they are one—to two-person places to sleep, cook, and watch videos. Everything else that makes life interesting has to be done somewhere else. There are no gardens, no workshops for CNC machines and 3d printers, and no space for outdoor recreational equipment like kayaks, paddleboards, bikes, etc.

I can concede I am biased, and I'm blessed by being able to afford a property with a garden of about 2,000 square feet. I'm looking to expand it by another 500 square feet this year. My basement is just half full with my workshop and home lab; the other half is my partner's art studio.

There was a recent discussion on HNN about developers who quit their jobs to start a farm or otherwise leave the tech world behind, but I do a version of that in the small. I am content to hang around the house and garden, relax outside, watch birds, and occasionally hike in neighboring State Parks.

> Everything else that makes life interesting has to be done somewhere else.

So you've never lived in a city? All the things you have are typical suburbia pastimes. I don't see in your listing for "things that make life interesting" going to the theater, pub, hanging out with your neighborhood friends at the local restaurant 10 minutes away.

And all these things are enabled by dense housing and essentially inaccessible for suburbanites.

I have lived in cities. Going to the theater held little charm for me, although I did go when a friend of mine was acting in a community theater. I went to support him, not because the play was a draw. I never had any neighborhood friends. In most of my apartment blocks, very few people spoke to each other. I quickly found out I had nothing in common with those who did talk to me. When they went to the local restaurants, it was to talk about American sports and drink beer. I don't do American sports or drink beer.

L’enfer, c’est les autres.

Sure, just pay the appropriate property tax and don't externalize the cost of your own highly inefficient housing on others.

You probably intended your comment as a gotcha on the property tax issue. Still, I only bought my house a couple of years ago, which reset the valuation of the property to a much higher level at the current tax rate. I don't use much in the way of city services (road, water), but I know the property tax I pay goes to help pay for school for other people's children, police, fire, and EMS for folks who need them. I know my income taxes contribute to many services in urban areas that I will never use. I am okay with this. I recognize that there are many cross-subsidies in our society, and unless we go completely pay-as-you-go, it'll be impossible to untangle them all.

Yes, they most certainly are.

> There are no gardens, no workshops for CNC machines and 3d printers, and no space for outdoor recreational equipment like kayaks, paddleboards, bikes, etc.

Funny, since I live in a dense city and I do all of that daily.

> So a fancy trailer park basically?

No, not at all.

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