Why would ANYONE want to live in the town of Orinda (shown in the photo accompanying this article) when they could live in a concrete beehive?
14
Someones Virtue Signaling...
8
So your vision of the future looks like the neighborhoods of Seoul, or Beijing ?
Thanks, but no thanks.
14
Mr. Manjoo, you couldn't be more wrong with this statement:
"the single-family home is out of step with the future"
Not everyone wants to live in an apartment building. Full Stop.
14
I read this piece, and thought, ‘who cares what this guy thinks/wants’?
13
Some people just like more space. Why is that so hard to understand?
15
And where is the water going to come from for all these people?
14
A surprisingly large number of Californians agree, Farhad...
Especially folks in Frisco...
A small and snug sub-grade room - soundproofed so as not to disturb the neighbors...
All they need, to play in today's American dream...
2
Be a good boy. Don't own a house. Don't have a family. Share an apartment. Don't make vegetable and meat a fetish. Eat the bugs.
7
Genius, ever fly over California? There's tons of room. Reclaim some desert and build. If you don't know how to do that ask Israel how to do it.
Or you can live in a congested place with people on top of your head, parties going on next door at all hours, people coming and going in your hallways and elevators, smokers and drinkers right outside, pets, regularly searching for parking, all for similar, or in some cases like in New York City, more money.
Yeah, private homes really stink.
9
I really want other people, Times columnists especially, to stop telling me how to live my life. Sell me on the benefits but stop with the commands from above.
16
This article isn't helping to debunk the notion that journalists live in a bubble.
15
I'm on #TeamTinySingleFamilyHomes
2
I don’t know. People are too inconsiderate and ignorant to live in such close quarters to each other. Smelling other people’s cooking, listening to them fight and have sex and stomp around, hearing their TV and music, babies and children crying, dogs barking... that’s a miserable, soul-crushing existence. Not to mention no private green space. How about people stop stop breeding instead... stop having more than 1-2 babies, or better yet have none at all. The world is overpopulated.
10
Problem: housing shortage
Solution: less humans
Problem: water shortage
Solution: less humans
Problem: food insecurity
Solution: less humans
Problem: disease
Solution: less humans
Problem: pollution
Solution: less humans
Problem: flora and fauna collapse
Solution: less humans
Problem: climate change
Solution: less humans
Problem: you name it
Solution: less humans
19
You have no clue what SB50 was about. Weiner and his cronies are in the back pockets of big international developers. Instead of going after communities that want to keep their single family homes, go after the Googles, Facebooks and Amazons who have singlehandedly created the income and housing imbalance issue. Not one of these corporations had put a single unit in to help with the issue. They should be required to build one unit of housing for every employee they have. You want to fix your so called “housing crisis” then start there. Otherwise take a seat and talk about something you know about!
10
Most people are loud, obnoxious and cruel. Living in an apartment with them is miserable. Condos aren't much better.
10
Amen California brother, amen. #YIMBY
2
Another thought. While this might seem sensible to some in SF, LA, and a relative handful of other places, these notions on housing and living are simply not going to compute for many, many people in this country.
And what, after all, is wrong with having your own space, and maybe planting some trees and having a garden, and a good-sized one, if you want.
Saying that increased population density somehow makes for healthier living is a con job of nearly trumpian proportions.
As a life-long liberal Democrat, I ask what the heck is wrong with the 'American Dream' of working to to provide opportunities and healthy, meaningful, and prosperous lives for all.
We can do that and be good stewards of our planet.
If we don't believe that, we've lost something very valuable; we're just throwing up our hands, not trying, and saying "Dystopia here we come".
5
When I saw the accomanying photograph of the Orinda hillside, I couldn’t help thinking how utterly indefensible those homes would be in a wildfire. But wildfires never happen in California, do they?
2
These comments?!
Ok boomer.
Can we move on to building sustainable solutions for people who will be around to experience the consequences of climate change. It’s impressive how selfish the boomer generation can be in the face of the horrid policy making and lack of leadership they have demonstrated in their lifetimes.
Next, next, next!
5
I recommend looking at an aerial view of the Netherlands towns. Dominant house type is a connected townhouse, 3 stories high. Most gardens are on the order of 15 y long and 5 y wide. No large lawns. No drone of lawnmowers in the summer.
Only negative is the garden is not big enough for a swimming pool.
6
"The reign of the single-family home is over." Based on what? This columnist's opinion? Certainly not based on the facts. According to the Commerce Department, last October the construction of new apartments plunged 28.3% to an annual pace of 327,000. The exact opposite of what this columnist is predicting. California is a unique situation. Elected officials & even many experts in science & the environmental movement have been cowed into silence when it comes to addressing the elephant in California’s living room: population growth. California is on track to hit 60 million people by mid-century. The biggest casualty of the illegal immigration debate in the U.S. has been the ability to discuss openly the staggering effects of population growth on critical resources such as housing, water, hospitals & schools. Census Bureau data shows that the nation's immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached nearly 38 million in March of last year. This is the highest number in the nation's history. No nation has ever attempted to incorporate 38 million newcomers into its society. As a share of the population, one in eight U.S. residents is now an immigrant (legal and illegal), the highest level in 80 years. Illegal immigrants ARE draining national & state treasuries. That is a fact beyond debate. It's out of control. To believe otherwise is simply "woke" nonsense. I hate the fact that the DP is stigmatized as the open borders/sanctuary city party. That position is political suicide.
13
Fun fact. I don't want to live with a bunch of people who I don't know on land that I do not own.
17
Hear, hear. California's affordable housing crisis breeds other crises, from homelessness to lowered economic output. Seriously, there's something bad in it for every economic class and political affiliation.
And the idea it's a population issue is just silly. Other cities and countries have far more people that manage to live in a smaller area. Be honest enough to admit it's just about preserving your lifestyle.
16
The sad part is, the picture shows Orinda and their own state senator Glazer voted against the bill. Have to vote him out in the primary coming up.
Try riding the BART before promoting Weiner's horrible plan.
If you want to live in a high rise next to the BART, you can move to the city or Oakland.
Turning Orinda into Oakland (or for that matter Greenwich into Jersey City) is not the answer.
8
An op-Ed in the Times that makes sense. Not much with which to disagree. My wife and I are empty nesters in almost 3,000 sq. ft. It all seems a bit much now.
1
Part of California’s problem is its population of illegal immigrants. If California has too many people, perhaps that issue should be addressed before doing away with single family housing. Why should Americans accept a decreased standard of living, pray tell?
13
I’ve read a bunch of the comments here. One thing sticks out to me. Do you like seeing the homeless everywhere? If not, they have to have someplace affordable to go. If we do not do this, there will be more and more of them as home prices and rents keep going up and fewer people can afford housing. What do you think THAT is going to do to your precious housing values? Masses of homeless do not make the neighborhood look good.
5
Counterpoint: You can have my fenced in back yard when you pry my cold, dead body from the hammock I have hanging back there.
No really, it's awesome.
9
California housing activists believe that SB 50 is meant to unleash the luxury high-rises that have turned New York City into a ghost town. Opposition to SB 50 is not about fetishizing single-family homes. It is about protecting California's affordable housing.
5
No, we just don't want to encourage more sprawl.
1
I don’t think that most of the commentators have a grip on the severity of this problem. A studio apartment costs 3K a month in the city (no dishwasher, fancy amenities, certainly no yard). This is probably more than your mortgage. You want a yard? That will be a million dollars plus, at auction, on a good day. And for those who got theirs early, congratulations. You are not paying your fair share of taxes due to Prop 13, essentially a give-away for those old enough to have hit the jackpot. Please please please open things up for the next generation(s). Build some houses please!!!
4
We have seen this intensive construction in our town. What once were single-family homes now house a dozen or more apartment dwellers. Gone are the majestic trees on each of these "converted" properties. It is shameful to destroy nature just so people can walk to work or live close to where they want to live.
6
Here in NYC they have been busily taxing single family homes out of existence.
4
Has the author travelled this great State? Does he have a clue about our great Central Valley?Only needing the precious investment the L.A. basin and Bay Area have enjoyed for decades. Still plenty of room for the American Dream.
3
This article is remarkable for its density--of misinformation. I can't critique all of it, but here goes:
1) Re "Little Boxes:" Malvina Reynolds was driving through Daly City when she got the idea for the song. That's how Daly City still looks. Orinda doesn't look like that.
2) I've had the pleasure of riding my bicycle across much of California on club bike tours. Suburbs don't "stretch across California." Visit Trinity County, for example.
3) Speaking as a retired UC Berkeley science editor, the Terner Center is a thinly disguised PR front for the real estate industry. I'll trust them when I they start publishing in peer-reviewed, highly cited academic journals.
4) SB 50 was a train wreck that deserved to die. The amendments were not significant. Wiener met with Governor Newsom, who suggested amendments. Wiener rejected them. Newsom then failed to support his bill.
5) The 3.5 million figure you quote is absurd. It's been criticized by many people, from Dan Walters of CalMatters to the Embarcadero Institute.
6) Zoning isn't the constraint. Cities have authorized lots of housing that developers aren't building.
7) Your conflation of single family homes and racism is an anachronism. Please read Aaron Glantz's new book Homewreckers.
8) You bought a townhouse. That's not what Wiener's SB 50 has in mind. As far as the bill is concerned you are still part of the problem. But I'm with you.
9
A basic first step in solving housing problems and helping people afford their first home with a rental unit.
1
There’s another approach: don’t insist to yourself that you have to take a “premier” job in a “premier” location. Instead, work at a less-glamorous job and live in a smaller city or town, where single-family homes are more affordable.
The writer loved growing up in a single-family home, but apparently isn’t willing to sacrifice his career to give his own kids the same benefit. I’m sad for them.
8
Right there with you, Mr. Manjoo. We spent two years living in Valencia, Spain, a city of 800,000 people and not a single-family home in sight. Everyone lives in an apartment or townhome. Spanish culture is highly collectivist, so life happens in shared spaces: the streets, parks, restaurants, bars, theaters, museums, and plazas. It was a bummer to come back to our neighborhood in Colorado with its quarter-acre lots, car-centric culture, and nary a pedestrian in sight. Hard not to believe that there's a correlation between how we treat each other and the distance we live from each other.
34
For the future of all of us, less is better than more. For the planet and our own financial wellbeing. Was a homeowner all over the country for 41 years. Moved on 3 years ago. Downsized. A relief. And newsflash. Your children do not want your "stuff".
3
Let’s also bring up the insane fetishization of the anachronistic model that everyone is “entitled” to have a multi-child family and that women “should” of course need and want to be mothers first and foremost. Exponential growth is not not not sustainable.
7
Half of these comments can be summed up with: not everyone needs to live in California. Except me. You leave first. I'm the last one allowed in. Not you. Everything needs to stay the way it was when I arrived, and shut the doors behind me.
3
People prefer single homes because other arrangements make more dependent on neighbors. A lot of jerks are neighbors. In my condo where I live as a preference, despite huge signs, we still cannot stop people, usually renters from other owners, from stuffing huge cardboard boxes in trash chute. Big signs near the recycling bins about breaking down your boxes and still people just throw regular garbage into the recycling bins. People park in other owned slots because, gee I have another car and I will just take someone else’s spot. We have too many people that somehow reached adulthood and never learned how to live in proximity of other human beings. God only knows what the dorm rooms looked like where they matriculated.
A single family means you control your space. If Elizabeth Windsor and Mark Zuckerberg can have single family homes, then others that choose can also have them.
9
Mr. Manjoo I understand if you can't afford a house with backyard, and have made peace with your townhouse, but that doesn't give you a right to take away the rights and quality of life of people who like to live in single family houses. There are a ton of problems with multifamily buildings which make them suitable only for the young and possibly the retirees, example noise, parking hassles, crime, no control on who lives in close vicinity to your family and likes to come and go at late hours. This fetishization of soviet style block living which so enamors the millennial is just a symptom of loss of American prosperity and not something to be proud off.
9
"The reign of the single-family home is over."
I am not sure that's a fact in the indicative mood. And it's wrongly worded for the subjunctive mood unless one is God and one's word is effective in the utterance....
" . . . single-family zoning was one of the many ways white homeowners and politicians kept African-Americans out of suburbs."
You make it sound so . . . past. While white suburban Americans may be less consciously racist than in the past, you are whistling past the grave if you imagine they will be baptized clean of class culture issues. Real estate is the foundation of class identity in the USA. And politicians are reliant on votes to pursue progressive policies. People buy into the character of a neighborhood and don't want it to change without a say: that, btw, is just as true of the multicolored indigent and working classes as the whiter managerial and professional and wealth classes. It's human home thing.
you can change yourself. you cannot change others.
1
I’m completely on-board with townhouses and apartment complexes. But can we please get rid of HOAs?
3
Here's an idea: you live how you want to live and I'll live how I want to live and the heck with government telling either of us otherwise.
5
The one form of single-family housing that Californians evidently support is the tent. More of these are pitched every day on the sidewalks of San Francisco and Los Angeles and Californians don't seem motivated to divert money from their personal consumption to build apartment buildings for their neighbors currently dwelling in single-family tents.
19
If I don't own a house with a garage where will I plug in my electric car?
6
Excellent article. Thank you. Not to mention the finances you bleed trying to maintain an unweildly lawn that no one really steps into except the landscaper perhaps.
Yes, we know... living in a single family home is "outdated," just like owning a car is "outdated." Just like going by gendered pronouns is "outdated."
Farhad Manjoo is making a mistake common to the arbiters of culture on the left: they're generalizing their preferences for a particular lifestyle into proscriptions for the rest of us. In doing so, they necessarily cherry-pick arguments and rationalize downsides.
Just say, "living in a single home is not cool to Farhad and their peer group." That's more intellectually honest than trying to cast the majority of Americans, who prefer single family homes, as backwards or out of touch.
13
People, you can't support new housing developments and be so unflexible in regards to your "quality of life" and "property values". I know you have your "piece of the pie" but we NEED more housing. It has to be built somewhere so maybe we can all make some sacrifices.
Farhad Manjoo meet Cole Porter: "Oh, give me land, lots of land, and the starry skies above. Don't fence me in."
It's an American imperative. On the flip side, Manjoo might review the works of another American, Michael Todaro, probably our foremost development and migration economist.
The real risks in California are greedy developers, inept or corrupt politicians, the rain-starved climate (LA annual average 15" compared to Austin's 34 and NYC's 45), and turning into favellas rivalling those South "of the border down Mexico way."
"If you build it, they will come." In a post-Industrial Age, let's think distributed instead of concentrated.
6
The responses to this article exemplify the single-mindedness and concreteness which is a hallmark of our culture. Either single family or big apartment tower! How many of the respondents actually traveled and saw other options? I lived in a single family house for 47 years, apartment houses on and off, attached houses, village shacks, kibbutz. All have pluses and minuses, but living in a single family house with toxic dump in the front (AKA lawn) and pool in the back (AKA a trap) is a waste of one's time and money. It is a joy however to builders and city officials who tax you.Best I saw were attached houses with small gardens and large common areas and good public transportation feasible because of medium density housing - like in Holland for example. So stop talking about something you do not know and get out of your fetish that makes you work like a slave!
2
What about good transportation like a bullet train?
3
How about reality check, California is too expensive, enough with the PC excuses. Lots of other great places to live or stop wining....
6
People in the comments are hating on you Farhad, but you speak the truth. I and every other urban planner I know agrees that if we are to avoid the oncoming climate catastrophe, we have to build denser housing, ideally closer to where people shop, work, and play.
Relax, everyone else, that doesn't mean that the government is going to take away your precious white-picket fence and force you into Soviet style apartments; it just means we have to prioritizing building denser housing units over building single-family homes. We have to stop treating multi-family homes like second class citizens in the urban landscape.
36
Give 'em Queens! Bring on Borough Park! Yo, California, do the deed and SHARE, for pity's sake.
1
an attack on the concept of single family homes is an attack on the concept of a nuclear family of two parents and a couple of kids
which has been the backbone of middle class family life--and much of western life--for hundreds of years. The single family home is a cultural expression in American life which has survived many catastrophes, and remains a symbol of prosperity despite attacks by iconoclasts like Manjoo.
3
California in the 1980s was the land of Milk and Honey? Ha-ha-ha! Kid, you should have been there in the 1950s! Boy, did you miss the boat... Been there, did that, moved when the fun was done... Speaking of... I've lived in lots of apartments and townhomes and suburban houses and, while y-o-u-r individual mileage may vary, the best castle to be had, from my long experience, is a house NOT connected to the guy next door - and with a little space in all directions between your building and his. Good luck in your favored egg carton house. Hardly a soul on earth won't pick a "ranch style in the burbs" over what you're waxing on about... Har-har!
7
Listen to all of you—“it’s mine, I was here first!”. Shame on you!
Farmers and rural inhabitants had to move to make way for your single family homes and now you have the audacity to say that your way of life should be permanent? When did it become acceptable for people to say how other people should live?
If you want a single family home, fine—live in one. Nobody is forcing you to tear your home down. But for you to tell your neighbor that he or she can’t turn their home into a duplex or fourplex is absolutely ridiculous.
I’ve got a solution for everyone who’s complaining about change in their neighborhood. Go move somewhere else! Thank god my fiancé and I have the money to afford a house in this absolute mess of a housing policy. I feel for other millennials who are being told that they’ll never be able to afford property all because their parents were too stubborn allow some modest change.
1
Just the phrase High density housing has this Californian opening up his check book.I would rather see half the population incinerated than to have an invasion of people The current residents to not want to be near
Well I live in a Brooklyn town house (w a back yard) and I’m happy here - but I kind of admire the “anti progressive “ (?) leanings of Californians who can say: sure Farhad. We don’t care. We don’t want infinite building upwards and the economic success that will go hand in hand w all that. In a sense they are luddites. More power to them.
Articles like this make me question everything from why I read this paper to why I am a Democrat. This is an assault on the American dream that I was lucky enough to grow up with. Attacking this dream like this immigrant does here makes me question my stance on immigration and even Trump’s wall. Overpopulation is the problem, and people who will never understand the inestimable value that an idyllic childhood affords because they didn’t have that experience. I will chalk this attack up to yet another checkmark on the list of our emerging Dystopia.
11
Another way to look at this is that instead of needing more densely packed housing, perhaps we need fewer people.
12
only 5% of California is developed for housing - this isn't a problem of not enough land to build housing on
2
It is no fun to live in close proximity to someone who has no respect for others needs.
A single home with a plot of land to grow on is the best way to live.
Aggregate housing starts off lovely and thru poor HOA management becomes the crime ridden. Slums of future America. It’s happened thru eons. Change occurs. Yet suburbs seem to stabilize if homes are individualized and not connected .
7
What bothers me the most about this "modest proposal", and let me be clear, the author is no Jonathon Swift, is that it's another temptation for people to abdicate well-thought out decisions. IMO one must give thoughtful consideration when choosing careers and employment as to where that line of work is centered, which should trigger further thoughts as to what's your budget and what are the housing, transportation, recreation, educations, etc. of that area. If you're a computer programmer who wants to have a large house with a big backyard not more than a 15 commute to the office, you'd be hard pressed to be part of the Silicon Valley scene, you'd be better off making sure you could work from home. The columnist tells folks not to worry, higher density housing is the best for all so don't fret we'll take care of all your housing problems and concerns via high density housing. Obviously he's never read Thoreau because he seem oblivious to the human need and restorative health benefits of daily doses of Mother Nature. I get a sense of well being listening to the owls hooting at night. Maybe he gets his from hearing what Pandora channel the neighbors in 3C are listening to tonight?
7
Sure are selling well enough for being “outdated”. Too well as a matter of fact.
3
This simplistic assessment overlooks the most important quality of a single family home, or any genuine home. What townhouses and apartment rentals lack is the emotional investment in the neighborhood and the neighbors around you because they are inherently transient dwelling spaces.
Solve that and I may be more willing for forfeit the 30 years I spent working hard and investing both my money and good will in this neighborhood I live in, to put my feet down. You're not talking about anyone's dream when you're really talking about throwing up another cheap block sized apartment, cramming another 50 cars onto the street, another 200 people that won't bother to speak to a neighbor because why would you when you know you're not staying. Your argument about fairness and opportunity doesn't address the loss of value to those who did the hard thing, worked hard, paid the taxes that renters don't.
When I started out it didn't come easy. I had to rent to useless deadbeat roomates. I had to toil for two decades just to keep the place from falling down. I had to borrow to make the mortage, insurance, taxes. Now you want to build a monolith beside me and you'd hand that privilege to the same large property management firms whose seething greed pushed out the elderly and non-white and ruined our cities in the first place.
11
Genuine question: is it illegal for people to rent out spare bedrooms in their single family homes? If so, maybe that should be up for reform. If not, why aren't more people taking in in-home renters?
If multiple people share apartments, why not a house? That's what baffles me. Sure you have to live with other people but ??? if my house payment was 4,000$ a month roommates would absolutely be needed.
It's not good to live in isolation.
3
What are your thoughts on people with pets? It's burdensome for me to live in an apartment whose elevator often breaks during snowstorms. Imagine me carrying an elderly dog down 4 flights of steps with snow blowing sideways. Maybe that's what I deserve for being working class- but I'll cling to my backyard dreams!
4
I know California has a serious homelessness problem.
But 3.5 million new housing units?
Growth: Quarterly. Yearly. Infinitely. In a finite state. On a finite planet.
Maybe we should stop fetishizing growth.
20
Dense development is both more affordable than single family houses and generates lower greenhouse gas emissions per capita. The suburbs have lots of grass and trees, but are anything but green.
Imagine if American metropolitan areas were merely four times as dense as they are today. Certainly not a high-rise hell, but the urbanized footprint would also be four times smaller in extent. This would make transit more viable and decrease the distance of everyone's commute.
Single family homes are resource intensive space hogs that spread our cities out into unsustainable car dependent urban sprawls. Banning them would go too far, but we should at least allow other types of housing in those places which have already been developed, leaving the countryside open and pristine.
6
I grew up in Brooklyn where townhouses were common and highly valued. When we moved to San Diego 20 years ago we bought a townhouse in a dense neighborhood where we can walk to, parks, grocery stores, restaurants, movies, etc. Some long time CA residents called our area, condo hell. They lived far from work in single family homes where if you just needed milk you had to drive.
These ideas of what a “good home” looks like are set early in life. We still love our home. Someone my husband works with said “ you still love there! When will you move to a real hOuse. Some people will never change their minds.
3
Sorry, Mr. Manjoo, but as an American living in Germany, I can tell you that higher population density and the resultant loss of single family housing, automatically means lots of regulations, unless you want to live in some version of a college dorm hell. In Germany, there are noise regulations (you cannot run lawnmowers on Sundays for example), light regulations, strict hours on when businesses can actually be open. There is no way your kid can just "go outside and play" unless you are one of the few lucky enough to have a back yard. Americans would be most unhappy when they find out what the loss of single family housing would actually mean to their freedoms. California is an expensive anomaly, but does not warrant a change in federal policy. If the State of California wants to remove the option of single family housing, it is free to do so, however.
7
I love that the photo for this article is of Orinda, CA, apparently the symbol of single-family homes in California. Please look through your collection of photos for many of the neighborhoods in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco. You will find single-family homes with yards (gasp!).
6
"They’re afraid to accept the single-family home is outdated."
Shrug.
I prefer living in my own house, which has been standing for over 150 years, has little land and, given my frugality and energy-saving, leaves almost no carbon footprint.
When people stop blasting their stereos and screaming instead of having conversations that do not disturb neighbors, or smoking foul substances that travel though ducts and floorboards, or setting their dwellings on fire from carelessly overloading circuits or leaving stuff on their stoves, or keeping their living quarters as roach breeding grounds, I might someday consider living once again in an apartment.
Sick of "progressive" dictators. Live and let live, for God's sake. Don't I pay enough taxes out of my middle-class salary for you?
9
You'll have to pry my SFH out of my cold, dead hands. My garden is a haven for endangered and threatened songbirds, not something to cover with concrete and stuff with people. We also grow a lot of our own food in our back yard.
We need a human population of a sustainable size, not an ever-growing one that is causing massive extinctions. The problem is not SFH's. It's overpopulation.
15
Single family homes are too much work.
4
The author may be quite correct in believing that many people in the future will not be able to afford a single family home as in the past, but being unable to afford a single family home is not an excuse to make already existing single family home areas more dense. The author can afford a townhouse, so townhouses are good. If he could only afford a high rise apartment he would rail against town houses.
5
American city density is inhumane, give me a 5-story European city with piazzas and gardens. US developers aren't interested in quality of life.
5
Townhouse. Condo board. Nightmare. I know from personal, painful experience. Never again.
8
The population of California is just shy of 40 million and the land mass is nearly 164,000 square miles. Take a quarter for housing and that’s half an acre for every man, woman and child in the state. Telecommute and have Amazon drones drop you food every week and we can all have our estates.
2
I like my walls quiet and the noises I like to make without guilt for making my neighbor’s walls noisy... same for ceilings and floors ... if that’s a fetish fine ... not much but a single family home fits those specs...
6
Just visited friends in mid Oakland. Not close to NY density, more like Long Island. But the packed bungalows we’re still 10x more dense than most cities. Which makes sense since California is the grapes of wrath for so many strivers.
There’s plenty of housing and space to build elsewhere. Why aren’t we?
3
In Switzerland the percentage of people who own their domicile is very low and everyone loves it. Why? Because there are rent controls that allow for multi decade leases at affordable levels, and the landlords’ rapacious tendencies are regulated.
Owning a house is a scam intended to keep people on the property ladder while pouring billions into the banks. It wastes land and increases the emission of greenhouse gasses. The list goes on.
I have had 3000 square foot houses in suburbs, but now live in a 700 sq ft condo downtown. I never drive, walking everywhere. It’s just better.
5
This is the urban planning version of those articles saying we need to start eating insects.
7
I like my single family home and I won't apologize for it.
5
Mr. Manjoo is perhaps unaware how 1 percent he sounds in this piece. The neighborhood of his attached townhouse has, I’m guessing an overall Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of under 1.0 (that is, building floor area on all levels in relation to gross land area), maybe even 0.5. Low. Despite his belief he’s living with density.
That wouldn’t get California anywhere close to the vision he has. Don’t get me wrong; It’s the correct vision. But he’s effectively admitting it’s for others, others less fortunate.
And so, the piece comes across as an elite-knows-best piece. Maybe part of the reason SB50 was defeated.
I’m always curious about where proponents of more density live, how they commute to work, etc...
3
Come and live in my non single-family home, dude. With my obnoxious apartment neighbors, the garbage in the alley, the constant noise, the dumping of material in my alley, The zero on police response for anything but violent crime,
the barking dogs, the constant coming and going of cars, the graffiti, and the lack of personal responsibility. If I could afford a single-family home, I would. And so would all my neighbors.
39
I'd rather we stopped fetishizing poverty, overpopulation and open borders. And besides, people who want have their views of the sky obliterated by towering apartments should move to cities that already build such structure. We in California do not want that!
10
89% millennials want to own their dwelling, and 74% want a single family home. HGTV is one of the most popular TV channels (along with Hallmark, another pusher of "outdated" things.) How many shows are there about renovating townhouses and apartments on HGTV?
So no, the single family home is not "outdated" any more than love, marriage, and having babies.
This might be shocking to our cultural overlords living in the center of the universe in NYC and San Francisco, but out here in the lame and deplorable hinterlands, the overwhelming majority of actual humans still do want to do things like experience romance and get married, own a detached single family home, and have space to raise their children.
The chattering classes are so detached from reality it isn't even comical anymore.
11
If Mr. Manjoo enjoys his townhouse, that's great. But he's out of line to suggest that we should all live in multifamily housing.
I owned a condo in San Francisco for 25 years and could hardly wait to leave it behind for a single family home in a diverse suburban neighborhood where I can't hear my neighbors or smell what the people next door are cooking.
When I no longer want to drive and deal with home maintenance, I'll move back to a city where I can walk to shops and restaurants or take public transit, but until then I'll enjoy the well-deserved peace and privacy of a detached home on a huge lot.
22
A well know national politician once said, "all politics is local." A much lesser know small coastal California town politician, my father, once said, "all local politics is growth, no-growth.
"Only in California do you have millionaire haves on the same side as poor environmentalists have nots. Only in California, a state rule by one party, do you have the two faced cry of "build bridges not walls," and "not in my backyard."
One thing Trump is right about, Californian's are a bunch of hypocrites. Those who fight realistic solutions to affordable housing are just racIsts in green clothing.
After the Civil War, the Federal Government had to keep troops in the South to enforce the end of slavery. Again, in the 1960's Federal troops were sent to the South to enforce desegregation. What will it take for California to take meaningful action on affordable housing, Federal occupation?
2
Maybe the author wouldn't have triggered so many boomers if he talked more about the specifics of parts of CA that need higher density housing.
Let's talk about Mountain View. A lot of it does NOT look like the picture in this article. We're talking really tiny houses, where a 2bd house can cost like $2m. They're close together, tiny yards. There's not a lot of sidewalks, just streets lined with these tiny houses. Not your picturesque idyllic suburb. But SV is where a lot of high paying job demand is. Yet only office buildings are allowed to be built, when what they really need is apartments for the people who work there.
San Francisco isn't much better, a studio apartment may be $4,000. Not even in a good area either. Couple that with a long abysmal commute. Not as bad as LA traffic though.
It's weird when people tout their nature, yards, trees and gardens. Because that necessitates highways, roads, cars, highways, traffic, driving, highways, commutes. How much of that yard time can you really enjoy when you waste your life away guzzling gas driving to work, driving to the grocery store, driving to the gym, the dentist, driving absolutely everywhere? Is being far from everything and necessitating a car worth it for a large house filled with stuff?
Low density housing is just climate denial at this point.
An apartment building getting in the way of your view is extraordinarily solipsistic.
10
@uhhh if you are retired, as I and all of my neighbors are in my single family subdivision, we can enjoy our yards, flower beds and peace and quiet all the time. And we actually talk to each other, something with never happens in all my years of apartment living in areas throughout the country.
I did my time in multifamily housing during my working life, but in retired life, with a marriage and more relatives moving in with me, it was single family house time.
13
@uhhh People don't like to walk.
"And the solution is so painfully obvious it feels almost reductive to point it out: Make it legal to build more housing that houses more people."
Before we do that let's hold accountable undocumented immigrants by repatriating them. That should free up some housing. Also, let's encourage some of our biggest companies to expand outside of California so that more people will want to live elsewhere.
139
@Swaz Fincklestein
Undocumented immigrants and others with low income are living mainly in multifamily apartment housing. If they were 'repatriated' there would not be a substantial increase in housing for middle class families who are priced out of the market.
26
@Swaz Fincklestein the idea that "real Americans" can have their needs met as soon as some undesirable-of-the-week is eliminated is a lie older than the United States itself, and a smokescreen the wealthy use to distract a weary populace from a simple truth: there's much more than enough to go around if only it were a little better distributed. I'm sorry you think that America's promise exists at the cost of generosity rather than because of it, and I hope dearly to outlive this mindset.
73
@Farhad Manjoo "Get to stay" might be the preference for some, but at least one recent poll of Bay Area residents showed many would leave if good jobs were available outside urban centers. Boise, Idaho and the Spokane, WA metro areas are two examples drawing more interest from people seeking quality of life, including single family home ownership. Tech jobs increasing in both regions.
24
The single family home is the single biggest reason we are set on destroying the world. Let’s get rid of it.
2
"And what level of extreme unlivability is it going to take to finally convince us that there (aren't enuf' natural resources) for all of us to live as if (natural resources are) infinite?
Is it getting warmer? Ribbit!
2
Come to Charlotte NC and see what multi-unit housing is doing to traffic.
6
A single-family home was the dream of many of the veterans returning from World War II. The Roosevelt administration in the early years of the war knew that returning vets would need jobs and housing. The first "planned neighborhoods" were not single family homes but garden or row type townhomes and apartment complexes. New York and other cities were crammed with people desperate for apartments throughout the war. My parents were lucky to get a older 2 room apartment because a family member helped them get the lease they were going to give up. it was on Cypress Ave. across the street from PS 65 in the Bronx. My sister, me and mom and dad lived in that little apartment until about 1953. I was born in 1947. There was one bath, one closet, and the living room and kitchen were the same room. We all slept in the one small bedroom. In about 1954 we moved to 1579 Townsend Ave off 175th at the Grand Concourse. The kitchen was separate but we still shared one bed room.
Mr. Manjoo knows little of the real history of the greatest generation and the baby boomers. There was no such thing as gentrification. The "tricky-tacky" houses of Levittown were a godsend. Levittown was not built to exclude blacks. Escaping from the city to little Cape Cod house was a dream.
America has changed since WWII but there was no conspiracy and no plot to zone out anyone. A single home was not a fetish. It was a dream come true. Manjoo, you need to really understand how we got here. I love my home.
7
So I got a house fetish. It's called privacy. Don't tread on me. I'll be done and outa' here in twenty maybe twenty five years.
Until then call me Francis from the movie 'Stripes'.
8
How about we just all live in jail cells or 1970's style college dorms? Everyone work in community gardens for food. Comments here say no one needs a backyard to live. True!
Look up Cabrini Green in Chicago. Gang and drug infested high rises with high murder rates and many daily shootings, built with good intentions but turned into war zones. They were finally leveled.
So some communities should be packed in like rats for our own good? Guess who gets to live in the single housing? Yes! The political elites who dictate the great unwashed live like sardines.
For our own good, of course.
8
You could just so easily see this coming: I was fortunate enough to grow up in a single-family home, and now I’m gonna pull up the ladder and tell everyone in the world that any shoebox for rent is a great thing because I call it “housing.”
Totally predictable, but the fact that this is also coming out of this columnist shows us the breadth and depth of corporate indoctrination: “Housing” = a typically ugly, tiny, boxy warren, with zero mud for children to play in and barely suitable for even rats—FOR RENT ONLY.
5
Where I'm from "Townhomes" are called RowHomes. And they breed government dependence, crime, and trash.
The Author's family actually immigrated halfway around the world to experience America's single family homes and backyards. And like most immigrants, gets here and immediately wants to change it.
The bill in California is not about adding affordable housing to subburban areas. This Author's liberal, socialistic mindset doesnt see the big picture.
This bill is about making developers richer. There are plenty of places to build apartment buildings in urban Cali. But developers can make so much more building them in wealthy subburbs! And if you think those apartment buildings are going to have "affordable" prices think again. The whole point of building in subburbia is to charge more money per unit. This business model has been tested all over the country.
The answer is not "lets spread out urban density"
How about making urban areas less dense. Start by cracking down on illegal immigration. Make anchor babies illegal, and not citizens. Overpopulation is whats ruining Cali. Not zoning laws. The zoning laws are whats keeping Cali livable.
This bill is not the answer to what this author wants. He wants more low cost affordable apartment complexes to be built as an answer to a California population problem. This bill will not create that.
Where i come from on the east coast, those buildings and "townhomes" are called Housing Projects.
6
The only problem with multifamily housing like town homes and condos is the noise. If you're especially the sensitive to noise like I am, then you value the serenity that a detached single family home can provide, especially since many Americans have zero ability to be considerate of their neighbors.
11
Good article. Condos are sprouting up all around my area of Dallas, and people love them--they can be in the city and skip the commute, versus living in the vast suburban sprawl of the DFW area. But gentrification is a huge issue. Most of the dense housing is built in poorer areas, and the people who live in those areas are priced out.
4
Yesterday I wrote a comment, not published, about having lived in apartments in which neighbors made noise at all hours and bred roaches, and whose cigarette smoke came in through ducts and from beneath baseboards.
Now in addition to tobacco smoke there's the stench of marijuana to contend with.
I lived in apartments for almost 30 of my 66 years. I would not want to go back to that.
Nowadays, stereos are louder, people practice less self-control, and all the disadvantages of apartment living have been ramped up. I prefer a house. I always have. Growing up, I lived in one.
It isn't for everyone. That's okay.
(How funny, though, that the United States had a financial meltdown in part because banks were lending money to poorer people who could put almost no money down on single-family houses they were then in no position to maintain and repair. Having no money in the game, they abandoned the houses. But politicians had insisted on facilitating, for everyone, the American dream. As often happens, good intentions, terrible outcomes.)
12
I live in a townhome near a light rail stop, with every kind of product and service I need within close range. I hadn't thought of it as virtuous. I just love the convenience, especially when I'm watching all the traffic jams I'm speeding past during my commutes. In urban settings, you just can't have that kind of convenience in areas where everyone has a house. Just not feasible. The kids around here--a nicely diverse lot--go play in the park together. I keep wondering why we're so in love with our isolation that we think it trumps convenience and climate change.
2
Co-housing is an option that should also be more widely considered.
When well designed, it can provide the comforts of a single-family home, savings from pooled resources (printer, gym, toys, books, etc), and a community of like-minded people willing to help one another out (childminding, shared meals, etc).
Easier on the environment, easier on the budget, and with built-in companionship!
7
Zoning changes to add density don’t necessarily solve environmental or economic problems. In fact, they can add to flooding and other environmental risks, overtax existing infrastructure not designed for higher density, and merely create wealth and incentives for developers to build the lowest possible cost structures to house the maximum number of humans with no regard for safety, quality, longevity, affordability, much less aesthetics.
9
Ask the people of Ohio how disappointing their decision to buy a SFR turns out to be. Property taxes are 2.5 to 3.2 % of home value and no longer advantaged as an itemized tax deduction. The cap on state and local taxes and interest is eclipsed by the 25,000 dollar standard married deduction is the new norm. After proper maintenance there is virtually no advantage to buy rather than rent. Especially true comparing monthly rent of $2K to a $350K home. States should streamline the costs of development of PUD's both to own or rent.
Local governments should not be allowed to permit office buildings without at the same time permitting enough housing for all the new office workers. For example, San Francisco should not have permitted the gigantic new Salesforce office tower without permitting about 20 new gigantic residential towers (assuming a person's home is typically 20 times larger than his or her office). If this policy had been in place in the SF Bay Area, there wouldn't be the insane housing crisis that exists now. Probably most of the newly built offices would instead have been built in other communities and states, to their great benefit. It shouldn't be hard for the tech geniuses to learn to run their businesses from dispersed offices.
8
I've lived in apartment blocks almost my whole life, and will likely never be able to afford to live anywhere else. It's not the way of life I'd recommend to anyone who can afford to live in their own place.
Having to live with other people is awful. And it's worse the more other people there are. Neighbors have very different schedules from yours. Their kids scream when I want to sleep, and they demand silence at night when I'd like to lift weights or listen to loud music. They leave their trash in front of their doors. Couples have crises and you have to listen to their screaming. People get babies and you have to listen to them too. On the flip side, you can't throw a party because it's against the rules. To sum it up, it's bad all around with totally no upside.
If apartment blocks are the unavoidable future, at least there should be strict regulations everywhere that force developers to invest heavily into creating as much insulation, buffer and separation between units as is technically possible. Sound insulation in particular in completely neglected in virtually all buildings. I can understand what the neighbors under me are saying to each other. I'm sure human engineering is capable of building apartment blocks where you can make a lot of noise but your neighbors won't hear any of it. Make it happen. It may cost a bit more but it's worth it.
18
Never lived in a single family home, and I probably never will. Frankly, the idea of not hearing or seeing anyone around me is pretty scary, so I fail to see the attraction. Plus, the idea of mowing a lawn, no street life and having to drive (which I never learned) gives me the chills.
4
Or perhaps we dont want a central government dictating the nature of our local community including housing density, whether there are pot shops next to school busses, homeless housing, and halfway houses for ex-cons. In all cases, the local community may differ with where central planners want to impose their views.
8
I grew up in the bland tracts of suburbia, a false and stale landscape of chemically-treated Frankengrass and uninspiring architecture dotted with squat shopping malls plopped in vast parking lots. Since escaping to college 40 years ago I’ve never considered going back.
I can appreciate the appeal of living on a farm or in a cabin in the woods, where at least I could let the yard be free and the exterior of my home weather away. I would never trade places with house-dwellers who must spend their weekends enslaved to oppressive domestic chores. Before we married, my husband lived in a 5000sf McMansion seven miles from the closest grocery with a lawnmower the size of a tractor. The place gave me the creeps. What a perfect setting for a murder. Now, we live in 1300sf in a downtown high rise. We both work hard at jobs we love and having real down time on the weekends allows us to relax and recharge, something that wouldn’t happen if weekends were spent trawling big box stores or cleaning the garage. We can leave whenever we choose, never worrying about a storm damaging the roof while we’re across the world. No weed-whacking. No exploding water heaters. Our very tall building can be noisy as it creaks and moans due to wind and temperature changes and there are the occasional sounds of other human lives around us, but all-in-all, it’s as pleasant and easy as living in a hotel.
5
It could very well be that the great exodus from California may not be exclusively political. Maybe some are looking for affordable, single family homes.
8
I love our single family homes.
I intend to buy another one.
I refuse to be living in a zoo where there's no privacy and you can't know who will be living next to you in a month.
I'd rather live by people I know won't rob me because life is too hard...
21
The one constant that is most evident is that charity and subsidies don't work.
What's the solution?
Regulation on the state level.
Every locality has an established minimum square footage for a living space. Average these out for each state.
If you have ever been to Ikea you'll know just what can be done with a mere 277 square feet!
Once the minimum size has been established, implement the following legislation.
Minimum wage X 40 hours - deductions = 1 months rent.
An allowance may be made for units in which 2 people are expected to share a unit in which the formula would be:
40 hours at minimum wage - deductions + 1/2 of 40 hours at minimum wage net earnings = one months rent.
When dealing with those on fixed incomes such as retirement or SSD: No greater than 1/4 of the net income of an individual.
Here's the thing about so called "affordable housing:"
Developers and apartment management companies are often required by local government to supply a small percentage of the units available as affordable housing.
They are often offered subsidies to "make up" for losses of market value rent.
Typically these units are just like any other unit and the requirement often EXPIRES in 5 years!
This eliminates any future options for low/fixed income persons.
By mandating that new apartment complexes have a percentage of "tiny apartments" that meet the minimum requirements, we can be assured that these offerings will always be available in the future.
1
As ex-suburbanites, we find living in a dense urban apartment neighborly, worldly, fun, and efficient. We don't pay for a car, gasoline, auto insurance, or auto repairs. Only our smallish slice for heat and hot water, fixing the roof, shoveling snow, and cleaning gutters. No lawn to mow or leaves to rake. Not much in home insurance, since it's shared across the whole building. I don't need a smartwatch to remind me to step, since I take the subway to work, ride a CitiBike home, and walk for most errands. Supermarket, drugstore, bakery, pizza, hair salon all within a block. People in wheelchairs or with baby strollers move freely around the neighborhood. The most noxious thing really is the surrounding motor-vehicle traffic, throwing up grit, honking madly, and causing mortal danger at every intersection. But that's largely to serve people driving into the city from single-family homes.
10
Here on Oahu, single family zoning predominates in all areas outside of Waikiki. However, due to the high cost of housing, what is occurring is that local families are doubling and tripling up in the existing single family homes built in the 1960's. There are the people my age who either bought or probably inherited the house, plus their married or divorced children with spouses and boyfriends/girlfriends and grandchildren all living together, not because they want to but because of economic necessity. A guy who recently did plumbing work for me lives like that, and he reported that it was extremely noisy and stressful. However, the alternative is homelessness. The streets of the neighborhood I grew up in by Pearl Harbor in the 1960's are now choked with parked cars because so many people occupy the houses that the garages and carports cannot accommodate all their cars. Compared to the 1960's, the lifestyle for the residents is greatly degraded.
9
SB 50 was a Trojan Horse by real estate interests to run roughshod over cities and neighborhoods to build luxury housing. Since January of this year AB 1763 eliminates for 100% affordable projects "any maximum controls on density if it is located within ½ mile of a major transit stop". So the welcome door is already there for those interested in building affordable housing at any density around transit.
Additionally, the author seems to not know that single-family zoning is history in California — the state permits triplexes (main house and an accessory dwelling unit, and since January a junior ADU) “by right” on all single-family lots, with streamlined time-limited approval by cities required.
10
The thing is, single family homes are what most people want to buy. It’s what the market demands.
43
@Blue Femme this is undercut by the fact that in many places it’s the only kind of housing that is legal to build.
40
@Blue Femme That's not true. The market demands more housing period. Look at all the homeless people in LA and SF.
3
The author only gives one possible solution to his question about there not being enough space for all of us to live. The only solution he offers is to destroy The American Dream through changed zoning regulations to accomodate high density housing.
But another solution is to put a moratorium on all immigration for 10 years or more. It used to be policy that the USA would only bring in immigrants in response to economic needs. There'd be periods when there was restricted levels of immigration. The USA seemed to do fine. Maybe we should consider that option again. Stack and pack developments are stressful for humans and also there are public health issues that come up. Consider China as a poster child for negative impacts of "stack and pack" housing on its citizens' health.
14
I am of two minds here…
I support free markets and property rights, so let developers build high density housing if that’s what folks want to buy or rent.
On the other hand, I spent my childhood in a Queens apartment (a Fred Trump building) and I had always wanted a dog but we couldn’t have one in an apartment. My kids have grown up in a house and we have a dog. That is progress and I don’t care if Farhad doesn’t like it.
So, I am all for permitting, but not mandating, high density housing.
15
But please, not next door to a farmhouse on a country road.
I totally agree with the author and can’t believe how negative the comments are.
I’ve spent lots of time in Victoria/Vancouver BC and in Berlin, Germany. Both of those places have many more condos and townhouses. They seem to be well-built and sound transfer is less of an issue than in the US. (US building codes need to be improved!)
BC has lots of parks, green spaces, bike paths, and awesome community centers.
I think a lot of people forget that the more spread out we get, the more cars are on the road commuting to suburban SFR’s. That means dirtier air and more noise. And people with long commutes aren’t actually paying their fair share for road maintenance, utilities, etc.
14
@Mel
Are the parks and green spaces directly accessible from my kitchen door? Can I open the door, let out my 6 and 8 year old, and let them run around unsupervised while I make dinner?
Can I pull a lawn chair out onto this public park on a starry night, make a bonfire, and drink a glass of wine?
Can I plant my own garden in these public parks?
Will I have to put up with other people's radios, boomboxes, and noise?
Park are nice. Most suburbs, believe it or not, have them.
But there are reasons people, particular adults with children, like having their own yards, and we use them in ways that cannot be replaced by public "green space."
12
I agree that everyone should live more modestly and choose small homes but how small do we go?
I have been reading that China, Singapore and I believe Hong Kong have been creating what are referred to as coffin apartments.
For some time, in China, the people have been illegally doing this by chopping up apartments into tiny spaces that are no bigger than closets.
So, if population pressures, require us to live in boxes then that must be where the real problem is. That's the place to start instead of creating a world of living cemeteries.
The whole world needs to make population control the first concern. It drives everything else.
...and developed countries that choose to reduce their families, should not be undermined by increasing immigration.
10
In Europe, this isn't controversial. I lived in Germany with my family a few years ago, and we lived in a row house. Most of the houses on the streets in our area of the city (on the outskirts, near a large forest which housed the zoo and hiking / biking paths) were row houses. They were all built on cul-de-sacs off a main road, within easy walking distance of our neighborhood center with groceries, etc. Each house had a back yard, and they all backed up on each other and there was a communal play area between all the back yards. The kids ran between houses after school. In Germany the standalone single-family house is rarer, especially in cities. And yet, it was a lovely place for our family, with more of a community focus. And plenty of space for us in a 3-floor row house with a big back yard. I actually quite preferred it to the small fortresses we tend to build here in North America, with fences, cameras at the door, a watchful eye on our kids the whole time, and the need to get in the car to go anywhere.
15
Yes, we need to start thinking about living more densely. But the author didn't touch on the OTHER half of the equation: fast, clean, efficient, nonpolluting, inexpensive (or free, why not?) regional rapid transit that would allow workers to realistically live further away from their jobs and maintain a good quality of life. Some might even be able to have a house with a yard and garden. We're already seeing that in Europe, where fast commuter trains have turned what were once towns far out in the sticks into thriving suburbs.
10
@Rita Rousseau I love transit, but even better than rapid transit is telecommuting. I work in the Bay Area for one of the largest tech companies in the world and it there is no telecommuting policy and most managers are against it. Insane.
8
How do police officers, JiffyLube mechanics and Walmart stickers telecommute? Such employment only applies to a sliver of the population.
7
Telecommuting only works for nice office jobs.
A big part of there problem here is that Sen. Wiener's SB50 had no mechanism or guarantees to provide increased better transit and more money for schools & other impacts of increased density. Transit may be not such a problem in some places such as downtown Oakland, San Jose or San Francisco, but significant density increases in many of the suburban towns will be a transportation nightmare. I think many suburban voters would feel better if any bill tied transit funding and parking requirements and school funding to an increased density mandate.
3
@OccasionalPundit How about a telecommuting mandate? Transit is great but everybody is also missing the obvious.
5
And you are also missing the obvious. Telecommuting is only good in clean office jobs. You can’t paint a wall or fix a broken toilet over the internet.
1
When I was growing up I lived in different apartment buildings. I also lived in an apartment in California, which I hated. Now I live in a nice house with a backyard. I'll never go back to an apartment. I prefer a single family home a million times over a flat. While I understand the need to build affordable housing in urban areas of California, it is just silly to characterize single-family homes as outdated. There are plenty of beautiful places outside California that offer affordable single-family houses, job opportunities, good schools, and safe neighborhoods.
21
This is a case where the market just might work. If people want multi-family homes, builders will build them and communities will zone for them. The demand will be reflected in the selling price of the multi-family homes that are available. A high demand will result in increasing prices, and builders/zoning will respond.
I am glad the author is happy with his townhouse. Many people are. But multi-family homes often include HOA/maintenance fees that go on (and often increase) forever. People on fixed incomes might not want to pay those fees forever, and might prefer single-family homes.
The use of the word 'fetish' in the title is unfortunate. It is judgemental/condescending. Why not just express your opinion without denigrating those who have made a different choice?
97
@woodyrd
Because those making the "choice" to limit growth in their neighborhood are the reason coastal California is so expensive. If you want the market to function, remove the power of the wealthy few to block dense housing.
21
No. The developers make more on luxury units, not affordable housing. So you get tons of luxury housing and nothing a teacher can afford.
20
Here in Durham, North Carolina, the city council recently pretty much abolish zoning to supposedly allow duplexes and triplexes to be built in the name of affordable housing. Instead, what has happened is that the land has become more valuable, and the demand for single-family homes remains very high, so developers are incentivised to tear down small, modest, affordable bungalows and build giant, out-of-character, ultra modern fancy houses that sell for five or six hundred thousand dollars, which here in Durham is wildly above the norm for the neighborhoods where these houses are being built. It's a complete travesty that actually is having the exact opposite results as what the city council said they wanted. Affordable housing is disappearing, gentrification is accelerating, and the character of neighborhoods that makes them attractive is being utterly destroyed. along with an unholy number of trees being cut down. Be careful what you wish for.
79
@Sara The whispers are everywhere here in California that the proponents of abolishing zoning are on the take from developers.
21
There has to be a way to prevent that. Maybe limit the square footage of what can be built there.
4
@Sara Only five or six hundred thousand dollars? In San Francisco, you can't even buy a converted garage in the back of someone else's house for a price that low.
1
Front yards are an unused waste, but back yards can be used as gardens. Townhouses and apartments should have areas nearby for gardens, as is done in Germany. Giving up lawns whose main use is conspicuous mowing and fertilizing should be easy. Giving up gardening should be hard.
40
Front yards are not "unused waste." Mine has flowering bushes that bees enjoy, a growing oak tree (that replaces the one Sandy destroyed) that birds are beginning to discover, a honeysuckle bush whose red berries serve as the birds' food, and soil rich enough to harbor worms that serve as food for said birds.
Seasonal flowers: snowbells, mums, asters, other perennials that spouse has planted. Everything is crammed into what is in fact the smallest front yard in the neighborhood.
At the same time, when I am out tending this unused wasteland, passers-by stop to chat about the flowers. Those from the Caribbean like the coleus beneath the little fence. Elderly ladies from the South enjoy the roses.
We all benefit from focusing on a little beauty for once.
6
@sdavidc9 Some areas allow front gardens, including the area I live in.
1
Love the idea of apartment living. I lived in shared housing arrangements post college through age 50. BUT, listening to people walking around above me, slamming doors at midnight into the wee hours, enjoying their favorite television programs loudly, playing music at all hours of the night, with me setting fans everywhere around the house to baffle noise and developing nearly incurable insomnia over it fairly well nixes any possibility that I'll move to shared space in the near future. I'm glad that it works for you.
300
@Marsha I second this response. As a former UWS, apartment dweller for the first 37 years of my life, I cannot imagine having to listen to other peoples' lives again since moving to a single family home. If Farhad does not wish privacy that is his prerogative. But do not foist this communal living on those who can afford otherwise and vote with our money and choices. I cannot help but notice that climate change is another excuse to force others to conform to 'their' notion of what is right and wrong. I do fear some of the ideas of the Left tend to be heavy handed in alternatives. They end up being all or nothing. Medicare for all and no private insurance for example. No 2nd or 3rd options...just their viewpoint as the only viable choice.
137
@Marsha
As another former long-time apartment dweller I also cannot conceive of returning to a situation where I have to hear other people's noise. I'd sooner pitch a tent in the woods than have to hear clomping footsteps above me, music, random door slams, etc. There are just too many inconsiderate people out there.
94
@Marsha
Housing can be built that minimizes noise transmission between units. Hotels have good noise insulation between rooms; why can't multi-family housing have the same?
35
The SB50 mindset for solving the housing crisis is akin to carpet bombing – indiscriminately place high density housing anywhere. This no-planning approach without consideration of a range of locale and site specific circumstances is the simple minded answer to producing more housing.
A more strategic approach to development would look at an area and assess available sites for development and tailor and incentivize solutions which meet future needs while respecting existing residents as much as possible.
In San Jose, there is A LOT of land still undeveloped or underdeveloped. And these sites should be priority locations for new housing, well before unleashing a Developer free-for-all where a ten unit condo suddenly pops up in the middle of an R1 neighborhood.
Here, we should start with some accountability from Santa Clara County who holds hundreds of acres of land in the undeveloped category that could be used for housing. All of it near transit. Memo to our State representatives…if you want to make a State law, then draft legislation to compel Counties and Cities that land bank and do not make measurable progress toward housing at the sites they own to either develop or sell.
4
Am misunderstanding this article? The comments section largely seems to think Wiener's bill marks the end of the single-family home as we know it. No, it addresses the issue that in many areas it's straight-up illegal to build anything other than a single-family house.
Low density sprawl simply cannot be the only option if we're to build a sustainable future. It creates a vicious cycle: low density makes public transit inefficient, so people drive their cars because it's more convenient. Retail decentralizes to afford the land needed to accommodate their customers' cars. Now having a car is a necessity because the infrastructure prioritizes fast car movement and parking at the expense of other modes. So now municipalities are compelled to ban denser housing because traffic is already awful and wherever will they park anyway?!? Nope, clear more land, subdivide another crop field, build farther and farther into the desert. And for what? So we can pretend the society that affords our lifestyle doesn't exist?
3
As long as we prioritize and subsidize dispersed, car-dependent settlements, we will not make a meaningful dent in climate change, and we will continue sacrificing our wetlands and forests to parking lots and strip malls (not to mention our time, sanity, and health to traffic, pollution, and accidents).
Yes, it's true that Americans generally love single-family homes and SUVs. The climate doesn't care. We need to fix this with policy, now.
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@D What about subsidizing electric cars instead of fossil fuels?
6
While we are at it, let’s stop subsidizing children. I’m tired of paying taxes and wasting space on schools I’ll never need.
4
@D We need to stimulate population reduction by limiting annual immigration quotas.
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Sorry Farhad, I'm as liberal as they come, but these bills are a bridge too far. We need to construct more housing. But we don’t need to do it by making everything the same. Those who like and are willing to do what they can to afford single family homes should not be dragged down (yes, down) to the least common denominator.
That is the fundamental problem with socialism. I’m liberal, but not socialist. We need to build, not destroy. We can build housing that doesn’t destroy what other people have worked hard to achieve.
Fundamentally, why is single family housing so expensive? Because it is in high demand. Lots of people want it.
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@Jon "But we don’t need to do it by making everything the same." Isn't that what you have now and you are arguing to retain? Huge swaths of cities zoned for only ONE type of housing? I noticed years ago in Los Angeles that the neighborhoods that were zoned to allow both houses and apartments were more colorful and more interesting. The R-1 single family neighborhoods were monochromatic by comparison with generally duller architecture.
The block I live on allows houses and multi-units and has done for decades. My own property has two houses on the lot. It is located one-half mile from a subway station, perhaps long by NYC standards but not unusual by London standards and very close by LA standards. My expectation is that when I eventually sell it the two houses will be bulldozed and replaced with a larger number of units as I see happening on other streets in the neighborhood. But Farhad's article doesn't suggest that I will be forced to sell my place. If I do sell and I really want to live in a single family home, I'll have plenty of cash from the sale to buy something further out.
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Rather ironic.
“Making everything the same?”
Cookie-cutter, suburban single-family homes are the reason American cities are completely soulless, while dense, mixed-use cities in Europe and Asia (bar China and its communist-mandated uniformity) brim with character and activity. As the late Tennessee Williams said, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”
“We need to build, not destroy?”
Then please let the market(!) decide what gets built, instead of mandating that 3/4 of housing fit some 50’s white-pickett-fence home-in-the-suburbs fantasy. It is NIMBYism by SFH owners that destroys —families’ incomes, economic opportunity, and potential housing that could fulfill millions of family’s needs if it was allowed to be built, that is.
The reason single-family homes are expensive isn’t because people love them. It is because the alternatives are literally illegal, and most people aren’t willing to commute 2 hours to work. Lots of demand, too little supply in a given area. The only way to provide more housing, increase supply, and therefore lower cost, is to build denser.
8
On the bright side, if more dense urban housing is allowed for those who actually want it, those of us who prefer suburban living with a comfortable house, a big yard, lots of trees, flowers, space for a vegetable garden, a place for pets--can have all those amenities cheaper than now!
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You can still have pets in denser housing. No you couldn’t have a Great Dane but small dogs and cats work just fine. And there are lovely city parks in many cities with lots of space and trees
1
@Smilodon7 Not if the landlord or housing association does not allow pets. And trekking to a park is not the same as enjoying your yard, including planting your own trees, flowers and vegetables. And what if you want a large dog?
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@smildon7
Lovely city parks .. with space and trees?
Have you been to Los Angeles lately? Try to find a park that’s not full of homeless tents, drug addicts and piles of trash.
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It's fascinating to see the visceral anger of people toward this column and its author. Farhad is simply asking that multi-family zoning isn't banned, as it currently is in most of the US. If most people want a single-family home, then that's what will still be built. But if people prefer to live in a townhome or apartment, then that should be allowed.
As for people saying apartments are horrible: the most beautiful livable cities in the world are the densest, while the worst are dominated by single family zoning. Do you prefer Dallas or Los Angeles or Houston with their sprawling highways -- a necessity for single-family zoning? Or would you rather live in Paris or Stockholm or Berlin where density reigns and single-family homes are virtually nonexistent? The reality is that multi-family dwellings are the most livable, and humane, form of housing.
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@John Actually--I don't want to live in a city at all.
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@John “The reality is that multi-family dwellings are the most livable, and humane, form of housing.”
I certainly wish this were true. After eight years of living in apartments in Silicon Valley, I was ready to lose my mind. In the last one, I heard virtually every noise every neighbor made, plus the screams of every child who ventured outside bouncing off the courtyard walls. The building did not come close to approaching a CA sound-insulation building requirement passed in 1974. We finally moved to the exurbs and now spend three hours commuting to our jobs every day, which we hate for both personal and environmental reasons.
What we had to do to get the slightest peace of mind is idiotic. Until construction standards in the USA go way up (or Americans get quieter, HA! HA! HA!), some people will continue to buy single-family homes for this reason alone. And until tech companies wake up and actually use the technology they create to let people telecommute, we will get in our cars every day.
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@John It's annoying to work and save hard for decades for that suburban single-family home with a large yard, finally get it, love it--only to be told by some columnist that it's an obsolete idea and everyone should get with his personal program.
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One thing I don't like about my single-family house is that the lot is 60' x 100'. I wish it were 75' x 125' (approximately 0.25 acre). I would treasure the additional privacy.
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One issue that is overlooked is that by getting rid of backyards (or sharply reducing them) we contribute to the decline of insect, bird, and other wildlife populations. Backyards, especially when planted with native plants for birds and pollinators, have become refugia for many species.
And where is the water going to come from for all these people?
We need to learn to live within the limits set down by Nature.
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And you’d be surprised what you can do in a small space for a garden if you get creative.
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The people are already here. They are living on the sidewalks, in cars, on their friends couch, in their parents basement.
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In my California county, each year about half of the homes purchased are for second homes (or third or fourth). I find it sad that while one segment of the population is buying up houses to spend a few weekends a year in, the middle class and below is supposed to be content to live in a quarter of a house - a house that was once inhabited by a single family on a single income, now split into four units each with a family scraping by on two incomes. We cannot continue to discuss this housing crisis without addressing the gross wealth disparity that is continually perpetuated throughout the state. Let’s regulate that and then we can talk about zoning.
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@SK but that's what they want to do to the rest of the state - make single fam homes into 4 and 6 plexes
This is a design problem for architects like me.
People would more readily accept multi family housing if they could be assured of total peace and quiet with decent light and air, and maybe a patch of earth to work with. They do not want to deal with unwanted noise, smells, or sights from neighbors.
This is mostly a matter of choosing appropriate construction materials, and solving three dimensional geometry problems. It might take a little more money, but not necessarily.
Realtors and developers usually sell visible features, not invisible ones like sound and smell proofing. As we all live closer together, this will have to change.
There will be fortunes to be made in products that support privacy in the coming decades.
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@Chris Agreed, a lot of the appeal of the single-family home is in peace and quiet. Last year we bought something we previously didn't know existed—a single-family home with no backyard, just a patio, packed in tightly with five other houses around a shared driveway. It's essentially a large townhouse with no shared walls. We didn't want the upkeep of a yard, but shared walls would've been a dealbreaker. This seemed like an ingenious solution. I'm sure architects can come up with even more creative ways to use land more efficiently without putting us all in apartments.
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@Mini And much of the rest of the appeal is in space. Space in the house itself, space in the yard, uncrowded streets.
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IMHO, the reason behind the failure of real estate reform in California is not people holding on to an outdated ideal; it's the structure of California politics. Real estate wealth is the backbone of the middle class in California. The owners accumulate wealth (i.e., equity (most of the time)), but so do landowners, developers, brokers, construction workers, retailers of construction supplies, retailers of home goods, etc. Several other large sources of wealth are gone, such as auto and airplane construction around LA, and port work in SF. In addition, many local companies have been bought out or closed, and their headquarters moved out of the state. Movies and tech work are flourishing, but are also substantially outsourced. All these factors give the real estate industry undue influence in state politics. As a result, we may be a blue state, and culturally liberal, but our politics are not very progressive on economic issues.
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"And what level of extreme unlivability is it going to take to finally convince us that there isn’t enough space for all of us to live as if space is infinite?"
Another way to address this would be to discourage couples from having more than the 2 children it would take to replace them. At the urging of Senator Rubio, Congress increased the tax deduction for each child. It would have been wiser for Congress to have increased the amount for only the first 2 children, and to have left the deduction the same amount that it used to be for any additional children.
Extra children (and the adults they become) lead to more pollution, more crowding in schools, parks, schools, hospitals, mass transit, and to more cars in bottleneck traffic. It means so many people jammed into a city that everyone tries to remain anonymous to the strangers around them out of fear that someone could harm them. People who live in densely-packed cities are afraid of being friendly. Many of us do not want to live like this.
Rather than having our tax system reward people for having lots of children, we should be encouraging everyone, out of consideration for each other and the planet, to have no more than 2.
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@ann We should also be providing free, readily available birth control for everyone who wants it.
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I’m not religious but a hearty “Amen!” to that, Ann!
Far too many people on the planet, If there’s something we should stop “fetishizing”, it’s babies.
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Maybe a tax break for not reproducing would be a good thing too
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I think it might be good to wait and see what the accessory unit permits do in California. Interesting idea and it might make it easier for one's children -or one of them -to have a home in the community.
People have already made the very accurate case that increased density is not equivalent to affordable prices.
I see people doubling up in lots of cities and trying to make it work. Good for them.
I have a detached single family dwelling with a garden and a pool. I am as happy as I have ever been. And it produces some environmental benefits-birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals abound. And I have very large trees oxygen producing trees as well. I try to stack my driving. I have a short commute. In my imminent retirement I plan to stay here for some years longer. The peace and security is very enjoyable. I've lived in apartments-once in Manhattan. I tasted the neighbor's cigarette smoke. I could never tolerate that again.
I do think that the suggestions about better soundproofing and insulation are on target if people are to accept multi unit housing.
One thing I do observe that worries me is that there is a lot of housing jealousy and resentment. Many older people worked hard to obtain and still work hard to maintain a house. Lots of people who object to " their carbon footprint " and waste of space " would move in in a heartbeat if they could afford it.
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I think that jealousy is more because younger people have worked just as hard, but didn’t get the rewards their parents and grandparents did. It’s not so much because you have something nice, it’s because they know the deck has been so stacked against them that they will never have that same opportunity, despite working hard.
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@Smilodon7 Younger people will, in time, inherit their parents' assets.
Wow! No one likes this proposal. I'm good with it. I live in a very fancy single family house with land in California. But would be just has happy in a rowhouse so long as I could have a fenced yard for the dog. You can have the amenities you want at higher density. I don't want to live in an apartment where I have to haul the wash to the local laundromat. But that isn't what's being proposed. When my kids were little I lived in a second floor apartment where I had to haul the kids and the wash down to a place to do the wash. That's miserable. But that's not what's proposed.
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There are many reasons I don't prefer single-family homes and sprawled neighborhoods.
I prefer a community park/garden to a private yard that encourages me to interact with members of my community. I want to see my family everyday without making plans and to share the load of domestic responsibilities and child rearing. I want to live in a modest space that is cheaper and easier to maintain that dissuades excessive accumulation. I would love to live without the hassle of a car in a community that is safe for pedestrians.
Complaints about the downsides of increasing density like less parking, bad traffic, or crowded schools, are about issues that are easily addressed by public policy if the political will existed. Changing neighborhood character can be uncomfortable, but a bit inevitable. Communities are rarely static because new generations will change their character as much as migrants.
As long as we chose single-family homes over dense housing, home prices, rents, and environmental degradation, life will be harder for other people. We should be willing to give up a few yards and a little privacy before we jump to population control. I have lived in rural areas, in suburbs, and in city apartments. I can't relate to the lamentations here of lost privacy or peace and quiet. The country, the burbs, and the city all have their sounds, and as far as privacy lost, I suppose I won't be able to walk around my fenced-in yard naked, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
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I live in Idaho and we have 23,000 people in our entire county, which is 2600 sq miles. Maybe people should not congregate in one city or state, our country is huge and I have never understood the desire to live amongst millions of other people. We have jobs and cheap housing, maybe let the market dictate where people migrate too. If I lived in LA and was getting tired of commuting 2-3 hours a day, I might think about living somewhere else, and luckily we live in a country where this can happen.
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I agree with Mr. Manjoo. Many Californians seem to have a closed gate mentality: I've got mine, never mind who comes after me. I am a native Californian who has traveled widely, and lived in a number of large cities. Apartments do not have to be skyscrapers, but three and four story buildings can house a lot more people, greener, than sprawling suburbs. Reduces the need for cars and addresses the ridiculous housing costs that are creating more and more homelessness. Nothing to do with immigrants, but with outdated zoning policies.
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I agree and am saddened that this comments section seems to be majority-against the editorial. Come on, sharing a little space is the least we could do towards affordable housing and climate action. I’d like to add that lawns are just so wasteful. No one even walks on them and hardly anyone except maybe kids uses them for sports or play. They require SUCH a waste of water! Especially in California they should incur a tax. As for gardens, how about roof ones instead? Community gardens can be a great way to bloom a happy local sociability.
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The writer's heart is in the right place, but he's arguing with the wrong reasons.
He says, we're running out of space, but are we really? There are plenty of space to build, just not in the location that you want it.
And then he befuddles the argument with gentrification, but what does that have to do with single-family homes? (In fact, redevelopment of multi-story properties would almost certainly be luxury condos, hence accelerating the pace of gentrification.
He adds his own story as anecdote that because prices have become so expensive, he chooses to stay put in the townhouse without a yard. But, he could have had chosen to move further out afield to get a bigger house and front/backyard, with prices that are much lower. The prices are thus a coefficient to the location rather than the size.
Don't get me wrong, I do think higher density is a far more efficient way to accommodate the increasing population without constantly tear down and rebuild new properties. In fact, yes if the zoning change has gone through, even with just allowing an existing single-family to 2-family, CA could have doubled its housing stock in a heartbeat. It would have retained the neighborhood character, gentler impacts to the environment (less driving, less cars on the road, less CO2), allowing more people to live closer to where they work.
Arguing the right thing with the wrong arguments can oft have opposite effect when people will shut their ears. Pity.
8
I prefer to live in self-selected groups of 5 to 10 people, and laws in San Francisco and other cities make this difficult. There should be single-family areas, but those who want to live more economically and sustainably should also be free to do so. One advantage of group living is that it's easier to share information and be informed about your community.
On population, many demographers believe global population will level off, as women want fewer children. Part of the reason is that people are moving to cities, where children do not contribute to income but are a serious expense. So we aren't facing a permanent exponential population increase and Malthusian starvation crisis.
3
It might partly be that in many other areas, apartments are situated so that you can easily raise children. Here, Many apartments are 1 bedrooms or studios, and they are always along busy roads with no shared play area or nearby park.
5
How about we think of ways to stimulate more economic activity outside of a handful of large cities in the US? I am not sure that SF homes are the enemy here. If anything, venture capital has created the housing mess we now have in the Bay Area, by pumping a lot of capital into companies that for some reason, believe they can't do their work anywhere else in the U.S.
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At least let us stop fetishizing “landscaping” and lawns, and let a bit of wild nature into our yards and life. Imagine houses, nestled into the wild, not glaringly misplaced, and a chance to stem the loss of biodiversity. We don’t need higher density. We need fewer people.
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@Samantha Kelly I totally agree with this. A number of people in my neighborhood have made this change.
2
That didn’t work too well for the residents of Paradise, CA.
@Samantha Kelly In California, that's the very best recipe for having your house destroyed by a wildfire. And possibly you or your family being killed by that fire.
As usual Farhad, you've nailed the main point: the 60s model of endless suburbs, freeways, and cars is broken in California. You've got the pitch all wrong though.
Apartments in dense, walkable areas are expensive because people *like* them. I'm one of those people, and I enjoy walking to work rather than losing my sanity in traffic, devoting time to friends and family rather than yard work, and the general liveliness of having others around.
Single family homes are great too though, and scolding people for liking them is a losing strategy. If you like your house, great, you should keep it! Nobody is suggesting we bulldoze your home to build some high rise Soviet apartment block. You don't own the entire city though, and you shouldn't be able to prevent other people from building and living in the type of housing that they prefer.
Cities need to grow and adapt with the times to stay healthy, Trying to freeze them in time to satisfy people's nostalgia is a great way to kill them.
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I agree with you with one clarification. Keep like housing together. Zone some areas multi-family, but not on a block with all the rest being single family. It stands out and is not consistent with the neighborhood that everyone there bought into.
I’ve seen some great downtown redevelopment projects around the country, like Atlanta, that look old rail right of ways and abandoned warehouses and made it into a phenomenal place to live, work and recreate. Win-win.
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@Paul H. I agree, to a point.
I'm all for redeveloping abandoned areas like you describe. But we should also allow gradual infill in already successful areas so they can densify organically and accommodate newcomers.
We certainly shouldn't drop a five story apartment building in the middle of a 100% single family neighborhood. On the other hand though, if I buy a single family house near a lively main street, I shouldn't be surprised if nearby properties gradually convert to multifamily in response to the area's popularity.
Transforming quiet neighborhoods overnight is no good, but neither is trying to freeze them in time forever - high demand plus limited supply means they end up filled with old timers and rich people, with no room for anyone else.
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@AaronB Some of us enjoy yard work.
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Zoning changes in areas that already have transit, or in areas with a legally binding commitment for transit, or in designated block areas that are due for redevelopment. Zoning changes where communities favor such changes. Otherwise let the price of housing serve as a market signal to move jobs and housing to other areas of the state or country. Lots of affordable housing in many parts of America. Subsidize housing in apartment blocks, condos, etc at some income level, preferably with ownership potential. Investment in high speed transit, plus sustainable development in underdeveloped parts of the state. Not everyone will be able to afford to live in NYC, LA, SF, Seattle etc. Top priority for subsidized housing for teachers, firefighters, police, and a host of other professions needed to make a city work. Supply increased where possible, subsidy for critical personnel, public supported housing for some number of low income workers with ownership possible, and less demand when people move to other parts of country/state due to prices.
I lived in apartments for a good portion of my life. I grew tired of inconsiderate neighbors who have little regard for anyone beyond their own immediate personal needs. I have noticed this behavior primarily among the younger generations who seem to have a toxic self absorption. Yes I know that the old like to blame the you but it does seem that basic manners of social consideration have declined.
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Where has the writer been? Cities and counties (and state legislators) all over the US are grappling with this issue. And they’re finding it’s more complicated than “a fetish” for single family housing. These same governments are the ones who since the 70s turned planning and zoning into a fetish of rules to encourage and protect single family houses. It’s going to take awhile to reverse that, especially because a house is the greatest wealth for most Americans. Still, there is progress: five-plexes in neighborhoods. Urban renewal with apartment complexes, some low-income, tiny houses, mother-in-law apartments. Meanwhile, a big source of resistance to urban and suburban “infilling” is something the writer doesn’t even mention. Where ya gonna put all the additional cars? Will you expand sewage treatment or bring in enough water? What about public schools? Shouldn’t you address these problems first? The whole problem is like America 2020. No easy solution but really easy to opine about.
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if higher density leads to Less expensive housing, Why are Hong Kong and Singapore so expensive? the Clearly, there needs to be a holistic approach to the housing issue. a good place to start Is to find a city that works well, And use what is adaptable to American culture.
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@Nerka writes: "Why are Hong Kong and Singapore so expensive?"
-------
And having visited both places, I can say that I certainly wouldn't to live in that kind of environment.
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Slum it in a townhouse he owns? In Seattle these new townhouses go for $800k- between 3-6 on a typical single family lot. I don’t think the residents consider them slums and they haven’t improved affordability. But the developers are very happy.
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I like my single family home and the quiet and privacy it provides. I work hard for this small reward to my standard of living. Calling my preferences a fetish is an insult. This law wants to homogenize living. There are those who prefer urban living with the excitement of hubbub, stores, restaurants, etc. I don’t tell them how to live. Please don’t ruin the parts of California that allow for individuality.
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Yes, the typical American suburb has a lot of negatives. But please don't ask me to live without quiet, solitude, a garden, and some connection with the natural world. I spent years trying to tolerate leaf blowers, lawn mowers, insanely loud music, construction, revved-up engines, and motorcyclists who were only happy when they deafened everyone in the neighborhood. Finally acknowledged that, for me, the toll on my physical and mental health were simply too great, and moved further out. If you can somehow place a high rise apartment building next door to me without blocking my sunshine; without forcing me to listen to dozens if not hundreds of automobiles firing up in the morning and returning in the evening, with their attendant CO2 emissions; without imposing the sounds of their blaring TVs and AC compressors and oil deliveries, then we'll talk. If not, please have the grace to acknowledge that your criteria for quality of life aren't everyone's. And have you ever researched the direct correlation between percentage of paved land and decline in water quality?
You correctly identify a problem, and your objectives are admirable, but your solution is simplistic.
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I’d recommend looking at some examples of “soft density.” What you’re looking for is being achieved around the world, and it’s actually very exciting!
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"When my family emigrated from our native South Africa to Southern California in the 1980s, my parents, my sister and I fell hard for this state’s endless suburban sprawl."
Ironic. The sprawl and environmental damage in this country is exacerbated by too much immigration.
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@semaj II
Also ironic or perhaps just hypocritical: Manjoo's past opinion articles advocating unlimited migration from places like South Africa (and every other foreign country) into the United States.
Manjoo also complains, in other articles, about crowding and environmental degradation in California. And how he can't live in as big a house with a big lot as others do in California. It never dawns on him that he is a cause of the problems he whines on about.
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I grew up in a single- family home but haven’t lived in one for the last 35 years. It holds absolutely no attraction.
Instead, I’ve been raising my family in co-housing. 27 households, each with our own townhome on 2.5 acres of land and surrounded by another 2.5 acres of common greens, a huge garden, an orchard, a play ground and a stream. We also share a common house with a large kitchen, dining room, kids playrooms, lounge, exercise area, laundry and guest rooms.
Having close relationships with neighbors is a true highlight, yet I’ve also got space of my own. After 17 years of sharing the yard work and the gardening and the snow-shoveling with neighbors, I would never consider living somewhere I had to do it all myself. Nor would I want to buy and own the many things we can easily share. Looks like twice the hassle and half the pleasure!
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@SJN there was nice co-housing where I used to live, but it was for low to to very moderate income only. Most have income limits and that means it excludes those who may want to live in co-housing but exceed the income limits.
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Interesting. We’re dealing with opposite. There are so many people attracted to this lifestyle (and our area) that the housing prices have doubled in my community. Still, co-housing is often created by a group of people who decide to look for land and build. The group sets the parameters. When my community was built, there was special attention given to creating a variety of house sizes so people of differing incomes could live together.
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My family of four recently traded in a big house with a big yard to an apartment. I could not be happier. More space brings with it more junk and more problems. We used to drive everywhere. Now we take public transit, and not dealing with the car is itself a relief.
We need to come to terms with the fact that the spacious house with a yard is a status symbol, not something that makes life more comfortable, especially when you have to strap into a car to get absolutely anywhere at all, even to grab a coffee or go to a children's playground.
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@LV you make a good point Housing needs are not static over a lifetime. People needs change during different phases of their lives. There is no fixed solution, and the insistence of one over the other serves no one. There needs to be a variety of housing options to serve those needs. At some points in life a spacious house with a yard fits, especially if you have several adults living in it such as a multi generational house and in other phases it does not - such as if there are only a couple of people living in it as they age.
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@LV I think for many people who love a house, the idea is to "grab a coffee" in one's own well-stocked kitchen.
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@Blair exactly. And take it outside and sit with peace and quiet and look at well tended flower beds with native plants nourishing bees, butterflies and the like.
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California can adsorb most of Nevada and Oregon - then the single family structure with 1/2 acre plot will work! /s
Can this be done? While we are ate this let us merge those states with tiny population, population density and/or land mass.
This might fix the Republic.
1
I agree that fewer single-family homes need to be built going forward. But we need to do it wisely (and make it affordable and inclusive) and make sure that these new population areas have adequate parking, transportation, food, stores, etc., and that people won't be so packed-in that they become stressed. (Not sure about you, but ever had a neighbor above you stomping around day and night? Or kids or pets running and jumping around while you're trying to sleep or read? Ever had your neighbor's thumping music or an ever-present TV blasting constantly?)
But to not mention the population problem in California (and the world for that matter) in conjunction with the housing and environmental crisis is negligent. With an economy based on growth, this is unlikely to change, but it desperately needs to. I did my part and chose not to have children, but I do have rescued animals and we sure like our backyard! My backyard is small, but it's an absolutely necessity to my sanity and my safety. (I don't own, I rent.) I've lived in apartments before, most of my life in fact, and walking my dog late at night, sometimes in the middle of the night, so she can relieve herself is not something I plan on doing again. Being near trees and birds and having a garden that is a quiet space to get away from the world is essential to my mental health.
Some can and like living in communal situations, but it's not for everyone. And that doesn't make it a fetish.
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I live in an area that would be affected by SB 50. I would be fine with such a law if the transit that SB 50 imagines is in place actually existed. But it doesn't. I would love for the San Francisco Peninsula to operate like Switzerland--where parking is available at peak times everywhere because not that many people have cars--but our transit is a joke in comparison. So dictating denser development around non-existent transit services is a bad idea. When the state spends on transit, people will support higher density.
15
Oh Brother ... so desiring a single family home is like a vegan eating meat, wanting a coal energy plant or owning a gas guzzling car ?? In the author's world, he would have the government dictate the scope of the community one lives in - period. I am not suggesting single family housing with a back yard is integral or mandatory for all - but let us chose. I grew up in NYC in a high high density area. I am thrilled to be out in the 'burbs'. If some people choose to live in a city - well that's their choice. Don't tell me or hinder my ability to live where I want to live. Live and let live dude, glad you love your little town house. We have a very fulfilling suburban life style and my kids aspire to the same.
28
Opposition to rezoning is not about the fetishization of the single family home. Its about homeowners worrying about wealth destruction if the value of their primary asset falls because a giant apartment building goes up in their back yard.
Rezoning can be a form of regulatory taking, in my opinion, and it's not fair to let the government just steal the value from homeowners. Of course, you can say the risk of rezoning is always there, and when you buy a home you're taking on that regulatory risk, but I don't think we really expect the ordinary citizen to be cognizant of this idea, especially for people who purchased property long before rezoning was ever a political issue.
29
Come on! Zoning is and has always been political. It is cloaked in some semblance of civil engineering but if engineers designed cities, they wouldn’t look like any of the ones in most suburbs. Anyone buying a house should know something about the world before they buy the most expensive thing they’ll ever own. No one guaranteed your house would always remain a good investment. If they did, you are probably gullible.
A community of mixed multi- and single-family houses on less than enormous lots can work well. Children are free of the need for autos and auto-transportation. Such communities are not new: often in the US, and abroad, they are earlier suburbs that predate 1945.
4
More failed third-world ideology. When there are multiple families or unrelated people in a dwelling it is called an apartment, not a house.
21
I live in LA and I totally get what you're saying, never mind all the haters in the comments.
My wife and I caught the last train to middle class homeownership in the mid 90s. There is no way we could buy our current house at its current value. We were the last of the lucky middle class homeowners. Which okay, great. But what about the next generation?
My wish is really for my daughters, who were born and raised in LA and who deeply love this city. They and their friends just want to live here forever, and they'd be at peace with a high rise condo. SB 50 would do a world of good for their generation, if it could ever get passed.
13
@Bernie curious - what are the condo fees on high rise condo's in LA? Are they affordable to the young who want to purchase in a high rise community?
7
@Bernie I have heard conservative estimates that if seismically active L.A. experienced an 8.0 earthquake, there'd be six feet of broken glass on the downtown sidewalks. High rises are for New York.
5
12 feet.
I grew up in a single-family 3-bedroom suburban house. I love living in a 2-bedroom apartment in the city and raising my daughter here. We have friendly and thoughtful neighbors and we all look out for each other, accept each other's packages, etc. We don't have a backyard, but we have parks. And we leave much less of a carbon footprint than my childhood home did.
14
Let’s get rid of the mortgage interest deduction and, at the same time, not tax the capitol gains when the property is sold. Also remove the deductions for state income taxes and charitable deductions (benefitting only the rich).
In California, get rid of raise taxes to account for the increase in value and do not cap the increase. This only encourages large buildings and large houses.
In addition, at the local level tax single-family homes at a higher rate than multi family homes. Then the market will respond, producing more multi family housing, which is environmentally more sound. Add to that reduced taxes for multi family developments within 1000 meters of a transit hub.
Single family homes encourage lower density, increase pollution and damage the environment more.
3
@Marco Andres The federal mortgage interest deduction is already gone. So is the ability to deduct most state and local taxes. Many Californians' income taxes therefore went *up* in the most recent "tax cut for the middle classes." Mine included. As for reducing taxes on multi-family homes and the capital gains tax for selling them--which are paid by the building owner, not the renters--I am sure landlords would love that.
8
Looks like a lot of people here are still fetishizing the single-family home, regardless. Most of them complain about a lack of privacy. I lived in Europe for a decade, and enjoyed living in flats with neighbors above and below. Buildings were mostly made of brick or stone, with thick walls, and flats had balconies facing onto inner courtyards that are like small parks. They were nicely designed and well-constructed. They had basements for storage space; each flat had its own storage space. Neighbors were pleasant and it was good to know that there were there, should there ever be an emergency. In contrast, apartment buildings in the U.S. are cheaply made and poorly designed: thin walls, dark interior corridors with no windows, little to no landscaping or park space, rickety outdoor staircases in some places, and above all, lousy noise insulation. American construction standards are definitely sub-par. Maybe if we adopted stricter standards for building flats, they might be more desirable places to live. But then I suppose real estate developers wouldn't be making money hand over fist, and would complain about the expense of being held to higher standards.
53
“[In Europe the flats] were nicely designed and well-constructed. . . . In contrast, apartment buildings in the U.S. are cheaply made and poorly designed“
You nailed it. Apartment buildings, per se, aren’t bad. Where I grew up, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, there were plenty of gorgeous old apartment buildings, many of them brick. I lived in one during my senior year of college.
But the apartment buildings being built in Seattle — all over Seattle — now? Boring, bland, or outright ugly. And the same is probably true for new apartment buildings in the Twin Cities.
8
@Jim I used to live in a pre-war apartment building in Brooklyn. I was kept awake because one of my neighbors was usually up all night playing video games at maximum volume. Then there were the people next door who kept their garbage around too long and had an apartment full of roaches which spread to our apartment despite spraying. I'll keep my single family home, thank you very much.
2
Thanks for this! As a millennial renter in a high COL area (who grew up in a rural single family home) you've articulated what many of my friends are feeling. We're happy to live in a smaller space to take advantage of some of the accommodations of a city (frequent transit, bike lanes, shared open spaces, and shops nearby).
Seattle recently passed some "upzoning" legislation in urban villages and transit corridors. When everything is walkable, bikeable, or available via transit, you don't need a ca. New townhomes/apartments in these areas are desirable and sell and rent quickly.
While the city alone can't absorb all the growth our region is experiencing (we need the suburbs to upzone around transit corridors as well), it's a good start and rental prices plateaued in early 2019 as supply started to meet demand.
11
One thing I've noticed with the push for density and eliminating single family housing and zoning is that the advocates never seem to talk about what could go wrong. The arguments always assume that the changes will bring down prices, increase equality, and make wonderful neighborhoods of diverse people all holding hands.
As a homeowner, I understand that things have to change. But I don't think it's unreasonable to be skeptical of developers and landlords when zoning is opened up.
12
@Steve S They also never seem to understand that a walking and public transit lifestyle is not suitable for anyone not healthy enough to lug a week's worth of groceries around by themselves, let alone if they are using a walker. Also, parents like yards for their kids to play in.
16
@Frances Grimble or that family size changes over time. When I was single and working I happily lived in apartments. Then I got married after retirement, then my sister and her son moved in with me. So I had to substantially up size my housing size in retirement to accommodate the privacy needs of four adults.
In my own small community a few retired couples have had adult children move back into their home. Lucky they had an extra bedroom! I have four adults in my own home so no way would I live in apartment crammed together.
3
What I don't get is why single-family homeowners think they have a "right" for nothing to change because "that's the way it was" when they bought there. A lot of us have worked hard to be able to afford a home - and then the people at the front end of the boom, or people with foreign cash, or corporations looking for assets to buy and hold bought politicians, changed laws, bought up the property by leveraging corporate assets, all kinds of shenanigans that put the rest of us at a disadvantage. Suddenly, we have no "right" to somewhere to live? Why do they think their "right" supersedes everyone else's?
9
@Sara Well, I actually didn't get the home I really wanted till I was 60 (and my husband was 64). And yes, we both worked hard and saved. And we had to leave the San Francisco Bay Area to do it. Don't assume everything is rosy for everyone else.
17
@Frances Grimble Who said things were rosy? If you'll note, I am addressing California single-home owners who are fighting to be sure no other housing is built because they like it that way. Too bad! Those of us who work here and whose work is not portable need somewhere to live besides under the freeway. And we're not spring chickens.
2
@Sara I just don't want to see my life's savings evaporate. Any plan will have to take the current stake holders into consideration.
7
I agree that the housing mix could be improved, but the claim that single family homes are obsolete needs more evidence than merely noting that California has a large and growing population or that somehow high density housing is more ecologically friendly. The picture seems to me more complicated. For instance, solutions like high density housing obscure the very worrying fact that human population growth remains unchecked. People feel that their childbearing choices are entirely personal, and as long as this urgent conversation remains taboo and population continues to surge, all solutions as to how to house this population will be inadequate. The emergence of highly contagious viruses and superbugs also casts a pall over the idea of high density housing. In short, while I agree that California's housing situation is far from optimal, I disagree that the only or best solution is high density housing.
23
“People feel that their childbearing choices are entirely personal, and as long as this urgent conversation remains taboo and population continues to surge, all solutions as to how to house this population will be inadequate.“
Exactly! A comparison would be only talking about what we need to do to adapt to rising sea levels (due to climate change) with any discussion about how to limit those rising sea levels considered taboo.
1
@AG the author asserted his position on this is the comments. Here is his response to this very same question:
A commentator: -----"here are two levers here: population and housing. You can manipulate either or both to achieve a desired result."
The authors response: "@Jim56 I’m ... not keen on manipulating the population lever."
1
The single family home in a nice, quiet, leafy suburb is the apex of the American Dream. Why would anyone want to regress to multi family housing?
34
I think Mc Mansions are unnecessary but there is nothing wrong with a smaller sfh. Families of four or five lived in 900 sq ft homes at one time (3bd 1ba), but that may be too small these days. There is nothing like having no one over or under you in a living space.
20
I love my single family house in a single family neighborhood in San Francisco, and want to keep it that way. I selected the location because it was zoned that way.
AirBnB is bad enough. If housing is too expensive for you, go to a neighboring city or state. Or, to Manhattan. As the Trump crowd would say, don't tread on us, my neighbors and I have rights too.
38
Imagine the impact on national politics if solidly blue states like California, New York, Washington and Oregon each shed 4 million left-leaning residents who moved to battleground states. Talk about a win-win.
34
I love my single family home because I have a small yard where I can have a vegetable garden. I grow lettuce, garlic, tomatos, peppers, squash, peas. My yard is also wildlife friendly. Lots of shrubs & trees for the birds and weed beasties. Lived in apts for years, would never go back.
57
@Cynthia exactly. So well put. I lived in rented apartments for my entire 25 year career, and when I retired, I moved into a single family home. I now feel connected to the earth because it is one story and I can literally take one step down and into my glower beds. Can't do that living in apartments, especially the upper floors - even in so called "garden apartments". I always felt disconnected to the earth living in apartments.
13
Denser housing will be acceptable as long as there's space for kids to play and adults to relax outdoors. Outside of urban neighborhoods where the whole appeal is to walk right out onto the sidewalk and down a street full of restaurants and bars, people will want that stuff. But that doesn't require an acre of land per house.
A small yard or deck with space for outdoor seating and a grill, plus a central play area where the kids can run in a pack, actually recreates a 70s neighborhood better than a row of McMansions where nobody goes outside.
11
No thanks! I am lucky to have worked outside of California in my younger years. Once, on a project abroad, the company put me up in a high rise building, 16th floor. Yes, the place had everything, views, balcony, and noise and ants from my upstairs neighbor, and on the occasion, the elevators were out. No thanks! When I got back home, the first thing I did was save to buy my own little house.....My parents are so happy in the single house my parents own, fig, orange, lemon and avocados trees and the brick oven my dad built for our regular bbq get togethers. It took me 2 hours on Sunday to drive over and visit my dad, but once I got to his place, and I drank my beer, he sipped his wine while I did the bbq, life was perfect. Life is perfect when I get home and I sip my drink while looking at my garden after a difficult day at work. Not everyone wants the townhouse. Not everyone wants the highrise floor. Not me. No thanks!
36
@farhad manjoo, there are ways to do this that are even less disruptive to existing neighborhoods: just mandate a doubling of allowable density everywhere. A single family home neighborhood now allows duplexes; a low-rise area allows somewhat higher densities. We don’t need tall towers everywhere overnight, we just need to allow new construction where there is already construction, and back it up with better infrastructure. People understandably don’t want their neighborhoods changed by developers and state legislators who don’t understand local issues.
A simple doubling is an example of incremental development that, applied broadly, would allow housing a ton more people without disrupting existing inhabitants or fundamentally altering character.
And ultimately, what’s you’re missing here is that everyone benefits! More housing of all types means that any one type of housing gets cheaper, including existing single-family homes!
6
@J.D. Zamfirescu The two phrases "housing a ton more people" and "without disrupting existing inhabitants or fundamentally altering character" are not logically consistent.
19
@J.D. Zamfirescu adding a "ton more people" impacts everything from water and sewer, electrical grids, roads, schools, environment, fire suppression efforts, the need for more stores - the whole deal. There is no such thing as adding a lot more people and not changing the character. I can see that right here in my own one small town - population of 3,000. There are a "ton" of new houses being built in this area and it is impacting everything - to include providing water and sewer services, roads - everything.
12
@Mary there are a ton of new houses built in your small town because every large town near you has probably blocked new construction. So instead of spreading growth equitably, it gets concentrated in places that can’t handle it — precisely because they often lack the infrastructure to say no.
You small town growing from 3000 to 3300 — what would probably happen over 10 years under this proposal, and more than enough to house everyone new in that time — would have a far lower impact than what you are observing today.
how much space do we all need? i think based on some of the responses, we need to be better neighbors. i know that i am going to come off as self righteous because i am going to say i live in a 16’ x 8’ tiny house. i am not saying that should be the standard, however i do think more places should be zoned for tiny houses, and i do think with what we know about climate change, people should be thinking smaller (not necessarily tiny, but i work in Danville, and some of the houses in the area are ridiculously big.). i just think having money shouldn’t justify using more than our fair share of resources.
8
@Jo De do you live alone in that 16' x 8' space? If so, that may not be as efficient as several people living in a larger space.Utility services must be run to your tiny place in the very same manner as they do in a larger place housing more people - so no saving there. The permit is probably the same price. You also need water and sewer (unless in an area not zoned for that), so that is the same process too. If you have several people sharing those same services in more appropriate sized home that seems more efficient than a group of solo dwellers in their tiny homes all needing the same services as homes that have more occupants that are a bit bigger.
7
What is a fair share and who is going to make that determination? And will the fair share be advisory or imposed on the populace via government fiat?
2
I've lived in an apartment, I've lived in a townhouse, and I've lived in a suburban single-family home. The single-family home wins, hands down. I will never go back to living in multi-family dwellings.
41
The single family home is not out dated. Multifamily, high density housing near transit lines will not work for all families. High density multifamily works for Dual Income No Kids (DINKs), Young families, students and some elderly. We really cannot talk about housing without discussing more advanced intelligent transportation networks.
20
It might be outdated in California, but not in America. In America, we don’t believe in being packed together like sardines. And in America, we like to plant and cultivate flowers and trees and vegetables in our own big or little garden. And we like a little elbow room here in America. If you Californians want to squeeze together like too many peas in a pod, feel free. And for you Californians who happen to be Americans, come join us.
25
we Californians are as American as you-- how dare you imply otherwise? Most Californians will never leave our state in the USA to move to any other state. our perfect weather, natural beauty and open minds and hearts -- add up to a great place to live an American life.
@ehillesum Californian’s see no need to limit immigration so perhaps they can stay in CA while their population goes to 45,50, 60 million over the next decades. Good luck with that.
3
The single family house is a "fetish"? What about the equally faddish infatuation with urban living? Which lifestyle actually gets social media and social engineering endorsements? Which shows up in trendy discussions about what's currently hip and signals the right political posture?
How about let people do what they like, as long as they can pay for their preferences?
39
Single family zoning is literally the definition of not letting people do what they like. If I have a plot of land and want to build a home for 3 families, I should be able to. That’s what freedom is.
4
Lucas, you could say the same for building codes (not codes for safety, but for design.) If I have a plot of land next to your plot of land and want to build a hideous—looking house, paint it bright lime green and store wood pallets and junked cars in my front yard, I should be able to because freedom!
2
@Lucas Munson You can move to an area zoned for multi-family homes.
2
Yes. Let's further destroy the environment. Or is there a plan in place to limit the sprawl that results from high urban density? Ever look out the train window, while riding from NYC to Philadelphia? The two cities may as well be considered a single municipality.
No. The problem is population.
32
Wonderful piece on all counts. Thank you!
2
The author pretends to be bold when he talks about the need to do away with single-family zoning but gets squishy when he starts using euphemisms such as "low-income areas sensitive to gentrification."
Either we've got ourselves a crisis or we don't. If suburban homes need to be bulldozed then why not homes in "sensitive" areas too? In fact, it probably makes sense to demolishing homes in those areas so developers can get cracking on 10-story apartment buildings.
You can't remake the state by wiping out single family housing then start worrying about niceties such as gentrification.
It's like worrying that you're making a town unlivable as you rush to give ever more people a place to live.
18
California is a REALLY big state; lots of room ! Not everybody has to live in Sunnyvale. They could live in Stockton, or Sacramento. Or Bakersfield. I was in Sonoma County last week; brand new commuter train, miles of space along the railway ....
11
@Charles Better yet, they could live in Phoenix, Memphis or Rochester.
1
So because more people want to move here, those who are here have to suffer more? Live with less? I get that its the way of the future, but why be forced into it? Nobody is saying housing isn't ridiculous. What we're saying is don't force me to eat the negative externalities I didn't create.
29
SB 50 would have allowed higher density development in very specific areas. It would not come close to eliminating single-family neighborhoods. We have more than enough sprawling single-family neighborhoods. We have very little good urban higher density places which is why cities like San Francisco are so expensive to live in. Higher density locations can provide a wonderful quality of life, and there are simply not enough of those kinds of places to satisfy the number of people wanting to live in them.
9
I am not terribly interested in telling people where to live, what kind of car to drive, etc.
But it is imperative that the price of our individual choices reflect the true costs of those choices. Therefore, gasoline, as one example, should be priced not at the cost of extracting and processing crude oil, but should also include the cost of undoing or completely containing the damage done to the planet.
And the cost of gasoline above extraction and processing should be mandated to be used for those ends.
8
Your view is totally right, but unfortunately voters generally resist it almost everywhere. Most uneducated people don’t understand the idea of externalities and the fake news extractive-industry-supported media are not interested in educating them on this point. They can’t fathom how there could be any benefit in higher gas prices. Economics and the big picture are not part of their kitchen-table chats.
1
California has "too many people and too few places for them to live ...."
No, California has too many people and too little water for any more people. Build housing in regions of the country with adequate water resources. More housing for more people in California will lead to a water disaster.
56
It's remarkable how self-sufficient and environmentally responsible a family can live on less than an acre - even a suburban lot can sequester carbon and reduce your community's footprint. Suburban farming makes FAR more sense than urban farming; but it is rarely written about. We need to open up our minds and our zoning restrictions and let it happen (and small-scale industry might also follow.) Agricultural productivity within the villages of Europe and much of the world reflects time-tested models of sustainability. Besides a garden, one can raise chickens, rabbits, goats, hogs, a family cow, feeder calves, various types of aquaculture, etc.. Less consumption and more production... all at home.
9
@carl bumba
We live on 2 acres in a subdivision in a semi-rural suburb. About 3/4 of the property is forest we leave untouched. The remaining half acre is box gardens for veggies, pollinator gardens, chickens, and a lawn that we've sown with clover for the bees and which we neither water with sprinklers or artificially treat with chemicals.
We are lucky to live somewhere that allows this and where it is common.
10
My new neighbors have endorsed the livestock in the backyard idea, but have it overcrowded with pigs, sheep, chickens, cows, a horse etc. (on maybe 3/4 acre?) There were no animals there for the first 25 years I lived here. The pens are filthy and the stench sometimes makes my yard unbearable. Manure just gets tossed in the creek by the property. There is almost no zoning here - before you encourage the 'green acres' route, make sure you have some checks to ensure other people don't have my problem.
8
@muddyw
The "green acres" route may very well be needed if we are to live sustainably. This may include odors and visuals objectionable to non-agrarian people (who often like agrarian products). It's unfortunate that your neighbors don't seem to be managing waste well. But it can also be seen as unfortunate that there were no livestock animals (and presumably no agriculture) there for at least 25 years. Such a waste. Think of all that beautiful grass growing in expansive lawns, just to be cut and thrown away! (Anyone who raises grazing animals thinks like a grazing animal; domestication is a two-way process.) IMO, if our needs aren't being met in the spaces we occupy in a sustainable manner we will continue to see the destruction of the environment.
1
I'll stop fetishizing single-family homes when developers start putting sufficient sound insulation into multi-family homes. Today, it is woefully insufficient.
82
@Polaris - agreed - also when developers put impenetrable allergen/airborne irritant barriers in multi-family homes. The biggest issue I face (as one highly sensitive to airborne pollutants) in a multi-family building is second- and third-hand smoke coming through the walls from neighboring units.
6
modern condos and townhomes have extremely good sound insulation. I can't remember the last time I've heard a neighbor.
1
Not the apartments I’ve lived in!
I’ve lived in apartments, condo and now a small, vintage home. I love it and worked for years to afford it. You may be happy in a townhouse but it doesn’t suit everyone.
Californians are constantly told we must build more housing but where does it end? We’re already short of water, had rolling power outs in 100-plus degree heat. How many more people must be squeezed in — and if housing density solved all problems then NYC would have no housing issues.
How’s that working out?
40
@NJ The "rolling power outs in 100-plus degree heat" were caused by Enron, not population growth.
It is already legal to build multi family housing.
Building market rate housing doesn't raise anyone's income. And that is the problem, which you seem to be missing.
13
No thank you. I love my single family home.
SB 50 was a bill written to enhance the pockets of developers and Scott Weiner's pocket when he runs for re-election or higher office.
Before we create more housing density in the suburbs, FIRST, solve the traffic problems so we don't just add density AND more traffic.
SECOND, get the 70 or so transit districts in the Bay Area to work together so public transportation is viable. Today, if I wanted to commute to my former job in Silicon Valley by public transportation, it would be a bus to SF, then another bus to the CalTrain station, then a train to Silicon Valley and FINALLY, a shuttle from the train to work.
Total time 3+ hours.
Farhad, everything is not as simple as you make it seem.
And last, if the Bay Area were not an attractive place to live and work, then housing prices would be a fraction of what they are.
41
I have mixed feelings about Senate Bill 50. On the one hand, California does need a great deal more housing. On the other, the bill would destroy my neighborhood of single-family houses built in the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s. As soon as one developer built a single 8- to 12-unit condo on our street - the norm in nearby neighborhoods - homeowners would face the choice of selling out themselves, or watching condos rise above them.
A neighborhood that is a regional magnet for children on Halloween because of its flat, safe streets, its close-together houses and, frankly, its idealized, turn-of-the-century American neighborhood appearance, would quickly disappear.
Maybe that's for the best, in a societal sense, but it will not necessarily solve any housing crisis. Hundreds of apartments and condos are under construction in blocks adjacent to us; the newest units to go on the market are priced at $1.35 million. And even though near a light-rail station, they all provide parking; the buyers drive.
Planners rarely anticipate what the market will actually build.
20
Native New Yorker now living in the burbs. My wife and I bought our house to raise our family, mostly schools and space. We would have loved to stay in a 3BR/2BA apartment with turn of the 21st century amenities but those types of middle class apartments were, and remain, few and far between. We didn’t need much space, not even 2000 sq feet would have been more than enough for the four of us. Apartments that size just don’t exist, or if they do, are not affordable for the middle class.
23
I never understood the suburbs. I grew up on a small farm and I live on a small farm. But my wife works in Denver, 300 miles away. We have a small 1 bedroom condo in downtown that she uses as residence and office. We can walk to everything from groceries to museums to the vet for our dogs, and take the bus or light rail or a Lyft for anything else. Our retirement goal is to maintain both the city life and the rural life as long as we are healthy and then retreat to city where there are more resources. But the suburbs hold no attraction for me and never have. Sensible population distribution is high rise residential towers surrounded by parks and open space.
6
@Condelucanor "Sensible population distribution is high rise residential towers surrounded by parks and open space."
One man's "sensible" is another's discomfort.
30
@Condelucanor
Except that's not what's happening in Denver. We're getting the big apartment buildings, but not the parks and open space.
What was once one of the most vital and healthy of urban areas is having the life choked out of it.
29
@Condelucanor Sensible population distribution is high rise residential towers surrounded by parks and open space.
Reads ghastly, and the condo fees are even ghastlier.
No thanks. I like living in a one story home, grounded to the earth surrounded by flower beds with native plants - not some box in the sky.
To each his own.
13
It looks like those who owned big houses on large lots for many years now favor more compact living arrangements. And they want to force that ideal on the rest of us who only owned small houses on small lots or lived in apartments.
Just allow individuals to make their own choice in a free market. I'm not against zoning, but include all options.
16
If you believe increasing density will reduce housing costs to the end-user, see NYC. Oh but it will be a fantastic windfall for developers and city tax revenue.
55
@Judy Harmon Smith ,
Agreed. Here in Brooklyn the pace of building is fierce; all of ten or twelve units where once there was a brownstone with two units. Yet the price of everything is skyrocketing. The owners of the old stock, no matter how run down their units are, know what the owners of the new units are getting for them. So they jack up their rents to match.
Meanwhile the newer residents are mostly very transient since they agreed to pay a rent that demands too many sacrifices.
True, the old owners benefit in their twilight years. The younger ones eventually trade one mortgage for another in the suburbs. But the neighborhood is destroyed and the developers make out like bandits.
They all live in big homes in the suburbs.
19
@Judy Harmon Smith Now that tenant-paid broker fees are outlawed in NYC, all 25,000 of those brokers can move to California and help the next generation of migrants move into Mr. Manjoo's communal apartment utopia.
2
A very timely and sensible argument, coming quickly on the heels of The Economist's January 18th issue, with title, "The Horrible Housing Blunder; Why the obsession with home ownership is so harmful".
After I got divorced, many years back, I moved into a 2-bedroom apartment and let my (then pre-teen daughters) share the Master bedroom when they visited. I lived in the guest bedroom.
After 2 years, I bought a home, nearer to what was to become their High School than their Mom's home would be. Each daughter then had a private room that dwarfed the one they had formerly shared.
After years of extensive effort at maintaining that home and doing significant upgrades/enhancements in my spare time (I was handy, to a fault), how ironic it was to hear my older daughter say that she missed the apartment.
Other than the very belated discovery that once they reached High School, they could actually walk home to my house and thereby inconvenience neither me nor their Mother, I am hard pressed to identify any benefit to owning that home.
I overpaid when I bought it, and I was forced to sell after the market tanked in 2008, due to temporary unemployment.
I now have a good paying job, and rent a 700-sq foot apartment in a very nice, upscale apartment building only 7 miles away from a transportation hub.
I cannot dream of ever wanting to live in a bigger space again.
3
@Lou S. : and that is fine FOR YOU.
Nobody is telling apartment or condo lovers that they have to own a single family home.
I live far from overcrowded California, and housing prices here in the Rustbelt are relatively low. But we still have condos galore -- I see them being built continually! -- we have apartments -- we have very small single family homes (about 700-900 square feet and on tiny lots) from the 1950s -- we have larger homes including our fair share of McMansions. And everything in between.
People have housing needs and housing preferences, that change throughout their lifetimes.
The sad thing is that A. Farhad is pea green with jealousy that he can't have what he grew up with and B. he wants to therefore punish everyone else for this!
Hives are fine for some people. Others are happier with physical and psychological space. The fundamental problem is that there are too many people in general, and too many people trying to live in a few metro areas. No one complains about single family homes in Nebraska. It is far easier to solve the problems of a distributed work force than the housing problems in California.
29
I like a single-family home. I like the front yard, the backyard, someplace to put my cars, the privacy, the spaciousness, no one above me or right on my sides.
It's not like there isn't space enough in the USA and California, our third-largest state, for such homes.
Problem?
18
We live in a one-family house in a rural area. I am also somewhat of an introvert. So I prefer to live in a place where I have privacy and am not constantly experiencing involuntary contacts with other people.
For many years I lived in a downtown Manhattan apartment. What particularly upset me was the noise. Street noise would have been bad enough. But the vertical sound transmission from the apartments above and below me was a constant irritant. Plus the knowledge that the neighbors were (involuntarily) hearing my conversations.
I realize that in some cultures, sharing everything is considered desirable. But for me it isn't.
That said, if we're going to live in shared housing units, good sound insulation can help reduce the irritants. Most modern apartment buildings aren't built that way.
73
California’s coastal cities are at maximum capacity and economics is the only thing keeping another one hundred million from trying to move there. How about properly funding metal health care and job training with all those Silicon Valley and Hollywood billions?
11
Very tiresome. Fabulous that you love a townhouse. Bravo. Glad you had a great home with a backyard.
I personally live in an apartment. Love it.
Doesn't mean that I don't recognize the value of a single family home for those who genuinely want one.
The problem is over-population. Let's deal with that. When I was growing up (in a city home with a backyard), the world had less than 4 billion people and the West didn't feel compelled to accommodate overpopulated countries.
44
The problem is car-centric development.
13
@Mopar How dare we not want to walk everywhere?
1
The front lawn is the biggest waste. Years ago I lived in a colonial era townhouse in NJ, there were no front lawns, the townhouses were set right at the front sidewalk, but there were back yards for cookouts, gardens & kids & dogs to play in. On the High street there were store fronts on the first floor and family rooms above. Walk-able town centers - as opposed to sprawl - is a growing trend in Florida real estate development. Sometimes it pays to look back on what people did in an earlier era when they had less resources.
10
@Mr. Jones My husband and I have a large front yard and a small back yard. So, we planted a hedge for more privacy in the front yard. Various neighbors also have either hedges or fences. Problem of "useless" front lawn solved.
5
Having learned to live well in much smaller quarters than my historical 4br/4ba/4 acre residences of the past, now that I'm retired, I realize that smaller can still be comfortable, quite efficient and still comfortable and elegant.
I'm also reminded that it was said that movement to the suburbs was enabled by the government as a consequence of their concern post WWII that mass casualties could be a consequence of warfare and weapons developed during that conflict, and as a strategy to preserve a viable population. I suspect we have different threats today, namely energy efficiency, public transportation and resurgence of population centers with better health and security prospects than previously. That has not all been achieved of course, but single family residences as separate structures have been getting more closely spaced, so why not find ways to continue the move away from SFRs.
2
Right problem, wrong solution.
Rather than undermine local zoning rules, Californians should accept the fact that they are full up. Instead of fruitlessly trying to accommodate endless population growth, it is time for the state to shift to a stable population.
There is nothing “sustainable” about endless population growth.
At recent growth rates, the state is on track to double its population by 2100. Does anyone really think California will be a better place to live, or more sustainable, with 80 million rather than its current 40 million residents?
64
@Philip Cafaro My family owns a ranch in Colusa. They'll make a big profit when it gets sold to the Toll Brothers as everything from Redding to Bakersfield gets turned into endless urban sprawl. I'm sure that once they chop down the redwood trees, Eureka will become the heart of a great metropolis stretching from Bodega Bay to the Oregon border.
4
@Philip Cafaro How exactly does California shift to a stable population? Build a wall? Escort people out by gun point?
This is a thinly veiled anti-immigration argument, as Mr. Cafaro is a member of a close the borders organization. Also, projecting a constant growth rate 80 years into the future is a naive approach to estimating population trends.
1
Let's stop fetishizing unsustainable human population growth. If population growth requires an established population to upend many of the things they value, isn't it time to question the orthodoxy that human population growth is always and everywhere a good thing? The prevailing orthodoxy is built on Ponzi economics - a perpetual increase in the labor force is needed to pay for the needs and desires of other generations.
At 1% annual growth California human population grows to 55 million by 2050, to 90 million by 2100. One hundred years from now California' population would be 110 million, which exceeds the entire U.S. population in 1920.
Get a taste for soylent, because a back yard won't be the only thing you'll be losing.
54
This writer makes some excellent points. First, in many areas of down town dwelling, such as Philadelphia and other cities, there is no such thing as a single family residence as we would find in the burbs. Town houses in America, the UK, and other counties, even for the wealthy, have always been considered desirable housing. Many people are not interested in maintaining lawns and yards. Great! Such adjoined housing is perfect, especially if it comes with green spaces. But too many people think of adjoined housing as being akin to the ‘projects’. Not so. Each development can be uniquely attractive. We just need to get away from the desire to own land that most do not really want to properly maintain.
3
I'd suggest we curb (and gradually decrease) our human population growth so that we're at a solid, sustainable 5 billion in 6 generations or so. And then each of those 5 billion can have healthful food, clean water, fresh air, and green space to live and run around in.
35
@gbr
Not even close. Scientists think perhaps 2 billion people might be able to live sustainable decent lives on this planet. Reducing human numbers as quickly as possible should be our main goal. In this county that will be most easily done by drastically reducing immigration. Combined with universal birth control we have at best a slim chance.
7
Sounds good. Are you in for supplying the education and healthcare that would permit such an outcome?
@AL - 2 billion sounds even better to me! I’m all for it.
1
Instead of trying to maximized development near train and mass transit why not focus on suburbs? Lots in SoCal tend to be 5 to 10K sq ft. I see many old suburban developments where single-family houses from 20 to 100 years old are blighted and in need of replacement. A new model of development could replace those. It doesn't have to be high density. It could be higher density. Large yards are fun but wasteful and expensive to maintain. Higher density development like San Francisco's 2 flat Mission style houses with a shared garages and smaller back yards are just one thought. Sprawl and development only creates more traffic and eats up virgin land. It's time to limit sprawl and revitalize existing neighborhoods with replacement density that solves the housing crisis.
4
@E Instead, why not better public transportation within the suburbs and to nearby cities?
The reality is that single-family homes are not affordable in many places convenient to their workplaces. What do they do? They buy houses further away, with virtually no public transportation, ensuring that workers will spend hours in their cars.
When we became parents, we lived in a high rise co-op, in a location convenient to our work. Then we investigated schools. The local public schools were so poor that the state had taken them over. Private schools in the area cost $8,000 to $12,000 a year (not counting religious schools, which we were not interested in).
So we moved to suburbia, based solely on the public schools. We made a good purchase, and our house has tripled in value. There were so few townhomes available in this area that it was not a viable option. Most were limited to 55+ and we couldn't live there with a child.
Now, our kids cannot afford to live anywhere near us (except in our guest room), and we are ready to move into a townhouse of our own, so someone else can take care of the roof. Yes, our house will fund our retiremen (in part), but maybe we could have save more money if we had found a townhome that worked for us.
3
I continue to see plenty of housing built for the internationally wealthy in the form of multi unit buildings in Los Angeles. Much of it sits empty for the majority of the year as investment property. Why not expand the conversation to include this circumstance? Those same properties could house many people struggling today. It's isn't the established single family home that is the problem here, development is happening inequitably in favor of the wealthy. A by-project of what you are proposing is the demise of the middle class single family home owner's retirement plan, which is their home.
14
@Julia The silver lining is that these high priced, usually unoccupied units pay large property tax bills while their owners use very little in the way of municipal or state services. If someone is paying $40,000/yr in property taxes but rarely using the roads and other infrastructure, we are getting a big benefit. (The fact that this money goes down a seemingly bottomless pit is our fault as citizens, because we tend to reward happy-smiley or finger-waggery politicians instead of holding them to account on unsexy bread and butter issues.)
3
After living in teeny tiny very expensive Manhattan apartments for the past 15 years, I am now clearly fetishizing the single family home. I grew up in the NH boonies miles away from the nearest shop with hills too severe to ride a bike and too young to drive, and clearly overcorrected by moving to the densest city in America as soon as I could. I definitely see the appeal of something in the middle like a regular suburb of single family homes with a few condos thrown in. I certainly detest having a landlord, not owning my own dwelling and being unable to make even the most basic of life-altering positive improvements to my own living space.
30
Independent home owners are one of the few forces that limit the influence of people like Donald Trump on local affairs.
Landlords can engage in all kinds of shady practices and choose their tenants. Do we want cities run by a collection of Trumpian figures, or do we want them controlled by independent voters with a long term interest in their city's well being?
"The Economist" recently published a piece lamenting the policy "mistake" of promoting individual home ownership. The sentiment is so naive it is hard to call it merely naive. In their defense, they are not based in the USA and Europeans have different values, but the very American New York Times has no such excuse.
Individual homeownership contributes to personal liberty. The likes of Donald Trump already have way too much political influence.
24
@Alan I agree. Perhaps at the heart of this is the sentiment that landownership, and thus individual liberty, is a threat to some people. We are all under the thumb of many things, but owning your home make it one less entity to be under - a landlord. That feels pretty good but to others may indicate pose a threat.
15
I recently moved from a small single family home in a medium sized midwestern city where I had to drive to do almost anything. Everything was spread out, and though I could ride my bike for a few things, winter, distance and time were barriers.
I now live in the Bronx, in a neighborhood of immigrant families. I walk 5 minutes to work, 10 minutes to several different grocery stores, hardware store, library, post office, etc.
I’m in a beautiful old Art Deco apartment building, I chat regularly with many of my neighbors and people who work in the shops, and I love the freedom of not constantly fighting Mother Nature with a yard.
I firmly believe that everyone should be able to live where they work, or work where they live.
People who insist on commuting alone in cars 30 minutes or an hour or more are ruining our planet. Unfortunately, many people don’t have a choice because they work in wealthy areas, often in the “service” industry, and can’t afford to live there.
8
It’s nice to be able to walk to work, and I do while paying through the nose for the privilege, but I would take 30 minutes of highway driving for a commute over 30 minutes jammed into an overcrowded 6 subway train any day!
6
@TJ Good for you. It's great that in this country we have such a variety of living situations. Some people love the burbs. Some can't stand it. Free society, freedom of movement, freedom of choice - people self sort.
8
@TJ How much more are you now spending on rent?
High density walkable communities are overrated. There are maybe 10 people who actually think driving is more of a chore than walking, especially when the weather is not sunny and 68 degrees.
12
@Will I have a friend who lives on a small income. She excitedly moved to a "walkable" urban area about 12 years ago. She bought a very small house there. She can't afford a car. She expected to walk or bike everywhere. She has found out she can't. She buys vegetables at a farmer's market because they are cheaper, but it's a long trip by either bike or public transit, both of which make it hard to for her to transport bulky bags of groceries. She contracted a serious disease and her medical specialists are all at the other end of town. She can only afford to go to a dental school clinic, also far away. She strained a tendon and that makes biking painful. She constantly begs everyone for rides. She has friends who come by every weekend just to do errands for her all afternoon. Yet, she says she lives "carless."
11
So, because your one friend who lives carless has had unfortunate luck (I hope your friend is doing better) living without a car is completely off the table for everyone? it's a weak argument. Living without a car only works in some places and even then, you have to be dedicated to planning ahead, whether you are biking, walking or taking the bus.
2
@Patrick Living without a car does not work well for anyone not healthy enough to do lots of walking, biking, and standing up on public transit.
4
California is already over-populated. High density housing will only exacerbate CA’s excessive environmental impact. The state cannot supply reliable water or power to its residents. This is a decision that is best for the environment.
28
The power and water issues have nothing to do with overpopulation. 90 percent of water in the state goes to agriculture. Power cuts are caused by wildfires. Neither will change with population. Frankly, water usage would fall if farmland were converted to housing.
@Andy The Evil Almond! All that darned nutritious food being grown. And the dairy! THE DAIRY! We need forced veganism, which would stall the water crises for a couple generations while population growth continued unabated finally caught up and the water crises would be just as bad. And then what, more "innovation", more "adjusting".
1
We raised our 2 kids in a townhouse and it didn’t feel different from the single-family in which my sisters and I grew up. It has its own backyard, but as soon as they were old enough to go on their own around the corner to the park, they preferred that anyway because they could spontaneously meet up and play with other kids.
And to my delight, the association cuts the grass and clears the snow. I loathe yard work.
5
A bad neighbor in a condo is worse than a bad neighbor in a single family house. It's true that condos have rules, but it's not so easy to enforce them against a determined bad actor.
40
It's now easier to add garage conversions and Accessory Dwelling Units in single family home zoned areas. It might not solve all problems but can help. ( California Senate Bill 1069)
4
But don’t most of them get used as Airbnb rentals?
1
@Los Angeles local The guy crippled by addiction and brain disease who lives in a tent by the freeway doesn't suddenly move into a market-rate granny flat. And the renters of granny flats in prime neighborhoods will still pay dearly, while clogging the street with more cars at the same time.
1
It's the urban elite's vision for us all: stacked and packed in tiny condos, with no privacy or quiet.
69
@Will I actually think it's the rural elite who don't want to live too close to anyone else that are the most afraid.
7
@Ryan Rural people are more likely to know their neighbors than city dwellers.
2
@Will and paying killer condo fees.
1
Living in a modern apartment building with walkable distance amenities, including green spaces, is doable in places like where I live: old mill towns where the population has been declining for decades. Not sure how many young folks want to move to a place with six months of winter and few good jobs, though. For those who can manage, it’s easy to imagine that one is living in Scandinavia. Now if the country could be governed in a similar way as those “commies” do, solutions to our social problems might include creating habitable neighborhoods that are pleasant, safe and affordable. What else could we do?
5
@Thomas The safest, most pleasant, and affordable neighborhoods I've seen are the master planned communities of Houston.
Perhaps giving Californians monetary incentives to leave the State would be cheaper than building new housing. I'd like to leave, but my spouse does not want to leave. You could knock down my house and sheds and then build a small apartment building that would house many.
8
There needs to be a real economic analysis here Farhad and you have not done it.
You assume high rise condos are cheaper than single family homes. In dense urban areas like the bay area, this simply is not true. High association fees alone make a high rise condo just about as expensive per sq ft on an annual basis as a suburban single family home. In San Jose these high rise condo buildings only exist because people are willing to pay a premium to be right in the downtown district... NOT because they are more economical to own.
Construction costs of a high rise are much higher per sq ft than single family construction, or low density townhome construction.
I will agree with you that we need an end of the era of mc-mansions... because the average family of 4 simply does not need 3000+ sq ft of home to live comfortably. That is an entirely separate social issue.. and thankfully.. housing costs in California are taking care of this to a large degree.
The average family of 4 can live very comfortably in 1500-2000 sq ft. And in this size range the cost to purchase a single family home, or a low density townhome, or a high density high rise condo in a large urban city is roughly the same price per sq ft. And in the case of the high rise condo, the owner will also need to fork up an additional $500-900 each month for association fees. This is just the nature of the market for big California cities like San Jose and the surrounding communities.
28
@Chuck agree. I note nothing is said about killer condo fees, which can run thousands of dollars a year.
9
The single family home remains a worthy American aspirational goal. Anything less is merely lowering ones standards. What reasonable red blooded American would do that, or even consider doing that ?
24
This is constantly talked about it my area of CT. Areas of big, beautiful single family homes and how exclusionary they are. But to start building multi-family homes in these areas you would have to totally reconfigure all the neighborhoods including adding more schools which nowadays cost millions and millions of dollars to build. And if you are specifically targeting low income non car drivers unless they are all going to be taking Ubers you need to add more public transportation which is also costly. Face it, all the people buying the big, single family homes are the ones paying all the taxes! Make these places wealthy people don't want to live in just drives away your tax base.
13
Thank you so much for this column! My family recently moved to Southern California from a slightly (but not much) cheaper city where we likely could have afforded a single-family home in a not-too-far-out suburb. Here, the best we could do was a condo, and although I like it fine and I love our neighborhood--and I know we're very fortunate to be able to afford housing here at all--I feel a constant twinge of guilt that my young kid doesn't have that idealized single-home childhood. I appreciate reading about how our lifestyle is in some ways more responsible and sustainable than the single-home ideal.
6
If I am to live in a high-rise building, let me have clean air and quiet. I don't want to breathe second-hand smoke from my neighbors' homes, and I don't want to listen to loud music and loud voices. And give me a good fire escape!
10
I second the concern over natural resources. More housing only creates demand for more infrastructure and water in California is a very big issue. Just analyze our last drought. Limitless growth is not sustainable. We need to think about growth in a different way.
12
Density doesn't necessarily mean cheaper real estate. There are many communities with single family homes that are cheaper than dense ones. A bungalow in a small town or in the West or Midwest is way cheaper than an apartment in New York City. Jamming more housing into single family neighborhoods in the West, where we have a tradition of more space, isn't necessarily going to make housing more affordable. Those of us who grew up in areas with single family homes feel a cultural attachment to the concept, and we shouldn't cave to demand for density that might just result in crowded neighborhoods that are even more expensive than what was there.expensive than what used to be there.
19
So true, Farhad. I too grew up in a single-family home but it was on Long Island.
I live in Los Angeles now and with home prices so out of control and even rental insanely high, it's looking like the wife and I will be leaving in the next year or two.
Our sentiments are really similar. I grew up thinking I would someday own a single-family home and my kids would get to do some of the things I got to do in the yard and the neighbors and friends' yards. We don't have kids yet. But that desire for a single-family home no longer exists in me. I would much prefer a nice apartment, condo, townhome, or such. It has a lesser environmental impact. And truly, these are still homes where families can thrive. But now, how do we afford one of these in Los Angeles?
4
home builders build homes based on the demand of clients. They pour money into projects that are going to give them a return. This isn't a government problem (not a problem at all) but definitely not a zoning or Gov problem.
If there were a demand for town homes or multi unit housing they would be being built more. Pricing would be high on those to if there were demand...
You cant force builders to build things they dont want to build.
7
@John cavendish That's just not true though. There's a huge demand for housing in Menlo Park for example, but zoning allows for offices to be built, not homes and certainly not apartments.
4
@John cavendish
It's not that straightforward. Loans for multi-unit projects are harder to come by than for single family houses.
1
@John cavendish And you can't force people to buy homes they don't want to live in.
I've always wondered why there aren't more affordable townhome co-operatives. I've lived in mine for many years, raised my kids here, and we have plenty of open spaces/parks, if not big yards. We own the corporation, we are self-managed, and have 400 townhomes, all occupied almost all of the time. We're within a mile of the train station to go to the city or any place in between, and once in the city, there are trains leading to anywhere in the country. I'm not one of those people who write in to crow about what they have. I'm serious about the need for affordable housing, which continues to grow more severe. Because we own it, our monthly charges are half what the renters pay for these same townhomes six blocks down the road. Our is well-maintained, attractive housing, 12-13,500 sq feet per unit on three levels. Two or three bedrooms, full basement with laundry room, and all maintenance except for appliances is handled by in-house maintenance. It's great living, close to schools. It could be done anywhere. We have five other townhome co-operatives here, some as large as this one, others smaller.
My town used to be middle class before middle class required a $2000k income. It's a lower economic town these days, and not everyone would want to live here. But the point remains why housing cooperatives aren't set up in better areas also? They would solve so many problems for so many people. I could not have survived financially in an apartment while raising kids.
4
@Jrb - you might want to check the square footage you quoted. You may have added an extra 0.
Fine, as long as you stop demonizing people who want single family homes. And oh, by the way, the single family home is a major source of investment for retirement - knows what happens to home value when high rises are next door? Yes, large loss of value. What's your plan for paying single family home owners for lost value?
Better still - why not invest in a better rapid transit system to as yet undeveloped spaces and put new cities there. The major problem here is that as a society nobody wants to foot the bill for the sort of infrastructure improvements that used to be taken for granted.
28
Calling the desire to live in a detached house a "fetish" is transparently rhetorical. Your dream, your family's experience, your understanding of American life (all the way back to 1980s!) is, after all, your perspective. For millions of others, the hard lessons of the problems that arise in shared-wall housing will not be forgotten, and their preference for private houses is a rational one.
This week, in an entirely related matter, I see that former California senator and current city councilman Gil Cedillo has proposed the use of eminent domain against a private apartment building in Los Angeles because housing crisis. In Anglo-American law, there are few things that can arouse opposition like the threat of eminent domain by an over-reaching state. Just last year someone insisted to me that "nobody" was talking of its use; here we are. I don't even like Ayn Rand's work, and if my libertarian impulses are stirring, I can imagine what more conservative Californians are thinking.
17
If the future is all of us packed together like rats, I'm glad I won't be around for too much of it (born 1955, ok boomer).
If everyone is going to be packed into multi-family units with shared walls, I hope the relevant governments will at least force builders to soundproof in such a way that you don't have to endure constant explosions from your rude neighbor's gaming station at 3:00 in the morning.
There is great peace and contentment (as well as quiet and privacy) to be had from being surrounded by greenery. After spending most of my adult life in city apartments, for the last twelve years I have lived on a couple acres of wooded hillside. It is human. Perhaps we can find some way to curtail population growth, rather than accept more and more crowding, along with increased competition for dwindling resources.
41
@Bill Smith
Amen, and a big boomer .A-OK
1
Apartment housing?
No thanks, who knows what kinds of people you are surrounded by, and who knows what their visitors/friends are like. Not everyone will have the same noise threshold nor will they have the same sense of cleanliness and public decorum.
Add in affordable housing, and the issues relating to class will arise, but of course, no one wants to talk about it.
32
it's easy to demonize home ownership. and sorry but townhouses are not much different: low-density, with some out door space and parking. but that doesn't make the case for forcing everyone to live in block housing.
1) home ownership allows a person to control their most expensive cost (fixed mortgage or no mortgage). rents and condo/co-op fees just keep rising stratospherically, forcing people to be on a carousel of moving every 3-5 years.
2) homes eliminate some ancillary expenses like parking costs and storage costs. an offsite storage locker in NY used to cost $85/month; now it costs $500/mo. a parking spot used to cost $180/month; now it costs $600. not everybody wants to live with storage boxes and ride a bike. but ancillary costs get prohibitive.
3) it's fantasy to think developers will build affordable housing. look at nyc: a typical 1BR rents for 4K/month or costs $1.5M to purchase, and that is old housing stock. new stuff is untouchable.
this article doesn't make a compelling or cogent case. it tries to strike at sentiment like "ok boomer." but remember that single family housing was built when there was lots and lots of land available, which isn't the case now.
16
@Aubrey
... and 4) homes give some control over upkeep. you can work on things in stages or defer until the best year financially to do a big repair, and then you gain full equity in return for your expense. not so in block housing, where it is typical to face assessments every few years - eg., $10K per shareholder for the scaffolding that costs half a million in NY for facade inspection; $20K per shareholder for a leak on the common roofline that has nothing to do with your own apartment or its value. that is a peril of block housing ownership. but the alternative is spending money on rent with nothing to show for it and nothing to refinance if you need to tap equity for something important like kid's college....
9
It's not a fetish, it is a preference. People do have a right to it if they can afford it. As the world becomes more populated it may be that fewer people can afford it. But you don't have to declare that it is inherently bad or advocate taking it away from people. (By the way, I live in a multifamily unit now).
29
I don't know if my experience is unusual, but my urban apartment is actually quieter than the suburban home I grew up with.
My childhood home was in a bustling neighborhood full of neighbors with noisy habits, whether it's Bob sawing away in his backyard, the garage band across the street practicing all afternoon, the backyard party two doors down that doesn't wind down until way too late in the evening, the gardener with his leafblower, etc. Except for the occasional muffling from my neighbors, my apartment is much quieter.
A friend lives in a new apartment with good insulation. You can't hear the neighbors at all.
I find people who complain about how dense housing necessarily entails constant noise either haven't checked out newer buildings or are overstating just how quiet suburbs are.
12
I live in an apartment complex, nearly always have, and I never hear my neighbors, though I have many. I’m writing to answer those posters who say they want peace and quiet, and you can’t get that living in an apartment building. You can; the reason Americans think you can’t is that most new construction in the US (houses or apartment buildings) has paper thin walls. In contrast, the walls in even modern buildings in Italy are very thick—I measured about 30 cm for an inner wall once. The result is that I don’t hear my neighbors at all. The solution to the problem of noisy neighbors is to reject cheap and flimsy construction, not to reject apartments.
38
I love apartment living. I like the freedom to move whenever and wherever I want and I have no desire to fix anything. Houses, like kids and husbands, are unnecessary shackles.
You just have to do some meticulous shopping. I recently fled a lifetime in the East Bay for Des Moines. I spent several weeks searching for my perfect spot: no animals allowed, elderly quiet neighbors, and responsive but not overbearing managers.
4
At some point, recently, I realized that I no longer fantasized about ever having a backyard — my dream home is now a townhouse, and if it’s good enough for me, perhaps it could be good enough for others in my state, too.
Maybe but I would not count on that. The American dream is still a single family home
2
As someone raised in rural america and now living downtown in a high rise - I do think that if people want affordable housing they need more density.
I don't know if I would raise a family in one, but that is more to do with the crime directly outside of my high rise rather than the high rise itself.
Downtown living has done wonders for my health. I walk everywhere and there is no more fast food in downtown minneapolis. I have lost ~40lbs.
Rural/suburban living is just begging for people to be overweight.
2
@Morgan I live in a suburban area, where many people jog, walk, lift weights, go to gyms, and other readily available activities. People here don't weigh any more than in the city itself.
9
@Morgan I live in the suburbs and all my friends in my small subdivision and I engage in rigorous physical fitness daily. Not everyone is rural or suburban areas are out of shape or overweight/obese. We all moved here from MN, MI, IL, and the Northeast to engage in daily physical fitness without freezing to death. We can go out outside year around and do so - we all get way more year around exercise here than when we lived in MN, MI, etc.
3
I very much want to agree with Farhad. But the combination of more people on the same footprint, the existing road infrastructure and the unlikelihood of superior public transit in California brings me to the conclusion that multiple unit housing is a non-starter.
Smaller, more livable cities will wise up, employers will wise up, VCs will wise up,and there will be potent tech centers with a huge cost advantage outside outside of the Bay area and LA.
25
@Tone
100% agree with your analysis here. '
In my experience though, Farhad does not listen, but he loves to rebut any other view point in his opinion pieces.
Housing is a complex dynamic in any community... and Fahad is trying to trivialize the complexities with a single sweeping mandate.
19
@Chuck even the title trivializes and mocks important living priorities, with it being bracketed by the last sentence, delivering a "if it is good enough for me, it ought to be good enough for you" scold.
Not a way to influence pr further his weak argument.
1
Increased housing density doesn't lower housing prices. The cost of housing is related to the property tax assessment and the market price of what the traffic will bear. Rents have gone up in our area ~25% in 5 years because of demand and speculation. Suburbs and rural areas have more wildlife habitat due to wild land buffers than an urban setting with parks. If you want the next generation to care about the environment, wildlife, and agriculture, it helps if they have a daily exposure to the outdoors, not just an occasional visit to a park. Live in the city if you prefer, but don't advocate for urban expansion for everyone else.
11
@M Perez
In California, this is largely true. The property tax on an 1800 sq ft home in San Jose (pretty well in the middle of the distribution curve) and an 1800 sq ft Townhome or a highrise condos are about the same per sq ft. Purchase costs also do not normalize for absence of a yard either.
And where high rise condos are concerned, and costs associated with ownership... they are actually more expensive in many cases in San Jose because townhomes and even more so high rise condos have high association fees, which are mandatory. Even a low amenity high rise condo complex is going to have high association fees due to the costs of maintaining and managing the condo.
Farhad thinks high rise is the cats meow cost of housing wise for the 21st century, but from an affordability standpoint they are not.. they are expensive and cost to own such a condo is very high per sq ft.... all consts considered.
7
I don't believe this problem can be easily solved until we begin to de-commodify housing and start treating it as a universal human right. Much like healthcare, it turns out housing is something that the market rations out in a very savage, brutal and ultimately unacceptable way. It is not some "fetish" that kills common sense legislation like SB 50, it is real estate speculation; our infallible market and invisible hand at work. I think people have the right to live in the same communities that they work in. So we either guarantee that everyone makes enough to live near their work, or we guarantee that living can't cost more than what folks make. The market isn't doing this very well. Public housing can be built near public transportation, couple this with a universal housing guarantee and the actual funding it needs and we've solved what seems to have completely stumped the market. We're either going to get serious about actually solving these problems and re-evaluate our religious obsession with free market capitalism or we'll keep reforming around the margins and run out of time.
3
I think we saw this with student loans. Pouring money from debt into an activity of limited capacity simply makes the activity less affordable.
1
SB50 was deeply flawed, and the amendments that Scott Weiner proposed made SB50 even worse. SB50 would have affected not only urban areas but also rural areas. Why should a rural town of 500 people be forced into up-zoning their town to allow four-plexes next to single family homes? That has nothing to do with building adjacent to transit rich zones. A lot of dirty politics going on here; some exclusive beach communities getting an exception, a pass. These were the kind of amendments Mr. Weiner was finagling.
Economists do not agree with Weiner's theory that building more market rate housing will soften the middle market. To add insult to injury, to allow building enormous projects without parking is insane.
What about infrastructure? If we are going to start jamming six story apartment buildings in between single family homes, where is the electricity coming from? Here in Los Angeles we experience brown-outs often. Last year one of our neighborhoods went three days without power. The City is not maintained and our infrastructure is failing as it is. Weiner made no provision for improving or upgrading the systems required to support all these new residents. What about water? We have experienced many years of drought, where is all the water supposed to come from?
Why allow the demolition of historic neighborhoods? Hey, why not just drop a bomb on the entire City so some developers can start fresh and make huge profits? Did see how much money developers donate to Weiner?
15
Michael:
I totally agree with you as to the question of water, power and infrastructure in California.
Even homeless advocates have said that Wiener’s SB 50 would not really help homeless— but would help developers.
In recent years, Wiener has pushed several bills which benefit developers.
Coincidence?
6
"...though the policy is now defended as a way to maintain the ineffable “local character” of neighborhoods. "
You seem to mock the concept of local character of neighborhoods. Not all "neighborhood character" is the result of racism, indeed it often relates to economic rather than social realities. I live in a modest home in a modest single family neighborhood with backyards. Our neighborhood has a distinct history and character and we are proud of both. We garden, our children play together and we watch each other's pets. It's pretty darned nice.
Why should we have to forfeit what we cherish about our living situation to make your vision a reality.
18
Agree. I read articles about California and all I see is future people moving to Oregon. Nice if you are a current homeowner, catastrophic for rents, nice for our economy overall, stressful for our transit infrastructure, and very stressful for our “culture” though as a transplant I cannot complain. I hope we are sensible about the growth planning to accommodate all the Californians, and that they like rain.
Portland has a Metro Urban Boundary which voters have upheld for many years which does what Farhad suggests. We value our identity as a rural state, and try to keep our cities disciplined. A native Oregonian would explain this better but here goes: It’s a line, outside which there are no city services like electricity, sewer, and water. Inside the line it’s city, and outside the line it’s rural, until the voters agree to redraw the line, which historically they (we) have been reluctant to do. It forces us to become more dense inside the line, despite zoning and NIMBY pressures that might push us in the opposite direction. And certainly the Oregonian in a multifamily with parks everywhere and wild land within a 10 minute drive outside the city in every direction is justifiably famed as a nature lover. A patch of your own nature to rule is not a requirement for learning to love nature when your city makes truly great parks available close to your home; the density of multifamily living makes a “nearby” park a reality.
Clearly there is a need for apartment buildings unless you all enjoy seeing people living in tent cities on your public sidewalks and parks. Seriously, it makes sense to build hospitals when people are sick and dying in the street so it follows that building affordable and centrally located multi-family homes, boarding houses and apartment complexes are needed for people who cannot afford single family properties and have been pushed out of their homes. Not everyone even wants a home in the suburbs. I live in upstate NY and in my suburb there are single family tract homes, apartment complexes, multi-family homes, town-homes, duplexes, a boarding house, senior living facilities and a trailer park-- multiple options all on a bus-line but the real bargains and diversity of housing are to be found in the city which has a larger mix that includes high rise apartment buildings and dormitory style live/work artspaces. California has a lot more space than we do here.
2
@Kathy I live in a city with a large homeless population. Many of them were drawn to California from other states by the warm winter climate. (Other warm-weather states have homeless problems too.) Most people are homeless for reasons that have nothing to do with housing costs. They have problems with mental illness, drug addiction, or alcohol addiction. They can't get jobs because of these problems, plus being homeless doesn't look good on a resume. No matter how affordable housing gets, unless it's provided free by the government they won't have it.
11
You may make an important point vis-a-vis the political alchemy (and sociology) of California. But then again, in our MAGA era — rife with narcissism and angry selfishness at all levels of society — why shouldn’t we aspire to five uncovered planes? Honestly, spiritually I personally would have probably loved a Greek polis form of living — even Spartan dormitory life if that really existed beyond the imaginations of my Classics professors. But dang it it drives me nuts nowadays when my connected or close-by neighbors live their lives without regard for the fact others are trying to live humbly and mindfully nearby. This sort of mindless and obliviously selfish behavior is all around us in the roaring 2020s. So why should public policy only envision domain and sanctuary only for the wealthy? Even if your “moat” of sway measures only a sidewalk’s breadth and a roof that attaches not to a neighbors underbelly but rather to sky, in this era a home is one sense of control working class people can hope for. California should look at the “new town” movement pioneered in the UK in places like Milton Keynes. There, in the last Century through public-private partnerships, jobs and housing were plopped into unused farmland outside of Greater London. This innovation moved tens of thousands of working people and immigrants out of festering urban tenements and into the first-ever semi-detached and one-family attached houses they or many generations of their families had ever experienced.
5
I appreciate this thoughtful and well-articulated article. Would love to see a mention of how tiny homes allow couples and small families to live the single family home dream affordably and sustainably. Unfortunately, most local jurisdictions don't allow tiny homes. If they do, they only allow them if they're built on a foundation (though many are built on trailers) and are associated with a larger home. Residents are willing to take on the burden of downsizing to help solve housing and climate crises, if only the zoning and regulatory codes would let them.
4
I agree with the sentiment, but the piece overlooks the fact that the state legislature already passed a raft of ordinances allowing property owners to build one "accessory dwelling unit" on nearly all single-family properties in the state. Yes, ADUs are not the same as a duplex or townhome (for one thing, they can only be rented, not sold separately), but they could go a long way in getting more units in place within the fabric of existing neighborhoods. I'm excited to see where the new laws take us.
I’d really rather see government mandate teleworking for certain categories of employees.
Few white collar workers need to be in an office today. I suspect people would spread out of major hubs if they didn’t have to live near an office.
Less commuters would also make life more livable for those who must physically be at a work site.
8
It would help if a few more developers in the past forty years had designed multiple family dwellings that don't look like urban blight. Way too tall for nature (above the treeline is too tall), cheap materials, ugly stark facades, asphalt landscaping, no continuity with surrounding neighborhoods. There ARE places with well-integrated mixed single and multiple-family dwellings, mostly where the entire area was developed as a community by one developer. But far too many of these places are hit-and-run profit makers for realtors with no taste or conscience, enabled by greedy towns looking for more taxes. This story has two sides, as well as too many storeys.
14
As the middle class is shrunk the absolute number of people who can afford and keep the payments is diminishing.
2
Single family homes wouldn't be built and sold unless people wanted them.
We can dream about good policy, affordable housing and all that stuff, but at the end of the day there's something called a housing market. It takes into account how people want to spend their housing dollars and responds by supplying what they want.
This is similar to EVs. Yes, EVs could be good from several policy perspectives. But you won't be able to sell many EVs to folks out in flyover country who want their heavy duty diesel pickup trucks.
Administrative fiat could of course end single family homes. Just like it could end diesel pickups. But squashing individual freedom and preferences is not usually a good approach.
10
as an owner (along with the bank) of a single family home i enjoy a monthly rent that does not change from year to year (unless i refinance and lower it) and thanks to prop 13 a tax bill that does not go up so fast it forces me to sell. i dont have hoa fees i have no control over, or a landlord who can push me out of my residence by doubling or tripling the rent. the stability of single-family home ownership will never be outdated.
24
@allen I live in a 115 year old single family home. I'm only the 4th owner. There are homes all over the country like mine, maybe not as well kept. The payments on this house were around $700 a month. No yearly increases, and then it was paid off. All I have to worry about now are taxes and maintenance. And, when I die, my children will have something of value they can keep or sell. None of this would have been possible in a rental. I also tried a condo. Couldn't stand the constant problems with the association.
8
What isn't mentioned but could help in framing your argument for denser housing is the fact most Californians are dual income households. A single family home in the suburbs is extremely attractive to a stay at home mother. These women/mothers make 70% of the housing decisions when buying. Now that they are no longer staying home with the children, homes are becoming more launchpads for the family rather than a place of many hours per day outside when it is dark and dinner is being cooked. Smaller spaces are far more practical given the dual income reality. It's less upkeep on the weekend when you would far prefer enjoying the sunny California weather or are at kids activities than the big home in the suburbs. Moreover, it gives you back the time lost in commuting.
The older homeowners getting to take advantage of their low tax rates because of prop 13 hold the power over those in office. They have their home and safe community. They don't want to see things change even if the change would benefit their children, Gardener and overall vibrance of their city.
2
@Jeff Bochsler There's no reason why older people should give up the homes they love just because other people want them--for lower than market rates.
12
I spent most of childhood in apartments and townhouses. They worked because it was the 60's and people knew each other in our neighbourhoods, looked out for each other , including each others children, and all areas I lived in had large common outdoor spaces in which I remember playing with neighborhood friends from sun up to sun down. I felt safe and I loved the large community of children that I was able to spend me days with.
I think great places to live feature these qualities; good neighbours, well maintained and well used outdoor space, rich deep community connections and the reality of safety for all (oh yes, and well constructed buildings so you are not bothered by noise from the apartment next door). Provide these things and people won't care what their actual home is.
5
I am always amazed at how much people want the single family homes in this day and age... as if they don't read the statistics on what a huge environmental footprint they make. We moved into an apartment this year after living in various other situations (single family home, cabin, etc.) and are loving the community it offers. I feel much better about my carbon footprint and my need for less things to fill up more space. We save on heat and cooling too. It feels so much more sustainable. When some friends from Europe came to visit they rolled their eyes at me when I commented about how we live in less than 1000 square feet and said "Jeez, this is how most of Europe lives, get with the program." Indeed.
5
@Lola some people contribute to lowering their carbon footprint in other ways, such as not having children and having relatives live with them in their single family home. I have four adults in my single family home - that is green. Oh, and between all 4 adults there were only 3 children born. And one adult is incapable of driving. So yeah, pretty green.
1
I certainly sympathize with the need for new housing, BUT with land and building costs the way they are, most, if not all, of the new housing will still be unaffordable for most people. Manhattan has built thousands of apartments in the last decade, with zoning changes making development denser. ALL of them are affordable by only the rich.
What we need is government-subsidized housing, which is a whole different ball game.
2
Apparently it escaped your notice that Wiener's bill would have permitted large, high-rise apartment buildings in single-family home neighborhoods -- not just the attached townhomes that you're rhapsodizing about.
170
@Farhad Manjoo
High density housing also requires expensive improvements in transportation infrastructure and merchant infrastructure.
These are expensive and transportation infrastructure requires bonds and increased taxes to pay for the bonds. No small task, even in California.. most notably where increases in public transportation systems to support higher density housing are needed.
NOT all communities are alike, nor does all of California need to adopt San Francisco style housing norms either.
45
@Farhad Manjoo
Yes, apartments are fine for many people, but that is not really the issue here.
A view, from 10 stories up, of attractive older single family houses with yards and trees is nice. The view looking at a 10 story concrete tower from those single family residences not so much.
If the "density" movement were really about density, and not about plundering older pre-sprawl neighborhoods for profit, builders of high rises would be advocating denser zoning out where the cookie-cutter tracts are, in order to compete with them, not ignoring them by instead lobbying for rezoning of rarer, more expensive and more compact single family walkable communities.
110
@Chuck - and endlessly sprawling single-family 1/4-acre lots don't require expensive infrastructure and improvements?
27
Local zoning is not the main reason for urban sprawl in California. Most of the world has local land use regulation in some form, but most of the world does not resemble the vast prefab wastelands of California.
What is different about California is its unusually high dependency on motor vehicles and freeways, and its massive development companies with sway over local governments. Those companies made trillions producing that urban sprawl and the costly traffic congestion resulting from it.
Now those developers, whose past fortunes built the sprawl which now seems increasingly incompatible with future shifts away from fossil fuel use, are looking elsewhere for new opportunities to plunder for private gain. They've turned their sights on older, pricier, pre-cookie-cutter-sprawl cities, and imagine potential fortunes available by turning those cities into high-rise jungles.
Local zoning codes stand in the way of such lucrative prospects. The development industry's response, from their longstanding playbook, is to take over local governments by bamboozling voters.
Homeowners do receive preferential tax treatment over renters, but that applies to dense condos as well as single-family houses. Single residences are not "fetishized" in public policy, but are favored by buyers who prefer them in older non-sprawl communities. That's why the cost of those properties is rising, and why developers now seek to make money gutting the zoning laws which gave rise to those communities.
10
@Sage Sure it's all a conspiracy, really, we secretly want to live in tiny apartments and go to work standing elbow to elbow on street cars
There is a lot of room for housing in US, it just isn’t all in SF, Manhattan, and Silicon Valley. Not everyone is entitled to live in tiny slivers which are currently hot. And if the current voting residents express the desire for the status quo through their representatives that’s kind of how Democracy works. Even if the technocrats are sure it is wrong.
32
fun fact: the los angeles urbanized and bay area urbanized areas are the two most densely populated areas in the country, both about 30-40 percent more densely populated than the nyc urbanized area.
25
@Andrew Edge this is not correct: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/10/americas-truly-densest-metros/3450/
70
@Andrew Edge
The most densely populated (small) cities in the country are in Hudson County, New Jersey.
1
" ... Increasing density by replacing single-family homes with multifamily ones ... "
In many areas one would not even need to replace. Even on modestly sized lots, there is space to build a second "mother-in-law suite" - a 1- to 2-bedroom apartment-sized unit, attached or independent of the main home. The only problem I foresee is the potential for overloading of sewer lines.
1
@Steve and parking
What I don't see mentioned here is that the economy in this country is not spread out far enough across our geographical borders to entice people to migrate to less densely populated sections of the country. Small-town life has become unappealing because good jobs are scare, so people flock to urban areas because they believe there is more economic opportunity there. Where I live, you can have a single-family home for less than $125K. What you can't have is a decent-paying job with security and benefits. If we could find a way to spread whatever economic prosperity there is across the country, the pressure on urban housing would vanish.
50
City life is also appealing in terms of culture. Arts, restaurants, sports, recreation, etc. This variety is only possible if a niche is big enough to make it commercially viable.
Well, I live in the bullseye of a housing crisis but in a city that has a multitude of housing choices; condos, big apartment complexes, duplexes, tiny homes, massive homes, old homes, new homes, shared homes, even affordable housing. Something for everyone. which is great. Most folks here don’t even want the single-family home these days, it’s too much work and they’d rather play all weekend. So on that front I really beg to differ, especially when I talk to millennials and younger.
I suspect part of what you are seeing is the lack of housing diversity being offered in many places.
One thing my city doesn’t seem to have, according to some, is enough homes. But even in the best of all possible worlds, not everyone can live in the same geographical area.
7
Interesting perspective. I lived in multi-family buildings for the decade I lived in California. The last place was a town home that we owned (right next to a 8 lane highway - like I could throw a rock out my window onto the road). When my husband and I realized that we didn't HAVE to stay until retirement, we moved out of state to a smaller community and closer to nature. We were spending every weekend we could in the mountains because we couldn't tolerate living in such close quarters with so many humans. Not an environmentally friendly way to live - driving 8 hours every weekend to get away from the frustration of "city life".
12
An option is to move to a region with less demand for housing. The quest to eliminate the single family home will never happen in terms of changing the zoning of existing neighborhoods. It will never make it out of the gate, but will be mired in lawsuits.
7
Part of the problem with housing in California is that supply is low, for various reasons including zoning, and demand is high. I think it's worth looking at why demand is high. There are about 8,500,000 California residents who were not born in the US (Source: CalMatters.) By comparison, California has about 147,000 homeless persons.
Before you jump all over me, I'm not xenophobic or racist or an advocate of wall-building.
But it's hard to imagine a logical analysis of this or any other pricing problem without taking into account demand.
No one seems to do this, possibly because they're afraid of being lumped in with the Trump anti-immigrant crowd, or because they can see no solution to the problem.
There are more California residents from India than the entire homeless population.
Doesn't this tell you something?
38
@GP A high proportion of California residents come from somewhere else in the US, as well as from other countries. So?
9
@GP
Because that is where the Tech companies do most of their hiring!
You’re argument is missing an important factor: More humans crowded into California is not desirable,
People in California do not want to live in more crowded conditions. So the single family home -unaffordable as it may be—acts as a population control. (The homeless population has little to do with their not being enough high rise apartment buildings near mass transit stations)
Frankly, the less housing, the less people, the less cars, the less strain on the environment all around.
There is finite space and resources. Building millions of more dwelling units, will just add millions more people into the state.
So grateful S.B. 50 failed.
45
@Jenniferlila Well actually, it's not acting as population control since the population of CA is increasing faster than the housing amount is increasing.
But it does lead to more cars, traffic and pollution.
5
Hard to see how less housing = less cars, when it means more people commuting to places like Palo Alto where there are excess jobs compared to housing.
I'm in favor of zoning that allows more multi-family dwellings. I'm lucky enough to live in a place (Arlington, VA) that's done a reasonably good job of mixing density. I would not be opposed to allowing higher-density infill in my own neighborhood...if it didn't drive down the value of my house.
(I'm not saying I think it would drive down the value, just speculating.)
I think THAT is the real rub for most people. This is the biggest purchase most of us make. It's probably the nest egg we cash out to go into assisted living. If higher density is mandated, can our house values be protected?
15
A thoughtful, well articulated article. Thank you! I was raised in an urban environment (NYC) in an apartment building with a shared backyard garden. I loved growing up there and would have happily raised our son in an apartment, but we moved to Washington State because of my husband's job and live in an exurb. We have a house with a backyard and have to drive pretty much everywhere. It's not a sustainable way to live and results in massive sprawl. We should look to places like Vancouver, Canada that manage to have diverse housing (i.e. apartments and townhouses), avoid sprawl, and provide a lot of easily accessible green space for their residents.
25
Ah, yes - lived there and had to move our family back to the States due to how utterly unaffordable said diverse real estate housing is for just about everyone but absentee foreign investors.
4
Three times in my life I've lived in non-single family housing. While in graduate school,we lived in university married student housing, in a small two bedroom ground floor unit. The sense of community was wonderful. We enjoyed informal Friday night potlucks, baby-sat one another' s children. One of the best parts of living there, at least to me, was that my daughter played with a diverse group of kids near her age and attended the public school where 1/3 of her classmates were from other countries. Later on, I lived in a townhouse condo whre again there was a solid sense of community. During a 3 day electrical outage, due to a winter storm, we looked out for one another, shared food and blankets and grew new friendships. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I don't think of living in less space as a wholly negative option like others here seem to.
19
@PJB I'm with you. I live in an apartment building with a great sense of community. We regularly have casual weeknight dinners at someone's apartment and there's always someone nearby if you need to borrow an extra egg or a particular tool. I suppose I occasionally have to hear a door slamming or someone playing music too loud or a dog barking, but the benefits far outweigh those minor inconveniences.
1
@PJB It only takes one or two really bad neighbors to make you feel an apartment building is not a pleasant community.
"If it’s good enough for me, perhaps it could be good enough for others in my state, too." This is the concluding line in Mr. Manjoo's article. It makes me cringe a little. I am open to various discussions of housing, zoning, urban planning, and so forth. Until I hear a statement like that. Then I shut down completely. I would never presume to tell anyone that what was good enough for me might (should) suit them as well. Democracy dies in many ways. Some of them are obvious, deliberate, and self-serving. Others insidious and ostensibly well intentioned.
45
I think there are two issues here. One is, "Is it wrong to want a single family home?" On that issue, I read this op-ed as stating "No - but you can learn to love a townhouse just as well."
I think the other, more pressing question is, "Should a state with inordinately high cost of living restrict large swaths of land to only single-family development?" I agree with the op-ed that the answer to that question should be a resounding no. Upzoning does not remove housing willy nilly. It provides for more dense options where people are open and willing to buy them.
2
@Josiah That is willy-nilly. And it is controlled by and for the profits that developers can extract from neighborhoods by degrading the lives of existing residents while building more and more-expensive units. This does nothing for the "housing problem."
1
I urge the crowded Californians to consider moving to the state of Maine.
Our state slogan is "Maine, the way life should be,"
We have thousands of acres for single family homes, townhouses, and apartment buildings.
Visit Maine and stay for a lifetime! And yes, plenty of high paying jobs for all.
23
@charlie222
Maine is beautiful.... but what's the temperature?
Take it from a place being over run by Californians fleeing “the good life”. Be careful what you ask for.
Less is more. In my area, there is a trend towards ditching the cars and moving to condos in downtown or at least closer to downtown where we can walk or access the metro. But as the writer noted, the equating of the single family home in the suburbs with the American dream, as well as the high costs of the condos and HOA fees, deter many people from downsizing.
6
@jw If you look at the various financial articles on the subject, "downsizing" from a larger house often costs more than staying in place. Smaller houses are proportionately more expensive and there is more competition for them. There are repairs to sell the old house and repairs on the new house. There is the agent's fee. There are taxes. There is the cost of moving your stuff. And people like to stay in the neighborhood they love and where their friends live.
5
"Slum it" in a townhouse that you OWN. Gosh. After living in a tiny rented one bedroom in a densely populated city, with two kids, for over ten years, I’m either really ahead of the curve, or not the intended audience of this article. I’d love to slum it in an owned townhouse, even without a yard. It's good you had the chance to grown up in a nice home though.
11
Older neighborhoods in inner cities did single family housing right. Post WWII, planners mandated wide streets, wide frontages and wide separations and thereby legislated out high density single family housing. No more neighborhood stores. Every thing far away, including even schools, libraries. Total car dependence, making suburbs a virtual jail for middle and high school students, unless mom or dad can get time off work and long commutes to chauffeur them hither and yon. Once I graduated from school, I moved downtown and never looked back.
16
@GeorgeNotBush That's really nice if your job is downtown. Many people's are not.
Local zoning where I live is a bit looser than what the author is describing, yet housing prices continue to rise. There have been lots of new apartments built that rent at a mythical "market rate" that most cannot afford, yet they still need partial tax abatements to get financed and built. Then there's the part about how many of them are nasty looking (e.g. big taxi cab yellow panels on an otherwise acceptable building) and owned by large out of town landlords who only see that thousands of college students can be packed in at maximum rent.
Ultimately, this is a population question. I'm not suggesting for a moment that we pursue the Chinese government solution of forced small families, but even if all of us suddenly abandon our cars and drastically reduce consumption in other ways we still can't expect our planet to support extra billions of people at anything like an acceptable standard of living.
17
The highly populated parts of California do not need any more people. Every few years a drought reminds us that we have exceeded capacity here. Our roads are jammed, BART is strained to the limits, schools are full and underfunded. How will increasing our population, already at 40 million, work in this situation? It's time for Silicon Valley and San Francisco to disperse some workers to other states and release some of the pressure on housing here. I say this as a home owner who is astounded by the $million plus value my home has attained. I'd rather be less "wealthy" with less traffic and a more relaxing California feel.
83
@s
A surprising number are moving to Idaho. Sorry AL! My daughter just sold her small Boise home in two days for the asking price!
California is a large state and the housing shortages are mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles area. My husband and I moved from San Francisco to a close suburb of Sacramento three years ago. We bought a single-family house with a yard because we hated our noisy, overcrowded apartment days--long ago, before we bought our San Francisco house. In our apartment days, a downstairs neighbor--this was a "safe" neighborhood--even selected me as a target for abuse, banging on our door and screaming threats every time my husband left our flat. I had to stay in a hotel every time my husband went on a business trip. Sacramento housing prices are a third of San Francisco's. And Sacramento is the state capitol, hardly the boonies. This area is also very actively developing. There are still many. many cheaper parts of California. In short, no, California is not running out of housing. Nor is most of the rest of the country.
10
@Frances Grimble
So people should just..... leave the bay area and socal? As opposed to trying to fix the housing shortage? The vast majority of high paying jobs are in the coastal areas.
1
Why can’t the corporations have offices in other places? They could pay lower salaries and buy cheaper property. Spread them out. SF does not need all those buses roaring through our streets. Share the wealth across the country. There are good employees everywhere.
Scott Wiener can work on acquiring PG&E.
@adam Yes. I think jobs should be moved to other, very pleasant, parts of the country that already have lots of very nice housing. There are only so many people you can cram into an area.
1
I don't think single family homes are outdated. I lived in the same one until I went to college, then bought my first one at 29.
As the town got busier around me, I recently moved to another single family home with more land, out of state, and I am thrilled.
Not everyone wants to share a wall with another family, have condo costs rise because of poorly managed associations, be prevented from certain color choices on your front door, or face trying to sell a unit when there are 50 others in their community.
Shared housing may work for some, but it doesn't for everyone, so I say live and let live- if you can afford a single family home and want to enjoy your space, I say go for it.
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This is also true in Australia where the suburban sprawl is a blight on the economy and environment. I grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne but as soon as I was old enough I escaped to the city and high density living. One of the things I love most about Europe is the ability to drive only ten miles from a huge industrialized city and be out in the country. I’ve never understood the attraction of suburban living and hope that economics will finally force governments to promote high density living.
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@Katrina One thing about Australia, though, is that our suburbs DO zone for multi-family dwellings. If you drive through Essendon or Parramatta, it's mostly single-family homes, but you still see lots of apartment blocks and townhouse developments, especially along main roads. In suburban America, you don't see that, even in high-traffic areas.
True, but on a personal level if you’re going to live in a mutual family unit wouldn’t you prefer it to be closer to the CBD than in the burbs?
@Katrina I personally would and do, but 1) not everyone does, and 2) that's why reliable public transit is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle in the housing discussion. America is incredibly car-centric, which is a massive problem.
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For everyone saying they don't want to give up their single family home, you won't have to! It's about also having denser housing in cities, near public transportation, near workplaces, etc for those who want it. The more we have denser housing in cities, the more public transportation becomes a practical and natural way to travel in cities, the lower the per capita greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. Of course there will continue to be options to live in a single family house, but why not build denser housing for the people that want it?
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@Amy At least in the San Francisco Bay Area, the infrastructure does not even support the people who already live there. The traffic is horrendous. Back in the 1980s, it used to take my husband and I 45 minutes to drive to his parents' house in Berkeley. Now the same trip takes two hours. Each way. And that is a daily commute for many people in the area.
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@Frances Grimble I agree wholeheartedly with this reply.
Re-zoning housing isn't enough. You have to rezone for infrastructure. In Brooklyn, I lived in a 30-unit building, never had to drive, and had the subway. Here in the Bay Area, BART doesn't even run 24 hours and has no express track. So even if you could build 5-story buildings that could survive an earthquake, what are those people going to DO? How will they commute? Will their garbage be picked up? What's the sanitation like?
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@Frances Grimble
If you think SF is bad, try Seattle where I lived and worked for most of why adult life. It is a joke and one reason we moved to a smaller city where we have all the amenities and few of the problems. And the snow is not a problem here. Snow in Seattle closes everything down.
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In 1980, around the time of the authors immigration, the population of California was ~24 million. Today it is ~40 million. Mostly from immigration, but also from births, the population has almost doubled. The problem is not with housing, it’s with population growth. Sure, high density housing might buy some more time, but in the end, stuffing ever more people into a finite area will result in exactly what California and much of the nation and indeed the planet is currently facing. Of coarse, the loss of open space, increasing dirty air, increasing commute times, decreasing clean water and on and on will only be slightly reduced and again, not for long, under any plan that doesn’t address the real problem. Btw, Idaho is now the fastest growing state. Driven mostly by Californians fleeing all that growth and development that we purport to love and need so much. The Ponzi scheme of infinite population growth to keep our unsustainable lifestyle and civilization going will end at some point. The question is, will there be anything left when we finally come to our senses?
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@AL And what's happening in Idaho? People are complaining about increased traffic, loss of open space and the ever escalating cost of rentals, houses, and property taxes.
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@AL well said. Population Growth Ponzi Scheme.
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The mistake is the usual California Democrats problem. Instead of overriding local zoning throughout the entire State; the bill that could have passed would have limited the State override of local Zoning to census tracks with an existing and neighboring population density of X.
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The great myth of homes being the path to wealth will do this job for you. Home values going up used to be a given. Home buying, “an investment.” Now, we see it for what it really is: an expense like any other. And more and more, people will want to keep that expense down, have the flexibility that renting offers, and that’s gonna drive values farther down. Maybe not everywhere. But that’s the trend.
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For most who own the home is their largest asset. It roots them to the community and they are apt to care for their investment. With renting over time you are not investing in a long term economic future. That is why the generational wealth of ownership contrasts greatly with the poor and struggling classes who can't gain a foothold.
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Isn't it all about $$? For most single family homeowners -- who probably skew older, right? -- most of their wealth is in the value of their homes. They fear higher density will reduce housing values, ergo their wealth. Nobler arguments are secondary.
Or is this just simplistic?
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@Bert
I don't know. We bought our house at 31, 40 years ago. Three of our kids bought houses in their 30s. One granddaughter and her husband just bought their first house. They are in their mid-20s.
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So kind and thoughtful of the author. He acknowledges how nice and liberating it was to be raised in a single family home; that he had a very happy childhood.
And yet now he advocates against the single-family home, essentially denying the same happy childhood for others.
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@Luke another way of saying this is that I’d like others (I cling my own kids) to have happy childhoods in homes of any kind if they’re not able to afford one with a backyard
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@Luke
I agree with this even though I've never liver in a single-family home and never plan to. I live in an apartment in a high-density part of NYC.
But--when you ask Americans to put their lives in hock for decades to secure housing, they will usually want what they signed up for. I have views of a park, and beyond it a highway. I enjoy seeing trees out my window. If someone wanted to build housing there I wouldn't be happy, and it's not because I'm opposed to building housing.
I know my park is likely to remain and not because it is a public park, but because it's also a highway right-of-way. I don't put it past America to one day sell off its parkland, But the day we sell our highways will either be far in the future or we'll have far bigger problems than what we see out the window.
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@Luke "Single Family Home = Happy Childhood." Uh, no.
I grew up in a multi-family home. Know who had the other unit? My grandparents. Generations of our family have been near, but not too near - independent, but able to support each other since 1960. Still are. My own mother still lives in the flat I grew up in, and I live in the flat my grandparents had. We are here for and take care of each other - in stark contrast to my husband's family who have large single family homes across multiple states, and when things get bad, people have to board airplanes, risk job loss, and try to figure out how to take care of someone 1,000 miles away.
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I imagine in the ultimate state run economy, people will be assigned housing rather than own and assigned work, education and geography based on the needs of the state coupled with the skills of each citizen.
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@Brad I’m not sure how arguing against government zoning restrictions is pro “state-run economy.”
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@brad
By any measure, the more people you stuff into a given area, the more rules you need. To a great extent our increasing population is not only destroying the natural world but reducing our personal freedoms as well, It’s like walking down a crowded city street vs a path thru the woods. By necessity the street has to have a lot more rules and by extension less freedom than the uncrowded path. The only question is, why are we doing this?
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@AL
interesting.
birth rates in developed nations are falling while rising in the third world. I don't know that we can do anything about that, but Mother Nature will.
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This is like saying fetishizing wanting clean air or eating non-processed foods. The ability to walk away from your community is integral part of the healthy human psyche. We weren't born to live in such high population densities. If some people choose to live in a city, that's their choice. Don't hinder my ability to live a happy life. We have too many people in this country and this planet and need to take steps immediately to start lowering it. Stop/Lower immigration and a 2 child policy. I'd rather have less neighbors and a more fulfilling life than better technology or senior care when I'm 80.
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@Martin Alexander people need clean air and water to live; they don’t need a backyard and lawn to live.
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@Martin Alexander
In the historical past, if people walked away from their community they were likely to be eaten by wild animals or killed by members of rival tribes. They often lived in one large structure. It is only in recent times (really since WWII that the single family house on property became common with the development of communities like Levittown. Look at a historical show like Downton Abbey. For the wealthy living with extended family and servants in a large house was the norm. Only farmers lived in single family houses on land and often didn't actually own it. The working class lived in the equivalent of town houses or even just rented rooms in a bigger building, check by jowl with others. There were always hermit types who went out in the woods to live alone but they were the exception rather than the rule. And if one was in the shipping business or the military one lived crammed in a ship or a barracks!
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@Farhad Manjoo
You also can live off of soylent or fast food and vitamin pills. The human body is resilient but life is more than survival. My comment was doesn't really address your article because the issue is so complex. While I agree that California's housing code needs to change and we need to build much denser urban centers, this is a band-aid and doesn't solve the root problem of too many people and not enough free space. California is being destroyed by development. I'm sure you too drive on 50 and see all the new massive single family homes near Folsom, destroying nature for the unsustainable living of the few. However we need to solve the issue at its core, too many people.
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The author wanted a single-family home for his family but couldn't afford it in high-priced California. Having settled for a townhouse, he now condemns single-family housing and advocates measures that will discourage that way of life. I suppose that, if he couldn't afford a townhouse, he'd be advocating zoning that favors large apartment blocks.
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@Cato I am advocating for zoning that favors large apartment blocks.
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@Farhad Manjoo
Farhad, thanks for taking this all on (including the personal attacks). My question is about historic SFR areas. It was very unclear whether SB 50 allowed them to be protected as they currently are.
Also, SB 50 allowed high density in “job rich” areas, which does NOT mean right next to an office building. It means any area with decent employment, which is all of LA County. I advocate building densely in re-zoned commercial areas. SB 50 did not address that.
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@Cato "The reign of the single-family home is over." Based on what? This columnist's opinion? Certainly not based on the facts. According to the Commerce Department, last October the construction of new apartments plunged 28.3% to an annual pace of 327,000. The exact opposite of what this columnist is predicting. California is a unique situation. Elected officials & even many experts in science & the environmental movement have been cowed into silence when it comes to addressing the elephant in California’s living room: population growth. California is on track to hit 60 million people by mid-century. The biggest casualty of the illegal immigration debate in the U.S. has been the ability to discuss openly the staggering effects of population growth on critical resources such as housing, water, hospitals & schools. Census Bureau data shows that the nation's immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached nearly 38 million in March of last year. This is the highest number in the nation's history. No nation has ever attempted to incorporate 38 million newcomers into its society. As a share of the population, one in eight U.S. residents is now an immigrant (legal and illegal), the highest level in 80 years. Illegal immigrants ARE draining national & state treasuries. That is a fact beyond debate. It's out of control. To believe otherwise is simply nonsense. I hate the fact that the DP is stigmatized as the open borders/sanctuary city party. That position is political suicide.
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Some unpleasant truths: one, everybody can't live in California. Some people are going to have to live in other places - what we need to de-fetishize is the notion that the lesser-heralded states in this country are somehow less great places to be. Two, as a Midwestern native who's been in California for 32 years and is counting the days until I move back (in June) to escape the heat, the mobs, the expense and the inordinate amount of hassle than everyday chores like getting to work or going to the grocery store have become - thanks to the overpopulation - I can tell you why I don't support the demise of the house-and-yard model: I don't want to be crammed cheek by jowl into a life lived among people who don't share my value system. I want it quiet when I go to bed at night, I want the property in my neighborhood to be maintained properly, and I want my neighbors to have some regard for my right to live without their dogs, their kids, their parties and their cars constantly in my space. That living standard is already barely achievable here unless you're rich, and housing density will only make things more miserable. So spare me the lectures on how outdated single-family zoning allegedly is. That standard permits a life lived in peace - or as close to it as you can get in a state with 40 million people.
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@Sarah
Those are all fair points but there are really important things to consider:
1. Part of the reason so many people come here is for good paying jobs. It would be next to impossible to try and reorient our knowledge economy to force jobs and people to go live elsewhere.
2. California's home ownership is 55% and continues dropping. The national average is a full 10% higher. We are creating a generation of renters with no equity and the outcomes will only get worse as millenials get older.
3. Single family homes are not sustainable, the climate crisis is real and its more important than everybody have their own quarter acre lot driving personal vehicles 10's of miles everyday.
Homelessness, climate goals and inequality will be impossible to tackle in California without housing affordability being addressed.
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@Sarah
Hoozah.
The US desperately needs investment in communication infrastructure in "flyover" states. Young, mobile workers will build vibrant communities all over the country once they can get reliable internet and cell service so they can be productive far from the corporate hub.
Not everyone wants to be an urbanite, but many of us are forced to by lack of other options.
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@Sarah From a libertarian perspective, the government is providing a subsidy to existing landowners by enforcing zoning laws that limit the supply of new homes (which would compete in a selling environment with my existing home).
This is an issue mainly in the cities, not necessarily suburbs. But there are lots of single family homes in San Francisco, for example, that can't be bought and turned into an 8-flat condo building (or buy 20 houses and build a larger develpment).
Existing landowners are using NEPA, CEQA, and zoning to prop up the value of their existing houses.
21
Surprised to see suburban sprawl characterized as "a fine place to grow up". I grew up in suburban Columbus, Ohio and living in such a car dominated area while not being able to drive was hellish. I don't drive now, either, but living in a vastly denser place with meaningful public transit provides the agency that only driving could provide in a subdivision.
I hope more people will consider this when deciding where to locate their families. Enabling kids the freedom to get to engaging, diverse places without a parent gives them the freedom to develop into the unique, self-actualizing people we hope they'll be.
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@TBRN
We live in a house with a nice yard, a Craftsman built in 1909, right in the middle of the city, far, far from the suburbs. Wouldn't have lived in the suburbs for anything.
But it ain't California...
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The failure of AB50 is not about the fetishizing of the single family home. And this from someone who lives in a townhouse. It is about keeping local control and zoning where it belongs - local. Broad strokes from state politicians usually make bigger messes than they fix because by their nature they cannot account for specific community characteristics and requirements.
I would much prefer these politicians enact some laws that require all of the vacancies be filled before we build even more housing. (I believe that SF is considering a "vacancy tax") There are a lot of available residences that are corporate-owned and/or were purchased solely for investment that should be targeted first.
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@Regina G.
Look at any wealthy country with "reasonably priced" housing such as Japan, Germany and Switzerland. There is a common trend, local governments don't have the ability to block infrastructure that meets whatever regulations are in place. Interesting how those cities often score much higher on livability indexes as well.
7
@Regina G. My city was horrendously planned with a major job center placed directly adjacent to a large military base and multi-million dollar estates, while the working class housing is all an hour away during rush hour.
A new trolley stop is being built less than a mile away from my house but they didn't put a parking lot there. The housing is all up a steep hill from the trolley so I know far less people will walk to the trolley to use it than they expected. Great use of funds.
I think the local planners have failed us enough and it is time to let someone make the tough decisions that need to be made.
There are two levers here: population and housing. You can manipulate either or both to achieve a desired result.
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Manipulating housing is at best a short term solution. At some point, we need to wake up to the reality that unlimited population growth, as much as the chamber of commerce likes it, is insane and can’t go on.
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@AL
True.
What Farhad is advocating here, whether he realizes it or not is to provide high density population in compact spaces.. which is a boon for the Googles of the world.. who want labor and want it close by and want it cheaply.
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My point is there is no difference. If you manipulate one, you affect the other. Neither path is somehow more benevolent than the other.
4
I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, we should allow more density and more multi-family housing, especially in cities that are experiencing severe housing shortages, too high of housing costs, too much commuting traffic, etc. But, i don't think we're giving up on the love for single family homes any time soon - it's not just in America that people love them. Single family dwellings are desired in many parts of the world. There's a comfort to them, and something that feels very rooted about being able to plant a garden. It's not for everyone - I've lived in apartments just fine, and many people prefer apartment living. Fine. I also strongly dislike suburban sprawl (huge lawns, huge houses). Perhaps the developments that will make us feel, collectively, like we're home will be somewhere in between. Walking through sprawling suburban neighborhoods is depressing, but walking past blocks and blocks of apartment buildings can also feel isolating and unwelcoming. Walking through neighborhoods of dense single-family housing or rows of conjoined houses makes me, at least, feel at home and like my environment is on a human scale. Townhouses, like yours, are nice solutions, or smaller lots. There's a huge argument to be made for more density - and I agree with it - but the single family just pulls on our heartstrings in too deep a way to pretend we can just jettison it and win over supporters.
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Those who live in single-family homes can offer endless reasons why they would never give them up and why they take on big mortgages to have them.
The author admits he lives in a townhouse, presumably part of a multi-family structure, so methinks there is a sour-grapes element to his story.
Also, since Mr. Majoo is a writer, it would seem that if he wanted an affordable single-family home experience there are many places (even in California, more so elsewhere) from which he could choose.
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@Mon Ray
few writers can afford their own home. it's not a lucrative profession, unless you're Stephen King.
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@Anti-Marx they can if they don't live in CA. And that is a choice.
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@Anti-Marx Mr. Mahoo could probably afford a single-family home in many states other than California. It's his choice to live where housing is more expensive.
1