The long-awaited Friend Compound laws in California

https://supernuclear.substack.com/p/the-long-awaited-friend-compound

156 202 1 year ago

supernuclear.substack.com

cratermoon3• 1 year ago

Why do I feel like this is going to supercharge short-term rentals like AirBnB and do little to ease the housing crunch?

AstralStorm• 1 year ago

Instead of high density housing this will do slightly higher density in low density zones. You cannot really increase density by that much with it, but you for sure can cut the yards... And parking space.

I'm pretty sure this won't make housing more affordable by much. Or will even have an opposite effect. To build these houses a pretty serious investment or Amish-sized group is required. Who has that?

outer_web8• 1 year ago

I thought the post says one person buys the lot and then sells it to friends who individually fund the houses.

justonceokay2• 1 year ago

Additionally, what happens after 5 years when the first friend moves out? I see this complex as a terrible HOA-in-the-making since neighbors will be sharing more resources. Reminds me of when I was doing factory work and living in a punk house.

dylan6042• 1 year ago

but you for sure can cut the yards... And parking space.

As if each of the people moving into the subdivided spaces still won't need parking. Now, you've actually increased the demand for parking. Where is that parking going to happen?

bryanlarsen4• 1 year ago

This is for suburbia. There isn't massive demand for AirBnB in suburbia. There's such a massive shortage of housing that the small AirBnB demand is large relative to the supply of empty houses, but that's because a small number divided by a number very close to zero results in a large number. More supply will help a lot more than limiting AirBnB.

llm_nerd3• 1 year ago

It allows to subdivide lots down to 600 sq ft parcels. I can find endless examples in the core of every major California city, including San Francisco, where this is applicable, and could 5x or 10x the number of houses in single family areas[1]. San Francisco currently zones for a minimum of 4000 sq feet lots in RH-1 zones, and at least 1000 sq ft lot per residence in RH-3.

Should it or would it? Probably not. But this weird image of the suburbs vs "the city" (someone else used the term "metro" which humorously includes the suburbs, but whatever) doesn't seem reality based.

Doubly so given that the suburbs are car-centric, and plans like this are car-antagonistic. It seems to specifically exclude the suburbs, if anything.

[1] This law only applies to multi-family zoning, which in SF is RH-3. Regardless, funny to see people saying this is some low density suburb thing when many of the cores of cities have zoning requiring significantly more land.

subpixel• 1 year ago

You are correct - in fact the OG “bestie row” compound in Texas is already a glorified Airbnb.

What all of this will do is fuel vacation villages for rich people to use a little and rent out a lot.

dmitrygr4• 1 year ago

“Replacing parking” is going to cause all sorts of fun. Where will the cars go?

And please spare me the tired “transit that is safe and not full of stabby hoboes will magically sprout out of nothing overnight” nonsense.

ceejayoz3• 1 year ago

Where will the cars go?

Half of some cities' downtown space is parking.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities...

Every apartment complex in my area clearly has way, way more parking that needed - at no time of day are they more than 50% occupied.

jajko• 1 year ago

In Europe generally all new bigger construction has most parking below ground, even 2-3 floors. Very few outside if any, normally just for quick drop off or services.

I've even seen locals blocking a successful local bank trying to build a additional building and planning way too many of those - citing concern of too much added traffic in neighborhood. Not entirely sure if thats the best approach, but thats how how respect for laws and locals looks like. At the end, bank managed just fine despite that restriction.

lotsoweiners• 1 year ago

at no time of day are they more than 50% occupied

Why is that? Is there more than one parking space per bedroom or do people not have cars?

bryanlarsen4• 1 year ago

The problem is that parking is too cheap. It's not hard to find parking in downtown NYC but you have to pay an arm and a leg for it.

Get rid of free parking and you'll never be short of it again. Putting a proper price will reduce demand and increase supply.

richwater• 1 year ago

This is literally just a regressive tax.

Especially (but not solely) in areas with lack of quality public transportation (ie, doesn't double the time it takes to get somewhere)

thesuitonym4• 1 year ago

Transit that is safe will never sprout if you keep building parking lots.

bigstrat2003• 1 year ago

Maybe, maybe not. But you need to solve people's transportation problems first, not claim that if they give up car transportation options something else will materialize later.

Workaccount25• 1 year ago

The more popular mass transit becomes, the better the proposition of driving a car becomes.

You cannot escape that as transit drives down traffic and frees up parking, cars become much more enjoyable to use.

JumpCrisscross2• 1 year ago

Where will the cars go?

Idk, don't move there if having on-site parking is a dealbreaker for you. It isn't for a lot of people. Why should they subsidize someone else's parking preferences?

_carbyau_2• 1 year ago

OTOH, nimbyism sucks.

OTOH, having 4/6/8 new tinyhouses worth of neighbours and the streets filled with their cars sucks for many in the neighbourhood - so you'd expect them to resist, or at least ask the question. Where will the cars go?

The "pursuit of happiness" applies to all.

rickydroll6• 1 year ago

This is where you have to be smart about parking. Building small houses like that, raised up so you can park a car underneath, gets dual use out of the same square footage. While you are at it, orient the building properly so that installing PV panels on the roof makes sense. Now we have three uses for the same square footage.

gradientsrneat2• 1 year ago

If you're not able to afford a regular-sized house in some area, you're likely not able to afford a car either. Also, the places with more residential density already have public transit that is heavily used by normal people. Sadly cities will always have crime, but IMO crimes on public transit are the least of your problems if you're stuck in a neighborhood like that. And nothing is stopping miscreants from stealing stuff from your car trunk, breaking a window in your car just for fun, or keying your car, or possibly much worse if your car is a Tesla these days.

gradientsrneat2• 1 year ago

Forgot the elephant in the room here. Public transit fatality rates per mile are much lower than driving your own car.

boringg• 1 year ago

This works for suburbs I'm guessing - I don't see how it helps out in metro areas? Where does this work best for? Buy and re-develop for friends?

fckgw2• 1 year ago

Since this is California law, it helps tremendously in places like LA which were built as large suburban SFH neighborhoods but have long exhausted all free space. Building denser housing within existing SFH neighborhoods will help to alleviate the housing crisis.

outer_web8• 1 year ago

Exactly, rather than sending people farther and farther out of county, it lets LA's existing, sprawling suburbs look a tiny bit more like a real city.

mindslight• 1 year ago

Anything but building significantly upwards, amirite?

ebiester• 1 year ago

Increasing density in suburbs is a giant win.

aeontech• 1 year ago

The second law adds ability to replace parking spaces with ADU's, which could be useful even in more denser metro areas.

colanderman• 1 year ago

As someone interested in "friend compounds", I'm missing what in either of these laws enables that specifically. They both just seem to provide for denser housing generally. (Particularly SB684 almost literally just seems to allow subdividing lots which couldn't be subdivided before.)

tptacek4• 1 year ago

Yes, that's the whole subtext. These kinds of developments with multiple freestanding units on a single lot are generally disallowed by the previous generation of zoning and planning rules. Note how these changes are allowing "friend complexes" on lots zoned multifamily already.

ThinkBeat• 1 year ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ceejayoz3• 1 year ago

So a fancy trailer park basically?

Would you describe an apartment building this way?

rickydroll6• 1 year ago

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

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

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

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

Thorrez• 1 year ago

So a fancy trailer park basically?

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

Step 3: Sell the new lots to friends

fckgw2• 1 year ago

So a fancy trailer park basically?

No, not at all.

Maken2• 1 year ago

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

jagger27• 1 year ago

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

Work with what’s there.

Workaccount25• 1 year ago

The overall idea is pretty good, but I take issue the image that shows the $1M plot turning into $2.5M by building small homes.

This makes sense in a vacuum (maybe) but in reality, the areas that get subdivided like this will become less valuable with each new division.

There needs to be a feedback mechanism that prevents every lot from being turned into a bunch of micro-lots in a race to do what the image depicts before the area loses value.

Maken2• 1 year ago

Isn't homes becoming more affordable an intended side effect of this legislation?

Workaccount25• 1 year ago

Yes, but you want a system that can dial in a level of affordability rather than a "rapidly multiply every home in an area by four" race to the bottom.

I don't know the specifics of the bill, but if it's a 2.5x investment cheat code for the fastest actors, it's going to cause mayhem and hard backlash.

barryrandall• 1 year ago

How many of these would it take to drive down property values in a neighborhood?

Workaccount25• 1 year ago

How much more would you pay for a house with 1 or 2 neighbors instead of 4 or 8 neighbors?

There is your answer.

meragrin_3• 1 year ago

I think you missed the actual point of the graphic. It is to point out that the laws enable cheaper housing. Instead of people having to pay $1M for a single home, you're enabling 4 homes at $700k or less each.

mr3martinis• 1 year ago

That’s absolutely not true. Higher population density almost always increases land values and it certainly would increase the total value of the land that was subdivided.

awongh• 1 year ago

Except that this is California, where real estate prices are crazy. And not just recently, prices have continually been getting less and less affordable for 40 years.

There could be macroeconomic forces that affect that estimate, but in Berkeley in the historical context of home prices it makes perfect sense.

michaelmrose2• 1 year ago

The goal of housing is not to grow or even maintain the wealth of the people who live there it is to to house people. If it should come about that A given neighborhood triple's in population and everyone's house is worth half as much I should count it as a success.

kelnos5• 1 year ago

Not sure I agree. The extent of the increase is certainly up for debate, but in a place like California where we have a housing affordability crisis, packing more housing units onto the same lot absolutely increases the value of the lot as a whole.

Now, certainly each individual house will be worth less than a single house on the lot would be. But the value of the lot+improvements will likely go up quite a lot.

Also consider that the value of the lot, unimproved, doesn't just magically go up once you get approval to build your friend compound. To get that $1M -> $2.5M increase in value, you probably have to invest a cool million into building the rest of the homes.

CalRobert• 1 year ago

Why? More, cheaper homes is a good thing

alistairSH4• 1 year ago

Do you have a source for this?

From what I've seen with infill in my area (Reston, VA, outside DC)... infill might slow the appreciation of adjacent property, but rarely/never hurts it. Surrounding property (>1 parcel away, give or take) generally increases in value, because along with the infill housing comes more amenities (commercial/retail redevelopment).

And for the property that was "infilled", the per unit price might be slightly lower, but the value of the entire property has gone up. Say the land cost $1 million, got split into 4 parcels, and each is now worth $275,000 (fabricated numbers).

EDIT - this isn't quite apples to apples, since we don't have the same rules as CA - we just have a massive amount of infill development happening along approved "density" corridors.

crmd• 1 year ago

In a friends/family compound that is subdivided, you need a covenant on the original deeds that controls what happens when a member wants to sell their lot, e.g. the existing members collectively have to approve the buyer, or have right of first refusal to buy back the property, etc

Otherwise what starts as a family compound will eventually just become a “normal” neighborhood of strangers.

Subdivided family compounds are one of the extremely rare cases where you actually want a deeded homeowners association.

daft_pink• 1 year ago

As someone that’s dealt with families trying to sell real estate owned jointly by several different families, owning real estate that requires all your friends and/or family to approve your sale sounds like a recipe for disaster.

KerrAvon• 1 year ago

Yes. Even when all parties are directionally aligned and fundamentally agree on everything it can be a nightmare simply to get all the ducks in a row.

But if I understand this correctly, this is just a way to allow for high density housing; there's nothing specific to friends / family here? A developer can buy a large lot and subdivide it to tiny, tiny houses. Doesn't sound pleasant to me, tbh, but high-density advocates gonna high-dense, I guess.

toomuchtodo• 1 year ago

Not much different than private equity that requires board approval to transfer. As long as the terms are in the operating agreement (or other ownership structure agreement), caveat emptor.

(am member/owner in family friend's family farm)

m463• 1 year ago

All the stories I've heard about families not getting along pale in comparison to stories of when the parents die. Game of Thrones come to life.

I would love to know how people have successfully resolved this for their families.

I wonder if this compound stuff might work better for 6 secondary homes, like in the woods for summer. Everyone pitches in to build them.

achierius2• 1 year ago

On the other hand, right of first purchase seems fine: "I'm going to sell this to <X>, and if you want it you have to pay the same amount".

amy214• 1 year ago

I agree, I don't think HOA is good idea here, at least not, "the right to veto the buyer" part. This creates a whole litany of potential moral hazards "okay, I'll approve them BUT you do XYZ or pay me ABC" or simply someone with a chip on their shoulder or feeling slighted might jam it up out of spite. It's not uncommon to see low key frustration between neighbors.

It's also worth mentioning that in California urban regions, where such a law is most applicable here, the townships are fairly highly regulated to the point of being a quasi-HOA. Specifically, various housing developments may have bylaws and rules - no HOA - but bylaws and rules enforced by the local city and burned onto the property deed. A true to life HOA in Idaho or Wyoming, for example, may offer more freedom and flexibility than a HOA-free property subject to local government in California.

xrd2• 1 year ago

My mom has owned a timeshare (which is a freestanding house) for almost 40 years at the Oregon coast with 5 other families. The families have all changed over the years and there have been small conflicts around what color the couch should be reupholstered but never any large conflicts when someone left the arrangement. It has been a source of pride that these families have shared something in this way, and a bunch of the kids like me have really benefitted in a way that we could not if we always went to a different rental.

crooked-v3• 1 year ago

Otherwise what starts as a family compound will eventually just become a “normal” neighborhood of strangers.

That's explicitly noted as an advantage of the arrangement in the article.

anjel• 1 year ago

Sounds like more fun than selling a co-op, even!

nicoburns• 1 year ago

The real benefit here is the increased density of the neighbourhood. That's conducive to community even if it's strangers that move in. Combine this with mixed zoning that allows for commercial property (things like cafes and grocery stores) and suddenly you have a pathway for gradually turning faceless modern suburbs into walkable neighbourhoods with amenities.

renewiltord• 1 year ago

That’s fine. My home will be for my children to grow up in, but the world is big. I would never constrain them to this place. Once we pass it’s okay if other families make this their home. What sin is it that’s others enjoy it after I am gone.

randunel• 1 year ago

It's called preemption, and it's a thing where I live.

A compound's members can have preemption to acquire a property when an outside buyer puts their money in an escrow for a contract that's already been signed. The preemptees have 30d-1y to come up with the same amount to purchase the property themselves or accept the new owner.

This way, property law isn't violated, because the seller still gets to sell their property for the agreed price no matter what others decide.

Pet_Ant• 1 year ago

This does not prevent gentrification or changing the vibe of the neighbourhood. One can see that as a positive or a negative, just wanted to call that out.

walrus01• 1 year ago

In a friends/family compound that is subdivided, you need a covenant on the original deeds that controls what happens when a member wants to sell their lot, e.g. the existing members collectively have to approve the buyer, or have right of first refusal to buy back the property, etc

This sounds like reinventing the the often extremely long, complicated and onerous process of getting approved to buy into a coop in NYC.

I would hope that any real estate is subject to such covenants will be appropriately valued much less than traditional freehold / fee simple land.

logifail• 1 year ago

To get this going, we had to buy 1 home, not 6 of them

You had to buy land for six, though?

This side of the pond buying (vacant) land to build one family home would run well into six figures (USD $$$,$$$ where the first digit is definitely a 2 and if you're unlucky it's higher still) - then you have to finance the house(s) on top.

s1artibartfast3• 1 year ago

Yeah, I think the article captures that pretty well. The infographic shows 4 lots for 100k each.

In most cities it is close to impossible to find several lots for sale side by side.

Mountain_Skies• 1 year ago

At the risk of sounding glib, the Detroit Land Bank has some amazing deals on adjacent vacant properties when you buy a property to rehabilitate. If a family wants to have their own virtual compound and can stomach the safety implications, buying a Land Bank house and adjacent properties would give everyone plenty of elbow room.

wmf3• 1 year ago

They're talking about buying one lot and splitting it into 6 micro lots. That sounds ridiculously small to me.

crooked-v3• 1 year ago

The context you're missing is that zoning and building codes make a lot of lots ridiculously big in the first place.

Izikiel43• 1 year ago

Depends on what your measure for normal is.

In Seattle, luckily a lot of SFHs with big lots are being turned into multiple townhomes.

kelnos5• 1 year ago

I think the idea is that you buy a house that has a lot that could easily support more houses. You live in the house that's there, and then you subdivide the lot and sell those smaller parcels for some amount to friends/family, who then finance the build of their own home.

So as the initial buyer, you're certainly spending some extra to get a house on a lot that's large enough (vs. a lot only large enough for your own house), but you're going to recoup some (all?) of that extra outlay from your friends/family. You're not financing the build of more homes yourself.

Also we need to be on the same page when it comes to lot size. Here in California it's common to have a house on a quarter of an acre of land or (much) less. You could easily build 6 -- maybe even 8 -- homes (1500 sqft or so each) on a 1-acre plot here, and no one would think that's unusual.

And sure, an acre of land in CA is not going to be cheap, but that certainly depends on where you buy it. But if you can get an acre for, say, $1M, and then sell sub-parcels to 5 of your friends for $200k each, that's... fine? Honestly that seems pretty standard here. But sure, in some places in CA you could get acre for $600k, or maybe less.

ramesh312• 1 year ago

Now you get the privilege of paying a mortgage to live in a Hooverville.

outer_web8• 1 year ago

I think for many the only alternative is renting. Having your rent go towards ownership is preferable in many cases.

foogazi2• 1 year ago

That's just one of many preferred outcomes - not the top one

1. Buy cheap sfh

2. Buy cheap condo

3. Rent cheap sfh

4. Rent cheap condo

...

20. Buy expensive micro-house

Edit:formatting

ramesh312• 1 year ago

I think for many the only alternative is renting.

Indeed it is, and that's kinda my point. These were the $8,000 starter homes our working class grandparents bought on a single salary from Sears in their 20s. Now they are a stretch goal for middle aged dual income families.

game_the0ry2• 1 year ago

Is it just me, or does this seem like a another example of how housing in CA is broken? The demand is totally insatiable.

I grew up in the state, and am in the East Coast for now (which also has its own problems), but I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU. The whole concept of an ADU just seems like a bad sign for the market, not mention the increase in traffic bc more density = more people.

You would think the market would normalize and people would move to other states, which is happening, yet people are contemplating making these mini houses.

Yet another symptom of American standard of living decreasing -- younger people are just getting less with the same amount of money. That's the root of the problem.

outer_web8• 1 year ago

Is insatiable demand equivalent to 'broken' housing? Seems like the latter is a pejorative and the former is the better of two possible problems.

Considering people live in apartments and condos, what's the problem with an ADU (or tinyhouse as they called them years ago)?

The density/traffic thing is not straightforward. Increased capacity will add traffic, sure. To the extent that capacity remains static and people can live closer to their commute destinations, you have fewer people taking longer trips and more people taking shorter trips (or other transport). Obviously both of these will be the case. As will people moving from high density housing to ADUs in the suburbs.

Agreed on the standard of living issue.

Daishiman3• 1 year ago

I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU.

People have different imagination from you

I can't imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU.

More density implies that services get built closer together. A corner store needs a high level of density to exist, but when it does it cuts down your trips to a large grocery store.

I live in a dense city. I have a grocer half a block away, 10 coffee shops in a 5-block radius, etc.

You have an extremely Americanized view of a fundamentally unsustainable housing mechanism; American car-dependent suburbs don't make any sense as the main source of housing.

game_the0ry2• 1 year ago

I live in a dense city. I have a grocer half a block away, 10 coffee shops in a 5-block radius, etc

"Density in CA" is not the same as "Density in Copenhagen/NY/Berlin/etc". Density in CA means it takes you an hour to drive to get to Whole Foods that's 7 miles away bc of traffic, something I experienced in Venice Beach. Density in CA makes already bad traffic way worse, and its not like the infrastructure is going to upgrade such that coffee shops spring up on every neighborhood corner.

You have an extremely Americanized view of a fundamentally unsustainable housing mechanism

Bc I live in America.

American car-dependent suburbs don't make any sense as the main source of housing.

Agreed, but I do not think ADUs make much sense in a suburban area that does not support the infrastructure for more dense housing.

ahmeneeroe-v2• 1 year ago

A starter home in the 1950s is so much closer to an ADU than the median SFH from 1990+

aprilthird20212• 1 year ago

The demand has nothing to do with it. SF should look like Tokyo, but California gave away its right to be the king of the world economy so it could hand over feudal fiefdoms to retirees and old people who bought houses when they were worth $10 each.

diebeforei485• 1 year ago

It would be nice if the yards could face each other. So people could basically have a large open space that is private to the residents.

defterGoose• 1 year ago

That's what a Bungalow Court is all about. They're kind of a dying breed, but have previously been very popular here in LA County.

hexis• 1 year ago

The Californians yearn for a cult.

njarboe• 1 year ago

In rural Colorado there is a law that makes subdividing lots under 35 acres very difficult. There are lots of areas in the mountains that have expensive housing. You are allowed to build one 15,000 sqft house but not ten 1,500 sqft houses on the 35 acres. Would love to have something like this in Colorado.

fritzo• 1 year ago

Where are those ten houses going to get water?

bmacho• 1 year ago

Spring, well, rain-water, or water transported there on pick-ups

scarecrowbob2• 1 year ago

I just haul it on a trailer from the water dock.

scarecrowbob2• 1 year ago

Same. I am living on about 40 acres in the 4 corners area and I'd really like to put in more infrastructure. Currently I have a bunch of non-permitted (built in the 90s) cabins together in one corner, running off of solar. I'm planning on building a septic and a cistern for this set of buildings and a larger, more permitted house on another part of the property this year.

I could have 6-10 tiny houses on this property and not have folks seeing each other, and I have the cash to just put in everything necessary. As written, the codes are not friendly towards that idea. I am still going to put in some RV hookups, at least- those are much less regulated than dwellings. My neighbors certainly aren't in a position to do the kind of complainaing that would lead to more attention from the county, and I'm at the end of a long series of oil field roads.

While I am an anarchist, I do understand the county's need to prevent folks from creating dangers to themselves and other folks. I just wish that everything didn't need to be massively profitable for some investors before variations on codes and planning could be grante.

FooBarBizBazz• 1 year ago

Can condo or co-op (legal) structures solve this problem?

Suppafly9• 1 year ago

In rural Colorado there is a law that makes subdividing lots under 35 acres very difficult.

Those sorts of laws are often to protect farms and ranches from being turned into subdivisions are generally a good thing if you want a stable food supply.

rank0• 1 year ago

I like it. Honestly we need even more freedom. I thought this was AMERICA! Absurd that you couldn’t already do this.

josephpmay• 1 year ago

One thing that’s incorrect in the article:

SB 684 only works on multifamily-zoned lots, but starting in July, it’s getting replaced by SB 1123, which works on “vacant or uninhabitable” single-family lots

caycep• 1 year ago

why not NY style row houses? you might achieve more density than a compound

simonebrunozzi• 1 year ago

This type of law, and its consequences, are really interesting to me.

I used to live in San Francisco, but in 2020 moved back to Italy.

Now we like to spend 2-3 months a year in the SF Bay Area, but we would hardly consider buying a house (and renting it out when we're away).

Instead, a situation where we would be neighbors with a few "friends", it would make it much easier to consider the option.

cft• 1 year ago

Similar has been already tried in the USSR, it was called a Communal Apartment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment

TheCoelacanth2• 1 year ago

That's not at all the same thing. They're subdividing the lot and building a separate house for each family, not just putting multiple families together into an existing large house.

morsecodist• 1 year ago

I do YIMBY advocacy and this sounds policy change sounds like a good thing but I am always struck that our zoning is so restrictive that when people come up with different styles of housing it requires a law change and we talk about it like the law change is giving us this new cool style of housing. What is really happening is the law has taken away this style of housing and someone has come up with nice branding for a denser housing style that seems less scary so they are able budge zoning laws the tiniest bit to allow more density, but only if it is in this cool new style that we are OK with.

alistairSH4• 1 year ago

I'm pretty positive about the ability to subdivide and build smaller.

But pushing this as a "friend compound" law is super weird. Are there really that many people who want a friend compound for their primary residence? Personally, I'd be hard pressed to think of more than 1-2 other couples with whom I'd want to co-develop property and even then only for a vacation home, not my regular house.

dyauspitr2• 1 year ago

Are you a churchgoer? Because they usually have a lot of families they know that want these situations.

toasterlovin• 1 year ago

Yeah, exactly, we’ve talked about this a lot with friends from church and, IMO, this would be the best way to do it. It avoids the coercive danger of shared property and gives anybody the ability to exit whenever they want.

xrd2• 1 year ago

The general consensus in everything I read is that it is easier to build in the south (like Florida or Texas). But, where I live now, Central Florida, the zoning restrictions are tight. Even putting in an ADU is a mess. I assume this is because people want to protect themselves from a double wide showing up next door. Sprawl is fine, but not next door.

I see a lot of radical changes happening in the American West. I'm from Oregon where HB 2001 (https://www.oregon.gov/lcd/LAR/Pages/Housing-2023.aspx) passed in 2023 and it and a few other laws now disallow any city with more than 25k people from blocking high density housing.

I'm really curious to see if these things will work and if the pendulum will shift. I hope so.

The long-awaited Friend Compound laws in California

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