Grumpy NIMBYs. The state's ADU laws override local zoning requirements such as minimum setbacks, allowing their neighbors to build "horrible monstrosities" that "violate the spirit of the community".
The idea is degrading. A generation of people for which the only feasible path to home ownership is living in a mobile/kit home in someone else’s backyard.
To elaborate: this would be a fine policy IFF it were accompanied by other legislation that meaningfully improved the affordability of non-ADU homes as well.
Such as? Isn't the ADU going to be more affordable than the non-ADU home by definition (unless the ADU is actually larger than the house that was there first)?
First off, a lot of people jumped on the tiny home bandwagon in recent years, some seem to like them. Second, an ADU in a decent neighborhood would probably be a lot quieter than the various condo/townhouse/apartment options. Thirdly, it's not like they have to live in the ADU forever - if they could buy/sell it they'd actually have some equity built up for moving up to something bigger.
Plenty of new housing has been built-- luxury (mostly vacant) condos in downtowns and McMansions in the burbs. The real issue is affordability. Housing has been turned into a speculative commodity.
This is bullshit and lies.
Almost nothing has been built compared to the past. There are not mostly vacant luxury condos in downtowns.
As is this absolute canard "the real issue is affordability." Well obviously. But where does the unaffrodability come from? What gives landlords and home sellers the power to price far above average incomes?
It's a shortage of housing. If there was enough housing they simply could not price at unaffordable prices, because there would be no buyers.
The simple inability to see this is like some Jedi mind trick that landlords and real estate interests have played on the populace. We need to fully reject any ideology that has been saying that there's enough housing, because it's a bad and harmful ideology.
Again, absolute BS. No better example of this than LA. The type of new housing being built is small condos. Previously affordable housing is becoming unaffordable. That's not because of new units, that's because of a shortage.
Crappy little homes all over the city spiral up in price. Meanwhile a small number of apartments and condos are built downtown, and people publish fake studies about how there are vacancies, and the studies have to be retracted within days.
Everybody focuses on the new as if that's causing the problem, rather than seeing that there's massive massive overcrowding everywhere, lower income people are commuting massive distances, and what used to be working class neighborhoods have homes selling at prices that require household incomes of more than $500k/year.
The problem is a massive shortage. (And massive corruption in the permitting process, how many LA pols are facing felonies now because of denying housing so that they can take bribes to let a few things through?)
LA is indeed a great example. Your YIMBY laws at the state level are being used to override local zoning to build McMansions in the highest fire risk areas like the San Gabriel Valley foothills, along with bulldozing existing rent-controlled affordable housing near transit to build more luxury condos.
And yes, just take a drive into DTLA any night of the week and see the vacancies for yourself: 2/3 of the luxury condo units are dark, night after night after night. Good luck getting data from the parasitic real estate sector for a proper study. Those condos are bank accounts for foreign money laundering, which is probably why FINCEN recently announced that they're going to finally crack down on it.
The best part of your response was this though:
>how many LA pols are facing felonies now because of denying housing so that they can take bribes to let a few things through?
Huizar is the poster boy for this and he was taking bribes from the worst luxury condo developers of them all to build in downtown, razing the existing affordable rentals. Not to mention he went along with literally every big housing project that came his way for Boyle Heights (Vegas hotel/strippers/poker chips included or not), as detailed in "The Sellout".
I agree with you that there's a shortage, but the conversion of housing into a speculative commodity is a much bigger problem than a lack of construction, which is why there are well over 5 million vacant homes in this country (that we know of). AirBnB, Wall Street hedge funds purchasing single family homes, get rich quick flippers, are all driving the affordability problem.
Please do just a bit of thinking about vacancy. The idea that anyone would purposely let a unit they own sit empty for 10 years is ridiculous, and doesn't happen.
We need vacant units so people can move around. I guess in your perfect world there is 0% vacancy? Please, tell me, how would anyone move to a new city in that world?
yeah....
Also, rent control doesn't work. It never has. And never will.
