That's why I'm mostly talking about free market elements here, because that's the audience that needs convincing.

It's also a simple let me not compete for your suburban house and let me buy a row house in the fan for a more affordable price.

Land value tax is better economically. The 30 year mortgage was invented by the FDR administration. Zoning is not the free market etc.

I think it's strange democrats have taken up the issue, I hope they can convince Republicans that regulations can keep us down.

From the zoning code for TOD-1 the most dense and similar to the fan.

> A front yard of at least ten feet shall be required. In no case shall a front yard with a depth greater than fifteen feet be permitted, except as may be authorized pursuant to paragraphs (2) or (3) of this subdivision.

That radically changes the look of neighborhoods. Many homes don't have a 10 ft front yard.

>(2) Side yards. No side yards shall be required, except that where a side lot line abuts or is situated across an alley from property in an R district there shall be a side yard of not less than 20 feet in width. >3) Rear yard. No rear yard shall be required, except that where a rear lot line abuts or is situated across an alley from property in an R district there shall be a rear yard of not less than 20 feet in depth.

20 ft is enough room for an entire carriage house here, especially if it has a couple of stories.

>In the TOD-1 transit-oriented nodal district, a usable open space ratio of not less than 0.10 shall be provided for newly constructed buildings or portions thereof devoted to dwelling uses.

You can't build on 10% of the property.

TOD-1 is not in a large part of this city. The regulations have kept us from building up keeping prices down.

How do you explain why housing prices were flat from 1890-1980 and housing completed has fallen by a lot? IDK why it's inconceivable that we build as much housing as a nation with 2/3 the population.

This is with the zoning reforms from 5 years ago.

I do think we need some actually tiny apartments, SROs, though.

I think if they can make $175 a week work in NYC they can make it work in Richmond for what $100. That would help people from spiraling into homelessness, that would help people who just moved here. That's literally what the song YMCA is about, the song is about the old SROs that existed to help mostly young men get established in an area. It's a free market solution to take a bite out of homelessness.

I would have lived in one for a couple of weeks after starting my job then moved onto a normal apartment to live with some friends.

You don't have to ban something people don't want.

Edit: I will say that I don't think that many would take them but I think adding some SROs would be really beneficial.

I think there's more to it than housing but I think it's a huge piece. I think all payer rate setting would fix a lot (any MRI is $100 and if insurance or you pay cash the max price is $100 in America.

I really wish a party would take this up rather than wading into industries with Baumol's cost disease. Childcare and long term car whether we like it or not will increase with increasing wages across the board.

Those aren't the same at all. The density is way lower. Between setbacks and parking lots the density doesn't allow for something like the pulse. Minimum density for 15 minute leads for busses is 10,000 per SQ mile which the fan is at ~12k and museum is ~9.5k.

Those are also apartments and not row houses, we basically don't build new row houses. These are all worse off due to these regulations IMO. Scott's addition has removed a lot of the parking requirements and focused on transit and I think it's become all the better for it. The way the regulations are setup, it says the fan is unsafe while being the most desirable neighborhood...

If you want to get into specifics in the code I can.

My position is that we need to double the amount of housing being added per year, I think increasing the density and removing parking would increase housing added and decrease price. We clearly have skyrocketing demand and housing prices seems like we should build more and find out why they aren't.

Look at how many neighborhoods in Richmond haven't added housing in decades. We have a huge supply problem that will take decades to fix.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPUTSA

>Prices tell you if a place is nice or not. So if home prices are higher than the cost of construction, then you're not at risk of making a place undesirable, because if it was undesirable, prices would fall below construction costs.

We have elevated construction costs as well with regulations and waiting on them to approve something. This is usually financed and so more time borrowing money means more cost.

This is also why we have made projects so large to need huge financing teams and massive builders rather than some smaller places existing adding an ADU out back for some of these buildings. We have made it big developers by our own choices.

>And there is a missing middle for businesses just like there is for housing. The zoning restrictions basically create a price floor that small businesses/low income people can't ever reach, effectively pricing them out of the market.

Yeah IMO we would get better businesses if we had more cheap places for businesses. That's why food trucks became a thing, startup costs are a lot lower.

Suburbs mostly build out new chains because they can afford the space those places need.

A lot of it just seems like we've tried nothing and we are all out of ideas.

Give into urban sprawl seems like a leading statement, we've given into suburban sprawl. I think every city in this country would benefit by expanding whatever main street you have. Literally Paris has one of the highest densities of any city is extremely desirable but most of it doesn't go above 10 stories in 90% of it. I think we could really have 0 problems expanding city centers with up to 5 story buildings (cheapest SQ ft to build) emanating from the center. And a few duplexes/row houses near the city center.

I mean I think 4-6 plexes in Richmond are better looking than most suburban homes and add way more to the character.

Eugene, Oregon added 25% of it's population in the past 22 years, so less than 1% growth over the time period per year.

I think a lot of this boils down to the inherent throughput problems of cars and you can very easily hit issues with cars but with walking/biking/public transportation those are much harder to meet unless we are absolutely setting new limits to density.

That and the idea of move 5 minutes further away into a new subdivision has just gotten us into nonsense, it doesn't work after awhile and I think people are still acting like we live in a nice little suburb and the urban area is a 5 minute drive with ample parking which is just an unsustainable model.

>Are you referring to housing or businesses?

Both

>If you continue building, is there a risk you erase what is currently nice about a place?

I mean why can't we add something new fan style housing one of the most popular neighborhoods. Most people in urban Richmond city live in 100 year old housing, old factories converted into apartments, or brand new apartments that are a very recent development for the most part. That or shitty cape cods and more everywhere suburban sprawl.

>What if the low density is what makes a certain place desirable?

I mean yes in some cases but how many neighborhoods haven't built anything in decades and you are just yelling stop and watching as things increase as price fundamentally changing the nature of the area IMO more than building ever would have. I mean this view preserves the infrastructure but not the price point at all.

Increasing density has massive network effects, so it would almost all be clustered closer to the center. Most suburbs are too far away to really make sense for much higher density. Short pump to Willow Lawn is 9.8 miles, high density along that corridor maybe but bus times would be absurd. Nobody is adding more than like a couple of duplexes in any free market context to most neighborhoods and 90% of people can't tell the difference between a duplex and single family home.

>I know this will get downvoted because most Redditors would like to live in 100 sq ft apartments built 80 stories high, but I'm actually curious what you're saying.

I mean why don't we have more 2,000 sq ft row houses from this century that are actually urban?

Also people don't want small spaces but the 100 SQ ft places would actually take a huge bite out of the homelessness population, smaller places could be a lot more affordable. To me banning things below a certain size sounds to me like you are saying we should only build mansions, because I don't want to live next to poor people.

IMO the blight on this city is shitty post war cape cods. Which if you like them good, we have a shit ton of them (because they built stuff back then and now we don't). They are old and have no character association especially to Richmond.

Simply put this is talking about how when an article talks about how nice a town/city is then demand increases. I am saying that since we have too many regulations (you can't rebuild the fan because it's illegal if it falls apart) that's a reason why when demand increases supply is relatively flat.

We should be adding more due to more demand but we lack the ability to build enough.

Look at the amount of housing built which probably closely mirrors businesses, the amount has collapsed since the 1970s. Our early 2021 house building pace which was a relative high point, was among the lowest built during the 1970s.

If we built more stuff there could be more for everyone, instead we just say more is bad and then our favorite things get packed and expensive.

This is all due to our own constraints on supply, if demand increases above a very small level we have no answers.

We used to have answers but regulated those out of existence.

Diversity holds a pretty legit New years party each year, they are probably holding back for that reason.

IMO diversity is my favorite

You could also try azalea flea market which is popping most Saturdays.

The other piece is the Pacific Northwest banned black people for awhile there or at least Oregon...

But the deep dives on some local issues. If they want to spend the money they can but their revenue is down by 2/3 since 2006 and the Richmond local papers aren't laying some ground work for them in the same way.

I rather like the general Tso's tofu from the eatery.

Huge portion and I love it, plus tofu is had alongside meat all the time in Asian cuisines, whether vegetarian or not.

Whenever these articles come up I'm always thinking we are patting ourselves on the back and not thinking systemically about what is happening.

IMO I think it's more important that lower class disproportionately black Americans get into good housing with good schools than statues.

I think BLM's moment at least for now has come and gone (negative approval rating now vs March it was overwhelmingly positive) and we mostly renamed schools and tore down some statues and learned more about how we did/are segregating.

I think the race problem is always painted as worse in the south when I think the north has multiple marks they are dramatically worse.

I remember my coworker wouldn't go to Charlottesville because they tore down the Lee statue... Those kinds of people are out there.

Lack of budget these days to deal with harder hitting stories.

I worry that otherwise some convenience stores may struggle and close without vices to profit off of.

I mean but it feels more augment and likely making it so that it's a team of 3 to do a team of 5's work.

The casino plan was for them to pay Richmond $20 million plus $1 million per year, along with donating some amount to charity and another music venue.

Since we can authorize them or not they had to pay Richmond an extra tax, on top of another business moving into an empty area.

It's all absurd we could be spurring all kinds of new developments adding millions to the budget adding thousands of homes and Richmond will say they can't do anything.

It doesn't matter about short term rentals or not. I'm convinced a lot of that is a tax scheme to get around hotel taxes which are high because it's out of Towners.

The reason they buy it as investors is because the supply is not meeting demand so prices will rise. The big investors literally put in their sheets they love NIMBYs.

Add enough housing so that investors lose money. IMO the investor talk is because people don't like the idea that it's the people around them who are raising prices.

Or we build the casino and use that money...

People keep forgetting which side of the ledger the casino is.

Higher class malls are doing well, lower class not so good.