Rent control and housing

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Rent control and housing

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

esquilax posted:

Rent control and overly restrictive zoning are pretty complementary. The primary symptom of overly restrictive zoning is high prices (which is mitigated by rent control) and the primary symptom of rent control is that no new housing gets built (which is impossible anyway due to bad zoning).

Chicago is also suffering from a bad zoning problem - in a lot of areas you're not allowed to build anything except single family homes and maybe a three flat. Homeowners want to restrict the number of units to benefit from high prices. It's gotten to the point where many neighborhoods that have seen the largest growth in housing prices have actually seen a reduction in units, which is just backwards.

Are there any maps of this zoning? I thought one of the primary reasons for the 3flats was requirements for elevators on taller buildings, so it didn't make any economical sense to build that high.
That being said, you can have really high density with nonstop 3flats everywhere.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 18:54

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 00:45

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

esquilax posted:

Here's one that covers a lot of it:

Yellow is non-residential only, so no homes at all.
Red is single-family homes only, so no two-flats or three-flats allowed at all.
Black allows multi-unit, but a most of it can't be over 4 floors.

Here's a more detailed map of it. Click on any of the green areas, it will tell you the zone. It's hard to build much more than a two-flat in R-3 zones.
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1HmI6PT0q7rFbEXDfEt2VTbFyZVLZn__58AUe86E#map:id=4

With explanation of zoning type.
http://secondcityzoning.org/zones#R

A guy I know runs a really good blog on Chicago housing and zoning, it's been getting a lot of press lately. The first map is from there.
http://danielkayhertz.com/

Wow, that's fantastic. Thanks a ton.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 21:26

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

If you read that fantastic Chicago blog from a few pages back, you can see pretty clearly that the best way to get 'affordable' housing is to change zoning restrictions, whether it be in the near-downtown or the suburbs (or realistically, both).

# ¿ Oct 17, 2014 23:35

mastershakeman: Oct 28, 2008; by vyelkin

There's always going to be pushback though if you build housing in a 'nice' area. A large part of what makes an area nice is its exclusivity. Regardless of if you're converting commercial or residential space to a midrise or tower, the surrounding area will have their million dollar homes drop in value, which will create a huge blowback from politically connected people.

I was just reading that some of the nicest suburbs in Chicago haven't allowed for apartment construction in 100 years.

mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Oct 21, 2014

# ¿ Oct 21, 2014 13:19

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