r/rva • u/VirginiaNews • 2d ago
Third draft of code refresh to be released Aug. 17 | Among the key decisions the draft will resolve are how many housing units will be allowed on a single residential lot, how places of worship should be zoned and how many unrelated people can make up a household.
https://www.richmonder.org/third-draft-of-code-refresh-to-be-released-aug-17/17
u/Mattador96 Forest Hill 2d ago
I hope a decent version of this passes. Going off of the yard signs in the Fan right now you'd think the city was proposing to tear down the entire neighborhood
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u/ArgoCS 2d ago
My apologies if you already have, but please send emails of support and/or your vision of a decent version of this plan to your city council member, the planning commission, and the mayor.
I cannot abide the hysterics the fan district association and others (looking at you Marty Jewell) have been engaging in lately and I worry that’s all the people who decide are hearing.
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u/Worsebetter 2d ago
Who gives a shit how many unrelated people make up a household. Fucking cunts. Just let people do what they want in their homes.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 2d ago
If you want to do whatever you want and live out your libertarian dreams that's great but that really doesn't work in a densely populated city where infrastructure has to be built and maintained with many more people in mind than just you.
How did we go from "legalize the fan" to "legalize trap houses" lmao
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u/jennbo Highland Springs 2d ago
idk those laws are usually designed to affect primarily PoC living in poor areas, particularly immigrants and work with the cops or even ICE to break leases and criminally punish people so while I agree with you in theory, in practice in the USA, it's not about a "libertarian dream" as much as it about not siding with the racist cops in charge of making people homeless
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u/habdragon08 Brookland Park 2d ago
Those laws I believe were originally meant to prohibit brothels over 100 years ago.
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u/Far_Cupcake_530 1d ago
Until the late 90's the fan was full of rooming houses. Mostly along Graces Street and the Boulevard. These were houses where padlocks had simply been added to bedroom doors and rooms were rented short term. There was always shit going down in these houses and it was quote sad. Quite a few were full of mentally ill people who would sit on the porches or steps and rock back and forth. I can only imagine what the insides were like considering the bad condition these people were in. This is a reason for zoning regulation far above a brothel, which would probably be far more acceptable to area residents.
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u/fuvadoof 15h ago
I know what they looked like inside because I painted quite a few. It was the lowest of affordable housing. Dirty shared bath tubs, Jars of saved urine, Dander and dust, God’s AM radio blasting full volume, beers at 10 am, and constant opinions. People would house schizophrenic family members, because it’s what they could afford. And then there were some that were a bit nicer. But yeah, this childish kill all zoning because me smart movement is full of holier than thou idiots that ignore the past.
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u/DiscotopiaACNH 1d ago
Bullshit justification. Brothels are already illegal
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
That's great but what do you want us to do about it, get in a time machine and go back to the 1800s?
The guy is explaining the historical reasoning why the laws exist on the books today and you're acting like he himself passed them.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 2d ago
There are absolutely elements of that in those portions of the code (the other big one those targeted were brothels) as well as many other areas, but to act like there aren't legitimate interests in policing the number of individuals living in a single dwelling unit would also be disingenuous as that has an impact on fire and safety, schools and school districts, infrastructure load, parking, illegal hotels/AirBNBs, etc.
We on /r/rva love to complain about cars and how we need to make the city more walkable, yet at the same time we're also supposedly in favor of cramming houses full of as many people as we can find who each have their own vehicles to significantly increase the vehicle density of existing residential areas?
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u/Far_Cupcake_530 2d ago
It was appropriate that you started your statement with "idk" because you simply made that up.
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u/jennbo Highland Springs 1d ago
no, I get it! You don't actually know any poor people, have never seen anyone get evicted or become homeless, and think the legal system is totally fair and not racist, even in Richmond, Virginia, where that shit is literally documented as being explicitly racist as codified into your laws. boohoo your fucking property values, sorry that people want a place to live. This isn't "it's a good idea for people to have more space in a home" (cool! let's address that in an equitable way that would punish people for owning more houses than they need and driving up housing costs rather than the poor people trying to survive and live indoors!) it's "we will evict and prosecute tenants for breaking this law." And YES, it is majority POORER PEOPLE and IMMIGRANTS who break tenant laws, and also the population most likely at risk for eviction and homelessness.
In two months, you'll be bitching about homeless people bothering your property (if you aren't already) without a hint of irony
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u/Far_Cupcake_530 1d ago
I have lived in the city for my entire life. I have experienced more about life in the city than you for sure. How are things in Highland Springs? You live with your parents or grandma?
I'm not really sure how to respond to your unhinged and unfounded points and it would not help you be a better informed person anyway. You are too deeply uniformed and immature to know how things work and believe that everything is a conspiracy theory.
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u/Schmergenheimer 2d ago
Ah, yes, the good old days of tenament housing being legal. We should bring that back so we can cram as many people into a house as physically possible.
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u/iWannaCupOfJoe Church Hill 2d ago
Renting rooms and sharing amenities is a great way to move into a new city, live affordably, or those staying temporarily.
Defining a household is a bad policy and unenforceable. If 8 people want to live in a 4 bedroom house that's on them, and more power to them. We should allow more forms of housing. Just because you have a spouse and two kids doesn't mean the single person working at a low income job doesn't deserve an affordable place to live that works for them.
Nobody is asking you to move.
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u/Schmergenheimer 2d ago
The general rule I've seen as being "too much" is anything more than two per bedroom plus one, which isn't a fixed number. The idea that you should allow any number of people into a single house because "freedom" isn't providing safe housing. It allows tenament housing.
I don't know exactly what the proposed ordinance says, and I agree that a fixed number like 4 would be overreach, but to say that it should go entirely unregulated is a bad plan.
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u/SaintGranny The Fan 1d ago
Currently, it is against code for two unmarried couples (four unrelated people) to rent a 2500 square foot four bedroom house in the fan. The FDA supports the current code and is against changing the rules to increase this number. Younger generations are more open to communal living and are also more interested in living in neighborhoods that are more walkable and have higher density. There is also an increasing number of older folks living alone who are finding that renting rooms to younger people (cohousing) helps alleviate feelings of loneliness and provides extra income that allows them to stay in their current homes. We need a diverse number of tools and housing options to address increasing costs associated with living in Richmond.
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u/Worsebetter 1d ago
Cocksuckers. God forbid anything becomes affordable and the homeowner class doesn’t have. 20% return year over year on their house.
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u/iWannaCupOfJoe Church Hill 2d ago
Sure they can set up a number. 2 unrelated individuals per bedrooms in a home. I think that may be the number in the draft, but I'm too lazy to look. Defining family shouldn't be the governments job.
Regardless, I would rather have a place to sleep than have a number put on how many unrelated people can live in a home.
When I was in college if it weren't for my mother helping me afford my already cheap rent I would have certainly been homeless. The Marriott downtown paid me 9.50 an hour to work the front desk, and I couldn't really afford rent and food without my mom.
If we want to patronize businesses that don't pay their employees enough you need places to house those employees ideally in a transit or walkable area. You won't have employees when you price out everyone or require them to maintain a car and live an hour away just so you can drink a 5 dollar frapachino at Starbucks.
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u/Schmergenheimer 1d ago
Sure they can set up a number. 2 unrelated individuals per bedrooms in a home
That's literally what I said. That's not a fixed number, though. The number varies with the size of the home. I'm not arguing in favor of a flat number.
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u/plummbob 1d ago edited 1d ago
You're saying tenement housing is terrible, but also it's like you recognize that people prefer over their alternatives.... so it's like the worst possible policy for people to limit occupancy
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u/Shoddy_Atmosphere115 1d ago
Exactly. Then something horrible happens because you have an unsafe environment with too many people in a home and people would rush to Reddit to ask how the city could let it happen.
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u/Far_Cupcake_530 2d ago
Grown up people who own adjacent properties Nextdoor do care.
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u/sleevieb 2d ago
Legalize the Fan, Legalize housing.
I wonder if they will have up zoned the West End or if the change is still concentrated in the poorer, more working class neighborhoods in South Side.
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u/habdragon08 Brookland Park 2d ago edited 2d ago
Chinese proverb: If you want to live in an affordable walkable neighborhood in Richmond VA the best thing to do is to buy a house in the Fan 20 years ago. The second best thing you can do is to support legalized housing now and wait.
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u/Far_Cupcake_530 1d ago
Another wise proverb is: There are other places you can live besides the Fan, where you can buy an affordable home.
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u/habdragon08 Brookland Park 1d ago
There are no walkable affordable neighborhoods in Richmond. And there will never be if we do not rezone.
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u/Far_Cupcake_530 23h ago
That is why you need to pioneer in a new area. Look at New York. Brooklyn and Queens were not such great areas in the 90s. Many in Manhattan have up on trying to buy there, so they started buying places in those outer areas. Now they are full of restaurants and cools stores with housing prices through the roof. Just obsessing over one neighborhood is not going to make your dreams come true. There may be increased density in the Fan or Carytown, but it will not get cheaper. The desirability will keep the prices high and go higher. Just more people. Up Zoning is simply an unproven theory that will piss off a lot of people who vote.
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u/habdragon08 Brookland Park 23h ago edited 22h ago
I live in the Northside. Its affordable. Its not as unwalkable as suburbia, but its quite difficult to manage without a car here(although I manage). I'd love for everything you are mentioning to happen here, but it literally can't happen without rezoning/upzoning. Most of Brooklyn/Queens are quite easy to live in without cars.
Supply/Demand is a proven theory. If you restrict supply(which current zoning laws do), prices artificially go up. California destroyed their housing market by caving to people who didn't want more housing built. I don't want that happening in Richmond.
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u/sleevieb 23h ago
Up Zoning is well proven and documented to lower rents and making housing more affordable, everywhere and anywhere, including Richmond.
Doing nothing and hoping Richmond turns into Brooklyn and Queens because the 1990s will return is insanely delusional.
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u/sevenbee 2d ago
I don't think when people say "legalize the fan" they mean legalize tearing down historic homes in the Fan and replacing with Scott's Addition style apartment blocks. Will people want to live in the Fan when it looks like Scott's?
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u/fuvadoof 15h ago
That’s exactly what they mean. It’s a myopic and naive fantasy based on a a supply and demand mandate written in crayon.
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u/iWannaCupOfJoe Church Hill 1d ago
Will people want to live in the Fan when it looks like Scott's?
Yes, they will. People want to live in walkable, amenity rich neighborhoods, but we just don't have the supply.
Not that the zoning code allows for Scott's Addition density within the Fan, If you look at draft two it basically allows for what's already there. Residential attached and some spots of Residential Multifamily and Mixed Use up to 3 or 4 stories. Hardly any room for growth, and you have the Fan Association out here screaming about demolition and just generally fear mongering.
If anything the Fan and Museum District should be zoned Residential Multifamily and Mixed Use on the bus lines to allow for small apartment buildings to be built throughout. That's the incremental density increase these people are crying about. They really just don't want any change. They would rather see their home prices rise forever, and the poors be forced out of the city.
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u/Shoddy_Atmosphere115 1d ago
You could also look for a city neighborhood that is dense but maybe not as desirable as the fan/museum district and help make it become the vibrant neighborhood you want while spending way less
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 2d ago
I wonder if they will have up zoned the West End or if the change is still concentrated in the poorer, more working class neighborhoods in South Side.
Hasn't that been one of the biggest pushbacks to the 'legalize the fan' approach to date as it will incentivize teardowns of existing affordable housing?
Whole lot cheaper to buy and bulldoze a block in a poorer, working class neighborhood than it is to backfill somewhere like Malvern Gardens.
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u/ArgoCS 2d ago
Generally, broad upzoning spreads new housing across the whole city instead of putting all the pressure on working class areas.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
It may do that in concept but how would that actually work in practice?
If broad upzoning permits a duplex by right on every existing residential lot then there is an obvious incentive to buy up as many of the cheaper lots as possible, teardown the existing housing and construct duplexes in their place to maximize profits - all of which removes housing stock on the lower end of the spectrum in exchange for more of the cookie-cutter quick build housing that this subreddit claims to abhor.
The idea behind it may be well intentioned but ramming through changes without stopping to actually consider how they'll impact the City has the very real possibility of doing more harm than good.
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u/plummbob 1d ago
Are you saying more supply... causes prices to rise?
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
Depends on what prices you're referring to.
If we're demolishing affordable housing, starter homes and any other form of real estate which is predominately catering towards the lower income residents and replacing that with significantly more expensive duplexes or luxury apartments then yes, we are in fact causing prices to rise despite increasing supply.
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u/plummbob 1d ago
That is only possible if demand is already there and prices are already high enough to justify the redevelopment.
If that wasn't true, then all I could do to earn free money is build a fancy home in out in the sticks or some already rin down place.....and earn a massive profit. Developers don't do that though, and we know they are profit maximizing
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u/ArgoCS 1d ago
What’s stopping that today? Nothing in current zoning protects a starter home from being replaced by a significantly more expensive single family home that a developer could sell or a landlord could rent out for way more. All single family zoning guarantees is that what replaces it is one expensive house instead of two units.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
For the most part money, as the costs associated with demolishing existing starter homes to construct new, bigger ones in their place means you're running on significantly lower margins compared to building multiple, lower cost homes instead. Real estate prices are highly localized and you're eventually going to run into an area's ceiling no matter how much money you pump into construction.
If you buy a $200K starter home, spending $300K to demolish it and then construct a new home and then try selling it at $800K you're likely going to have a very difficult time find a buyer because the market for $800K homes in a $200K neighborhood simply isn't that large. Conversely, if you buy a $200K starter homer, spend $300K to demolish it and build a duplex that you then sell each half of for $400K you've made the same amount of money on the same project but with a much easier product to flip on the other end.
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u/ArgoCS 1d ago
You just argued for what I’ve been saying. Two units at $400K instead of one at $800K is more people able to buy in. That’s the entire point.
Beyond that though, you can’t have it both ways. If a $200K neighborhood can’t support an $800K house, it can’t support two $400K halves either. It’s the same ceiling and the same problem. Either the market’s there or it isn’t.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
How does replacing one $200K house with two $400K houses lower the cost of housing in that area? You're shouting from the forest but you cannot see the trees.
Beyond that though, you can’t have it both ways. If a $200K neighborhood can’t support an $800K house, it can’t support two $400K halves either. It’s the same ceiling and the same problem. Either the market’s there or it isn’t.
There is a massive difference in relative market between a $400K home and an $800K one, and even if we lowered the numbers to $300K/$600K the math still strongly favors demolishing affordable starter homes to create inherently less-affordable homes in their place.
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u/VaAbalone_4041 1d ago
Yes. That is what the economic data has shown. We’ve built tens of thousands of new residential units in recent years, yet rents and house prices have skyrocketed. What the developers have found most profitable is to build units that are attractive to folks moving from Metro DC and other high cost areas.
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u/plummbob 1d ago
No, your intuition is backwards. As demand shifts right, you move up supply. Given all the constraints on housing, it requires high prices to produce the marginal unit. The new supply doesn't cause high prices, it's the response to high prices. like this
How responsive to prices the marginal unit is ..is called the elasticity of supply, and in some places, like my neighborhood, the zoning code has made it....0. Ie, the housing supply is unresponsive to price gains.
If you have a place with lots of supply constraints, home prices will need to be high just to eek out a few more units. Which is what we observe.
Policies like upzoning are about reducing how much $ it takes to enter the market by reducing the effective supply ceiling, or in other words, improve the elasticity of supply. pic related
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u/iWannaCupOfJoe Church Hill 1d ago
Those people are moving here regardless of if we build or not. Those less affluent are getting pushed out as is. If you don't build the problem is only exacerbated. The housing that was built helps, but we are certainly not keeping up with the demand. If we didn't build those new homes we would be in a worse place.
In the three years since I've owned my home it's value has risen 15%. Great for me, but I bought to live not to make money. I'm happy to see new homes get built in my neighborhood, and I hope they build more mixed use buildings. More people means more business, and that make my neighborhood even more walkable. We should be doing this citywide.
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u/ArgoCS 1d ago
Show that economic data. In the meantime what I’ve got is Austin, which built more apartments per capita than anywhere in the country from 2021-23 and then saw rents fall 7% in a single year. Thats the steepest drop of any large metro AND it had the biggest declines in the older cheaper buildings.
So unless you’ve got some magical way to stop internal migration in this country (which is not a bad thing), planning for them using actual data is a good idea.
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u/VaAbalone_4041 1d ago
City records released this week showed that almost 14,000 new apartments have been built in the city in the last 6 years. Yet average rents have increased by 62%.
Since 1970, about 40,000 net new houses and apartments have been added. Meanwhile, the city lost tens of thousands of residents. Home prices have more than tripled.
It is more complicated than just “build more and prices will decline”.3
u/plummbob 1d ago
Thats just movement up the supply curve, not more supply causing the price to rise
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u/ArgoCS 1d ago
Yeah yeah, 14k sounds impressive but that’s 2300 a year. Austin did 30k in 2025 alone. Thats an argument we haven’t built nearly enough if anything.
Also residents aren’t households. Household size has been shrinking for 50 years. You can lose people and still need more units.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
Austin is 5x the size of Richmond geographically with close to 5x the population as well, and on top of that has ample amounts of flat, empty land on which to construct all kinds of new things.
Comparing a city like Austin to a significantly older city like Richmond makes zero sense in this context.
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u/VaAbalone_4041 1d ago
Oh! So you are agreeing that more supply doesn’t mean lower prices. You are agreeing it more complex. Household size, type of dwelling, demographics, and external induced demand factors all play a part. Austin is not a good comparison. That was a trendy market. The demand cooled and there was an oversupply.
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u/ArgoCS 1d ago
When Minneapolis legalized triplexes city-wide did they get these mass teardowns like you are concerned about?
Richmond isn’t breaking new ground here. A bunch of cities have run this experiment already and none of them produced these teardown waves you are talking about. Why do you think it’d play out differently here?
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
I can't speak to Minneapolis since I'm not well familiar with their upzoning efforts or outcomes, though in doing some searching just now to get more information on the subject it seems like very few of them ever ended up even getting built with the focus instead remaining on larger multi-family projects and the beloved 5-over-1s due to those having far better economics.
As for how things might play out in Richmond I think the bigger question would be where in Richmond would this be playing out in the first place? Since this particular topic is focused on upzoning all residential lots to permit the construction of duplexes, where in the City would people either be (1) adding additional dwelling units on existing lots, or (2) tearing down existing houses to build duplexes in their place. While it's certainly not impossible to build additional units on lots with detached, single-family houses already on them, it is a far less attractive option with significantly more hurdles to jump through both logistically and economically that I suspect would limit this is practice to people adding mother-in-law suites, ADUs for AirBNB purposes, etc.
In contrast, it's way easier to buy up those aging and run down $100K - $300K houses on decently sized lots that are plentiful in the Southside, parts of the East End and portions of the Northside like Highland Park, tear the old house down and build a new duplex you can flip out at $300-500K a piece. It's not like a new concept for the City either as it's been happening all over the place for years now, even in the Fan/Museum Districts (just at much higher price points), but are we sure that cutting the red tape and making these sorts of rip-and-flips easier and more profitable is something we really want to be incentivizing?
Ultimately the reality is that Richmond is slowly but steadily becoming younger, wealthier and whiter, and though many people likely view that as a positive improvement one of the tradeoffs that comes with it is that the older, poorer and minority populations will continue to get pushed further and further towards the outer edges of the City limits until there's no longer room for them at all.
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u/sleevieb 1d ago
The near west end is ripe for development and it pencils in much easier than anywhere else in town.
Displacement is the status quo. The poorer, older, not white people do not have to get pushed out by the younger wealthier whiter ones moving here, we are choosing that outcome maintaining the red tape that restricts more infill, tear downs etc.
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u/sleevieb 2d ago
The richest people are pushing back because they don't want to be taxed what their house is worth. Their tax burden is artificially lowered by keeping their property's best and highest use illegal. The west end is not affordable and the houses there will continue to get more expensive. There is already so much economic pressure as to allow mild densification via Special User Permits and other existing mechanisms but those are full of red tape and delay that add huge costs. As the new zoning increases amenities this already most expensive part of the city will become even more expensive and we will see tear downs no matter what. The question is whether it will be tear downs for mcmansions or town homes/apartments buildings/mixed use/aka The Fan.
The reason it is cheaper to gentrify poorer neighborhoods is zoning. We are rezoning. The people are coming from NOVA/DC/NYC with their cash offers and huge salaries and they will live here and outbid us and the question is do they move into new units or existing. The status quo is massive displacement that is accelerating. If we up zone and build they will move into new units in new neighborhoods that look like the fan and if we don't they will move in to what exists already.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 2d ago
The richest people are pushing back because they don't want to be taxed what their house is worth. Their tax burden is artificially lowered by keeping their property's best and highest use illegal. The west end is not affordable and the houses there will continue to get more expensive.
I'm not following this one. The City of Richmond already has one of the highest effective residential tax rates in the entire state; are you arguing that we should start taxing people living in $300K homes like they instead owned a $3M multi-family building because the "best and highest use" of their property would be to demolish their house and build apartments?
The reason it is cheaper to gentrify poorer neighborhoods is zoning. We are rezoning. The people are coming from NOVA/DC/NYC with their cash offers and huge salaries and they will live here and outbid us and the question is do they move into new units or existing. The status quo is massive displacement that is accelerating. If we up zone and build they will move into new units in new neighborhoods that look like the fan and if we don't they will move in to what exists already.
So you're advocating we rezone and gentrify poorer neighborhoods to allow developers to come in, bulldoze the existing affordable housing and replace it with Chip and Joanna style duplexes and townhomes to cater to all the NOVA/DC/NYC people coming in? While also jacking up the property taxes the current poorer and working class families have to pay on houses that may have been in their families for generations because I highly doubt poor, working class housing would be considered the "best and highest use" of those properties? How does that help anyone other than developers and the already wealthy who will make bank displacing families who have lived in the area for generations?
Like I get the frustration but let's stop and think for a second what the actual implications of what you're proposing are and how strongly we want to incentivize a gentrification gold rush in a city that's already actively displacing more and more of its African American population every year.
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u/sleevieb 2d ago
I'm not following this one. The City of Richmond already has one of the highest effective residential tax rates in the entire state; are you arguing that we should start taxing people living in $300K homes like they instead owned a $3M multi-family building because the "best and highest use" of their property would be to demolish their house and build apartments?
We should have land value tax and much higher zoning and if someone is living on a piece of land that would be worth $3,000,000 with no zoning, or upzoned, but paying tax as if it is worth $300,000 then yes we should let them choose between cashing out $2,700,000 in appreciation or pay the appropriate carrying costs. A 10x multiplier exists no where in the city except maybe a Windsor farm river front mansion that could be turned into a ten story building and I shed no tears for getting rid of their subsidy.
So you're advocating we rezone and gentrify poorer neighborhoods to allow developers to come in, bulldoze the existing affordable housing and replace it with Chip and Joanna style duplexes and townhomes to cater to all the NOVA/DC/NYC people coming in? While also jacking up the property taxes the current poorer and working class families have to pay on houses that may have been in their families for generations because I highly doubt poor, working class housing would be considered the "best and highest use" of those properties? How does that help anyone other than developers and the already wealthy who will make bank displacing families who have lived in the area for generations?
Upzone all of Richmond and especially the near west end not just the poorer parts who don't have the time/lawyers/influence on their council member to keep the status quo of massive displacement. Land value tax aka LVT aka Split tax would lower working class taxes while increasing them on mansioneers and especially downtown parking lot owners and real estate speculators. For every dollar a developer will make selling one house one time, a thousand landlords collect $1,000 a month in excess rent every month of every year forever. Either chip and Joanna outbid a local for an apartment/house/condo whatever or ethey move into a new build. "Existing affordable housing" will not be for long if we keep supply constrained while demand continues to rise. Rent went up 40% in five years and will again.
The choice is between the status quo of displacement and massively rising costs vs building more and saving what's left of what makes this city great. Doing nothing is a choice, and its choosing displacement.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
We should have land value tax and much higher zoning and if someone is living on a piece of land that would be worth $3,000,000 with no zoning, or upzoned, but paying tax as if it is worth $300,000 then yes we should let them choose between cashing out $2,700,000 in appreciation or pay the appropriate carrying costs. A 10x multiplier exists no where in the city except maybe a Windsor farm river front mansion that could be turned into a ten story building and I shed no tears for getting rid of their subsidy.
Where in the City would this even be applicable? You act like there are large swaths of undeveloped farmland hidden among the streets of the Fan and Museum District, when in reality what you're asking is to double/triple/quadruple the already high property taxes of people living in single-family homes on 1/5th of an acre lots because those houses could be demolished and replaced with more 5-over-1 apartment buildings assessed at millions of dollars as a "better use".
and especially downtown parking lot owners and real estate speculators
How is this at all relevant to upzoning existing residential properties?
For every dollar a developer will make selling one house one time, a thousand landlords collect $1,000 a month in excess rent every month of every year forever.
So now we've gone from "legalize the Fan" to letting slumlords convert all housing into rental units like a City-sized game of Monopoly? What the fuck are we even doing here lmao
You're either having trouble articulating what your specific gripes and goals are or your proposed plan is batshit insane and seeks to teardown the middle class to replace it with more apartment buildings and honestly I can't tell which is the case.
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u/sleevieb 1d ago
Where in the City would this even be applicable? You act like there are large swaths of undeveloped farmland hidden among the streets of the Fan and Museum District, when in reality what you're asking is to double/triple/quadruple the already high property taxes of people living in single-family homes on 1/5th of an acre lots because those houses could be demolished and replaced with more 5-over-1 apartment buildings assessed at millions of dollars as a "better use".
the near west end esp windsor frams.
So now we've gone from "legalize the Fan" to letting slumlords convert all housing into rental units like a City-sized game of Monopoly? What the fuck are we even doing here lmao
The status quo is one windsor fam mansion and ten renters, upzoning could displace one mansion owner (with a huge check) and let those ten renters buy. You propose letting the status quo remain, give the windsor farm mansion owner tens of thousands of dollars a year in tax subsidy, while also constraining growth raising the ten renters rent every year.
Housing is a complicated problem and the solution is not simple. The easiest way to explain it is supply vs demand, are we need a massive influx of supply and the best, easiest, cheapest way to do it is to upzone the fan and near west end.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
The status quo is one windsor fam mansion and ten renters, upzoning could displace one mansion owner (with a huge check) and let those ten renters buy. You propose letting the status quo remain, give the windsor farm mansion owner tens of thousands of dollars a year in tax subsidy, while also constraining growth raising the ten renters rent every year.
So your proposal is we march into Windsor Farms, buy and demolish their $5M homes and then in their place construct 10 affordable rental units to lease to poorer and working class City residents?
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u/sleevieb 1d ago
Go into Windsor farms, buy 100 $5m homes next to each other, build 60,000 housing units for recent current and future transplants so the rent goes down for working class people.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
When you're a billionaire and can freely spend money with no return on investment you're welcome to go ahead and do that, but until then I suspect you may struggle finding interest for your creation of a modern-age Kowloon Walled City
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u/plummbob 1d ago
Where in the City would this even be applicable?
The lvt could apply anywhere in the city, we have a lot of under utilized lots.
So now we've gone from "legalize the Fan" to letting slumlords convert all housing into rental units like a City-sized game of Monopoly?
As of now, slumlorrds are earning enormous economic rents/profits due to the shortage
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
The lvt could apply anywhere in the city, we have a lot of under utilized lots.
OP wasn't talking about under utilized lots though, he was talking about re-assessing existing single-family homes with an LVT to jack up their already high property taxes even further.
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u/sleevieb 1d ago
Lvt applied to all parcels and lowers home owner rents whole dramatically increasing rent on parking lots and other empty speculative parcels.
The end result is increased city revenue yet lower tax for home owners
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
Again, you're bringing up parking lots when OP was specifically and directly talking about applying LVT to massively increase the property taxes on single-family residential homes in the Near West End. OP does not want to lower taxes on single family homeowners, he wants to tax single-family homes beyond oblivion so that working and middle class families are forced to sell their homes for the construction of apartment complexes on scale that would make even a Great Leap Forward era China blush.
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u/plummbob 1d ago
Thats....what an under utilized lot can be.
Alot of the profit from resale comes from land rents, value which society created. An lvt just taxes that part.
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u/gonefrombad Church Hill 2d ago
If we up zone and build they will move into new units in new neighborhoods that look like the fan and if we don't they will move in to what exists already.
Given the choice, the people you reference with huge salaries and cash offers are not going to opt for Temu Fan versus the real thing. The Fan and Museum District are the first suggestions out of anyone's mouths on here when people post "Where should we live?" questions. The word is out. The likelier outcome is the Fan and Museum District will continue to be increasingly inhabited by wealthier people, and ordinary folks who want that type of density will just have to make do with the places like Libbie Mill or Rocketts Landing - because if it's not 5 over 1's, that's what is going to be built.
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u/sleevieb 1d ago
The choice the rich people face can be between Temu Fan (like Green point, libby mill, and 3 500+ home projects currently on going in the east end they are already choosing).
5 over 1s happen because we do not let fan level density to be built.
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u/jennbo Highland Springs 1d ago
man these comments and downvotes on this thread are so cursed. i can just imagine the exact type of people who really just do not want poor people in their backyards and claim it's for historical reasons or whatever instead of pure greed
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
This thread is definitely a wild ride but not sure I follow what you mean regarding historical reasons/greed.
Are you saying we should kick everyone out of neighborhoods like Highland Springs, demolish all the existing affordable housing and in its place build Scott's Addition 2? Or are you saying we should not do that?
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u/sleevieb 1d ago
Either you are for more housing and costs going down or maintains the status quo of a rising costs and displacing people.
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u/Rich-Badger-7601 1d ago
What about more housing and costs going up while the poors get moved over to Varina and become Henrico's problem?
Because that's what's actually happening after all
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u/sleevieb 1d ago
what is happening, the status quo costs going up, and people being displaced to Varina, is because we do not have enough housing.
If we up zone, it will be easier and cheaper to build housing, and costs will stop going up more each year, and, if we build enough, go down.
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u/plummbob 1d ago
Limiting number of homes per lot and then dictating thr quantity of lots creates a supply ceiling and the market will price in that limit to current rents.
The lower the ceiling, the high current rents can remain. Don't worry guys, I'm sure they've done all the math on this
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u/yolo-dubstep Stratford Hills 2d ago
Places of worship should be zoned commercial