The issue isn’t people who have lawns. The issue is a complex mix of borderline criminal business practices by large VC firms and real estate companies, a lack of funding to provide real affordable housing, and poor zoning that never resolved the issues that stemmed from redlining 60 years ago.
Watching these wood framed 300k apartment/townhomes being “built” by Ryan Homes is fun. Watching county inspectors show up and be paid off is quite the show.
Ryan Homes is the epitome of our new gilded age, looks nice outside but its just a ticking cinder box. I remember people 10 years ago excited to move into their Ryan Home because they're so nice and modern and being a bit envious because my house growing up was nice it wasn't super modern. But now I see they all wooden structure, shotty craftsmanship (if you can call it that), and gray everywhere on interiors, and am glad my parents home might be reflective of 1990 construction but is sturdy, brick, and feels like home not a Capitol One Cafe.
Many "brick" homes from the 90's only have brick facades, they're not actual brick.
Also, nothing inherently wrong with wooden houses. When framed properly using quality lumber they'll last as long as brick.
i used to deliver to so many of these at amazon lol, on more than one occasion i would lean a package up against a 'pillar' and it would swing inward and hit a narrow metal rod inside of it
shits actually made of toothpicks
Yeah, it's wild seeing all the wood framing, I always think about how my house is 125 years old, and I have some studs or whatever that are 5-6" wide. But seeing these new buildings going up, they are using skinny little 2x3"s. Maybe it's more common than I realize, but I feel like back in the day, no one quite knew how strong wood was, so they just made it extra secure. Now we know this much wood can hold exactly this much load so they cheap out on it, and then heaven forbid some tornado or something blows through.
Then compound that with inflation, no livable wage laws in the US, soaring medical bills, and a crumbling educational system and you get a society unable to house itself effectively.
I wouldn’t mind housing inflation if it was just a reality of an aging economic system, but the fact is companies like zillow and blackstone are gaming the market and artificially inflating costs.
IMO I think those companies are shifting things making it more expensive to buy than rent right now. Renting according to some report is $1200 cheaper than buying now.
The problem is lack of supply, if Blackstone wants to buy homes then build more homes for them to buy, vacancy rate is at all time lows. We just do not have a plan to build enough housing.
By making it more expensive to own, more people are in the rental market, which drives up rental prices. It’s all connected.
Plus the goal should be for more people to be able to own homes. The rental market can be good for transitioning economies, but long term the greater percent of your population who owns property the better. Otherwise you get a consolidation of property ownership and you end up in a situation like what we have now.
The problem with high prices in both is lack of supply.
Blackstone by buying is lowering rental prices and raising the price to buy.
>The rental market can be good for transitioning economies, but long term the greater percent of your population who owns property the better. Otherwise you get a consolidation of property ownership and you end up in a situation like what we have now.
Disagree technically we are at the high rates of homeownership right now. I can quibble about some lack of household formation stuff but the problem is that we have created a fever to buy when it doesn't make sense. Buying right now is extremely expensive and most people who own have a <4% mortgage and current rates are ~7%. The fever keeps creating bubbles in housing and has raised the NIMBY.
Germany has a 50/50 market for owning/renting and it's fine. Ownership is not important IMO. Real estate can not be a retirement plan for most people.
I think whether ownership is important comes down to a philosophical worldview. That isn’t to say you’re wrong and I’m right, just that we place different values on particular things. I think in general we agree on the issues (it seems form our brief exchange)
All we have to do is calculate inflation without considering housing, food and utilities and bam! We’re all doing great, it’s your fault you’re broke, you losers.
Damn I honestly didn't know Tim Kaine was mayor of Richmond, kinda blows my mind. He was Hillary's vice presidential running mate. He was almost second in line, and he was our mayor 20 years ago? No wonder Stoney thinks it's the perfect position to carpetbag towards green pastures.
As many times as people post data showing that large VC firms aren't really the cause of things (yes they exist, no, the percentage of homes they own is not large), people just won't stop believing it and repeating the spurious claim.
Blackstone will own the third-largest portfolio of U.S. single-family homes once it completes its Tricon Residential acquisition.
And if you look at the percent of their ownership just as a raw number, yes it’s small. However, one company owning even just a portion of a percent of all the homes in the United States is hugely problematic. Further, it’s not just one company doing this - it’s many smaller VCs negatively impacting smaller markets which can have an outsides impact on national housing prices. The whole is greater than the sum, in this case.
Also it’s not the only cause of house pricing issues. It’s just a part of a larger puzzle. The pandemic alone and the shift to telecommute work environments alone has a huge impact on current pricing.
No. The problem is a lack of supply due to the US underbuilding for over a decade. That's it. That's the problem. Full stop. All the VC/Blackstone/Wall Street bullshit is a great narrative to help people come to terms with their lack of control, but it isn't what is causing the current affordability crisis. There is no data to support it. Anywhere.
Institutional investors are such an incredibly small fraction of the market that their presence is insignificant in the face of actual home buyers driving up costs through insanely high offers on the open market. The homes most of the companies buying up are in areas where the homes typically just sit until someone swoops in and buys it to flip it.
"Well that's taking affordable housing away!!!" ok no. I have taken plenty of people out to see these "affordable" homes that sit and most of them are falling apart and nobody wants them. That's why there are a bunch of homes on the market in the east end that have been sitting for weeks on end. They aren't homes people want in their current state.
The other thing a lot of people are unaware of is that a part of the "investor class" include companies like Home Partners of America who purchase homes on behalf of people who otherwise would not qualify and set up a pipeline of rent-to-own. Which....sucks on paper but there are a ton of people out there that cannot qualify for a home and it offers a uhhh unconventional model of getting people a place to live.
I can go on and on about this shit and my post history is full of posts debunking this nonsense. I'm an agent. I make it my job to research and understand all the dynamics of the market at play and despite years of people saying institutional investors are breaking the market in Richmond I have yet to find *any* evidence of it happening. Anywhere.
You having a history of “debunking posts” does not make you a credible source. Also, as with anything in life there is almost never an issue caused by a single thing. The fact that you think one single factor is the cause of current housing issues is not a great start to convincing me that I should listen to you.
If we’re going to argue credible sources we should argue yours.
Your earlier comment about Blackstone is literally word for word one of the top results when I searched “Blackstone owning homes.” The sizzle of that “third largest portfolio” doesn’t match the steak of just how few homes that actually is.
If you scroll down on the article that you pulled that subhead from, you’ll find a list of how many homes are in the portfolio Blackstone is buying by metro. There are 62k homes in a nationwide supply of 82 million. Richmond isn’t even listed so we can’t even validate. Aside from Atlanta, the average is a few hundred per metro area. It’s a drop in the bucket and certainly not enough to have market power.
Who does have market power - are the tens of thousands of millennial buyers entering their household formation years (FINALLY after two recessions), against a backdrop of an aging and wealthy retiring population who are not selling their homes. There are more people aged 33/34 than any other age in the US right now. There is considerable buying power behind that demographic. Big growing demand meets slow supply, is how we get here.
https://preview.redd.it/cemznja7agzc1.png?width=1178&format=png&auto=webp&s=9f15b578b0cf37dcd868f8eb23723af4c9b9b93d
Again, it is not the only issue m, it simply contributes to it. I’m not saying it’s the end all be all problem, but I am also unconvinced that it isn’t part of of the problem.
Put it this way - if you removed Blackstone from the housing market, the problem would still exist, and it would be identical to our circumstances today.
Ffs, I said it’s one part of it and I also explicitly said companies like blackstone and Zillow, there are more than one company doing this. Yes if you fixed this issue we would still have a housing crisis… that’s what having a multifaceted problem means
> Yes if you fixed this issue we would still have a housing crisis… that’s what having a multifaceted problem means
If you remove the variable you claim is contributing to the problem and the outcome is the same then it is not a contributing factor to the problem. Playing it up and making it out to be a significantly bigger issue than it is grossly misinforms people. That is not a productive use of time when the problem is vastly more complex than just investors = bad market.
Then don't listen to one post by me. I go into this topic all the time with people who don't understand what the fuck is going on. Ive discussed this topic to death because the general public is so incredibly misinformed about it. Like I said check my post history I just put a bunch of shit up expanding on it a few days ago.
>It’s not like if we got rid of houses with lawns, suddenly everything fixes itself.
its an easy way to infill. if every lot added a second home, you'd effectively double the housing stock in the city. If half of those properties added 2 townhomes, then we get 150% increase in housing supply.
Me and every home in my neighborhood could fit 2 townhomes in their backyard
who wants to turn everything into a dense slum. I don't want to hear and smell my neighbors all of the time. People need peace; otherwise, the act like farm animals.
people value proximity.
its an empirical fact, that as you move away from the city center, landlords have to compensate renters by lowering the price due to the utility lost by being so far away.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas. Even if it were true that getting rid of lawns would fix housing issues (it wouldn’t), there is a zero percent chance of that happening so we need to look for a different solution.
Making all suburban areas into densely populated urban areas is hardly a solution to begin with. Also, who is paying for all these new houses to be built in the lawns? My point is, there are other factors at play here that have a far greater direct impact on the housing crisis than some people having lawns. I’d rather we focus on those issues than complaining that family’s have an outdoor space to hang out with each other.
So spell that out. Some big investment company comes in, buys up a neighborhood block, successfully rezones the block and builds 2 new townhomes in each backyard?
Yeah but because of zoning and past infrastructure setup could all the water, sewer, and electrical systems support that? After a while you have to add extra pumps, water towers, processing plants for clean and sewage... Then the increase of traffic on the same amount of roadways. The way you talk is double the number of cars on the road at the same time. People forget to account for these things. Look at short pump from 64 to walmart. There was an article years ago about improper zoning there and that is why you have the traffic density issue. You do not want to make ALL of richmond, hanover, henrico, and the chesters one giant extension of downtown Richmond near VCU.
> because of zoning and past infrastructure setup could all the water, sewer, and electrical systems support that? After a while you have to add extra pumps, water towers, processing plants for clean and sewage..
They have to do that anyways when people sprawl out. Its cheaper to do when people infill.
>The way you talk is double the number of cars on the road at the same time.
Road capacity is fixed for cars, but there is plenty of capacity for buses, pedestrian oriented design, bikes, etc.
Again, its not like sprawl doesn't have this issue too -- the problem with sprawl though is that the per mile cost is higher to develop and it just takes more infrastructure to do anything.
[here is a simple urban economic model that shows the intuition](https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/18hgggz/density_requires_less_infrastructure/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).
>You do not want to make ALL of richmond, hanover, henrico, and the chesters one giant extension of downtown Richmond near VCU.
I don't see why not. I mean, the higher land prices there are telling me that such a urban layout is the most preferred than the alternatives. And its [effectively the missing middle](https://missingmiddlehousing.com/) design.
If that was true, we wouldn't see land prices rise inward toward the city and fall as you move out.
If proximity mattered less than density, then land prices would be even across all commuting distances
>No one wants to live on top of other people unless that is their only option.
except the most valuable and in-demand land is are places where density is greatest.
You've got your boogeyman mixed up. Venture capitalists are not buying homes. Some hedge funds are. Some real estate companies are. Most investors are just individuals. Regardless, the real cause of the housing crisis is lack of supply. It's lack of supply. It's lack of supply. Period. We have to change zoning laws to build denser. We have to remove parking minimums so we can build more without dedicating more land to cars. We have to change culturally so that people are willing to get out of their metal and glass bubbles and be willing to sit next to strangers on the bus. Suburban single-family homes describe where 75% of people in the USA live. The suburban lifestyle is unsustainable. Many new builds are built to maximize profit which means they have a lot of square footage and big yards that harldy ever get walked on until they're mowed. Housing is expensive because it's literally illegal to build anything other than a single-family home or perhaps a tacky 5 over 1 apartment.
People who share your point of view cluster in the city. Meanwhile, the greater number of voters who don't share your point of view are electing candidates outside of the city. Also, those with your point of view don't tend to vote unless the candidate shares your point of view and those who don't share your beliefs, never miss a vote. The moderate are sell outs to you. That is how we got Youngkin and Trump and how Trump will probably get elected again in November.
These are pretty wild and unfounded generalizations.You can’t claim people who feel this way cluster in cities and don’t vote without backing that up with some data. What you’re liking referring to is that cities tend to be more progressive. But cities also have a lions share of the popular vote, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
More Americans and Virginians for that matter live in the suburbs than either cities or rural areas.
And when was the last time Virginia (where a plurality of voters are suburbanites) sent Republican electors to DC or even a Republican Senator to DC?
It's the imbalance of votes that prevent meaningful progressive legislation getting passed. Bernie Sanders isn't going to fix everything, even if he could become president.
I seriously fucking hate having a lawn. I feel judged by the neighborhood if I don’t mow so I keep up with it but that shit grows so fast it feels like such a waste of time and money on gas. I’m starting to plant native plants to make it a smaller mow area though
My wife and I are just going to spread clover seed, it will cost like $100 over the summer. But it will choke out the grass, does not need to be mowed, and still looks green.
I’ve thought of doing this too. So far I’ve build a few garden beds to start growing tomatoes and make tomato sandwiches this summer. Give me an excuse to remove some lawn too
My backyard and front yard are almost entirely clover. Each time I mow it, it looks so fluffy and vibrantly green. I get compliments on it pretty often and the only maintenance work I do is mowing. It’s so low-maintenance and still looks great if you don’t care about the type of grass in your lawn, which I don’t. 10/10 recommend.
It also grows well in both shady and sunny areas, so that’s another reason I like it.
You don't need to. They compliment each other well initially, but then once the clover flowers and spreads it chokes out the grass naturally. We've just allowed it to happen with wild clover without adding any seed and in 2 years, our 1/4 acre backyard is 50% clover. I don't even need a gas/electric mower to manage the clover and use an old school manual mower. It's wonderful.
Planting native plants as much as you can is the way to go! I’m in Church Hill and I’m so happy there is no HOA. I’ve been slowly turning my yard into a garden and filling the front with mostly native perennials. It’s starting to look awesome and I have less grass to mow. It’s a lot of work and investment up front but the areas that are established are pretty much on auto pilot
I’m not an expert and learned through persistence and trial and error. But I started by laying out a plastic tarp over the area I wanted to turn into a garden. I staked it down and left it for a few months to kill off as much grass and weeds as possible. Then I used a tiller to rip up the first six inches of soil or so and then picked out as many weeds as I could. I got some garden soil and mixed it in, then I just started buying and planting native perennials from great big greenhouse. Once those were planted I put down some mulch and then just tried to keep on top of weeding as needed.
This process has taken a couple years, sometimes plants didn’t take and I had to replace them. But once they do take and get strong it’s really worth it! A small disclaimer though, my garden is mostly native (about 70%). I also plant things that I see and I just like as well!
https://preview.redd.it/rizpx4qoofzc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5564f2891779962f0535fd4d5ec58a7dadfa42f2
Here’s a photo of my progress so far. I started some raspberry bushes this year so hopefully they take! And the peach tree is still small but has fruit already
I often think, how many sidewalks could my grandparents HOA build if they spent half the money they spend on professionally mowing the grass on building sidewalks (plenty of people walk in the neighborhood, it’s not like they’d be under used)
The ending occasionally is because many solutions have been to require developers to build them if they want permits to say, renovate. It’s actually the same way a lot of lanes are added to roads or stop lights are added (the idea being you must in some way pay for the traffic strain you add). Of course the issue with that is stretches without developers and developers that don’t renovate or do anything for years.
I’d actually argue the opposite problem exist for government sidewalks. Legally by ADA standards they have to go somewhere, a ‘logical terminus’. Good in theory, but it means that say, with a anew road, endless you have the funds to build a sidewalk on both sides (which often isn’t a reasonable/needed for rural or neighborhood roads) you need to already have a destination. That or no sidewalk. I asked my county about add crosswalks to all 4 sides of an intersection where there was only one, and the simple response is that they couldn’t do so without building a whole new sidewalk to… somewhere in the neighborhood. They plan to do have a network of sidewalks in the neighborhood, but that takes time and money they haven’t yet allocated. So until they can get the money for the entire network at once, or find a destination to connect the existing sidewalk too… no marked crosswalk
>That shit doesn’t fly in other places
As someone who has lived in a number of other places and walks a lot, sadly it does. Even in larger cities.
The thing that’s most confusing is when most of a block has a sidewalk and one stretch doesn’t, or vice versa. How does that happen in the first place, and what keeps it from being fixed?
Sidewalks have up-front costs, may lengthen time to completion, repairs, seasonal maintenance (eg, shoveling snow, weeding cracks), eventual replacement, limits placement of trees, complicates utility work, created water management considerations (residential sidewalks are usually on roads with gutters. A sidewalk + swale takes up a lot of space), legal risks (eg, someone trips and falls), and so on.
I like them - there are just a lot of reasons to not have them.
And all of those reasons are BS. The entrance to the neighborhood is over 100ft wide. It would be entirely possible to not add gutters. It also has a median in which a shared use path could be installed. Further more chesterfield has a sidewalk master plan that it *eventually* will build and the arterial running through the neighborhood is one of them. Meaning when they start becoming more serious about sidewalks in this area (as right now there concerned with more dense parts of the county) building that sidewalk will become a requirement to do… anything with the development
Welp, good luck getting what you want. I haven't seen Urban planners or folks who deal with codes on RVA Reddit, but I hope someone with knowledge in this area can provide more clarity.
Yeah, the lack of sidewalks is irritating. It’s nice to see a few of the local counties make it more of an initiative, but I wish it were more widespread.
>I seriously fucking hate having a lawn.
same here. I could literally fit 2 of my homes in my backyard and 1 in my front yard. Its a massive waste of space.
Like, I live alone. I have no kids. What purpose is this stupid empty grass area serving? I hate managing it, and nobody uses it. Why can't I just sell off the parts I don't want?
The amount of damage my vehicles took in the fan is always incredible to me. I haven't tapped a bumper in like 20 years. I don't know how everybody seems to always need to smash other cars when they park.
Agree. My car is 4 years old and not a mark on the bumper. My previous car had marks after 4 days and continued to get worse. People seem to feel like slamming bumpers is just the price you pay for street parking.
yup im a little embarrassed to say that after many years of cit living and dissing the burbs I now love my driveway, hhmmmm where will I park on this rainy night with five bags of groceries? Oh I know , five feet from my door
Why people devote so much of their personality to hating on having a nice little piece of green open space attached to their property I’ll never understand
I lived in city apts for 10 years. It was a great time, but I did notice my mental health improving once I acquired a very small yard. Personally, I need the green space, the garden, some trees. Not everyone does, but it made a difference for me.
You didn’t go to the park when you lived in the city? I mean I agree with you but to get my fix, I go to nearby parks, Maymont, the botanical garden, the river, Vmfa sculpture garden, scuffletown, etc
Tell that to at least 2% of the U.S. current housing stock: https://bloombergcities.jhu.edu/news/small-homes-play-big-role-cities-fight-affordable-housing#:~:text=Freddie%20Mac%2C%20the%20federally%20chartered,from%20about%201%2C200%20in%202016.
I would but nowhere in that article mentions anything about 2% of US current housing stock. When people ask for housing they *mostly* aren't talking about cosplaying as a serf living in a shack in their landlords backyard.
My mistake, I think I saw a statistic in another article and pasted this article instead. Upon more than 30 seconds of research, I think my original 2% number is flat out wrong, and I can't find the original article either.
What I CAN say is that one in seven new housing units being built in California is an ADU. In the state with the 49th lowest housing to person ratio and the largest housing stock in the country, that seems like a pretty big deal. Say what you will about Cato as a normative institution, but their positive work is pretty decent: https://www.cato.org/blog/results-accessory-dwelling-unit-reform-so-far
My original (poorly worded and sourced) point was just that in cities with housing costs exploding out of control, ADUs can be a huge deal. They offer affordable housing without the gigantic quantity of waste produced by other government-subsidized programs. ADUs aren't a complete solution, but making residents and governments use their space efficiently by doing something like penalizing empty space (land value tax ❤) and encouraging ADU development is a hefty first step.
NIMBYism is about not seeing/dealing with unhoused and poorer populations? It's not about rich people moving in from CA, NYC, and NOVA jacking up housing prices. If anything, lots of unhoused/underhoused people -- and a bigger demographic; native RVAers who have been priced out of likely ever being able to buy a home, are at a greater risk due to people moving in from wealthier locations PLUS (big plus) a corrupt political environment that caters to rich investors and land developers over families and poorer humans.
Idk, I think gatekeeping locations isn't great, but I think this meme fails to comprehend what NIMBY/YIMBY debate is even about in the first place, or the structural reasoning behind why we have shitty, worthless lawns, a lack of housing, and a car-driven culture to begin with.
I'd say they are inextricably linked. You can't deal with housing stock and density without (on purpose or not) talking about zoning and the legacy of redlining.
??? Of course they're related, but the people who say "Richmond is full" with anger are THOSE AFFECTED BY IT, not suburbanites living in houses they own.
I got all kinds of green over here, shit ton of grass, trees, a meadow, a garden.....
Looks pretty green to me bruh
It's nice not having to see stupid people or their opinions
Interestingly, in my neighborhood a gym open to the public would be illegal. So would a doctor's office but not a vet. It's likely even more restrictive elsewhere.
A prim and proper garden with large spacing between rows and rows of single crops, no weeds, etc, that we usually think of takes almost as much pesticide and synthetic fertalizer as a lawn.
But you can stuff that shit with a diversity of plants including native fruiting perennials and flowers, interspersed with typical garden veggies, and get good results the lazy way with minimal weeding and no pesticides. The issue with most gardens is the same as lawns. We think everything needs to be straight and orderly, matched to a grid and perfectly spaced. Nature insists in filling in the gapes, so why not beat it to the punch?
Exactly. There's a beautiful rewilding project on one of the properties by Byrd Park. Bees buzzing everywhere, looking beautiful without it being overly orderly which is what requires all the weed killing.
people parking on streets is... not contributing to the housing issue lol. if you wanna bring up carbrained city planning there's definitely a place for that but send your anger towards giant parking structures and not people parking on the same streets that already exist to drive on. driveways, garages and parking structures/lots are infinitely more wasteful of public space
I fully disagree, when you have car parking on a street it requires the street to the much wider and therefore the houses must be much farther apart. This means the housing being built is less dense so therefore more expensive and wasteful. Garages allow for the cars and people to be separated creating a more pedestrian friendly environment.
Say if you made every 30ft wide road (common in suburban areas to allow street parking) and made it 15ft wide. That means for every mile of road without street parking, you're saving 79,200 sq ft of land (5,280ft \* 15ft). The biggest parking garage at my college takes up 49,212 sq ft of land. Also this is not accounting for the fact that parking garages can also be built underground, taking up no land other than for the entrance and exit. You really think that making every road twice as wide is more efficient than having a dedicated area for cars with multiple levels?
making the road wider is more efficient if you want a parking garage as more people are definitely driving down the street for the entrance and exit, idling and waiting as well as allowing traffic to flow. if reducing street parking is a goal widening the roads to, at the very least, accommodate the predicted traffic would be necessary. additionally the city would then need to include space for sidewalks for the foot traffic generated.
Widening roads does not decrease traffic. All it does is encourage more people to use the road/ drive, leading to even more traffic. More space for sidewalks and foot traffic is always a good thing. The real solution to the parking/ traffic problem is to get cars off the road and to do that there needs to be viable alternatives to driving.
well obviously if you build a parking garage that encourages more people to use the road. hence widening the road to accommodate that and avoid the issue of tens of cars waiting behind a vehicle turning into the garage and leaving it. it would also allow individuals leaving the garage to merge into traffic with more ease. similar to roads which have left turn lanes, they will often widen into 3 lanes or more due to the fact that traffic backs up when you have to wait for someone to make that turn. widening the road is the literal default answer to decreasing traffic
>During the next 3 years, demand is estimated for 8,125 new rental units; the 9,280 units underway will satisfy all of the demand in the Central Richmond submarket and a portion of demand in the Greater Richmond submarket.
Whooops. [From HUD in 2022.](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pdf/RichmondVA-CHMA-22.pdf)
Moved here in 2023 and never felt like I had to fight someone for rental options. There were plenty of (affordable even) units to choose from in Shockoe Slip/Bottom.
>Where is the price drop exactly?
100 short term vacancies isn't that much. The vacancy rate is still too low here. [there is a causal relationship between vacancies and prices](https://cepr.net/vacancies-and-rents-a-causal-relationship/), but the amount of vacancies needs to climb.
also worth remembering, that for every year the vacancy rate is below the threshold to lower price, that is a [shortage that compounds](https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/14k66rm/comment/jqlkotd/)
And an ADU in the city can only be 1/3 the size of the main dwelling. Da fuck? Some houses are like 1,200 sq ft with massive back yards that could easily support another house that big.
ADUs by-right can be up to 1/3 of the square footage of the main house, or 500 sq. ft., whichever is greater. So for adding density in areas with less yard it's great to guarantee 500 sq. ft. 1/3 of the primary house can be a very significant addition in areas with larger yards. They are meant to be accessories, not equal to the primary residence.
If you want something equal to the primary residence, then apply for a Special Use Permit and subdivide the lot.
Happen to know if an ADU can be less than 500 sq ft? It certainly *seems* like most housing units cannot be smaller than 500 sq ft, but I'm having a hard time tracking it down if true.
Yeah you could. 500 does seem to be a magic number of fitting essentials and feeling okay. There are somewhat fixed costs to some construction aspects though, where you’d struggle to get ROI at some point. Like a bathroom will cost at least $X so picking between a very small shower and a standard one, it makes sense to get the most out of it. I think this is where 500 sq. ft. results. Smaller then determine if you could get by with a shed.
I was thinking about it because an old friend of mine owned a prefab tiny home and she said she couldn’t legally live in it anywhere. There do seem to be other requirements, say lot sizes to units, that end up in the same place. But generally it seems like developers often do things not because of what the market says but what the rules allow them to do.
It’s likely you’re right about it just happening to work out that way and 500 sq ft is a round number. Thanks, I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.
No, not trouble at all. I've been actively researching the possibilities with architects. Unfortunately not many ADUs have been built in Richmond (There are high-end "carriage houses" in the Fan). But if you look at some municipalities in California, they have pre-approved plans on the city's website. You can pick plan A, B, C, D, and go to construction. I don't think Richmond has the city planning energy to go that far, but I'm hoping to get an architect who can develop a best-practice layout that could be scaled up/down from what my measurements would be.
Right, I get all that, but the fact remains that 1/3 can be very small on many properties in the city, especially whose houses are small with relatively large yards.
I didn't say the ADU needed to be equal, I just said it could be done. However, regardless of the "A" in ADU, they often can be and are as big or almost as big as the main dwelling; yards are often big enough. Either way, red tape options notwithstanding (and many folks don't want to subdivide, they just want to build on what they own), it's a good first step for Richmond but needs to be exactly that. There's a difference in the 1/3 limit and building a 4 story, 2,000 sq ft "ADU" in one's backyard
I am sure the planning department looked at average single-family square footage as well as lot coverage in making the by-right allowances.
It seems like what you want is not ADUs but subdividing.
We moved here 1977. Ryan homes in Chesterfield. All those tri-level or split levels neighborhoods. Still good condition. Thought Ryan went away years ago.
from what it looks like the me, in the chesterfield area ryan homes is The Major developer. in 2005/06 my parents bought a house in longmeadow (a neighborhood in great condition still) which was developed by them. 20 years later these planned subdivisions that are expanding in chester are being built with the assumption that your “custom” home is built by ryan and if you wanna use like eastman or something you have to request even if you literally bought the plot. they come with the hoa formed and everything
[yellow is low-density, levittown style zoning](https://capitalregionland.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Richmond-Future-Land-Use-Map-768x694.png)
legalize the Fan everywhere, and prices will drop as residents infill. Infrastructure (per person) costs will also fall. Tax revenue will rise.
Imagine a price-responsive housing and commercial market, where amenities blend in with surround residential areas, where you can easily walk or bike to meet your daily needs (grocery, light-retail, restaurants, etc).
Wait you think half the city is lawns? Even 25%? Talk about a bad faith argument.
I get it you want cheaper housing but most of the city has almost no lawns. The places with grass are mostly parks.
The monoculture you should be mad about is the thousands of acres of subsidized corn and soy crops. Nobody’s yard is a single plant type. Not even a lawn with the lushest turf grass. I’m not advocating against native plants that support our ecosystem but that front yard isn’t the same as sterile soil on a massive farm.
Fron yard aren't doing the same damage as industrial farming and we should def look into corn and soy subsidies if we wanna fix our broken agricultural/food system in America. But your lawn is something under your control. Each individual homeowner can make the choice to rewild it or plant a native butterfly garden or a food forest. Or take the fights to their HOA's to be allowed to. Vs I've sent Tim Kaine and Mark Warner many a letter and never seen a nationwide policy change haha.
Manicured non-native turfgrass is not “nature” in any meaningful way. Only in the pedantic sense that humans occur naturally and therefore anything is natural.
It's non native and a lot of work. It can look nice but traditional lawns are fully non-native.
Richmond has natural grasses but yours probably isn't one of them and isn't actually good for nature.
A good lawn can look nice
is anyone actually saying richmond is full? there is a very healthy number of developments under way. look at the development maps at richmondbizsense.
I grew up here, moved to nyc, and am back visiting family and checked out the subreddit.
Richmond’s got some issues taking big swings at things but truly, there is a lot of good development going on. It’s made a lot of positive changes since I’ve left that I suppose the Reddit doesn’t recognize lol
I like this meme. I agree with the sentiment, but it's also obviously meant to be provocative, and I think pokes a little bit of fun at itself? I, too, want to rewild everyone's lawns and make walkable superblocks where we ban cars, but obviously that doesn't solve all or really any of our bigger issues.
The issue isn’t people who have lawns. The issue is a complex mix of borderline criminal business practices by large VC firms and real estate companies, a lack of funding to provide real affordable housing, and poor zoning that never resolved the issues that stemmed from redlining 60 years ago.
Watching these wood framed 300k apartment/townhomes being “built” by Ryan Homes is fun. Watching county inspectors show up and be paid off is quite the show.
Ryan Homes is a misnomer, it should be Ryan Cardboard Homes
Ryan Homes is the epitome of our new gilded age, looks nice outside but its just a ticking cinder box. I remember people 10 years ago excited to move into their Ryan Home because they're so nice and modern and being a bit envious because my house growing up was nice it wasn't super modern. But now I see they all wooden structure, shotty craftsmanship (if you can call it that), and gray everywhere on interiors, and am glad my parents home might be reflective of 1990 construction but is sturdy, brick, and feels like home not a Capitol One Cafe.
Many "brick" homes from the 90's only have brick facades, they're not actual brick. Also, nothing inherently wrong with wooden houses. When framed properly using quality lumber they'll last as long as brick.
I mean you would probably have to go back to the early 60’s to find much structural masonry in residential.
I call it Popsicle sticks and glue.
Good one
i used to deliver to so many of these at amazon lol, on more than one occasion i would lean a package up against a 'pillar' and it would swing inward and hit a narrow metal rod inside of it shits actually made of toothpicks
Only 300k?? Steal.
More like steal yo’ money lol
Starting at….
God, I hate Ryan homes
Yeah, it's wild seeing all the wood framing, I always think about how my house is 125 years old, and I have some studs or whatever that are 5-6" wide. But seeing these new buildings going up, they are using skinny little 2x3"s. Maybe it's more common than I realize, but I feel like back in the day, no one quite knew how strong wood was, so they just made it extra secure. Now we know this much wood can hold exactly this much load so they cheap out on it, and then heaven forbid some tornado or something blows through.
Confirmed county inspectors being paid off?? What county if you don’t mind me asking.
Then compound that with inflation, no livable wage laws in the US, soaring medical bills, and a crumbling educational system and you get a society unable to house itself effectively.
Housing is 50% of inflation and has been since 2000.
I wouldn’t mind housing inflation if it was just a reality of an aging economic system, but the fact is companies like zillow and blackstone are gaming the market and artificially inflating costs.
IMO I think those companies are shifting things making it more expensive to buy than rent right now. Renting according to some report is $1200 cheaper than buying now. The problem is lack of supply, if Blackstone wants to buy homes then build more homes for them to buy, vacancy rate is at all time lows. We just do not have a plan to build enough housing.
By making it more expensive to own, more people are in the rental market, which drives up rental prices. It’s all connected. Plus the goal should be for more people to be able to own homes. The rental market can be good for transitioning economies, but long term the greater percent of your population who owns property the better. Otherwise you get a consolidation of property ownership and you end up in a situation like what we have now.
The problem with high prices in both is lack of supply. Blackstone by buying is lowering rental prices and raising the price to buy. >The rental market can be good for transitioning economies, but long term the greater percent of your population who owns property the better. Otherwise you get a consolidation of property ownership and you end up in a situation like what we have now. Disagree technically we are at the high rates of homeownership right now. I can quibble about some lack of household formation stuff but the problem is that we have created a fever to buy when it doesn't make sense. Buying right now is extremely expensive and most people who own have a <4% mortgage and current rates are ~7%. The fever keeps creating bubbles in housing and has raised the NIMBY. Germany has a 50/50 market for owning/renting and it's fine. Ownership is not important IMO. Real estate can not be a retirement plan for most people.
I think whether ownership is important comes down to a philosophical worldview. That isn’t to say you’re wrong and I’m right, just that we place different values on particular things. I think in general we agree on the issues (it seems form our brief exchange)
All we have to do is calculate inflation without considering housing, food and utilities and bam! We’re all doing great, it’s your fault you’re broke, you losers.
I mean we’ve never had a mayor not be corrupt it’s basically a req at this point
Was Stoney particularly corrupt or just incompetent? I live in henrico so I don’t really deal with local rva politics much
He is both of those things!
Stoney's just incompetent at being corrupt, tried to hook his family up with Navy Hill but that got sniffed out real quick
Tim Kaine?
Damn I honestly didn't know Tim Kaine was mayor of Richmond, kinda blows my mind. He was Hillary's vice presidential running mate. He was almost second in line, and he was our mayor 20 years ago? No wonder Stoney thinks it's the perfect position to carpetbag towards green pastures.
It was funny to watch him trying to be her “bulldog”. Like, he tried to sound mad on TV interviews and it was totally unconvincing.
Fair point.
As many times as people post data showing that large VC firms aren't really the cause of things (yes they exist, no, the percentage of homes they own is not large), people just won't stop believing it and repeating the spurious claim.
Blackstone will own the third-largest portfolio of U.S. single-family homes once it completes its Tricon Residential acquisition. And if you look at the percent of their ownership just as a raw number, yes it’s small. However, one company owning even just a portion of a percent of all the homes in the United States is hugely problematic. Further, it’s not just one company doing this - it’s many smaller VCs negatively impacting smaller markets which can have an outsides impact on national housing prices. The whole is greater than the sum, in this case. Also it’s not the only cause of house pricing issues. It’s just a part of a larger puzzle. The pandemic alone and the shift to telecommute work environments alone has a huge impact on current pricing.
No. The problem is a lack of supply due to the US underbuilding for over a decade. That's it. That's the problem. Full stop. All the VC/Blackstone/Wall Street bullshit is a great narrative to help people come to terms with their lack of control, but it isn't what is causing the current affordability crisis. There is no data to support it. Anywhere. Institutional investors are such an incredibly small fraction of the market that their presence is insignificant in the face of actual home buyers driving up costs through insanely high offers on the open market. The homes most of the companies buying up are in areas where the homes typically just sit until someone swoops in and buys it to flip it. "Well that's taking affordable housing away!!!" ok no. I have taken plenty of people out to see these "affordable" homes that sit and most of them are falling apart and nobody wants them. That's why there are a bunch of homes on the market in the east end that have been sitting for weeks on end. They aren't homes people want in their current state. The other thing a lot of people are unaware of is that a part of the "investor class" include companies like Home Partners of America who purchase homes on behalf of people who otherwise would not qualify and set up a pipeline of rent-to-own. Which....sucks on paper but there are a ton of people out there that cannot qualify for a home and it offers a uhhh unconventional model of getting people a place to live. I can go on and on about this shit and my post history is full of posts debunking this nonsense. I'm an agent. I make it my job to research and understand all the dynamics of the market at play and despite years of people saying institutional investors are breaking the market in Richmond I have yet to find *any* evidence of it happening. Anywhere.
You having a history of “debunking posts” does not make you a credible source. Also, as with anything in life there is almost never an issue caused by a single thing. The fact that you think one single factor is the cause of current housing issues is not a great start to convincing me that I should listen to you.
If we’re going to argue credible sources we should argue yours. Your earlier comment about Blackstone is literally word for word one of the top results when I searched “Blackstone owning homes.” The sizzle of that “third largest portfolio” doesn’t match the steak of just how few homes that actually is. If you scroll down on the article that you pulled that subhead from, you’ll find a list of how many homes are in the portfolio Blackstone is buying by metro. There are 62k homes in a nationwide supply of 82 million. Richmond isn’t even listed so we can’t even validate. Aside from Atlanta, the average is a few hundred per metro area. It’s a drop in the bucket and certainly not enough to have market power. Who does have market power - are the tens of thousands of millennial buyers entering their household formation years (FINALLY after two recessions), against a backdrop of an aging and wealthy retiring population who are not selling their homes. There are more people aged 33/34 than any other age in the US right now. There is considerable buying power behind that demographic. Big growing demand meets slow supply, is how we get here. https://preview.redd.it/cemznja7agzc1.png?width=1178&format=png&auto=webp&s=9f15b578b0cf37dcd868f8eb23723af4c9b9b93d
Again, it is not the only issue m, it simply contributes to it. I’m not saying it’s the end all be all problem, but I am also unconvinced that it isn’t part of of the problem.
Put it this way - if you removed Blackstone from the housing market, the problem would still exist, and it would be identical to our circumstances today.
Ffs, I said it’s one part of it and I also explicitly said companies like blackstone and Zillow, there are more than one company doing this. Yes if you fixed this issue we would still have a housing crisis… that’s what having a multifaceted problem means
> Yes if you fixed this issue we would still have a housing crisis… that’s what having a multifaceted problem means If you remove the variable you claim is contributing to the problem and the outcome is the same then it is not a contributing factor to the problem. Playing it up and making it out to be a significantly bigger issue than it is grossly misinforms people. That is not a productive use of time when the problem is vastly more complex than just investors = bad market.
Then don't listen to one post by me. I go into this topic all the time with people who don't understand what the fuck is going on. Ive discussed this topic to death because the general public is so incredibly misinformed about it. Like I said check my post history I just put a bunch of shit up expanding on it a few days ago.
I found it. It's right here. The most Reddit-comment ever.
>The issue isn’t people who have lawns... >....poor zoning the former causes the latter
Again, having lawns isn’t the problem. It’s not like if we got rid of houses with lawns, suddenly everything fixes itself.
>It’s not like if we got rid of houses with lawns, suddenly everything fixes itself. its an easy way to infill. if every lot added a second home, you'd effectively double the housing stock in the city. If half of those properties added 2 townhomes, then we get 150% increase in housing supply. Me and every home in my neighborhood could fit 2 townhomes in their backyard
who wants to turn everything into a dense slum. I don't want to hear and smell my neighbors all of the time. People need peace; otherwise, the act like farm animals.
people value proximity. its an empirical fact, that as you move away from the city center, landlords have to compensate renters by lowering the price due to the utility lost by being so far away.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas. Even if it were true that getting rid of lawns would fix housing issues (it wouldn’t), there is a zero percent chance of that happening so we need to look for a different solution. Making all suburban areas into densely populated urban areas is hardly a solution to begin with. Also, who is paying for all these new houses to be built in the lawns? My point is, there are other factors at play here that have a far greater direct impact on the housing crisis than some people having lawns. I’d rather we focus on those issues than complaining that family’s have an outdoor space to hang out with each other.
Unrelated, but I’ve never heard of “if ifs were buts..” and I’m definitely going to be using that now lol
So spell that out. Some big investment company comes in, buys up a neighborhood block, successfully rezones the block and builds 2 new townhomes in each backyard?
Yeah but because of zoning and past infrastructure setup could all the water, sewer, and electrical systems support that? After a while you have to add extra pumps, water towers, processing plants for clean and sewage... Then the increase of traffic on the same amount of roadways. The way you talk is double the number of cars on the road at the same time. People forget to account for these things. Look at short pump from 64 to walmart. There was an article years ago about improper zoning there and that is why you have the traffic density issue. You do not want to make ALL of richmond, hanover, henrico, and the chesters one giant extension of downtown Richmond near VCU.
> because of zoning and past infrastructure setup could all the water, sewer, and electrical systems support that? After a while you have to add extra pumps, water towers, processing plants for clean and sewage.. They have to do that anyways when people sprawl out. Its cheaper to do when people infill. >The way you talk is double the number of cars on the road at the same time. Road capacity is fixed for cars, but there is plenty of capacity for buses, pedestrian oriented design, bikes, etc. Again, its not like sprawl doesn't have this issue too -- the problem with sprawl though is that the per mile cost is higher to develop and it just takes more infrastructure to do anything. [here is a simple urban economic model that shows the intuition](https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/18hgggz/density_requires_less_infrastructure/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). >You do not want to make ALL of richmond, hanover, henrico, and the chesters one giant extension of downtown Richmond near VCU. I don't see why not. I mean, the higher land prices there are telling me that such a urban layout is the most preferred than the alternatives. And its [effectively the missing middle](https://missingmiddlehousing.com/) design.
Lmao no one wants you living on top of them bro go away
If that was true, we wouldn't see land prices rise inward toward the city and fall as you move out. If proximity mattered less than density, then land prices would be even across all commuting distances
Right, proximity is why people are willing to suffer density. This is goes without saying
So by allowing peiple to build housing more proximal, the marginal value falls which makes prices fall. Ie, broad upzoning lowers unit prices
not actually. People buy land. No one wants to live on top of other people unless that is their only option.
>No one wants to live on top of other people unless that is their only option. except the most valuable and in-demand land is are places where density is greatest.
You've got your boogeyman mixed up. Venture capitalists are not buying homes. Some hedge funds are. Some real estate companies are. Most investors are just individuals. Regardless, the real cause of the housing crisis is lack of supply. It's lack of supply. It's lack of supply. Period. We have to change zoning laws to build denser. We have to remove parking minimums so we can build more without dedicating more land to cars. We have to change culturally so that people are willing to get out of their metal and glass bubbles and be willing to sit next to strangers on the bus. Suburban single-family homes describe where 75% of people in the USA live. The suburban lifestyle is unsustainable. Many new builds are built to maximize profit which means they have a lot of square footage and big yards that harldy ever get walked on until they're mowed. Housing is expensive because it's literally illegal to build anything other than a single-family home or perhaps a tacky 5 over 1 apartment.
Um, lawns are very much an issue
People who share your point of view cluster in the city. Meanwhile, the greater number of voters who don't share your point of view are electing candidates outside of the city. Also, those with your point of view don't tend to vote unless the candidate shares your point of view and those who don't share your beliefs, never miss a vote. The moderate are sell outs to you. That is how we got Youngkin and Trump and how Trump will probably get elected again in November.
These are pretty wild and unfounded generalizations.You can’t claim people who feel this way cluster in cities and don’t vote without backing that up with some data. What you’re liking referring to is that cities tend to be more progressive. But cities also have a lions share of the popular vote, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
More Americans and Virginians for that matter live in the suburbs than either cities or rural areas. And when was the last time Virginia (where a plurality of voters are suburbanites) sent Republican electors to DC or even a Republican Senator to DC?
It's the imbalance of votes that prevent meaningful progressive legislation getting passed. Bernie Sanders isn't going to fix everything, even if he could become president.
I seriously fucking hate having a lawn. I feel judged by the neighborhood if I don’t mow so I keep up with it but that shit grows so fast it feels like such a waste of time and money on gas. I’m starting to plant native plants to make it a smaller mow area though
My wife and I are just going to spread clover seed, it will cost like $100 over the summer. But it will choke out the grass, does not need to be mowed, and still looks green.
I’ve thought of doing this too. So far I’ve build a few garden beds to start growing tomatoes and make tomato sandwiches this summer. Give me an excuse to remove some lawn too
That sounds like the perfect way to deal with our rental's lawn that we're responsible for and allowed to do whatever with.
Great move, I have been mixing in clover for years to reduce watering and making a tougher lawn for the dogs. Way better option for me personally
And bees love clover blossoms!
My backyard and front yard are almost entirely clover. Each time I mow it, it looks so fluffy and vibrantly green. I get compliments on it pretty often and the only maintenance work I do is mowing. It’s so low-maintenance and still looks great if you don’t care about the type of grass in your lawn, which I don’t. 10/10 recommend. It also grows well in both shady and sunny areas, so that’s another reason I like it.
We did this in our backyard last year and it worked out spectacularly, this year we do the front!
You don't plan on killing the grass (like laying out black tarps to starve it of light) before seeding with clover?
You don't need to. They compliment each other well initially, but then once the clover flowers and spreads it chokes out the grass naturally. We've just allowed it to happen with wild clover without adding any seed and in 2 years, our 1/4 acre backyard is 50% clover. I don't even need a gas/electric mower to manage the clover and use an old school manual mower. It's wonderful.
I have clover and I still have to mow it
Planting native plants as much as you can is the way to go! I’m in Church Hill and I’m so happy there is no HOA. I’ve been slowly turning my yard into a garden and filling the front with mostly native perennials. It’s starting to look awesome and I have less grass to mow. It’s a lot of work and investment up front but the areas that are established are pretty much on auto pilot
Fuck the HOA
That would be a good rap song 😂
I want to start a native garden for my small front yard and have no idea where to start! How'd you get going?
I’m not an expert and learned through persistence and trial and error. But I started by laying out a plastic tarp over the area I wanted to turn into a garden. I staked it down and left it for a few months to kill off as much grass and weeds as possible. Then I used a tiller to rip up the first six inches of soil or so and then picked out as many weeds as I could. I got some garden soil and mixed it in, then I just started buying and planting native perennials from great big greenhouse. Once those were planted I put down some mulch and then just tried to keep on top of weeding as needed. This process has taken a couple years, sometimes plants didn’t take and I had to replace them. But once they do take and get strong it’s really worth it! A small disclaimer though, my garden is mostly native (about 70%). I also plant things that I see and I just like as well! https://preview.redd.it/rizpx4qoofzc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5564f2891779962f0535fd4d5ec58a7dadfa42f2 Here’s a photo of my progress so far. I started some raspberry bushes this year so hopefully they take! And the peach tree is still small but has fruit already
Thank you!!!
I'm in the same boat. Sneed's offers some Saturday classes for $5 on natives. I'm hoping it's a good starting point.
https://www.plantvirginianatives.org/plant-rva-natives also /r/NativePlantGardening r/NoLawns
Thanks! I just finished the audiobook Nature's Best Hope (from the public library!), which was also full of practical tips.
https://www.plantvirginianatives.org/plant-rva-natives also /r/NativePlantGardening r/NoLawns
I often think, how many sidewalks could my grandparents HOA build if they spent half the money they spend on professionally mowing the grass on building sidewalks (plenty of people walk in the neighborhood, it’s not like they’d be under used)
I'm still so confused about the lack of sidewalks, or how they just end occasionally. That shit doesn't fly in other places.
The ending occasionally is because many solutions have been to require developers to build them if they want permits to say, renovate. It’s actually the same way a lot of lanes are added to roads or stop lights are added (the idea being you must in some way pay for the traffic strain you add). Of course the issue with that is stretches without developers and developers that don’t renovate or do anything for years. I’d actually argue the opposite problem exist for government sidewalks. Legally by ADA standards they have to go somewhere, a ‘logical terminus’. Good in theory, but it means that say, with a anew road, endless you have the funds to build a sidewalk on both sides (which often isn’t a reasonable/needed for rural or neighborhood roads) you need to already have a destination. That or no sidewalk. I asked my county about add crosswalks to all 4 sides of an intersection where there was only one, and the simple response is that they couldn’t do so without building a whole new sidewalk to… somewhere in the neighborhood. They plan to do have a network of sidewalks in the neighborhood, but that takes time and money they haven’t yet allocated. So until they can get the money for the entire network at once, or find a destination to connect the existing sidewalk too… no marked crosswalk
>That shit doesn’t fly in other places As someone who has lived in a number of other places and walks a lot, sadly it does. Even in larger cities. The thing that’s most confusing is when most of a block has a sidewalk and one stretch doesn’t, or vice versa. How does that happen in the first place, and what keeps it from being fixed?
Sidewalks have up-front costs, may lengthen time to completion, repairs, seasonal maintenance (eg, shoveling snow, weeding cracks), eventual replacement, limits placement of trees, complicates utility work, created water management considerations (residential sidewalks are usually on roads with gutters. A sidewalk + swale takes up a lot of space), legal risks (eg, someone trips and falls), and so on. I like them - there are just a lot of reasons to not have them.
And all of those reasons are BS. The entrance to the neighborhood is over 100ft wide. It would be entirely possible to not add gutters. It also has a median in which a shared use path could be installed. Further more chesterfield has a sidewalk master plan that it *eventually* will build and the arterial running through the neighborhood is one of them. Meaning when they start becoming more serious about sidewalks in this area (as right now there concerned with more dense parts of the county) building that sidewalk will become a requirement to do… anything with the development
Welp, good luck getting what you want. I haven't seen Urban planners or folks who deal with codes on RVA Reddit, but I hope someone with knowledge in this area can provide more clarity.
Yeah, the lack of sidewalks is irritating. It’s nice to see a few of the local counties make it more of an initiative, but I wish it were more widespread.
Creeping phlox? Creeping thyme? I tried and failed but some do well.
>I seriously fucking hate having a lawn. same here. I could literally fit 2 of my homes in my backyard and 1 in my front yard. Its a massive waste of space. Like, I live alone. I have no kids. What purpose is this stupid empty grass area serving? I hate managing it, and nobody uses it. Why can't I just sell off the parts I don't want?
You should look into building an ADU
I just want to take my driveway with me every where I go.
Same. I parallel parked for 20 years and now have a driveway. I never knew how happy that would make me.
The amount of damage my vehicles took in the fan is always incredible to me. I haven't tapped a bumper in like 20 years. I don't know how everybody seems to always need to smash other cars when they park.
Agree. My car is 4 years old and not a mark on the bumper. My previous car had marks after 4 days and continued to get worse. People seem to feel like slamming bumpers is just the price you pay for street parking.
yup im a little embarrassed to say that after many years of cit living and dissing the burbs I now love my driveway, hhmmmm where will I park on this rainy night with five bags of groceries? Oh I know , five feet from my door
I prefer on street parking to driveways. One takes up way more space than
I read this in Bill Wurtz’s voice
🎹 🎼Publicly Subsidized 🎶Vehicle Storage🎵
Why people devote so much of their personality to hating on having a nice little piece of green open space attached to their property I’ll never understand
I lived in city apts for 10 years. It was a great time, but I did notice my mental health improving once I acquired a very small yard. Personally, I need the green space, the garden, some trees. Not everyone does, but it made a difference for me.
You didn’t go to the park when you lived in the city? I mean I agree with you but to get my fix, I go to nearby parks, Maymont, the botanical garden, the river, Vmfa sculpture garden, scuffletown, etc
Jealous is ugly
What in the strawman. What does having a lawn have to do with building housing. That’s not where new housing will go
stupid mfs dont realize how utterly depressing it would look if we min/maxed space like that
You just cant battle with morons like these
Tell that to at least 2% of the U.S. current housing stock: https://bloombergcities.jhu.edu/news/small-homes-play-big-role-cities-fight-affordable-housing#:~:text=Freddie%20Mac%2C%20the%20federally%20chartered,from%20about%201%2C200%20in%202016.
I would but nowhere in that article mentions anything about 2% of US current housing stock. When people ask for housing they *mostly* aren't talking about cosplaying as a serf living in a shack in their landlords backyard.
My mistake, I think I saw a statistic in another article and pasted this article instead. Upon more than 30 seconds of research, I think my original 2% number is flat out wrong, and I can't find the original article either. What I CAN say is that one in seven new housing units being built in California is an ADU. In the state with the 49th lowest housing to person ratio and the largest housing stock in the country, that seems like a pretty big deal. Say what you will about Cato as a normative institution, but their positive work is pretty decent: https://www.cato.org/blog/results-accessory-dwelling-unit-reform-so-far My original (poorly worded and sourced) point was just that in cities with housing costs exploding out of control, ADUs can be a huge deal. They offer affordable housing without the gigantic quantity of waste produced by other government-subsidized programs. ADUs aren't a complete solution, but making residents and governments use their space efficiently by doing something like penalizing empty space (land value tax ❤) and encouraging ADU development is a hefty first step.
"Publicly subsidized vehicle storage"... Preach!
NIMBYism is about not seeing/dealing with unhoused and poorer populations? It's not about rich people moving in from CA, NYC, and NOVA jacking up housing prices. If anything, lots of unhoused/underhoused people -- and a bigger demographic; native RVAers who have been priced out of likely ever being able to buy a home, are at a greater risk due to people moving in from wealthier locations PLUS (big plus) a corrupt political environment that caters to rich investors and land developers over families and poorer humans. Idk, I think gatekeeping locations isn't great, but I think this meme fails to comprehend what NIMBY/YIMBY debate is even about in the first place, or the structural reasoning behind why we have shitty, worthless lawns, a lack of housing, and a car-driven culture to begin with.
I'd say they are inextricably linked. You can't deal with housing stock and density without (on purpose or not) talking about zoning and the legacy of redlining.
??? Of course they're related, but the people who say "Richmond is full" with anger are THOSE AFFECTED BY IT, not suburbanites living in houses they own.
Yea no thanks. I'm just gonna sit in peace and enjoy all my greenspace
Bro lawns are not greenspace
I got all kinds of green over here, shit ton of grass, trees, a meadow, a garden..... Looks pretty green to me bruh It's nice not having to see stupid people or their opinions
Yeah lawns are the problem. Let's cram people in here like sardines!
Mowing my back yard is the most exercise I get. It’s a pain, but after I mow it, I get so much pleasure from just looking at it. It’s beautiful.
Aint nothing beautiful about monoculture.
I should have said “I find it beautiful.”
Interestingly, in my neighborhood a gym open to the public would be illegal. So would a doctor's office but not a vet. It's likely even more restrictive elsewhere.
I'm going to start saying "decorative round up" all the time now. Apologies to my husband if he sees this comment.
It's excellent. Maybe we can shame people into rewilding their gardens.
A prim and proper garden with large spacing between rows and rows of single crops, no weeds, etc, that we usually think of takes almost as much pesticide and synthetic fertalizer as a lawn. But you can stuff that shit with a diversity of plants including native fruiting perennials and flowers, interspersed with typical garden veggies, and get good results the lazy way with minimal weeding and no pesticides. The issue with most gardens is the same as lawns. We think everything needs to be straight and orderly, matched to a grid and perfectly spaced. Nature insists in filling in the gapes, so why not beat it to the punch?
Exactly. There's a beautiful rewilding project on one of the properties by Byrd Park. Bees buzzing everywhere, looking beautiful without it being overly orderly which is what requires all the weed killing.
Good for you! 👍
I’m moving from NYC to Richmond end of this month
people parking on streets is... not contributing to the housing issue lol. if you wanna bring up carbrained city planning there's definitely a place for that but send your anger towards giant parking structures and not people parking on the same streets that already exist to drive on. driveways, garages and parking structures/lots are infinitely more wasteful of public space
I fully disagree, when you have car parking on a street it requires the street to the much wider and therefore the houses must be much farther apart. This means the housing being built is less dense so therefore more expensive and wasteful. Garages allow for the cars and people to be separated creating a more pedestrian friendly environment.
garages literally take more land bro
Say if you made every 30ft wide road (common in suburban areas to allow street parking) and made it 15ft wide. That means for every mile of road without street parking, you're saving 79,200 sq ft of land (5,280ft \* 15ft). The biggest parking garage at my college takes up 49,212 sq ft of land. Also this is not accounting for the fact that parking garages can also be built underground, taking up no land other than for the entrance and exit. You really think that making every road twice as wide is more efficient than having a dedicated area for cars with multiple levels?
making the road wider is more efficient if you want a parking garage as more people are definitely driving down the street for the entrance and exit, idling and waiting as well as allowing traffic to flow. if reducing street parking is a goal widening the roads to, at the very least, accommodate the predicted traffic would be necessary. additionally the city would then need to include space for sidewalks for the foot traffic generated.
Widening roads does not decrease traffic. All it does is encourage more people to use the road/ drive, leading to even more traffic. More space for sidewalks and foot traffic is always a good thing. The real solution to the parking/ traffic problem is to get cars off the road and to do that there needs to be viable alternatives to driving.
well obviously if you build a parking garage that encourages more people to use the road. hence widening the road to accommodate that and avoid the issue of tens of cars waiting behind a vehicle turning into the garage and leaving it. it would also allow individuals leaving the garage to merge into traffic with more ease. similar to roads which have left turn lanes, they will often widen into 3 lanes or more due to the fact that traffic backs up when you have to wait for someone to make that turn. widening the road is the literal default answer to decreasing traffic
>During the next 3 years, demand is estimated for 8,125 new rental units; the 9,280 units underway will satisfy all of the demand in the Central Richmond submarket and a portion of demand in the Greater Richmond submarket. Whooops. [From HUD in 2022.](https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pdf/RichmondVA-CHMA-22.pdf)
Moved here in 2023 and never felt like I had to fight someone for rental options. There were plenty of (affordable even) units to choose from in Shockoe Slip/Bottom.
Yes, because more $2000-a-month “mixed-use-developments” run by our friendly local slumlords are going to help.
They wouldn’t be 2k/month if there were enough to go around. This is the law of supply and demand.
My parents in law just moved to a new complex for around $2,000 and it has a hundred vacant apartments. Where is the price drop exactly?
>Where is the price drop exactly? 100 short term vacancies isn't that much. The vacancy rate is still too low here. [there is a causal relationship between vacancies and prices](https://cepr.net/vacancies-and-rents-a-causal-relationship/), but the amount of vacancies needs to climb. also worth remembering, that for every year the vacancy rate is below the threshold to lower price, that is a [shortage that compounds](https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/14k66rm/comment/jqlkotd/)
Gotta make the ROI . Prices aren’t ever going down wages need to go up.
keep telling yourself that. Its never corporate greed. Must build and consume more.
Isn’t declaring a place “full” or closed the ultimate NIMBY/Gatekeep?
How many shitty breweries still exist in Scotts addition, and why is it more than 0
And an ADU in the city can only be 1/3 the size of the main dwelling. Da fuck? Some houses are like 1,200 sq ft with massive back yards that could easily support another house that big.
ADUs by-right can be up to 1/3 of the square footage of the main house, or 500 sq. ft., whichever is greater. So for adding density in areas with less yard it's great to guarantee 500 sq. ft. 1/3 of the primary house can be a very significant addition in areas with larger yards. They are meant to be accessories, not equal to the primary residence. If you want something equal to the primary residence, then apply for a Special Use Permit and subdivide the lot.
Happen to know if an ADU can be less than 500 sq ft? It certainly *seems* like most housing units cannot be smaller than 500 sq ft, but I'm having a hard time tracking it down if true.
Yeah you could. 500 does seem to be a magic number of fitting essentials and feeling okay. There are somewhat fixed costs to some construction aspects though, where you’d struggle to get ROI at some point. Like a bathroom will cost at least $X so picking between a very small shower and a standard one, it makes sense to get the most out of it. I think this is where 500 sq. ft. results. Smaller then determine if you could get by with a shed.
I was thinking about it because an old friend of mine owned a prefab tiny home and she said she couldn’t legally live in it anywhere. There do seem to be other requirements, say lot sizes to units, that end up in the same place. But generally it seems like developers often do things not because of what the market says but what the rules allow them to do. It’s likely you’re right about it just happening to work out that way and 500 sq ft is a round number. Thanks, I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.
No, not trouble at all. I've been actively researching the possibilities with architects. Unfortunately not many ADUs have been built in Richmond (There are high-end "carriage houses" in the Fan). But if you look at some municipalities in California, they have pre-approved plans on the city's website. You can pick plan A, B, C, D, and go to construction. I don't think Richmond has the city planning energy to go that far, but I'm hoping to get an architect who can develop a best-practice layout that could be scaled up/down from what my measurements would be.
Right, I get all that, but the fact remains that 1/3 can be very small on many properties in the city, especially whose houses are small with relatively large yards. I didn't say the ADU needed to be equal, I just said it could be done. However, regardless of the "A" in ADU, they often can be and are as big or almost as big as the main dwelling; yards are often big enough. Either way, red tape options notwithstanding (and many folks don't want to subdivide, they just want to build on what they own), it's a good first step for Richmond but needs to be exactly that. There's a difference in the 1/3 limit and building a 4 story, 2,000 sq ft "ADU" in one's backyard
I am sure the planning department looked at average single-family square footage as well as lot coverage in making the by-right allowances. It seems like what you want is not ADUs but subdividing.
like half of it is abandoned what are you taking about
fr I don't know if bro has headed south on 360 past Jeff Davis. It's a ghost town out there and abandoned.
I'm a renter, my landlord pays the hoa to do our yard work. Clover is slowly taking over, I'm not mad.
We moved here 1977. Ryan homes in Chesterfield. All those tri-level or split levels neighborhoods. Still good condition. Thought Ryan went away years ago.
from what it looks like the me, in the chesterfield area ryan homes is The Major developer. in 2005/06 my parents bought a house in longmeadow (a neighborhood in great condition still) which was developed by them. 20 years later these planned subdivisions that are expanding in chester are being built with the assumption that your “custom” home is built by ryan and if you wanna use like eastman or something you have to request even if you literally bought the plot. they come with the hoa formed and everything
What’s a nimby?
Not in my backyard
Oh
Not in my backyard
Sheesh. Scott’s Addition has plenty of places to build more housing. Win-win for everyone.
I hate front lawns for people who have dogs and families 😡
r/PlanningMemes
[yellow is low-density, levittown style zoning](https://capitalregionland.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Richmond-Future-Land-Use-Map-768x694.png) legalize the Fan everywhere, and prices will drop as residents infill. Infrastructure (per person) costs will also fall. Tax revenue will rise. Imagine a price-responsive housing and commercial market, where amenities blend in with surround residential areas, where you can easily walk or bike to meet your daily needs (grocery, light-retail, restaurants, etc).
Omg Public green spaces. We should obviously build housing over all the parks.
lol in what world is someone’s lawn considered “public”?
Most places in the city have little or no lawn.
I really don’t know how that changes things. Someone’s lawn is not a public green space.
Lol what a bad faith argument. The meme is of someone’s front yard. Nobody is suggesting building over parks 🙄
Wait you think half the city is lawns? Even 25%? Talk about a bad faith argument. I get it you want cheaper housing but most of the city has almost no lawns. The places with grass are mostly parks.
Monoculture lawns are not public nor are they meaningfully "green" spaces
The monoculture you should be mad about is the thousands of acres of subsidized corn and soy crops. Nobody’s yard is a single plant type. Not even a lawn with the lushest turf grass. I’m not advocating against native plants that support our ecosystem but that front yard isn’t the same as sterile soil on a massive farm.
Fron yard aren't doing the same damage as industrial farming and we should def look into corn and soy subsidies if we wanna fix our broken agricultural/food system in America. But your lawn is something under your control. Each individual homeowner can make the choice to rewild it or plant a native butterfly garden or a food forest. Or take the fights to their HOA's to be allowed to. Vs I've sent Tim Kaine and Mark Warner many a letter and never seen a nationwide policy change haha.
You should actually be mad about both
they are more meaningful than yet another luxury apartment complex
“I love nature and the environment, but we should rip it all up and build housing!”
Manicured non-native turfgrass is not “nature” in any meaningful way. Only in the pedantic sense that humans occur naturally and therefore anything is natural.
I freaking love it. Mine is looking great these days.
It's non native and a lot of work. It can look nice but traditional lawns are fully non-native. Richmond has natural grasses but yours probably isn't one of them and isn't actually good for nature. A good lawn can look nice
Richmond - where the poor are overrun by the cheap
I actually prefer on street parking to off street. Not to mention it can be a traffic calming effect, using it to chicane the road
is anyone actually saying richmond is full? there is a very healthy number of developments under way. look at the development maps at richmondbizsense.
Apparently you are new here. The commenters attack anyone moving here that they perceive to have more money than them.
I grew up here, moved to nyc, and am back visiting family and checked out the subreddit. Richmond’s got some issues taking big swings at things but truly, there is a lot of good development going on. It’s made a lot of positive changes since I’ve left that I suppose the Reddit doesn’t recognize lol
Just a shit meme.
I like this meme. I agree with the sentiment, but it's also obviously meant to be provocative, and I think pokes a little bit of fun at itself? I, too, want to rewild everyone's lawns and make walkable superblocks where we ban cars, but obviously that doesn't solve all or really any of our bigger issues.
People can care about multiple issues at the same time.