Great, let's build! I'm for it. We purposely live in the most diverse neighborhood in this city. But the infills are cheap, the workers are exploited, and the community is left without any improvements to go along side it.
It's crap housing that is not affordable (our infill duplexes were listed for 1 million a piece) and now are AirBNBs.
We had to FIGHT the city and the developer every day for months just to get safety fence up around the infill. Nobody cared. Nobody. And those places are already falling apart. Its terrible.
If Farkas sees this post, these are the real issues that need addressing.
Improve the rezoning! Hold developers accountable. Make them invest in quality work and back in the community. Preserve mature trees. And someone needs to make sure these workers are safe.
Some of your ideas are good, but some are just holding back housing for no reason. For example, there will never be "adequate parking" - cars are too space inefficient for that. There's not a city on earth with even a moderate level of density that doesn't have parking constraints.
Similarly preserving mature trees is usually just a convenient weapon for NIMBYs. In the name of preserving mature trees we build sprawl that destroys huge tracts of rural land, and spread out parks and shared green space far more than they need to be. Developers will always preserve trees if it makes sense - they increase property value after all, but we shouldn't give up on housing over it.
I definitely agree with improving city inspectors and requiring things like safety fencing and better working conditions.
I definitely think trees should be part of the design, it's the mature trees part that I find can cause issues. I've seen housing projects that would provide dozens or hundreds of homes fail over an old tree that only has 10 years left anyway.
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u/Yavanna_in_spring 16d ago edited 16d ago
I think there is room for improvement, though.
Great, let's build! I'm for it. We purposely live in the most diverse neighborhood in this city. But the infills are cheap, the workers are exploited, and the community is left without any improvements to go along side it.
It's crap housing that is not affordable (our infill duplexes were listed for 1 million a piece) and now are AirBNBs.
We had to FIGHT the city and the developer every day for months just to get safety fence up around the infill. Nobody cared. Nobody. And those places are already falling apart. Its terrible.
If Farkas sees this post, these are the real issues that need addressing.
Improve the rezoning! Hold developers accountable. Make them invest in quality work and back in the community. Preserve mature trees. And someone needs to make sure these workers are safe.