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For the tenth time in this thread, even if one agrees with that point of view, the issue isn't that Andreessen holds that view, it's that he's gone on record many, many times espousing the exact opposite of it.

It's insanely hypocritical, and points to him saying one thing in public to gain the kudos of like-minded people while in private being something completely different.

Is this a serious question? Because the density afforded by multiunit housing allows for urban amenities, walkabiliity and useful public transit. And well-built multifamily won't have noise issues.

I agree with the first points, but we need to stop lying about the noise issue. No matter how well built a place is, noise is always going to be a potential problem. People do like opening their windows, especially noisy people.

If we want people to accept density, we need social norms and legal enforcement on the noise front, not pretending.

Noise doesn't have to be an issue, there are building technologies that can make a room quiet which aren't used because they cost a more money, but it always is an issue in the end because of lax regulation. Both lax regulation in the general environment (e.g., loud motorcycles and leafblowers), and lax regulation in the building code. Regulations are currently in the wrong place -- focused on preventing construction, instead of enabling and encouraging quality construction.

Usually many sounds come from street. But then again I take that in these single family housing neighbourhoods in USA there is absolutely no one loud. Kids don't scream at their yards, no one uses loud tools, plays music outside and so on. I wish entire world would be such paradise of quiet.

Had a flat in London on the Thames. Beautiful new build. Close my balcony doors and I couldn't hear a thing from the outside. Quiet as a church.

Open the balcony doors and the sounds of the river and Gabriel's Wharf will flood in. And that one time there was this crazy guy yelling. Doors closed, nothing.

I think US construction is just lower quality in comparison, which is a fair complaint. With only access to inferior manpower without the skill and techniques from the UK, you'll likely end up with the noisy apartment and then you're fucked. So I understand the concern.

Granted, I live in a vintage office building that was converted to condos, but it has pretty good sound isolation (it kind of would have to since the L runs right by it). The main things I can hear with windows closed are sirens and those assholes with super loud motors that for some reason never get arrested for noise violations.

Sure if you open your windows there will be noise, but that's true everywhere no? Dogs barking, roosters, crickets...

There's a huge difference, to most people, between natural sounds and the noise of other people being other people. It's just not the same and we need to stop pretending it isn't an issue.

I lived in an amazingly solid, all-concrete, incredibly sound-isolated complex for awhile. In the bay area, so it's nice to have fresh air and not live like you're in a bunker. And then the neighbor with the parrot moved in next door, and the neighbor with the kids who loved playing CoD late at night with a subwoofer moved in above.

In short, I will _never_ share walls again. Never. Enjoy the density.

If you can clearly hear adjacent units then that sounds to me like improper sound isolation. Typically condos tend to have much better sound isolation than apartments in the US (apartments will typically cheap out on the party walls).

There was nothing wrong with the sound isolation. It was perfect.

Until people opened their windows. Which was the entire point of that post.

No amount of sound isolation is going to fix this problem.

Sorry I misunderstood. I don't normally open my windows since it's often too hot or too cold outside and also air pollution from cars/buses on the street below. Probably in a milder climate open windows would be a bigger problem.

There are advantages to multi-unit housing that you have not included in your analysis:

- No garden maintenance / snow removal

- Dedicated maintenance staff / landlord pays for it

- Generally lower intrusion risk

- Smaller footprint than most single unit homes: not everyone desires to clean several thousand square feet

And the disadvantages of multi unit housing you listed have their analogues in single unit homes:

- Neighbours are still loud and smelly

- Putting a hole in your wall and fixing it is expensive unless you have the tools + experience to do so yourself. Not everyone enjoys this.

- Commuting becomes more onerous the farther out you live

For many people there is no living situation without it’s compromises. But for some, single-unit is ideal and for others multi-unit is ideal.

I like living in multi family housing, and I like living in dense neighborhoods. I don't give a single shit if you don't like it, and I don't have to justify it to you.

Surely then you can agree to leave his neighborhood alone and note force it to become like yours?

I can agree to leave his property alone. He doesn't own his neighborhood, though. And anybody should be able to build multifamily housing on their own fucking property. Even if you don't like it. And if you really don't want it to happen, then buy the whole neighborhood. Nobody will force you to put apartments on your own property.

Right, so you do want to force his neighborhood to change its rules so it becomes like yours.

“Preference for me but not for thee.”

His neighborhood clearly doesn’t affect yours. Why is it so hard to leave it alone? I’m sure Marc doesn’t advocate for your neighborhood to change.

It does affect mine. High housing prices have ripple effects across entire regions. I know people that spend 4 hours of their lives in a car every day because of those ripple effects.

Again: Marc does not own his neighborhood. He owns his house. He can do whatever he wants with his house, but the moment you grant him control over the neighborhood, you grant him rights over everybody else's property.

But his neighborhood owns his neighborhood, and they vote to continue the multifamily zoning ban. Clearly if this was only Marc’s preference, it wouldn’t be law.

Surely the solution is to build more places for people to be employed rather than overcrowding existing ones and forcing people to commute from far away. COVID showed us the office centric commuter world is not necessary. I understand some people must be onsite, but still, drastic commute reductions and spreading out of people is a good thing.

It wasn't law. That is why they are objecting to it...cause the law doesn't ban it.

And no, the solution is to build more housing where people want to live, and let all the whiny nimby chucklefucks move to the places where nobody wants to live. That is, after all, what they want. If Marc Andreesen really hates people living near him, he can easily buy 100 acres in the Nevada desert where nobody would ever dare to build an apartment building.

I would consider zoning codes law. To argue otherwise is pedantic.

Sorry, just because you want to live somewhere, doesn’t entitle you to enough units built there for you to afford it.

I’d love to live in Atherton. But I can’t afford it. I don’t try and get more units built there when the community clearly doesn’t want that, so I choose somewhere else.

But this apartment building wasn't against the zoning code. That's why it was being built. It was just not part of some ambiguous plan created by some random dude. To argue that a completely non-binding plan is law is obtuse.

Just because you live somewhere does not entitle you to control your neighbors property.

> But his neighborhood owns his neighborhood

By that logic, the country owns the country, and the country should be able to force any part of the country to do what the broader country wants, and that is not considered force because, well, the country owns the country.

You've got it backwards. NIMBYs are the ones doing the forcing through government regulation. NIMBYs want to dictate what I can and can't build on my private property.

No, I’m seeing it the correct way.

NIMBYs (the community and vast majority of single family homeowners) don’t want to see their neighborhoods overcrowded and changed completely by density, because they moved to such a neighborhood to get away from density. So they vote as a group to keep their neighborhoods nice low density places to live.

Meanwhile, YIMBY people in dense areas think they should have the final say over what SFR neighborhoods feel like and how they develop, even though they don’t even live there.

It’s never the other way around. No single family homeowner NIMBYs push back against another apartment building in an already dense area in the city nextdoor. Yet YIMBYs feel so strongly about controlling low density townships they don’t even live in that they advocate for state preemption. That preemption forces those places to change to adopt the YIMBY vision of walkability, density, public transport, and less cars, something few to none of the residents in that community want.

Nimbys don't own their neighborhoods. They own their houses, and they are free to do whatever they want with those houses. If they don't want density in the property that they don't own, the they shouldnt move to places where people want to live. Reno is calling out to them.

The neighborhood owns the neighborhood, and they vote to keep it low density. It’s not like there’s a single homeowner voting to control what the entire city builds.

No, actually they don't vote on zoning. No city has zoning votes...they have city planners who are hired by an appointee of someone that is voted in on a platform that is always way bigger than land use code. We're talking several degrees of separation between votes and land use code.

The closest thing neighborhoods have to votes on density are "town hall" style meetings where the crankiest asshole in the neighborhood shows up and pretends to speak for the entire neighborhood. And inevitably they're wrong, because there are always people that don't want to stay for whatever reason, and they rightfully want the highest price for their property, and that price is always going to be higher if they can sell to a developer which will build high density apartments in high demand locations.

Believe it or not, we actually do have a legal mechanism for entire neighborhoods to vote on density, and it actually has more power than zoning boards...it could prohibit density even where upzoning happens, because it can prohibit the density at the level of a deed covenant. They're called homeowners associations. They suck, and everybody hates them.

If Andreesen can't convince his neighborhood to form a homeowners association, and willingly introduce density-restricting covenants to their deeds, then you can be assured that density restrictions on zoning are actually minority rule...not some community decision.

Sure, YIMBYs want to force NIMBY communities to stop forcing individual homeowners from doing what they want with their own land. It's a justified act of force to prevent an unjustified act of force. If a small community got together and tried to legalize murder (an unjustified act of force on a victim), the broader community has every right to force that community to not do that (a justified act of force to prevent the unjustified force).

People are not noisy. Cars, nearby freeways, and leafblowers are noisy, and those are elements of suburbia and single family houses.

Multi-unit housing is famously popular with extremely rich people as long as they're the ones living in it - a lot of them like NYC.

Single unit zoning in Atherton means at least a one acre lot. Have you ever heard of semi-detached housing? That’d count as multi-unit zoning here. Half an acre lot with a good sized house seems pretty nice to me :)

> I understand if you cannot afford a single unit, sure. But why would anyone actually want a multi-unit?

There are definitely circumstances in life where a multiunit is great -- single people early in life trying to meet people and make friends, for example. But even outside of that:

Anyone can afford a single unit, it's just a matter of where. If you're the wealthiest of the wealthy, you can afford it basically anywhere. If you're extremely poor, it might be a shack in the middle of nowhere. Everyone else is trading off the variables of price, type of housing, and location.

I know a lot of poor people. None of them ever said “let me get that one bedroom”.

They all did the same thing, move somewhere cheap. Live in a one bedroom, and work until they can buy a house.

My point is no one wants that one bedroom, except those well off who want to live in the city. Which by definition creating apartment complexes will destroy the aesthetic and overwhelm the city resources and utilities.

You’ll be better for moving where you can afford. Go move to a single family residential neighborhood and you’ll be far happier.

A lot of let them eat cake in this comment..Have you hear of "people who work at the restaurants you frequent"? They would tremendously benefit by living near where they work.

I like other people.