Tag Archives: neighbors

A picket line against McMansions

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McMansions may be unpopular in Los Angeles but they rarely attract picket lines:

Residents in the Melrose District Sunday protested what they’re calling mega-mansions in Los Angeles.

A picket line was set-up outside of a new home in the 700 block of N. Vista Street which some claim towers over much smaller residences nearby and isn’t energy-efficient.

Demonstrators say they timed their protest to coincide with the realtor’s open-house of the residence…

The owner of the home being picketed was not available for comment.

I am guessing this doesn’t build goodwill among neighbors. Imagine you are trying to sell a home (or buy that same home) that attracts a picket line…I’m not sure there is a good outcome for that seller. I assume the people in the picket line hope this (1) draws attention to their cause and (2) tells other owners in the neighborhood that they will be unhappy with similar teardowns. Yet, I wonder if this truly acts as a deterrent and instead affects their own property values. Directly protesting the actions of one homeowner tends to violate neighborhood friendliness or at least the suburban moral minimalism (a term from The Moral Order of a Suburb by Baumgarner) of leaving each other alone that marks many sprawling communities.

Being a better neighbor linked to better heart health

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Be nice to your neighbors because it may just help keep your heart healthier:

For the latest research, the University of Michigan team used data from 5,276 people over 50 with no history of heart problems, who were participants in an ongoing Health and Retirement Study in the United States…

At the start of the project, the respondents were asked to award points out of seven to reflect the extent to which they felt part of their neighbourhood, could rely on their neighbours in a pinch, could trust their neighbours, and found their neighbours to be friendly.

When they crunched the numbers at the end of the study, the team found that for every point they had awarded out of seven, an individual had a reduced heart attack risk over the four-year study period.

People who gave a full score of seven out of seven had a 67 percent reduced heart attack risk compared to people who gave a score of one, study co-author Eric Kim told AFP, and described the difference as “significant”.

This was “approximately comparable to the reduced heart attack risk of a smoker vs a non-smoker,” he said.

“This is an observational study so no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect,” the statement underlined.

While this research doesn’t establish direct effects, it introduces additional reasons for being a better neighbor. Would conclusive findings that this would help people’s health be more convincing to Americans than civic or moral arguments? Focusing on health could have a more individualistic emphasis – “I’d like to live longer” – though health could also be viewed on a community-wide scale – fewer heart problems mean less community money spent on healthcare.

It is also interesting that this relies on self-reported accounts of neighborliness. Is this fairly accurate? This could be measured in a variety of ways: number of conversations or visits with numbers, participation in local groups, and reports from neighbors about the neighborliness of others. Of course, it could be that perceptions of being a good neighbor matter even more than actual actions. Yet, I wonder how this lines up with the typical shocked accounts suburbanites present when one of their neighbors is accused of a crime.

Advice for how to stop your neighbor from building a McMansion next door

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McMansions can be opposed in a variety of ways but one poster suggests the way to go is to be an undesirable neighbor:

Paint your house bright pink. Put several cars on cinderblocks in the front yard. Have 20 people move in with you. Stop cutting the grass. Park junk cars on the street in front of the vacant house. Blast loud music 24/7. Tie up a pit bull in your front yard. Get someone with a huge gut to hang out in your front yard without a shirt while drinking beer. All of these together may work, but you’ll probably make yourself miserable in the process.

These actions may or may not be possible given local laws and neighborhood regulations but they all have a similar goal: drive down property values so that possible McMansion no longer looks financially appealing. As numerous people will tell you, who wants to have the nicest house on the street, particularly compared to your immediate neighbors? If McMansions are about wealthier people upgrading their property regardless of their surroundings, then such actions could undercut their financial basis.

Patterns amongst borders between suburban yards

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An artist noticed that her neighbors in an older Sacramento suburb follow some patterns in the borders between their yards:

“There are definite patterns of cohesiveness,” says Neidigh of her series Property Line. She says it’s possible to observe “the layering of planting trends over 50, 60 years, or even older.”A Midwest transplant who’s settled in California’s capitol city, Neidigh set out to document the “groomed landscapes” of the city, drilling down past the Pleasantville-type conformity to reveal the unique personailties expressed in seemingly cookie-cutter borders. Her earlier series, With Great Care, focuses on the tightly groomed mulberry trees found in Sacramento neighborhoods. She’s intrigued by the tension of perennially pruning these plants that outgrow their accceptable bounds.

“It has that inherited design, where they’re maintaining this thing that’s been planted so long ago, and just keeping it in bounds,” Neidigh says.

Here is my favorite of the online pictures:

Land lines can be quite contested with different ideas about landscaping as well as determining the exact line. The picture above offers a great contrast: a driveway on the right with an extra parking space on the lot line with the yard on the left going for some minimalist landscaping amongst brick pavers. The right side offers function, the left side wants to have a little piece of nature. Why don’t the people on the left create a larger hedge if they want to have plants along the line?

It’s too bad we don’t get to see the neighbors interacting across these lot lines. Of course, that assumes they do have much interaction in their front yards or that they even interact much at all…

Architectural sociology approach to why Las Vegas residents don’t know their neighbors

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Sociologists looking at why Las Vegas residents don’t know their neighbors explain that the design of their newer subdivisions are partly to blame:

“So that means squeezing a lot of houses into small lots, and it also means an architectural design in many cases that doesn’t facilitate the flow of people,” UNLV sociology professor Robert Futrell said.In 2010, UNLV professors conducted a survey of neighborhoods and people living throughout the Valley. They found that communities built after the construction boom of the 1990s include narrow streets, concrete walls, short driveways and few front porches. All of these things impede social interaction.

“While many developers have tried to create these master-planned communities to be high-functioning, high-interacting neighborhoods, many of them are not working that way,” Batson said.

Professors point to neighborhoods with short driveways as an example. People drive up to their homes, open the garage and drive in without talking to anyone.

The article goes on to say that residents in these communities truly do want to interact with their neighbors. But, design holds them back.

Is it completely the fault of design? The beginning of the article also notes that Las Vegas has many transient residents. If it is truly the design, we should be able to look at neighborhoods with different designs and measure higher levels of social interaction. Is this what we actually find? New Urbanists argue it is all about designing neighborhoods in a traditional way but they don’t as often bring up the data that would show the neighborhoods do what they say they should do. Other might counter that even with some better home design, people are still distracted from social interaction because of cars, air conditioning, television, the Internet, and more.

Another thought: would the residents of these new neighborhoods be willing to trade the size of their homes or the interior features of their homes for some more neighborly features?

Chicago McMansion battle reaches the McMansion pumpkin stage

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One battle over a proposed McMansion in Chicago recently turned to pumpkins:

The large pumpkin popped up over the weekend next to his lot at 829 S. Bishop St. It was painted with the words, “When size matters … McMansion Pumpkin.”

Many neighbors have referred to Skarbek’s plan for his home as a “McMansion.” He plans to build a home much larger than the row home that had been there, and the home will eventually interrupt a string of front yards that are all set back from the street…

Later Tuesday, Skarbek’s next-door neighbor, Paul Fitzpatrick, said his wife decorated the pumpkin, which actually sits on his yard to the north of a fence surrounding Skarbek’s lot while the new home is being built.

“I meant it as a good gesture,” Carrie Fitzpatrick said. “He likes big houses, so I thought he’d like a big pumpkin. I spent a lot of money on that pumpkin, and if it backfired, I’ll feel really stupid.”

A holiday-themed McMansion fight turned petty. Both sides appear to be trying to pass it off as no big deal but even in a country of moral minimalism (the argument of M. P Baumgartner in The Moral Order of a Suburb), this is an odd way to go about things. If the neighbors are already pursuing a lawsuit, the other main way for Americans to settle irreconcilable differences, why move to the pumpkin stage?

Problems in Detroit include “dysfunctional American sociology” and lack of regional governance

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One commentator focuses on the lack of metropolitan governance in Detroit and also mentions “dysfunctional American sociology.” Here is the bit on sociology:

And without widespread racism, there would have been fewer ghettoized African-Americans.

Hard to ignore this. See the work of scholar Thomas Sugrue in The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit.

Here is more of the argument for regional governance:

In a European-style metro Detroit, unified regional planning would favor reconstruction of the old city centre over new buildings and new highways in ever more distant locations. Some of the tax revenue raised in what are today separate affluent suburban jurisdictions would be spent in the centre of the city. With better roads, schools, police and services, Detroit’s slums would be less slummy and the culture of crime and despair would probably be less entrenched.

There’s actually no need to go to Europe to find better ways to arrange urban jurisdictions. As David Rusk points out in his book “Cities without Suburbs”, the American cities that have expanded their city limits along with their populations generally have stronger economies, less racial segregation and more equal income distribution than the mostly older cities with rigid borders.

The ethical issue can be reduced to an old question: who is my neighbor? Everyone, even economists who believe people should be selfish, recognizes that it is helpful to work together as a community. Almost everyone, perhaps excluding a few cold-hearted economists, would agree that the strong in a community have some obligation to help the weak. But how large is the relevant community?…

David Rusk, Myron Orfield, and others have made the argument for regional governance for decades but it has had difficult gaining traction, particularly in wealthier suburbs that do not see this as such a clear-cut ethical issue. Opposition to regional governance is rooted in longer issues between cities and less urban areas where cities are viewed as bad places full of crime, race, immigrants, densities that are too high, uncleanliness, and other “urban problems.” Why should people who made the choice to move to suburbs be held responsible for the problems of people in other communities? Ultimately, perhaps this is rooted in American individualism which views all moves to the suburbs as the result of individual merit and also tends to lead to an interest in government or control that is as local as possible.

A tiny house community in Washington, D.C.

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The Stronghold neighborhood of Washington, D.C. now features a small community of 200-square foot tiny houses:

The group behind Stronghold’s tiny-house community calls itself Boneyard Studios. “As property values and rents rise across the city, we want to showcase this potential option for affordable housing,” the group writes on its Web site. “We decided to live the questions: Can we build and showcase a few tiny homes on wheels in a DC urban alley lot? … Not in the woods, but in a true community, connected to a neighborhood? Yes, we think. Watch out left coast, the DC adventure begins.”

There’s one problem: The city’s zoning laws don’t allow residential dwellings on alley lots unless they are a minimum of 30 feet wide, or roughly the width of a city street. D.C. is currently discussing lifting the 30-foot restriction. So, as Boneyard Studios continues to advocate more progressive zoning laws, it is using the property to showcase what could be…

Although the diminutive homes are made of high-quality materials, they are priced for a flagging economy. They sell for $20,000 to $50,000, less than the down payment on a two-bedroom condo in a trendy D.C. neighborhood…

Despite the fact that tiny houses are, well, tiny, affordable-housing advocates are researching the possibility that attractive micro homes could one day complement or replace stigmatized trailer parks and low-income housing, especially in places such as the District, where they could be built in unused vacant spaces such as alleys.

This sounds like an interesting project. Still, these tiny houses could face a number of issues before being approved as affordable housing. Besides their size, how many people can fit in each tiny house, and how long each house might last, how many property owners would want to live next to these tiny houses? Even if these houses don’t have the stigma of trailer parks, residents and neighborhoods tend to worry about property values. Simply having smaller and cheaper houses nearby might lower other housing prices.

Additionally, how might these tiny houses be grouped or placed – would they be in rows, scattered in an open space or bigger lot, or on individual lots? Would a concentration of tiny houses fit under the same residential zoning categories as single-family homes or multi-family housing because of a greater density?

I imagine the neighbors will ask some of these questions and want good answers. Interestingly, the article does not cite any neighbors to the Stronghold colony of tiny houses.

Is it good for suburban neighborhoods for foreclosed homes to be purchased by private-equity funds who want to rent them out?

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Some neighborhoods are facing a new dilemma: how to respond to private-equity firms purchasing and fixing up foreclosed homes and then renting them out.

Similar scenarios and concerns are unfolding across Chicago and in other markets hard-hit by the housing crisis. Well-capitalized, out-of-town private equity funds are scouring neighborhoods, paying cash for distressed single-family homes and renting them out. The opportunities are plentiful, enabling investment groups to profit from low home prices, rising rents and an increase in the number of potential renters.

The transactions are returning vacant properties to active use. But they also are stoking fears among neighbors and municipalities about the long-term effect of large, private investors — including many that are operating under the radar — in their communities.

“This scares the hell out of me,” said Ed Jacob, executive director of Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago Inc. “In this rush to say this is a new asset class, are we creating the next community development problem?…

The general strategy of the companies is the same: buy low, make the necessary upgrades, fill them with tenants and then sell the homes in three to seven years. With companies and analysts anticipating projected returns of at least 8 percent, there also is talk of creating publicly traded real estate investment trusts.

This presents quite an issue for suburbanites worried about property values (which is a top-level concern). Foreclosures are not good for a neighborhood. They tend to drag down sales prices for homes with residents because investors or buyers can try to get the foreclosures for cheaper. Foreclosures may not be maintained well so the yard and exterior appearance can suffer. Suburbanites fear such homes might also fall prey to more criminal activity.

On the other hand, renters are not typically viewed positively in single-family home suburban subdivisions. Renters are perceived to be more transient, not as concerned about the property itself or the neighborhood. Renters can be viewed as a different class of people, meaning people who don’t have the resources to settle down and buy a home. Renting might mean absentee or less-involved landlords who might still let the property become run-down.

What is the long-term verdict? I think rentals make sense in a lot of suburban neighborhoods. Without buyers willing to pay good money for homes, it is better for a community to have people consistently in the homes than to have series of foreclosures. The situation could be made a lot better if the landlords and/or rental investors are good landlords who make efforts to help the neighborhood. As the article notes, different communities can also look into the matter and see how they want to respond. I would guess most communities and neighbors hope the rental properties again become owned homes but this will take some time for housing prices to climb again.

Mitt Romney and his neighbors disagree about his plans to quadruple the size of his La Jolla home

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Mitt Romney has another battle on his hands: some of his La Jolla, California neighbors are not happy about his plans to renovate and expand his home.

Four years ago, when he was just a well-heeled civilian in search of a quiet beach house, Mr. Romney paid $12 million for a three-bedroom Spanish-style villa with unobstructed views of the Pacific and a rich history: Maureen O’Connor, the former mayor of San Diego, once lived there, and Richard Gere had used it as a vacation rental.

Little did Mr. Romney know that his efforts to quadruple the size of his house would collide with a bid for the White House, foisting the unpredictable dramas of home renovation and presidential politics onto a community that prides itself on low-key California neighborliness…

Three houses away from Mr. Romney is Mark Quint, a Democrat who said that he is tired of watching neighboring homeowners bulldoze small beach houses to make way for McMansions, fearing a “nightmare of construction.” He sees a discrepancy in Mr. Romney’s ambitious renovation plan…

The Romneys have said that the current configuration cannot accommodate their family of 5 children and 18 grandchildren. The new house, by contrast, will be 11,000 square feet with a split-level four-car garage equipped with an elevator to ferry cars up and down. (There is currently a cramped two-car garage, and little street parking available.)…

Mr. Romney has hired a lawyer to shepherd the project through the local zoning process and has spent about $22,000 to lobby city officials for various permits. But construction is not expected to begin anytime soon.

Reading some of the comments from the neighbors, some would not be happy if Romney and his lived in a trendiest and greenest tiny house.

One lesson to take away from this: perhaps no one is immune from incurring the scorn of one’s neighbors if they try to make drastic changes to their home.

A second note: a 11,000 square foot home is quite large, bigger than most American houses. Yet, if the Romneys, 5 children and spouses, and 18 grandchildren were all in the house at once, each person gets 367 square feet of living space. This is less space than the average American household (2.63 people in 2009) has in the average sized new house of around 2,500 square feet (2011 figures).