The long-awaited Friend Compound laws in California

In a friends&#x2F;family compound that is subdivided, you need a covenant on the original deeds that controls what happens when a member wants to sell their lot, e.g. the existing members collectively have to approve the buyer, or have right of first refusal to buy back the property, etc<p>Otherwise what starts as a family compound will eventually just become a “normal” neighborhood of strangers.<p>Subdivided family compounds are one of the extremely rare cases where you actually want a deeded homeowners association.

I do YIMBY advocacy and this sounds policy change sounds like a good thing but I am always struck that our zoning is so restrictive that when people come up with different styles of housing it requires a law change and we talk about it like the law change is giving us this new cool style of housing. What is really happening is the law has taken away this style of housing and someone has come up with nice branding for a denser housing style that seems less scary so they are able budge zoning laws the tiniest bit to allow more density, but only if it is in this cool new style that we are OK with.

&gt; To get this going, we had to buy 1 home, not 6 of them<p>You had to buy land for six, though?<p>This side of the pond buying (vacant) land to build <i>one</i> family home would run well into six figures (USD $$$,$$$ where the first digit is definitely a 2 and if you&#x27;re unlucky it&#x27;s higher still) - then you have to finance the house(s) on top.

The general consensus in everything I read is that it is easier to build in the south (like Florida or Texas). But, where I live now, Central Florida, the zoning restrictions are tight. Even putting in an ADU is a mess. I assume this is because people want to protect themselves from a double wide showing up next door. Sprawl is fine, but not next door.<p>I see a lot of radical changes happening in the American West. I&#x27;m from Oregon where HB 2001 (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oregon.gov&#x2F;lcd&#x2F;LAR&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;Housing-2023.aspx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oregon.gov&#x2F;lcd&#x2F;LAR&#x2F;Pages&#x2F;Housing-2023.aspx</a>) passed in 2023 and it and a few other laws now disallow any city with more than 25k people from blocking high density housing.<p>I&#x27;m really curious to see if these things will work and if the pendulum will shift. I hope so.

The overall idea is pretty good, but I take issue the image that shows the $1M plot turning into $2.5M by building small homes.<p>This makes sense in a vacuum (maybe) but in reality, the areas that get subdivided like this will become less valuable with each new division.<p>There needs to be a feedback mechanism that prevents every lot from being turned into a bunch of micro-lots in a race to do what the image depicts before the area loses value.

As someone interested in &quot;friend compounds&quot;, I&#x27;m missing what in either of these laws enables that specifically. They both just seem to provide for denser housing generally. (Particularly SB684 almost literally just seems to allow subdividing lots which couldn&#x27;t be subdivided before.)

Why do I feel like this is going to supercharge short-term rentals like AirBnB and do little to ease the housing crunch?

One thing that’s incorrect in the article:<p>SB 684 only works on multifamily-zoned lots, but starting in July, it’s getting replaced by SB 1123, which works on “vacant or uninhabitable” single-family lots

I&#x27;m pretty positive about the ability to subdivide and build smaller.<p>But pushing this as a &quot;friend compound&quot; law is super weird. Are there really that many people who want a friend compound for their primary residence? Personally, I&#x27;d be hard pressed to think of more than 1-2 other couples with whom I&#x27;d want to co-develop property and even then only for a vacation home, not my regular house.

This type of law, and its consequences, are really interesting to me.<p>I used to live in San Francisco, but in 2020 moved back to Italy.<p>Now we like to spend 2-3 months a year in the SF Bay Area, but we would hardly consider buying a house (and renting it out when we&#x27;re away).<p>Instead, a situation where we would be neighbors with a few &quot;friends&quot;, it would make it much easier to consider the option.

In rural Colorado there is a law that makes subdividing lots under 35 acres very difficult. There are lots of areas in the mountains that have expensive housing. You are allowed to build one 15,000 sqft house but not ten 1,500 sqft houses on the 35 acres. Would love to have something like this in Colorado.

It would be nice if the yards could face each other. So people could basically have a large open space that is private to the residents.

Similar has been already tried in the USSR, it was called a Communal Apartment: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Communal_apartment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Communal_apartment</a>

why not NY style row houses? you might achieve more density than a compound

“Replacing parking” is going to cause all sorts of fun. Where will the cars go?<p>And please spare me the tired “transit that is safe and not full of stabby hoboes will magically sprout out of nothing overnight” nonsense.

This works for suburbs I&#x27;m guessing - I don&#x27;t see how it helps out in metro areas? Where does this work best for? Buy and re-develop for friends?

I like it. Honestly we need even more freedom. I thought this was AMERICA! Absurd that you couldn’t already do this.

Now you get the privilege of paying a mortgage to live in a Hooverville.

Is it just me, or does this seem like a another example of how housing in CA is broken? The demand is totally insatiable.<p>I grew up in the state, and am in the East Coast for now (which also has its own problems), but I can&#x27;t imagine moving back if I had to live in an ADU. The whole concept of an ADU just seems like a bad sign for the market, not mention the increase in traffic bc more density = more people.<p>You would think the market would normalize and people would move to other states, which is happening, yet people are contemplating making these mini houses.<p>Yet another symptom of American standard of living decreasing -- younger people are just getting less with the same amount of money. That&#x27;s the root of the problem.

The Californians yearn for a cult.

So a fancy trailer park basically? but one where relocation and moving can be more difficult?<p>People get divorced, relocate for work, relocate for mental health,end up in jail, People end up hating each other, have kids and need space, get a raise a want space, and people die.<p>How long does the friend structure survive? There will be people moving in and out just like any part of real estate.<p>Do the original owners turn into landlords and rent out the homes?<p>There would be an interesting dynamic if the homes were mobile, when you could move to a different friend compound if you wanted to leave.<p>But again, all of this is solved in trailer parks.<p>I am -not- being derisive of trailer parks. I am saying that this is a rich person&#x27;s reinvention of it with some added attributes. Spending time studying the dynamics of a trailer park over time would provide lessons on mistakes not to make, and nifty solutions to problems not yet pondereed.<p>(Yeah if you can afford a mini house on its own real estate in California these days you are rich)