For folks in the comments who didn't bother to read the first 5 pages (the summary)
The judge interpreted the HAA as only applying to units that expand housing beyond single family homes.
The proposed project would be a 4000 square foot single family home in a neighborhood of roughly 1500-1600 square foot homes.
Either way I think the law is absurd here, but it's actually having the INTENDED affect.
Rather than building a luxurious single family home, the developer is encouraged to build a multi family home and actually expand the amount of housing available in the area.
This seems like a "win" if your goal is to increase housing supply.
> Rather than building a luxurious single family home, the developer is encouraged to build a multi family home and actually expand the amount of housing available in the area.
The property here is a hillside 1.76 acre lot in a "heavily wooded" area of Marin County next to a creek and currently without vehicular access. No one is ever going to build a multi-family development there.
Local to the area and yes, there are a lot of NIMBYs, however this is not the best case to illustrate the battle for affordable and accessible housing. This is a power couple wanting to butcher their slope (19 heritage trees) to build a mansion unbefitting of the neighborhood, and then trying to use the HDP law to force the county to let them do it, despite obviously not fitting the spirit of the law.
19 trees "'protected' or 'heritage'". A "protected" tree is basically any native tree over 6-10 inches in diameter (i.e. more than a few years old), and a "heritage" tree is any of the same but over 18-30 inches (depending on species). See https://library.municode.com/ca/marin_county/codes/municipal...
These are very broad classifications that mostly serve to provide pretext for rejecting projects or exacting fees. In San Francisco a protected tree is any tree with a diameter of 15" or more (specifically, a circumference of 48" or more). It'll cost you upwards of $500 in mandatory permits and fees alone to remove any (and each) such tree, even if it's a foregone conclusion that it needs to be removed. And if you remove it without spending the money and time on the permit, you'll face thousands of dollars in fines.
The whole system is fscked up. Whether it was proper, legal, or otherwise for that "mansion" to be built, I have no opinion. But the existing regulations and permitting systems in California are wholly ridiculous; clearly, directly, and unequivocally responsible for an immense amount of social problems, including social inequities in this state; and outside a court of law, and without more context, deserve little deference regarding legitimacy and efficacy.
In fact, the system has the overall effect of injuring rule of law by making it difficult, not to mention often times economically infeasible, to obey the letter of the law. It turns the community into scofflaws. If the law and law-abiding community is the only thing protecting a resource, then it's of paramount importance to maintain the legitimacy of and respect for the law, even if that means sometimes making sacrifices and compromises regarding what you would like to accomplish with the law.
It is debatable, but this looks a lot like a Fifth Amendment issue to me. They were granted the right to clear the trees, but the neighbors objected to the size of their proposed dwelling and the commission changed their minds and denied the permit. So they own the property, but their government has denied them the use of it.
..."nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
"A taking can come in two forms. The taking may be physical, which means that the government literally takes the property from its owner). Or the taking may be constructive (also called a regulatory taking), which means that the government restricts the owner's rights so much that the governmental action becomes the functional equivalent of a physical seizure. "
The Legislature’s intent in enacting this section in 1982 and in expanding its provisions since then was to significantly increase the approval and construction of new housing for all economic segments of California’s communities by meaningfully and effectively curbing the capability of local governments to deny, reduce the density for, or render infeasible housing development projects and emergency shelters. That intent has not been fulfilled.
It looks like it's intended to allow for the construction of everything, not just affordable and accessible housing.
According to the decision, the planning division initially approved the project but the neighbors appealed and the oversight commission reversed the approval. Hence the lawsuit and appeal of the trial court's ruling.
Interestingly, the court left open the question of whether a project comprising a single-family home plus ADU would fall under the Housing Accountability Act. If the owners are still feeling litigious they may be able to file their original project proposal (5,000 sf. with ADU), get denied, sue the county again, and possibly get a different result.
They should apply to build a huge 5 story apartment complex on that lot, see how the community likes that. The county would have to approve that development according to that decision..
George Lucas once attempted to build low income housing on Grady Ranch after his studio expansion was successfully challenged by his neighbors, also in Marin County. They didn't like that plan very much[1].
That wouldn't work, but if this parcel is zoned for single-family homes they could subdivide it and build a duplex plus an ADU on each resulting parcel, without the interference of the local authorities, because of SB9.
The appellate court ruling upholds a Marin County superior court ruling that building a house is not a housing development project, and therefore the Housing Accountability Act does not apply. The stated legislative intent of the law was to remove barriers to building homes and was widely referred to as the "Anti-NIMBY" law.
Now a court in one of the most-NIMBY counties in California has effectively gutted the law.
An interesting term I recently learned from the real estate industry is not just NIMBY but for the ultimate extreme of people who start municipal political fights against new development, BANANA
Reading through this decision, it is clear that there is an overabundance of motivated reasoning here. The court very clearly is trying to justify its decision, not reach one based on the law.
In particular given the amendment to the law in 2017 which added, among other things, these clauses:
> It is the policy of the state that [the HAA] should be interpreted and implemented in a manner to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of, and the approval and provision of, housing.
and
> despite the fact that, for decades, the Legislature has enacted numerous
statutes intended to significantly increase the approval, development, and
affordability of housing for all income levels, including this section
Both of these quotations are very clearly statements of "fuck you courts, follow the law", which the court has summarily ignored, stating that even though it is routine for statutes to be interpreted in such a manner that singular nouns include plurals and plural nouns include the singular, that the statement "only residential units" does not include building a residential unit and nothing else.
This has not gutted the law, as I see it. The state's interest in the HAA and its enforcement by HCD is exclusively in multi-family development, at least duplexes and usually larger. Cities cannot include single-family developments in their housing elements, for example.
The ability for a city to approve or deny SFHs will have no impact on the housing situation in the state.
Was the law interpreted differently before? Have people previously claimed that building a single house was a housing development covered by this law, and succeeded, or is it a new kind of legal argument?
Some well-to-do NIMBYists who own fully detached homes wanted to prevent some other well-to-do from building, in their neighborhood, a bigger house than theirs (while butchering the natural landscape and harming the environment). They prevailed.
The builder tried to argue that their home is a housing project, and so legally protected from cancellation by NIMBYists under some legislation known as the HAA. There was subsequently a lot of elaborate squabbling over the wording of the law, and whether plurals like "units" include projects that build one "unit". The legislation was found to be lacking in clear definitions of its terms. In the end it was decided that one home isn't a housing project.
They set the precedent that someone building an an actual affordable home in all earnestness can now be stopped by NIMBYists, if it happens to be just one unit. If you build affordable housing, you must build two or more to stay within the protection of the HAA.
(It doesn't seem like a big deal since you'd think most housing projects subdivide an expensive property into a beehive of tiny cells anyway. You can see some NIMBYs using this to stop the construction of, say, a lane home on the property of an existing house. However, the joke will be on them if the builder decides to make a larger "lane duplex" instead.)
Under the reasoning laid out here, if you want to build one house, should you submit plans for a subdivision with multiple houses so that the HAA does apply, gain approval (and terrify the neighbors) and then run out of funds for construction as soon as the first house is completed?
Law is not a computer program. It's interpreted by human lawyers and judges. It's not a system of rules.
This sort of behavior falls under a broad set of rules about conspiracy, fraud, and similar. If that logic applied, I could apply for a permit to build an aesthetically-pleasing house, and run out of funds before the landscaping and exterior decoration were finished, and build slum housing. Fortunately, it doesn't work like that.
I think these conversations and discussions would be much more interesting if we were talking about housing supply and demand in other states.
It seems to me that California is unique. It has some of the best weather and natural beauty in the world. Infinite demand to live there. It’s always going to have a housing shortage.
That's a ridiculous statement. Tokyo has the same population as the entire state of California. You could pack up Los Angeles and San Diego and turn them into nature reserves and fit the entire state population into the Bay Area trivially if people just learned how to green light some fucking high rise apartment buildings.
Given it's a big lot, could they just build a granny flat somewhere on the edge, and it would become a "development" as it's 2 units? There's a cost obviously, but small units like that aren't _too_ expensive
It's a single fucking house on a fucking 1.76 acre lot? And these fucking psychopaths feel like that's too much housing? Like a single fucking house, on almost two acres?
The idea that local municipalities get to decide, arbitrarily and subjectively, what is "compatible with the neighborhood," means that property rights do not exist. As property rights are the basis of free markets, it's important that we understand there is no free market - not even a highly regulated market - for construction in large swathes of the US, and nearly every employment center.
It is perfectly fine to regulate the acceptable parameters of development, but they can't subjective and arbitrary. That's not how rule of law works.
I think the proposal of the Strong Towns organization is among the best I have seen balancing between YIMBY absolutists and NIMBY absolutists.
The problem with NIMBY absolutists is obvious -- it becomes impossible to expand the housing supply in areas that need expansion.
The problem with YIMBY absolutists is also obvious -- it's probably not ideal to build a 30 story condo tower in the middle of a neighborhood of single family homes.
(Though, arguably a 30 story condo tower is better than a housing crisis, but the Strong Towns proposal is geared towards never letting a housing crisis happen in the first place)
The Strong Towns compromise is that it should always be legal to build the next increment of housing stock relative to whatever is the most common in the area. Where the increments are defined something like: single family -> duplex/triplex -> row house -> low rise apartments -> mid rise apartments -> high rise apartments. In a neighborhood with a majority of housing stock at one level, it should always be legal to build the next level.
The idea is that it allows neighborhoods to "thicken up" over a few decades.
They did not decide “arbitrarily”. If you read it you’d have read the neighborhood got involved and were calling out the size, ecological impact.
Current residents have private property rights too. Both sides arguing in defense of their rights under the law is exactly how our “rule of law” works.
Rule of law does not give you special say over these proceedings. Clearly for good reason; you seem keen to rush ahead without considering the rights of others with an established investment under law. When you can’t you’ll call everyone else arbitrary even though an established process and precedent were utilized.
It is difficult to truely own something in the ideal sense of the word.
Most people pay a yearly fee to “own” their land. You cannot do whatever you want with your land i.e. you don’t really own it, but instead you own a lifetime tradeable lease. When you die, the land remains.
One definition of ownership I like is “can you freely destroy it without legal consequences?”.
Even “your” body: there are many laws about what you may and may not do with it (alive and dead).
There is even a grey area for whether you own your own thoughts? Maybe you rationally believe you can believe whatever you like, but actually your thoughts bleed through subconsciously into your actions which can have severe consequences. And unless you brought yourself up without human contact, it is very hard to discern the boundary between your own beliefs and those that belong to your society.
> The idea that local municipalities get to decide, arbitrarily and subjectively, what is "compatible with the neighborhood," means that property rights do not exist.
I have a hard time reconciling this. Because I also can’t help but think local governments deciding what they want for their neighborhood is the most direct form of democracy and overriding that at higher levels of government seems to be not ideal. Given that we agree that some level of laws and regulations must exist, it seems that we’re just adjusting our goal posts. If you’re a property my rights absolutist then you have to also accept edge cases, like Trump flags and 4x4s tearing through someone’s backyard, or someone painting their house in pink stripes since it’s “their house”. What kind of NIMBY are you to deny someone selling their home to someone who wants to open an auto repair shop? You have to accept these the same as you accept a new condo tower. You can’t pick and choose here and then go back and claim “well this is reasonable and this other thing is not” because people can equally claim a condo tower isn’t reasonable. In the case of particularly desirable places I think it’s just a case of too bad, that’s life. Nobody is entitled to live anywhere in particular at an affordable rate regardless of their priors. The alternative that you would believe this is the case means someone can endlessly complain that they can’t live in Vancouver with a view of the sea for $500/month.
Now on the more reasonable spectrum you can ok I’m not talking about all of that, I’m talking about a new high-rise in a downtown area. Sure, and that’s more likely to actually happen to so I’m not sure what the problem is.
“But teachers and wage workers will be priced out”. Yep. And either wages will rise and residents will be paying $70 for a latte, or they won’t get to have those things because of their anti-development NIMBY points of view and they’ll either accept that life or they’ll give in to change.
At the end of the day it’s all arbitrary and subjective. I think it’s arbitrary that we build highways for cars and subjectively believe that it’s a huge waste of money. That’s messy democracy.
"... these statutes do not resolve the meaning of the unhyphenated phrase “housing development project.” As their broad definitions suggest, the phrase could use development as a verbal adjective and mean a project to develop housing (a housing “development project”). On the other hand, the phrase could use development as a concrete noun and mean a project to build a housing development (a “housing-development” project), a concept these statutes do not define. Under the first interpretation, a project to build a single home would seemingly qualify as a housing development project, because it is a “project undertaken for the purpose of development” (§ 65928) and the development activity consists of constructing housing. Under the second interpretation, the same project would seemingly not qualify as a housing development project, since an individual single-family home is not a “housing development,” a term that generally refers to a group of housing units. ... Given the statutory context in which the definition of “housing development project” appears and the legislative history, we hold that the HAA does not apply to projects to build individual single-family homes."
[+] [-] hayksaakian|3 years ago|reply
The judge interpreted the HAA as only applying to units that expand housing beyond single family homes.
The proposed project would be a 4000 square foot single family home in a neighborhood of roughly 1500-1600 square foot homes.
Either way I think the law is absurd here, but it's actually having the INTENDED affect.
Rather than building a luxurious single family home, the developer is encouraged to build a multi family home and actually expand the amount of housing available in the area.
This seems like a "win" if your goal is to increase housing supply.
[+] [-] bdowling|3 years ago|reply
The property here is a hillside 1.76 acre lot in a "heavily wooded" area of Marin County next to a creek and currently without vehicular access. No one is ever going to build a multi-family development there.
[+] [-] marklyon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ceroxylon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahern|3 years ago|reply
These are very broad classifications that mostly serve to provide pretext for rejecting projects or exacting fees. In San Francisco a protected tree is any tree with a diameter of 15" or more (specifically, a circumference of 48" or more). It'll cost you upwards of $500 in mandatory permits and fees alone to remove any (and each) such tree, even if it's a foregone conclusion that it needs to be removed. And if you remove it without spending the money and time on the permit, you'll face thousands of dollars in fines.
The whole system is fscked up. Whether it was proper, legal, or otherwise for that "mansion" to be built, I have no opinion. But the existing regulations and permitting systems in California are wholly ridiculous; clearly, directly, and unequivocally responsible for an immense amount of social problems, including social inequities in this state; and outside a court of law, and without more context, deserve little deference regarding legitimacy and efficacy.
In fact, the system has the overall effect of injuring rule of law by making it difficult, not to mention often times economically infeasible, to obey the letter of the law. It turns the community into scofflaws. If the law and law-abiding community is the only thing protecting a resource, then it's of paramount importance to maintain the legitimacy of and respect for the law, even if that means sometimes making sacrifices and compromises regarding what you would like to accomplish with the law.
[+] [-] anonymousiam|3 years ago|reply
..."nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-05/16-just-...
"A taking can come in two forms. The taking may be physical, which means that the government literally takes the property from its owner). Or the taking may be constructive (also called a regulatory taking), which means that the government restricts the owner's rights so much that the governmental action becomes the functional equivalent of a physical seizure. "
[+] [-] zbrozek|3 years ago|reply
The Legislature’s intent in enacting this section in 1982 and in expanding its provisions since then was to significantly increase the approval and construction of new housing for all economic segments of California’s communities by meaningfully and effectively curbing the capability of local governments to deny, reduce the density for, or render infeasible housing development projects and emergency shelters. That intent has not been fulfilled.
It looks like it's intended to allow for the construction of everything, not just affordable and accessible housing.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
[+] [-] marincounty|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pessimizer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mertd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tanseydavid|3 years ago|reply
They are not stupid -- they just took a "calculated" risk that they could pull this off.
I guarantee if they consulted a lawyer beforehand they would have been told there was very high risk of rejection of the plan.
This is just their "Hail Mary" attempt at still being able to get what they want and preserve / protect their risky investment choice.
[+] [-] bdowling|3 years ago|reply
Interestingly, the court left open the question of whether a project comprising a single-family home plus ADU would fall under the Housing Accountability Act. If the owners are still feeling litigious they may be able to file their original project proposal (5,000 sf. with ADU), get denied, sue the county again, and possibly get a different result.
[+] [-] volkse|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackish|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/housing/333702/standoff-...
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
https://www.hcd.ca.gov/docs/planning-and-community-developme...
[+] [-] outside1234|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 09bjb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ImPostingOnHN|3 years ago|reply
hardly a "development", more like a single home build
[+] [-] zbrozek|3 years ago|reply
Now a court in one of the most-NIMBY counties in California has effectively gutted the law.
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
Build
Absolutely
Nothing
Anywhere
Near
Anything
[+] [-] codefreeordie|3 years ago|reply
In particular given the amendment to the law in 2017 which added, among other things, these clauses:
> It is the policy of the state that [the HAA] should be interpreted and implemented in a manner to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of, and the approval and provision of, housing.
and
> despite the fact that, for decades, the Legislature has enacted numerous statutes intended to significantly increase the approval, development, and affordability of housing for all income levels, including this section
Both of these quotations are very clearly statements of "fuck you courts, follow the law", which the court has summarily ignored, stating that even though it is routine for statutes to be interpreted in such a manner that singular nouns include plurals and plural nouns include the singular, that the statement "only residential units" does not include building a residential unit and nothing else.
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
The ability for a city to approve or deny SFHs will have no impact on the housing situation in the state.
[+] [-] r00fus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skybrian|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kazinator|3 years ago|reply
Some well-to-do NIMBYists who own fully detached homes wanted to prevent some other well-to-do from building, in their neighborhood, a bigger house than theirs (while butchering the natural landscape and harming the environment). They prevailed.
The builder tried to argue that their home is a housing project, and so legally protected from cancellation by NIMBYists under some legislation known as the HAA. There was subsequently a lot of elaborate squabbling over the wording of the law, and whether plurals like "units" include projects that build one "unit". The legislation was found to be lacking in clear definitions of its terms. In the end it was decided that one home isn't a housing project.
They set the precedent that someone building an an actual affordable home in all earnestness can now be stopped by NIMBYists, if it happens to be just one unit. If you build affordable housing, you must build two or more to stay within the protection of the HAA.
(It doesn't seem like a big deal since you'd think most housing projects subdivide an expensive property into a beehive of tiny cells anyway. You can see some NIMBYs using this to stop the construction of, say, a lane home on the property of an existing house. However, the joke will be on them if the builder decides to make a larger "lane duplex" instead.)
[+] [-] abeppu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frognumber|3 years ago|reply
Law is not a computer program. It's interpreted by human lawyers and judges. It's not a system of rules.
This sort of behavior falls under a broad set of rules about conspiracy, fraud, and similar. If that logic applied, I could apply for a permit to build an aesthetically-pleasing house, and run out of funds before the landscaping and exterior decoration were finished, and build slum housing. Fortunately, it doesn't work like that.
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/CSElmendorf/status/1538284897151832064
[+] [-] YeBanKo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericmay|3 years ago|reply
It seems to me that California is unique. It has some of the best weather and natural beauty in the world. Infinite demand to live there. It’s always going to have a housing shortage.
[+] [-] CPLX|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkwasny|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morepork|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tims33|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mips_avatar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _vertigo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burlesona|3 years ago|reply
It is perfectly fine to regulate the acceptable parameters of development, but they can't subjective and arbitrary. That's not how rule of law works.
[+] [-] gamegoblin|3 years ago|reply
The problem with NIMBY absolutists is obvious -- it becomes impossible to expand the housing supply in areas that need expansion.
The problem with YIMBY absolutists is also obvious -- it's probably not ideal to build a 30 story condo tower in the middle of a neighborhood of single family homes.
(Though, arguably a 30 story condo tower is better than a housing crisis, but the Strong Towns proposal is geared towards never letting a housing crisis happen in the first place)
The Strong Towns compromise is that it should always be legal to build the next increment of housing stock relative to whatever is the most common in the area. Where the increments are defined something like: single family -> duplex/triplex -> row house -> low rise apartments -> mid rise apartments -> high rise apartments. In a neighborhood with a majority of housing stock at one level, it should always be legal to build the next level.
The idea is that it allows neighborhoods to "thicken up" over a few decades.
[+] [-] evr1isnxprt|3 years ago|reply
Current residents have private property rights too. Both sides arguing in defense of their rights under the law is exactly how our “rule of law” works.
Rule of law does not give you special say over these proceedings. Clearly for good reason; you seem keen to rush ahead without considering the rights of others with an established investment under law. When you can’t you’ll call everyone else arbitrary even though an established process and precedent were utilized.
[+] [-] robocat|3 years ago|reply
One definition of ownership I like is “can you freely destroy it without legal consequences?”.
Even “your” body: there are many laws about what you may and may not do with it (alive and dead).
There is even a grey area for whether you own your own thoughts? Maybe you rationally believe you can believe whatever you like, but actually your thoughts bleed through subconsciously into your actions which can have severe consequences. And unless you brought yourself up without human contact, it is very hard to discern the boundary between your own beliefs and those that belong to your society.
[+] [-] ericmay|3 years ago|reply
I have a hard time reconciling this. Because I also can’t help but think local governments deciding what they want for their neighborhood is the most direct form of democracy and overriding that at higher levels of government seems to be not ideal. Given that we agree that some level of laws and regulations must exist, it seems that we’re just adjusting our goal posts. If you’re a property my rights absolutist then you have to also accept edge cases, like Trump flags and 4x4s tearing through someone’s backyard, or someone painting their house in pink stripes since it’s “their house”. What kind of NIMBY are you to deny someone selling their home to someone who wants to open an auto repair shop? You have to accept these the same as you accept a new condo tower. You can’t pick and choose here and then go back and claim “well this is reasonable and this other thing is not” because people can equally claim a condo tower isn’t reasonable. In the case of particularly desirable places I think it’s just a case of too bad, that’s life. Nobody is entitled to live anywhere in particular at an affordable rate regardless of their priors. The alternative that you would believe this is the case means someone can endlessly complain that they can’t live in Vancouver with a view of the sea for $500/month.
Now on the more reasonable spectrum you can ok I’m not talking about all of that, I’m talking about a new high-rise in a downtown area. Sure, and that’s more likely to actually happen to so I’m not sure what the problem is.
“But teachers and wage workers will be priced out”. Yep. And either wages will rise and residents will be paying $70 for a latte, or they won’t get to have those things because of their anti-development NIMBY points of view and they’ll either accept that life or they’ll give in to change.
At the end of the day it’s all arbitrary and subjective. I think it’s arbitrary that we build highways for cars and subjectively believe that it’s a huge waste of money. That’s messy democracy.
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Panzer04|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] int_19h|3 years ago|reply
"... these statutes do not resolve the meaning of the unhyphenated phrase “housing development project.” As their broad definitions suggest, the phrase could use development as a verbal adjective and mean a project to develop housing (a housing “development project”). On the other hand, the phrase could use development as a concrete noun and mean a project to build a housing development (a “housing-development” project), a concept these statutes do not define. Under the first interpretation, a project to build a single home would seemingly qualify as a housing development project, because it is a “project undertaken for the purpose of development” (§ 65928) and the development activity consists of constructing housing. Under the second interpretation, the same project would seemingly not qualify as a housing development project, since an individual single-family home is not a “housing development,” a term that generally refers to a group of housing units. ... Given the statutory context in which the definition of “housing development project” appears and the legislative history, we hold that the HAA does not apply to projects to build individual single-family homes."