quote:
There are some VERY nice duplexes in some VERY nice neighborhoods here so I guess it depends where and who is going to live in them? If they selling them instead of renting them, it prob would be ok.

Two general facts:

No. 1, anyone can either rent (or rent out) anything. A house, a double, a triplex unit, an apartment/condo. But generally, single-family houses are much more likely to be lived in by owners, while multi-family more likely lived in by renters.

No. 2, doubles and triplexes are almost always built to the building limits with minimum front, back and side yards, and they always need more parking and driveway space, so you wind up with TWO driveways in the front yard and no greenspace in front. Like this:

(incidentally, EACH of these units are going for $1.2 million)

Now going on personal experience here:

-- I live in Old Metairie, one of the nicest neighborhoods in the New Orleans metro area, and probably in the state.

-- My dead-end street runs perpendicular to the next street over; the back property line of the houses on that street hits my side property line as well as the dead end street.

-- When we moved in, the houses backing up to us on that street were all old single family houses.

-- The street in that section was, however, zoned to allow up to two-family buildings, as it had historically a lot of old pre- and post-war doubles. And there were several teardowns that were replaced with new, larger "townhouse" doubles on that street.

-- After Katrina, a developer bought three of those single family houses that back up around my dead-end street and replaced them with cookie cutter double townhouses (thankfully, none of these back up to my house or backyard, but one of them backs up to my front yard).

--Not the best owners/tenants in these; I can see lots of resident turnover. I know some have live-in owners, but I'm pretty sure some are just tenants of landlords.

-- The Parish, about a dozen years ago, did a zoning study, looking at changing the zoning on that street and the next parallel street. The planning department recommended changing SOME sections back to single family zoning. I (and several other residents) instead pushed to move it ALL back to single family zoning. At a council meeting we all spoke up, and the district Parish councilperson moved to follow our suggestion, and the rest of the council voted for it unanimously.

-- I only wish we could have had it done sooner.