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Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#11

Post by ilaksh »

Someone mentioned 3d printing homes which I think is going to be amazing especially as more of the construction can be done automatically rather than just the walls.

Another totally different take on this is information systems. For example, what if there was a single system where you could see a map and analyze all of the unoccupied homes in the us along with the homeless and housing-deficient?

I am afraid to mention decentralized systems because that usually gets my comments buried, but for a large scale project like keeping a database like that up-to-date I think they would be useful.

What I am suggesting is, what if there were a aggregate information system that allowed us to know exactly how many people needed more affordable homes, how much their income was, what unoccupied buildings there were in each city and area, development plans, etc. And there were a way to identify each person and allocate them housing credits if necessary. Instantly. Such as a cryptocurrency.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#12

Post by scrivna »

Seems the problem is supply. Build more. Problem solved? Why don’t we build more? Politics, locals often don’t want more housing near them so you can’t get a permit to build… many people in life don’t want change and oppose it as they only care about themselves and not the greater good (and their house price increases in value because it’s an “investment” more than a utility).

What can we do? Change local opinions, make the problem more visible in the news with actionable things people can do, find a way to reach people to remove red tape and get higher density, mixed use and more land available. Maybe community builds where people group together to build pre-fabs as a collective.

I personally wish this situation could be improved, we have recently been evicted by our landlord who’s selling in to the local price bubble and now all renters are looking simultaneously, we’ll likely have to relocate to find somewhere we aren’t price gouged… I’m sure you can tell this is a sore subject for me right now.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#13

Post by londondev45 »

ilaksh wrote: post #10
MilnerRoute wrote: post #3

Interesting idea! (Although our bodies will never be digitized -- and they'll need some protection from cold and a way to sleep...) The closest thing I've heard to a tech solution for housing is the 3D printed house that went on the market. That raises the question of whether there's some way to radically reduce the cost of creating housing. (Maybe interchangeable parts, like what revolutionized mass production?) The…

I think that 3d printing houses is going to be huge but it has a long way to go. They can print the main structure, but not do things like windows, plumbing, electric, trusses, roofs, etc. So a massive part of the construction is still manual. When the entire building or almost the entire thing is truly automatic, that is going to be a game changer. Not saying it doesn't help now to be able to 3d print a lot of it. B…

I guess some kind of large rig, that could be lifted on to site and literally print the whole house there and then.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#14

Post by ilaksh »

londondev45 wrote: post #13
ilaksh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that 3d printing houses is going to be huge but it has a long way to go. They can print the main structure, but not do things like windows, plumbing, electric, trusses, roofs, etc. So a massive part of the construction is still manual. When the entire building or almost the entire thing is truly automatic, that is going to be a game changer. Not saying it doesn't help now to be able to 3d print a lot of it. B…

I guess some kind of large rig, that could be lifted on to site and literally print the whole house there and then.

Well, they do have large rigs though. The problem is that the techniques are not able to "print" pipes, steel structural supports such as rebar or roofing/floor beams, windows, etc. They can mostly just put down layers of concrete.

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#16

Post by perilunar »

> can we ... do what has been done for music to housing

No, because unlike digital goods, houses (and land) cannot be duplicated at zero marginal cost.

> So that we can stop working our lives into the ground to afford it.

It's not houses that are expensive, it's the land, and as long as people speculate on land then land in popular cites will be expensive. Read Henry George's Progress and Poverty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty

Re: Ask HN: How can we digitise housing

#17

Post by himlion »

perilunar wrote: post #16

> can we ... do what has been done for music to housing No, because unlike digital goods, houses (and land) cannot be duplicated at zero marginal cost. > So that we can stop working our lives into the ground to afford it. It's not houses that are expensive, it's the land, and as long as people speculate on land then land in popular cites will be expensive. Read Henry George's Progress and Poverty : https://en.wikiped…

Also visit /r/georgism for a lot of discussion on georgism.
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