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Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The 2008 bubble-pop never happened here. I live in the Netherlands and that seems to be roughly what happened here too. ~~I mean, yes the prices have dropped a tiny bit around 2008, but in 2009 they were at an all time high again and have not come down.~~ EDIT: This was a lie, turns out they bottomed out around 2013 at ~25% below the 2008 peak. I live in a 'provincial' city, where prices are ~40-50% of what you mig…
I also live in the Netherlands. I am starting to believe there is something a bit more nefarious at play here. Anyone who is in power owns a house. Anyone who owns a house profits from house prices increasing. Who benefits if house prices go down? A select few, who are currently unable to buy a house. There is little incentive to actually start building affordable housing. Actually, most people who already own house(…
As a house owner in the NL, yes, it is comfortable to know that if I ever need to, I have room to increase my mortgage or sell my house at the considerable win.
But then what? I still need to live somewhere, and the rest of the houses are also getting more expensive. And in any case, some of my taxes are based on the value of my house - meaning, they are increasing every year.
The only people really benefiting from this are people owning multiple houses with the purpose of renting them.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#53Imo, the fix for the housing crisis is for governments to invest in the economies of small towns and cities with lots of land that can be built on or property that is vacant. Everybody wants to live in sf, new york, seattle, etc. because they are where the jobs are and that also attracts culture. If state governments could give grants or tax credits for companies to start or expand out to other parts of states that a…
Which basically boils down to internet at this point. Many small towns just have no or slow internet. Water - Drill Well. Sewer - Build Septic Tank Power Problems - Generator / Battery Backup Education - Home School Internet - No Solution??
Exactly, a tech job would fire me after realizing how inconsistent and slow the internet is at the house I grew up at in rural Wisconsin.
Even my cell phone hardly works if it rains or snows. I can’t even port my number to Verizon because they apparently won’t service 715 prefixed numbers.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even leaving aside kids, even decades ago when I rented, I really liked having a separate office. Also guest bedroom, hobby room, etc. Even as a single person I appreciated having a two bedroom apartment.
If everyone, minimum wage and white collar alike, is bidding for housing in the same, limited market, it hardy seems surprising that “housing with more/extra rooms” might be bid out of reach of those least able to pay. I don’t see people arguing why you shouldn’t want extra bedrooms so much as lamenting that some can’t afford two of them.
I admittedly read the upthread comment as "Why on earth do people want/feel they need two bedroom apartments?" in the same vein as I am sometimes tempted to go "Why?" with respect to huge mansions.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#55To put it in context, this is a Canadian magazine, and here in Canada the housing market is just absolutely insanely irrational. There has been no downwards housing price "correction" since the early 90s. The 2008 bubble-pop never happened here. Interest rates remain at record lows and the COVID-19 crisis seems to have led to massive _increase_ in housing prices rather than a decrease. It's a huge distorted market wi…
In the United States, a common refrain is that the housing crisis is caused by a failure to build, in particular a failure to build up. That failure to build is usually blamed on regulation. That's a harder argument to make in Toronto. Toronto is a sea of construction cranes, almost all building apartment or condo towers, and it has been like this for at least a decade. Toronto has a third of all construction cranes…
Failure to build is definitely not the issue, and that's why I posted here because people were talking about how this article was missing the mark, based on their Silicon Valley etc. experiences.
The reality is that western countries are making on the whole fairly terrible macroeconomic decisions for the long run. They are putting primacy on real estate assets for the upper middle class, and undermining their own long run primary industry capacity by making housing for working class people unaffordable. It's all short term decision making made by a minority of moderately wealthy people whose own interests run contrary to the needs of the majority.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#56To put it in context, this is a Canadian magazine, and here in Canada the housing market is just absolutely insanely irrational. There has been no downwards housing price "correction" since the early 90s. The 2008 bubble-pop never happened here. Interest rates remain at record lows and the COVID-19 crisis seems to have led to massive _increase_ in housing prices rather than a decrease. It's a huge distorted market wi…
> where will my kids live
In all likelihood, they will either need your help to buy a house, or be content with renting.
If you think real estate prices have ballooned in Canada, wait until you see what rental appreciation was like in tier 1 cities in China — easily 10x - 20x price appreciation over a few decades.
Price per square foot in Beijing is 'competitive' with world cities like Toronto, NYC, London, etc., but average wages in China are maybe ~1000-1500 USD per month equivalent.
So yes, parents help their kids in China. If the government is unable to effective do wealth redistribution, then families have to do it.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#57We need to start building tiny soviet style apartments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQgaCwrQQy8 Add to that some "coffin" motels. Once people have a place to sleep near a place they can work they can start moving upwards. My mom grew up in one, and I stayed with my grandma in one every time I visited. Sure, I slept on the kitchen floor, but it's not that bad.
That's about the same size as my first apartment here in the US. It looks like a pretty normal studio apartment. There's plenty of apartments like that in major US cities.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#58Ah, the difference between Europe and America. Here, a 300-400sqft single-bedroom apartmant would be considered standard and suitable for a single or 2-person household with median income. A two-bedroom 500-600 sqft apt would be considered just fine for most families with 1 or two kids (esp. if those kids are same gender or while they're small). Anything above that gets you into upper-middle class or above. Alternati…
> Here, a 300-400sqft single-bedroom apartmant would be considered standard and suitable for a single or 2-person household with median income. A two-bedroom 500-600 sqft apt would be considered just fine for most families with 1 or two kids (esp. if those kids). Anything above that gets you into upper-middle class or above. Alternatively, a 4-member family with two minimum incomes could get by with 400sqft (it'd be cramped but wouldn't be considered outrageously small).
As a Canadian, that seems like so little space. In university, I rented a condo with my brother and it was 900 sqft for two. I have considered what kind of property I would want for my first and 1100 sqft is probably what I would buy and my family might convince me to buy a full fledged detached (1900 sqft). Keep in mind that neither sqft figure counts any basement space. My parents have 1900 sqft and find that cramped with work from home.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about commuting? Pollution? School, hospital and other public services capacity? Crime arising from simply the rich place being affordable, inviting undesirables?
Those come from the savings from not having to maintain as much less power grids, less roads to maintain, less roads to plow, less helicopter ambulance rides to pick up injured remote people. Sure you need more city busses now. Giving the "undesirables" a decent place and means to live reduces crime.
Don't you think that in general, the drive to push as many people as possible into places as tight as possible, like high density urban areas, is abnormal? People by nature love to enjoy space, and this is what U.S. has in abundance.
Work on making geographic location less important, on decreasing the value of being in a particular place. Embrace remote work. It will solve the "housing crisis". Forcing millions of adults into dorms, won't.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#60The best solution to the housing crisis ever discovered thus far is widespread remote work. This allows people who don’t want to live in major cities the ability to live anywhere, reducing the cost for those that do want to live in a city.
this might actually solve the problem with robot waitstaff. Mechanical turk them, allowing the actual service people to work remotely!