The article is about "Tiny Homes ALONE Won't fix the Housing Crisis".
Of course, trivialized solutions don't fix any realworld problems, so this article doesn't provide much light...
Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
81–90 of 107 posts
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Toronto has a third of all construction cranes in North America Toronto can have all the cranes in the world and it won't really matter because construction industry cannot keep up. I think the city(not GTA) has grown 500k in the past 20 years (2.5M -> 3M), condo units only increased 200k (100k -> 300k), other new housing marginal. The fundamental problem isn't even that there's too much demand, but the west are inc…
Chinese building practices assume a certain disposability that we haven't accepted in Canada. Apartment buildings are built with an assumed lifespan of around 30 years. I have no idea if that is a good thing or a bad thing. That kind of throwaway mentality for housing might seem crazy, but keep in mind that housing is one of the only goods that we expect to last for a lifetime in the west.
I'm not sure most NA houses are so different. For instance, cheap floor treatments, drywall + stickbuilt, multipane windows that leak after a decade or two.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or we could stop putting everyone’s jobs in the same 10 towns and use a bit more space
When Obama asked Steve Jobs about those manufacturing jobs coming back to the US Jobs said it ain't gonna happen. The benefits of centralizing and critical mass are just too important. Being able to lunch with people and get into the same space to innovate, to read body language. It's to big of an advantage. Just like independent rural homestead living collapsed into small town and cities, small towns are cities are…
Perhaps we could use more cities instead of more suburbs.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or we could stop putting everyone’s jobs in the same 10 towns and use a bit more space
When Obama asked Steve Jobs about those manufacturing jobs coming back to the US Jobs said it ain't gonna happen. The benefits of centralizing and critical mass are just too important. Being able to lunch with people and get into the same space to innovate, to read body language. It's to big of an advantage. Just like independent rural homestead living collapsed into small town and cities, small towns are cities are…
There's ample unused built space, infill opportunity, or brownfields development (assuming the brown isn't overly toxic, and much is).
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#85I don't have a clue what any solution looks like or even what problem is trying to be solved. Growing up in the USA home "ownership" is always touted as an investment but for example in Japan, it's often more like buying a car. The moment you buy it it's a used house and the price goes down just like a car would. The point being home ownership is viewed differently. Also, the recent episode of the Flash Forward podca…
Real estate is the new pension.
With the virtual elimination of defined-benefit pesions, and inadequacy of Social Security, it's the combination of asset-based securities --- 401k (or equivalent) defined-contribution plans, and real estate, which most middle-class Americans rely on for retirement. (Those below this level are simply out of luck.)
So long as assets continue inflating, this works --- as an investment. But housing cannot be both aa good investment and affordable.
https://cityobservatory.org/housing-cant-be-affordable_and_b...
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#86There is no housing crisis. U.S. has more than plenty of good quality, large, and more than affordable houses (many of them are probably beyond repair but this is a consequence of their abundance and lack of demand). Housing crisis is only about the very few already overpopulated spots being hyper-attractive for people to move in because that's where opportunities are. There is no way to "fix" this because even if ho…
The Scarlet E: Unmasking America’s Eviction Crisis
Two years ago, the Federal Reserve found that 44 percent of us couldn't cover a sudden 400 dollar expense without borrowing or selling something. And so if you don't have family or friends you can tap, anything unexpected–health issues, accidents, car trouble, reduced work hours–can trigger calamity cascades....
When we first got these national data and we mapped it on the United States, I don't really know what I was expecting. But I spent a lot of time in Milwaukee, I thought evictions were incredibly high there. One in 14 renter homes in the inner city of Milwaukee's evicted every year formerly. Right? Huge amount you walk down any inner city block, look on your left look on your right, one of those families is not gonna be there by the end of the year. You crunch the numbers and you look and Milwaukee isn't even in the top 50 highest evicting cities in the country. You see South Carolina exploding, North Carolina exploding, Georgia–up the Mississippi to Detroit. Tulsa, Oklahoma is in the top 20. Albuquerque, New Mexico, I think one in twenty-one renter homes is evicted.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-unmasking...
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#87This seems to be Canada focus, but the US seems very similar with affordability issues in major cities. Everything I am seeing an hearing about housing cost in the US related to land, labor and lumber. Cost per sqft is crazy high and getting higher, builders would be able to build more but there just isn't enough highly qualified labor in the US, and the shutdown is preventing lumber from being milled. We cannot do a…
The labor shortage exists because labor doesn't pay, it's that simple.
Trades are not mass labor needed to drive costs down, and it's unlikely costs will be driven down further there because of foreign competition.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#88The 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.
I don't think this will help much at all. Maybe for a few, but I doubt it will reduce costs for city-dwellers.
If you have any ambition, your networking is severely limited. If you have any desire to find a mate, your pool has decreased rapidly. If you want to see a concert or go to a new restaurant, you have far less options.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#89Ah, 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…
Are you exaggerating or is it really normal for a family of 4 to live in a 500 sqft apartment? This seems impossibly tiny to me.
Re: Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis
#90When you have a city, where every surface is built, can you still say that there is a housing crisis? Maybe now, it is time to talk about real problems ?