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Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

construction-physics.com

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Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#141

Post by doctorpangloss »

tnel77 wrote: post #78
rybosworld wrote: post #57

Every single major population center that has distorted (high) housing costs relative to income, also has very strong protections for the existing home owners (NIMBY). "There are no coincidences..." The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer fu…

A major issue with housing is that it is a primary driver of wealth for many Americans. Obviously, this comes at the expense of our fellow Americans who do not own a home. I was able to buy shortly out of college (1% down loan) so rising home prices don’t impact me as much since my home has also gone up in value. I was able to sell the first house and roll that equity into the next house. As long as it’s the main sto…

Well but aren’t you giving a great example of how that wealth is illusory?

The purpose of this comment is to make this conversation interesting instead of rehashing BS about NIMBYs.

Don’t get me wrong, measuring billionaires’ wealth by multiplying stock price and stock count is flawed too, for a different reason. But both your wealth and that wealth are really measuring “taxable wealth in the marginal transaction case.” Not a super interesting measurement IMO.

If you were an immigrant from the Soviet Union like my parents were for example, sure you were dirt poor but you might have an education, which turned out to be much more valuable in every sense, in most cases, than a house, for baby boomers this century.

Like isn’t being educated being “wealthy?” On the flip side, Russia today has 30 percentage points more higher educated people than the US, so tell me Obama, what did that education get them?

There’s no reductive lens for this stuff. One POV is that maybe the average American is myopic, their house value number goes up and they regard that as real wealth, just like billionaires do. But it’s not just a matter of understanding what house values are because “that number going up and therefore you become wealthier” isn’t strictly speaking flawed. IMO what we lack is leadership: politicians who have the patience and motivation to figure these things out and inform the public, as opposed to merely being reactive to the hottest crisis on social media.

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#142

Post by giraffe_lady »

rootusrootus wrote: post #111
giraffe_lady wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely did not say that non-residents should have "more say over the nature of that place." Simply and narrowly that residents should not be able to block housing development, a much different and more straightforward position.

If the residents don't have the most say, who is the authority that is enforcing housing development? How would that not be non-residents?

Residents do have the most influence and the most concentrated control. That's not quite the same as being the only authority, or having absolute influence however, and this is a correct allocation of power.

Residents don't and shouldn't expect to have the final say on who can live in their area. This is explicitly acknowledged by, for example, racial housing covenants being illegal these days.

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#143

Post by rootusrootus »

sydbarrett74 wrote: post #131
geodel wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. So people who have been living in an area should have no say but people from planning to move must have a say. > This will probably never happen in the U.S Thank god for that. Maybe checkout in other countries like Canada, UK, France, Germany or even eastern europe, further in Asia on how they are doing on housing front. For sure they couldn't be having housing policies as bad as US.

Canada and the UK have woeful housing shortages. They're not doing much, if any, better than the US is.

I'd guess that is the point of the comment. In the US we can blame zoning, NIMBYs, and car-centric society for housing problems. But what about those other countries? What's the reason there?

I suspect important drivers of home pricing are:

- Young people not getting married and starting a family right out of school, making average household size drop considerably

- Increased standards for construction and rental quality

- Everyone wants more space, houses are pushing twice the size they were 30+ years ago

I think these are more plausible than just zoning and cars. I'd guess those are only serious problems in a handful of very dense cities which are constrained geographically.

The household size issue will probably level out, you can't really go below 1. Lowering standards won't happen. But smaller homes might. Bring back starter homes.

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#145

Post by ejb999 »

sydbarrett74 wrote: post #131
geodel wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. So people who have been living in an area should have no say but people from planning to move must have a say. > This will probably never happen in the U.S Thank god for that. Maybe checkout in other countries like Canada, UK, France, Germany or even eastern europe, further in Asia on how they are doing on housing front. For sure they couldn't be having housing policies as bad as US.

Canada and the UK have woeful housing shortages. They're not doing much, if any, better than the US is.

Based on what I have read, Canada is doing far, far worse than the USA - affordability problem up north is ridiculous.

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#146

Post by aclatuts »

ejb999 wrote: post #96
dubcanada wrote: post #32

If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago. Saying a bunch of glulam will solve the issue is just incorrect. Wood is fantastic material. But using half a forest to build a 2000sqft house is certainly not the direction we should be going, we…

Honestly, if I had to choose between buying a house built 50 years ago, or one today - I personally would take the older one. Nothing scares me more (relative to owning a house) than buying a brand new one. If it has been around for fifty years, it has been tested - may have some things wrong with them, but you usually know what you are dealing with and usually the skill was better and materials better. Heck, my pare…

The tried and true asbestos insulation

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#148

Post by notahacker »

rybosworld wrote: post #57

Every single major population center that has distorted (high) housing costs relative to income, also has very strong protections for the existing home owners (NIMBY). "There are no coincidences..." The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer fu…

Strong homeowner protection is almost universal throughout the developed world, including regions where the cost of housing is low relative to wage levels, so whilst it may be true to say that expensive parts of the US and Europe are homeowner friendly and have restrictive planning laws it doesn't indicate any actual correlation. New York isn't super expensive because other places take advantage of greater ability to build to a higher density.

In most lower middle income countries with relatively limited property rights, urban housing that can actually be bought is actually much more expensive relative to local median incomes, though these do have more options in the form of dorms and slums...

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#149

Post by ejb999 »

Ekaros wrote: post #126
ejb999 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, if I had to choose between buying a house built 50 years ago, or one today - I personally would take the older one. Nothing scares me more (relative to owning a house) than buying a brand new one. If it has been around for fifty years, it has been tested - may have some things wrong with them, but you usually know what you are dealing with and usually the skill was better and materials better. Heck, my pare…

50 years I think puts here them highly in danger zone... That means 1970s... Which have whole host of very well known issues. Now 100 or even 70 year old houses... If not ruined in 70s-90s by renovation...

Fair enough - but point still stands, newer is not always better (to me). Give me a house that is still standing decades after mother nature threw everything it could at it, over a shiny new one any day.

Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

#150

Post by oramit »

rybosworld wrote: post #57

Every single major population center that has distorted (high) housing costs relative to income, also has very strong protections for the existing home owners (NIMBY). "There are no coincidences..." The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer fu…

The incredible thicket of state, county, and municipal rules all layer and combine to make housing incredibly difficult to build. It's the technical debt of the material world.

Seriously, look up your local zoning rules. It's not "you can't build a chemical plant next to a preschool" like it's so often portrayed. It's minimum size for the lot, max square footage of the house based on lot size, max/min frontage, height allowances, max garage sizes, minimum number of trees, number of windows.... etc.

It really just goes on like that, and then to top it off, you can be totally compliant with code and still not be approved. Either because of local incompetence (building permits stuck "in review" for years) or because of local opposition.

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