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The case for single-stair multifamily

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Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#211

Post by nostrademons »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #200
toast0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, you pay very little tax on the empty land or parking lot because you’re taxed on that total value of the land and improvements. This discourages building stuff sometimes. With land value tax, you’d be taxed on what someone would pay you for that land with improvements similar to surrounding, so it’s advantageous to build something there instead of nothing, since you’re paying the same tax as the sky scraper…

You're looking at it the wrong way. They're not looking at the hypothetical improvements and charging as if you built them. They're saying "this land could reasonably support a skyscraper, therefore it is very valuable land".

Or the other way to look at it is "This land has lots of valuable community improvements like nearby restaurants, shops, parks, good schools, walkability. Therefore, the land itself is worth more. It is more economically efficient if more people get to benefit from the positive externalities of a good location, and so we should incentivize development in the locations that are most valuable."

Most areas can support a skyscraper, but it doesn't really make sense to build one in the middle of nowhere. Conversely it doesn't make sense to keep prime real estate next to shops & public transit a surface parking lot. LVT incentivizes developing the parcels that are in good locations into high-density, high-value uses. A traditional improvement-based property tax reverses those incentives: if you develop your parking lot into a skyscraper, you pay much more in taxes, which may be unaffordable for smaller non-corporate owners, which gives them an incentive to hold onto them and keep them as marginal low-productivity uses.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#212

Post by [deleted] »

adrian_b wrote: post #123
quickthrowman wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American here. I can't even put to words my embafflement upon learning that 72 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire in Europe in 2017.

That had little to do with stairs, but it was caused by the use of inappropriate combustible materials, which were forbidden for buildings of that height in many countries of continental Europe, but they were allowed in Great Britain were regulations were much more lax. So that event is strictly specific to UK and not representative for Europe in general.

[deleted]

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#213

Post by quickthrowman »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #184
quickthrowman wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why an architect and/or engineer(s) supervise a general contractor. A few things have changed in the construction industry over the last 3800 years. I’m not sure why I even bother reading HN threads about construction.

And if you don't supervise well enough, should it be legally fine to give you a defective house? If yes, that's a horrible idea. If no, then I don't see how "things have changed" in a way that's relevant to the comment you replied to.

Please respond in good faith instead of trying to ‘gotcha’ me.

There are building inspections periodically during construction by the authority having jurisdiction, with the important trades (MEP, civil, structural) having their own specialized inspections.

When you buy a new house (or a new building), you will receive a warranty for workmanship from the builder who should have corresponding workmanship warranties for all their subcontractors, and the materials will also have warranties from the manufacturer.

Lastly, you can sue the builder if all other options are exhausted.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#214

Post by novagameco »

deadbabe wrote: post #199
munchler wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With WFH, you’ll have unused offices no matter how cheap the rent. There are simply more offices than workers to occupy them. At some point it becomes immoral not to let people live there instead.

People can never live there, it’s not up to code. You can rent the offices really really cheap.

Change the code and it becomes way cheaper to renovate them. Turn them into dormitory style buildings with communal bathrooms and interior apartments with no outward facing windows

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#215

Post by bobthepanda »

nineplay wrote: post #120
bobthepanda wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intention of the double stairwell requirement, is that you are not supposed to have your access point to the stairwell by an obstruction, and there should be a maximum access time to the stairwell. One notable requirement of single-stair buildings where they are legal in the US, is that 1. the height is generally determined by the height of the fire ladders available, providing a second means of egress 2. the sin…

> 1. the height is generally determined by the height of the fire ladders available, providing a second means of egress This is an interesting requirement and makes me wonder if some of the need for two staircases comes from the proximity - or lack thereof - to fire services. I'd be sitting in a burning home for a long time if I had to wait for a fire ladder.

A lot of the requirements make sense in bigger buildings. It's not easy to evacuate a large office building taking up a city block using only ladders. And some of it is reactive; for example, there is a distance separation requirement for stairwells, because during 9/11 the three North Tower stairwells were only 70 feet apart and enclosed only with gypsum, so they were all severed on impact, dooming the people above the impact zone. But none of this is really relevant for a building with six floors and 24 units total.

The American city topology is basically office towers surrounded by single family homes; in the midcentury we demolished a lot of the in-between building stock, which is now referred to by urbanists as the "missing middle". Compare this to Europe or Japan which is largely buildings in between those sizes.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#216

Post by Retric »

ksenzee wrote: post #209
Retric wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 2nd set of stairs split across multiple units is a trivial matter from a cost perspective. Height restrictions, adding more office space than housing, mandatory parking etc are the real issues. Tiny increases in construction costs get wiped out when there’s insufficient housing stock.

I can’t tell whether you’re unfamiliar with the single- vs. double-staircase architectural arguments, or disagreeing with them: https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twi...

The floor plans being compared in that example are terrible. Nobody is going to give an interior hallway windows on both ends if they don’t need to.

You also need to consider external fire escapes etc.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#217

Post by closeparen »

quickthrowman wrote: post #102
SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #97

Looking from the outside I would guess this is one of the big reasons for the "missing middle" [1] (lack of medium-density housing) in most North American cities. It is simply not economically feasible to build a small to medium size multi-unit building if you need to include two stairwells, so all buildings are either single family houses or huge mega projects. In my country the simple and cheap four-story walk-up c…

The reason five over ones are popular in the US has nothing to do with staircase requirements. The reason is money, like always. You can stick build residential buildings up to five stories and it’s way, way cheaper than reinforced concrete and steel. They are mega complexes because the financial stakeholders want to maximize the available land and rents.

It’s true that five stories is an economic sweet spot, but the idea is we could get five story point access blocks instead of double loaded corridor layouts.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#218

Post by nostrademons »

bequanna wrote: post #13
alexb_ wrote: post #3

Land Value Tax being the main method of taxation would encourage municipalities to adopt things like this.

I have yet to understand why people have made land value tax a thing. As I understand it, land value and improvements are already taxed but a land value tax would only tax land value. Can someone make this make sense? Why would this promote development?

It's about incentives. In general, the best incentive scheme is one where people are incentivized to do things that other people find valuable. The worst incentive scheme is one where you get punished by a third party for doing things that others find valuable. Economists call this "deadweight loss", the number of beneficial transactions that do not happen because with the addition of a tax, the transaction is no longer beneficial for both parties. Ideally, the perfect tax is one where you are taxed on things that are negatively valuable for society (an externality or sin tax, as a way of disincentivizing you from doing those activities) or that you don't have control over (i.e. it doesn't alter your behavior at all), while not taxing any activities that are beneficial for others.

LVT is very close in structure to this perfect tax. There is a finite amount of land available, and no way to make more of it; taxes on land don't disincentivize land production, they just take a cut of the rent that you get from having conquered that land first or bought it from someone who did. And the land value (exclusive of improvements) is usually set by its location - what else is nearby, what community improvements have been made, is it in a pretty place, is there lots of pollution or crime? These too are things that the owner has no control of; arguably they are reaping the benefits of things that the rest of the community has built, and so they should be taxed on it so the fruits of those labor go back to the community.

By excluding the improvements, you let the land owner capture the fruits of their actual labor. So if they build a new apartment building and provide housing to those who need it, they can charge rent, and they won't be taxed on that rent, and so they capture the full benefit of those improvements. If it's a nice apartment building, they get to charge more in rent, and they can capture that money too.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#219

Post by kemotep »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #142
kilotaras wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone buys a property: +-------------+------------+-------------+-------------+ | Type | Land Value | Cover Value | Total Value | +-------------+------------+-------------+-------------+ | Parking Lot | 100 | 0 | 100 | | Dump | 100 | -20 | 80 | | Skyscrapper | 100 | 100 | 200 | +-------------+------------+-------------+-------------+ Land increases in price and buyer sells it: +-------------+------------+----------…

When money is growing on trees, pick it . If you have an undeveloped piece of land worth X, and it becomes worth Y if you put a skyscraper on it, then you do it as long as the cost of construction is less than Y-X. Sure, you can make money by doing nothing, if the price of land is going up. But you can make that money plus the money you make by building the skyscraper by, you know, building the skyscraper. If you're…

It is the case now that it is profitable to purchase a rundown building, pay the property taxes for years, and then sell it for a significantly higher value.

This is the rent seeking behavior that a Land Value Tax seeks to eliminate. By taxing the unimproved value of land, it becomes more and more burdensome to sit and do nothing with your property. By making improvements (building a high rise, running a productive farm, etc.) you reduce your tax burden and, as you mentioned, profit from the improvements.

So a more productive and efficient land use is encouraged by land value tax compared to property taxes which since they are based on total value (including improvements) you could potentially be punished for being more productive than just doing nothing.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#220

Post by smithsj619 »

nicole_express wrote: post #21

I'd like to see more discussion of the safety impact; I know the article makes the point that fire deaths per capita are lower in Europe, which lacks the requirement, but it also notes that US housing stock is also much more wooden and therefore at higher risk to begin with. (Wood construction is generally a good thing from a sustainability perspective) Whenever I see this proposed my brain immediately goes to the Gr…

That's what I'm trying to raise money to do! ;-)

Basically through an analysis of fire loss history combined with open property data. The fire engineering field hasn't traditionally had access to great data, for a few different reasons, but now the data is actually potentially available to answer the question – but it does need a bit of time and investment.

(I'm the author of the article.)

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