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Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

nytimes.com

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Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#31

Post by pyuser583 »

ozten wrote: post #16

I’ve volunteered to build a tiny home in Seattle and have seen this deployed in my neighborhood and a few other sites. It is a feel good thing, but the reality is… These are a fraction of what is actually needed. It is symbolic. The residents are removed from mental health and other services and plopped into a suburban neighborhood without community or resources. The host families are not trained social workers, but…

“Housing First” is such a bit like communism - perfect in theory. The problem is you need “second” and “third” things too, and the political will often just doesn’t exist.

I lived near a “housing first” facility that was no better than a homeless encampment.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#33

Post by lr4444lr »

I never understood why even though homelessness is concentrated in the U.S. cities where car ownership is difficult (NYC, SF, some parts of Boston), when said areas only account even collectively for a fairly small portion of the country's overall population. Wouldn't it make more sense to help these people get a vehicle, and hwlp them resettle in areas that already have much cheaper housing and are desperate for workers? Such places might even have local government incentives if these new arrivals could commit to staying for a certain period.

Surely a large number of them are working low barrier to entry jobs that exist widely across the U.S.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#34

Post by travoc »

crooked-v wrote: post #27
cglan wrote: post #12

Definitely not against this, since any housing is good, and I hate letting perfect be the enemy of good, but not sure why we are so intent on scaling the concept of a single family home down to 200sqft. Townhouses in NYC have existed for over a hundred years, and generally across the world are an extremely viable concept for dense and cheap housing. It's perfectly possible to build cheap townhomes that can house 6 or…

The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available, but they're not allowed to do so.

A tiny home installed adjacent to other tiny homes is just called an “apartment” and there are millions of them across the U.S.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#37

Post by lolinder »

cglan wrote: post #12

Definitely not against this, since any housing is good, and I hate letting perfect be the enemy of good, but not sure why we are so intent on scaling the concept of a single family home down to 200sqft. Townhouses in NYC have existed for over a hundred years, and generally across the world are an extremely viable concept for dense and cheap housing. It's perfectly possible to build cheap townhomes that can house 6 or…

From a bit of googling I think that there are different conceptions of what a townhome is across different regions, so it might be helpful to describe exactly what you're referring to.

Where I live, a townhouse/townhome is more or less just a single-family home without space to the left and right—it has a front door and usually at least a second story (sometimes three), it most often has a garage, and the left and right walls are shared with the next unit [0]. Typical total living area between all the floors is 1000-1500 sqft.

Judging from the picture in the article, the kind of townhome that I'm thinking of would absolutely not be a more efficient use of land per housing unit than what they're doing here with these tiny homes.

I'm assuming that you're referring to something different?

[0] This is typical of what I think of as a townhome, if anything a bit more efficient than most: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2914-Yates-St-Denver-CO-8...

Edit: Here's a link to the property on Google maps so you can see the full scale of each unit: https://maps.app.goo.gl/cqLLmbU3Rtufkfx78

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#38

Post by akira2501 »

pyuser583 wrote: post #31
ozten wrote: post #16

I’ve volunteered to build a tiny home in Seattle and have seen this deployed in my neighborhood and a few other sites. It is a feel good thing, but the reality is… These are a fraction of what is actually needed. It is symbolic. The residents are removed from mental health and other services and plopped into a suburban neighborhood without community or resources. The host families are not trained social workers, but…

“Housing First” is such a bit like communism - perfect in theory. The problem is you need “second” and “third” things too, and the political will often just doesn’t exist. I lived near a “housing first” facility that was no better than a homeless encampment.

It's just like communism in that it entirely ignores the needs and capacity of an individual and makes them slaves to the idealism of the state.

They're no better than a homeless encampment because you can't give people a house and then expect them to act like a homeowner overnight. It was the wrong problem to solve, and I think people rush to solve it out of self conscious guilt and a desire to quickly make the _apparent_ parts of the problem disappear from common view.

It's a cruel and ridiculous strategy.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#39

Post by samstave »

crooked-v wrote: post #27
cglan wrote: post #12

Definitely not against this, since any housing is good, and I hate letting perfect be the enemy of good, but not sure why we are so intent on scaling the concept of a single family home down to 200sqft. Townhouses in NYC have existed for over a hundred years, and generally across the world are an extremely viable concept for dense and cheap housing. It's perfectly possible to build cheap townhomes that can house 6 or…

The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available, but they're not allowed to do so.

There is another reason - single-family dwelling housing.

As an example I proposed to the City of Alameda a few years back to develop a tiny-home community on the base end of the island...

I was working with tiny home manufacturers but the city had their zoning laws set that tiny homes would not work - even in a planned area:

the zoning requirements were that each lot must be 2,000 SF min. for any dwelling - and can only have one primary entrance... but here was the reason that is important:

You could not put more than one unit on anything less than 2,000 as multiple units in that area cannot have separate entrances and shared utilities - otherwise its condidered an apartment building and would require a single entrance, cannot share power, water, etc.

Sothe zoning laws (and permitting process) need to be overhauled in most municipalities to accomodate tiny home groups - regardless if the intended residents are from the homeless population or single/couples that want that lifestyle irrespective income/career style.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#40

Post by dbt00 »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #4

Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes. It's a very loaded and misleading term. There are usually many other problems that they need help with, and homelessness is often just a symptom.

If you read the article, this is discussed. It’s not a panacea but helping some people is better than shrugging and helping none.
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