The housing shortage is so straightforward to solve, but government officials and citizens alike block most measures that would easily solve it. It's very frustrating. Rents in Austin are down double digits, and the reason? They changed zoning laws and built more housing. Seems like every major city should be doing that, but apparently, it's too complex.
Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
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Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#32If 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 should be finding ways to build with 1/2 the amount of wood we currently use. Or perhaps melt down all of that trash and form it into a house somehow...
Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#33Of course timber won't fix the housing shortage. The housing shortage is artificial. There are plenty of empty units across the country. It's a distribution issue of: owners holding vacant units, people wanting/needing to live in specific locations, and individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes. With an almost stagnate population growth this isn't really a building issue even if i…
Owners holding vacant units is not a significant cause of the housing shortage. Overly restrictive zoning and subjective reviews exploited by NIMBYs explains almost all of it.
Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#34Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#35Obviously someone who is familiar with the field but it's kind of strange that they compare these two technologies since they aren't used for the same construction. You've not going to use glulam and CLT to build your one story house. It's about building taller places.
Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#36Of course timber won't fix the housing shortage. The housing shortage is artificial. There are plenty of empty units across the country. It's a distribution issue of: owners holding vacant units, people wanting/needing to live in specific locations, and individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes. With an almost stagnate population growth this isn't really a building issue even if i…
Owners holding vacant units is not a significant cause of the housing shortage. Overly restrictive zoning and subjective reviews exploited by NIMBYs explains almost all of it.
There are studies - there are more vacation units than homeless people in the United States - like double.
Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#37Of course timber won't fix the housing shortage. The housing shortage is artificial. There are plenty of empty units across the country. It's a distribution issue of: owners holding vacant units, people wanting/needing to live in specific locations, and individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes. With an almost stagnate population growth this isn't really a building issue even if i…
Raise prop taxes for non-rented vacation units by 150% Raise prop taxes for rentals by %350. Raise prop taxes for airbnbs by %500. Everyone will own a home, and home prices will plummet as people try to unload extremely expensive property taxes. And if it doesn't work, double my percentages. Or just make it 100k per year. Those people crazy enough to keep holding them, will fund the creation of homeless housing. DV's…
I mean, landlords are going to pass on their costs directly to tenants. If you raise property taxes, then rents simply go up. None of these tax increases are going to magically make a 20% down payment appear in someone's bank account that they could use to purchase something outright. None of these tax increases are going to prevent people who legitimately want to rent from renting. (Some examples: apartments that are $30k a month for rich people that need to live in some city for 3 months of the year. $8k/month assisted living facilities for rich people that are now old and need access to care while still living alone.)
Probably the most realistic thing to do is to simply implement rent control. "You can't legally collect more than $X/month in rent" fixes the problem of rent being too high. If that makes owning rental units unpopular, so be it.
Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#38I would argue that the mateiral is not the pinchpoint of the housing crisis. Its the lack of land, or permits to build on said land.
Edit I should say _affordable_ land. Or land that isn't blocked by nimbys
Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#39How about converting offices to apartments?
Thanks to home office there should be many otherwise useless offices.
Re: Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage
#40Aircrete, Hempcrete, & foam housing are alternatives. All are inexpensive, have good insulation, & can form interesting single story houses.