Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by novok » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:38 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #281

scoofy wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that many folks here are ready to clap back at this comment about how "but people want single family homes" as if that weren't why we are in a housing crisis. Yes... people want single family homes, it's just not feasible to put 3M people into single family homes in a metro area without absorbing an unsustainable amount of costs. Here we are talking literally the cost of construction, but there is a…

You can easily get housing affordability crises even without single family homes, as is plainly evident right now in non-North-American cities. It's a bit of a red herring. You end up sitting in traffic for an hour instead of standing on a bus or train for an hour for your commute, and other knock-on differences like that, which can be debated for various other reasons like ecological impact, but you still end up run…

You don't sit on the train for an hour. In properly designed large cities the metro beats the car by a huge time margin unless they made cars so expensive by policy that nobody has a car and there is no traffic at that city as a result.

Americans often think the shitty experience they have in their country applies universally. Ex: The bus & light rail is bad and slow, so therefore it will always be bad everywhere. Americans haven't lived or even travelled to places in europe and asia with functional transit systems and do not realize what they are missing.

Another common american assumption is: apartments are only for the poor, so they will always be made shitty with bad soundproofing when you can make them with good soundproofing as a standard and a good amount of square feet. Or metros are always dirty, dangerous and the gross homeless live there, while that is also a pure policy choice of america.

I grew up in north america, lived in places with good metros and good apartments, and then moved to America. America doesn't know how bad they have it.

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

#302

Post by foxyv » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:38 PM UTC

qwertyuiop_ wrote: post #270

foxyv wrote: post #177

It takes significantly less materials to build a multi-dwelling apartment/condo/townhouse structure than a single family home. In addition, the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars. We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are…

I live in a multi housing building and its a NIGHTMARE. A drug dealer moved in next door and he smokes all kinds of synthetic drugs 24/7 the shared walls and gaps are so thin the drugs leak in to my home. The person above me has some sort of mental condition, he wakes up at 12:45 am and starts drumming the floor with his hands, runs around and moves the furniture all night everyday. There isnt a damn thing i can do a…

I agree, I've lived in such apartments and hated them. However, you will notice that such buildings are usually 50+ years old and barely maintained. The reason for this is the cost to create new ones is absurdly high due to planning restrictions at the city level. Any attempts to make modern and more livable structures are thwarted by local opposition.

Also, the lack of competition in the MFD housing market means that landlords can barely maintain them and people will not have other options. This is why it often costs $2k+/month to live in apartments that look like they may collapse at any moment.

However, if you can afford to live in a single family house I would say "Wonderful! Please do!"

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

#303

Post by giantg2 » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:39 PM UTC

pitaj wrote: post #44

giantg2 wrote: post #16

Of 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…

Except we know it's a building issue. Housing starts are lower than they were in 2000 despite adding 50 million in population. Vacancy is good - higher vacancy is related to lower prices. Vacancy rates are the lowest they've been in decades. We just need to build.

"Except we know it's a building issue. Housing starts are lower than they were in 2000 despite adding 50 million in population."

Check the timeline and distribution though. Housing starts dropped in 2008. Measure the population from that point. From 2008 on, you're looking at .5% population growth and it's dropping. Housing starts are still reasonable at about .5M-1M units.

The problem is distribution. Population growth in certain cities has outpaced building in those cities. However, there are other cities where the inverse is true.

"Vacancy is good - higher vacancy is related to lower prices. Vacancy rates are the lowest they've been in decades."

Vacancy is only going to lead to lower prices if those vacant units are on the market. That's not necessarily the case with the corporate owners.

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

#304

Post by giantg2 » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:40 PM UTC

pksebben wrote: post #182

giantg2 wrote: post #16

Of 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…

I would love to see a "landlord tax" that squeezes owners to either live in, rent out, or sell.

I think you mean an empty unit tax.

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

#305

Post by jahewson » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:40 PM UTC

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) What major population center does not have distorted (high) housing costs relative to income?

b) Does the answer to a) have slums?

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

#306

Post by majormajor » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:42 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #301

majormajor wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily get housing affordability crises even without single family homes, as is plainly evident right now in non-North-American cities. It's a bit of a red herring. You end up sitting in traffic for an hour instead of standing on a bus or train for an hour for your commute, and other knock-on differences like that, which can be debated for various other reasons like ecological impact, but you still end up run…

You don't sit on the train for an hour. In properly designed large cities the metro beats the car by a huge time margin unless they made cars so expensive by policy that nobody has a car and there is no traffic at that city as a result. Americans often think the shitty experience they have in their country applies universally. Ex: The bus & light rail is bad and slow, so therefore it will always be bad everywhere. Am…

> You don't sit on the train for an hour. In properly designed large cities the metro beats the car by a huge time margin unless they made cars so expensive by policy that nobody has a car and there is no traffic at that city as a result.

You should meet some of my old coworkers in large cities in Asia... (you don't SIT on the train at all in rush hour!)

In a smaller city it can work great! But in a small NA city, everything is a 5-to-10-minute drive from everything and everyone's also happy about that. That's easy mode. But London, NY, Paris, Beijing, etc - those are the cases that are somewhat broken everywhere, affordability-wise and commute-wise.

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

#307

Post by Analemma_ » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:42 PM UTC

tpmoney wrote: post #275

foxyv wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying we should ban 4000 sq.ft. detached homes on large sprawling lots. They just shouldn't be the ONLY type of home being built. Give people options so they can choose. In fact, if you want to have that beautiful home surrounded by nature and not suburban cookie cutter houses, then it's also in your interest to see that cities stay in the cities. Too many orchards and farms have been demolished to build mis…

Where do you live that 4k sqft homes are the only new construction? I live in a major metro area and sure in the outskirts and suburbs there’s plenty of McMansion developments, but there’s also a whole host of new townhomes and apartments. And the entire downtown is practically being rebuilt into massive multi story apartments. And this is hardly the center of YIMBY land.

It's getting better now, but the OP could live in Seattle: [0]. Anywhere white on that map it was illegal through 2019 to build anything but a single-family home. Just an appalling waste of land.

[0]: https://i0.wp.com/publicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/S...

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

#308

Post by mlsu » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:43 PM UTC

baggy_trough wrote: post #175

tptacek wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upzoning is a win-win for existing homeowners. Land doesn't get expropriated to build multifamily; it's purchased. Multifamily is a more efficient use of a lot than SFH, so it's purchased at a premium. NIMBYs worry that the mere existence of nearby multifamily will decrease their home value. In rare and unsympathetic cases (places like Winnetka in Illinois) that may be true. But in the bedroom neighborhoods of big ci…

I don't want to live next to a huge building, so I selected a town where that was not allowed. So don't tell me changing this is a win win for me. It isn't.

It's not a win for you then. It is a win for the 100 people who can move into that apartment building.

Are you really that important?

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

#309

Post by sanderjd » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:44 PM UTC

tpmoney wrote: post #275

foxyv wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying we should ban 4000 sq.ft. detached homes on large sprawling lots. They just shouldn't be the ONLY type of home being built. Give people options so they can choose. In fact, if you want to have that beautiful home surrounded by nature and not suburban cookie cutter houses, then it's also in your interest to see that cities stay in the cities. Too many orchards and farms have been demolished to build mis…

Where do you live that 4k sqft homes are the only new construction? I live in a major metro area and sure in the outskirts and suburbs there’s plenty of McMansion developments, but there’s also a whole host of new townhomes and apartments. And the entire downtown is practically being rebuilt into massive multi story apartments. And this is hardly the center of YIMBY land.

I'm seeing this in my area too. But I wasn't seeing it ten or fifteen years ago when these debates first came onto my radar. What it looks like to me is a success story of identifying a problem and working toward improvement, but simultaneously far more slowly than the proponents of the solutions want and far more quickly than opponents want.

A decade ago, YIMBY-leaning people and groups were mad but mostly obscure and NIMBY-leaning people and groups were powerful. Now both sides are mad, the YIMBY side because it is still taking a long time to build enough to see affordability improve (especially with the interest rate shock), and the NIMBY side because they can see all those new townhomes and apartments going up in suburbs and smaller towns and densification projects in the city center, and dislike that.

I remember I used to complain that housing was so expensive and you never saw anything getting built despite there being plenty of great places to build things. And then one day I realized that a lot of construction was happening in a lot of those places I was thinking of, and I should stop complaining, since what I wanted to see happen was actually happening!

It's hard to feel like it's "better" for both sides to be mad while affordability is still bad, but I do think it's better than what seemed more like an insurmountable problem to me a decade ago.

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

#310

Post by foxyv » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 7:44 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #264

foxyv wrote: post #177

It takes significantly less materials to build a multi-dwelling apartment/condo/townhouse structure than a single family home. In addition, the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars. We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are…

> We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are not met by their community. You assume it's a necessity thing instead of a desire+wealth thing. Yet the history of the wealthy and powerful "escaping" to large estates goes back centuries (millenia!). Additionally, the housing affordability crisis is also happening in European cities with 4…

If I can walk less than a mile to a theatre and pay $10 to watch a movie on a giant screen, I won't want to pay $10k to create a home theatre. If I can get food from around the world by walking 10 minutes to 20+ restaurants, I won't want to pay $20k to have an 800 sq.ft. kitchen. If I can entertain my guests at a community center or beer garden, I won't need to have a $15k patio and outdoor bar area.

People pay absurd amounts for these things because they can't get them in their own community.