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

#361

Post by MostlyStable » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:12 PM UTC

__egb__ wrote: post #263

oramit wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, heigh…

Many of the zoning rules you list, and far many more that you don’t, exist for valid reasons. Those reasons may not be as obvious as the chemical plant/preschool rule, but that doesn’t mean they’re not just as valid. I live near a cove that comes off of the Chesapeake Bay. We have many of those zoning rules here for environmental reasons. Water movement and erosion are huge concerns here. Rules that affect density, f…

This is exactly the kind of Motte-and-Bailey argument the commenter you are replying to is talking about. Sure, you can justify some of the regulations, much like you can justify not allowing a chemical plant next to a school, but there are, in many places, hundreds to thousands of such rules and the vast majority of them are _not_ that important. How does not wanting houses to flood relate to setbacks, minimum square footage, lot size, etc. requirements? Literally no one is saying "get rid of every single development regulation". So bringing up one of the _extremely_ small number of regulations that are worth having does not address the argument about the _hundreds_ that are not worth having.

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

#362

Post by Aloisius » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:13 PM UTC

tempsy wrote: post #71

mjmahone17 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely not an oversupply of apartments in my city, nor in Seattle proper. it should be non-controversial to let the market supply as many apartments in the locations people want to be as people are willing to rent. Especially any regulatory changes that enable family sized apartments to be built at relatively lower cost should be encouraged. Even if there were an “oversupply”, if someone could build new…

How is there not an oversupply of rentals in Seattle? I pulled up Zillow Rentals around downtown and there's a comical number of listings available. If you can rent a new construction 1 bed for under $2k a month in a jobs center there is no apartment shortage in your city.

> I pulled up Zillow Rentals around downtown and there's a comical number of listings available.

And how does that tell you that supply exceeds demand?

Even when there's a housing undersupply, units will still be available at any given moment. It's not like people stop dying, moving out or building altogether.

To determine oversupply, you need to look at something that also tells you demand as well. Like, what's the average time available units are on the market? What's the vacancy rate look like?

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

#363

Post by 10u152 » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:22 PM UTC

foxyv wrote: post #266

tpmoney wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue more than that the housing crisis is an “urban crisis” and a “fraying of the social fabric” crisis. By the first I mean the continued destruction of smaller towns and semi-rural areas. Even if single family homes are more expensive to build than multi family apartments, the fact is we have ridiculous amounts of space in this country. But most people for various reasons don’t want to live where the space…

A huge reason these shared spaces are so miserable is because the communities around them cannot support them. Parking minimums and low density means that not only are these commercial properties insanely expensive, but also that not enough people can access them. A huge upside to increasing density is that the theatre goes from having 100 people within 4 miles of it to 10,000. In addition, instead of having a 400 ca…

Cost is a factor but you can have all this and car parking. Plenty of developments in my city are mixed use. 3 or 4 levels of underground parking, then retail, supermarkets on ground floor then bars, gyms, pools, restaurants on the next few and and 20 or 30 levels of apartments on top. And people can walk straight off the street into the building.

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

#364

Post by kurthr » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:23 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #311

majormajor wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, ev…

In China right? You know they are the equivalent of people in LA who live so far away from their job and have 2 hour car commutes right?

China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan... I can break it down by city, but the idea that people don't commute more than an hour in any of these places is pretty laughable. HK is a bit better, because it's so small, but unless you're really wealthy or willing to live with your family in 100m2 even that is challenging. It's not that there aren't places to live (eg in Tokyo), but most people with a family and moderate incomes would rather live outside the city, and that means long commutes, standing during rush hours.

I once had a commute longer than 15min in Silicon Valley and decided I'd never do it again.

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

#365

Post by dubcanada » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:24 PM UTC

foofie wrote: post #68

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…

> 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. I think your comment is misguided and lacks reflection. Change for the sake of change is never good because by definition there is no upside. Construction technology is also expected to be reliab…

Just the comments on my comment alone justify my comment. I never said it was negative, it just is a fact. There are plenty of good new and old methods for everything. But it is resistant to change because it has to have a long service life.

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

#366

Post by monknomo » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:25 PM UTC

happyopossum wrote: post #102

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…

> 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. This is at best a huge exaggeration. For one thing, roofing is not a 50-year career. If you know any 70 year old roofers, they've either been retired or moved on to other things decades ago - the toll that roofing takes on a body makes it a 10-15 year career at best. Secondly, I've been wo…

haha, I used to have a torchdown roof and I sympathize. Finding folks to do a similar style (with integral gutters and tarred gravel, etc.) was a bit challenging. Plenty of folks that'd put down some foam and shingles though

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

#367

Post by bombcar » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:26 PM UTC

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…

Outside of literal college dorms, where can you find apartments without kitchens?

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

#368

Post by wolverine876 » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:28 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #306

novok wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ev…

> In a smaller city it can work great!

The best transit is generally thought to be in NYC.

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

#369

Post by travisb » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:30 PM UTC

ejb999 wrote: post #124

throwitaway222 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll tell you what's unserious - people wanting to actually solve the housing crisis. Every solution is 100% idiotic. The way we currently operate is to build more housing, they are building a dramatic amount of housing, and the price of a house is still $400k medium. It is telling me they are not selling to families but instead to corporations, bnbers, rentals, foreign governments. https://tradingeconomics.com/unite…

Maybe they still cost $400K, because the purchase of the land, the labor and the materials and the interest to finance the project eat up most of that $400K, not to mention some places charge you building permits that cost ten's of thousands of dollars - if not more. Nobody is going to build houses and sell them at a loss or at break-even price, they need to cover their costs and make some profit as well to keep the…

I was speaking to my house builder in the middle of 2023 and he noted that it had become impossible to build a starter house (2/3 bedrooms, 1.5-2 bath) for less than $450k CAD (~$300k USD) -- excluding land, utility connection, and financing costs.

He also mentioned that new requirements going into effect this year were going to add $10-15k per house.

People tend to have a poor grasp on what building a new house actually costs. They cost a lot to build with no gouging whatsoever.

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

#370

Post by bombcar » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 8:32 PM UTC

danking00 wrote: post #360

dragonwriter wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted] No more fever posting

I was surprised by the last clause in your last sentence, but you’re absolutely right. https://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.tx... LA edges out NYC: 7000 to 5300. Presumably in individuals per square mile.

It all depends on where you draw the lines. When people think of LA they think of that whole sprawling metropolis between the mountains (what is technically the LA basis or the LA metro area) - but the City of Los Angeles is a smaller denser portion of that.

And when people think New York City they think Manhattan, but New York City includes quite a bit more.