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

construction-physics.com

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

#371

Post by BytesAndGears »

trgn wrote: post #326
BytesAndGears wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird straw-man. I live in a 600sq ft 2-bedroom apartment with my wife, and we cook nearly every meal at home, we rarely go out to bars, or spend much money in the city. But we have 6-7 cute cafes within a 5 minute walk, so we stop in for a coffee now and then. We have a big park that we can picnic in, three blocks away. There are a ton of fun things to do for cheap or free nearby. We don’t need a ton of space…

It's impossible to explain this qualitative difference in life to somebody who hasn't experienced it. When the outside environment is attractive, apartment living is glorious. When the outside is gnarly (e.g. no amenities, bad neighbors, ...), apartment living is hell. There's a weird tipping point, where all the negatives of living in an apartment evaporate. But it's hard to put it into numbers. You just "know", exp…

Yeah, that’s a great way to put it.

I have also had great experiences in a detached home (living with my wife’s family for a short while). They’re kind of out in the beyond-suburbs, but we were able to do lots of trail running and hiking nearby, and they had a bigger house so we could all spread out and do different activities without disrupting each other.

(Though, honestly, the extra maintenance and upkeep that they had would’ve been exhausting, if it were actually my home and I had to do it long-term)

Neither is better, exactly, but there are a ton of hidden benefits to living in an apartment in a great part of a city (Amsterdam in my case)..

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

#372

Post by wolverine876 »

akira2501 wrote: post #224
stronglikedan wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone likes to share a wall. I'm glad there are options, since I'm one of them. I can walk from my single family home to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars in 15 minutes. Not everyone likes to be that close to that stuff, and that's okay. I'm glad we have options, since I'm not one of them. There's plenty of space to build new homes of all types. It's an entitlement crisis.

Every time I see a giant timber framed apartment building being constructed I'm exceptionally glad that I don't have to consider living inside of it. It's fine for your early 30s, but if you hope to be part of the "professional class" then that form of living takes it's toll exceptionally quickly.

In major cities filled with the professional class - the wealthiest communities in the US, such NY, LA, and the Bay Area, lots of them live in apartments.

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

#373

Post by bombcar »

zdragnar wrote: post #204
admax88qqq wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the affordable housing that exists int he Midwest not an incentive? Or do you think we should be giving people even more?

Many people find the Midwest winters unpleasant, and many Midwest states lack variety in outdoor terrain. On top of that, finding a job can be quite a bit more work if it is a career that can't work from home and you don't want a long commut., Many types of jobs are much easier to come by in urban areas, even in the Midwest. That said, there's plenty of great places to live here, and significantly lower costs of livi…

Or to factor it out, the incentive should be (perhaps) for businesses to allow "state agnostic" remote work, or give incentives to move to lower cost of living areas.

The problem with those things is the main decision is made by people who are not affected by the high cost of living; Musk doesn't notice the difference in housing cost between Texas and California, even if his employees would.

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

#374

Post by cortesoft »

ReptileMan wrote: post #110
cortesoft wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think we should not allow specific groups of people to live in certain areas?

Why not - there are a lot of non-citizens in a lot of places with very hot markets. I don't see good reason why they should enjoy all the freedoms that the citizens have. This will destroy some of the demand.

So we would have a rule that you aren’t allowed to move out of the neighborhood you grew up in?

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

#375

Post by sonicanatidae »

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…

The housing crisis remains about human greed. That's all it is.

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

#376

Post by bombcar »

ska wrote: post #252
robocat wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reducing government responsibility for elder care That's a bit of a non-sequitur. The economy pays for elder care no matter what, and mostly our governments remain responsible if people haven't saved. Plus we get emergent outcomes in our economies for systemic reasons - blaming our governments as though they are effective at controlling everything makes little sense. Even if true it seems unlikely to be a primary r…

> and mostly our governments remain responsible if people haven't saved. That's the point of it being "forced saving". Look, I'm not saying the government steered everything or even that they thought it through very far. I'm saying that they constructed a bunch of programs (in US, Fannie/Freddy, mortgage tax break, etc. similar other countries) to subsidize and incentivize house ownership in ways that economists hate…

The momentum is why the "quick fixes" don't work - you need "slow, long term" fixes to undo slow, long term problems.

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

#377

Post by scoofy »

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 can easily get housing affordability crises even without single family homes, as is plainly evident right now in non-North-American cities.

Yes, you can get an affordability crisis anywhere you make it illegal to build housing. Nobody is arguing that. The point is that you also get an affordability crisis simply by pushing the transportation infrastructure to the point of failure, and then reject density.

>Is "make today's cities larger and denser forever" really the solution? Or can we figure out ways to disperse and decentralize things instead of just feeding more money back into the hands of those who own and control the current cities?

This is literally what's happening in every tech satellite city, the point is that many-if-not-most of our urban centers are already at their transportation capacities, simply because that is the suburban development model: it's extremely cheap until suddenly it's no longer functional. The suburban model has no equilibrium, it's a cascade, once the planned automobile infrastructure reaches capacity, you cannot increase it at a rate that is sustainable. Thus, once that capacity is gone, suddenly the real estate in the core becomes extremely valuable -> which incentivizes density -> which further strains peak infrastructure -> which increases the value of core real estate -> which further incentivizes density -> etc. -> etc. -> etc.

We can't wish this away, beyond wishing other people just didn't exist. It's like wishing that other people would take the bus, but not wanting to take it yourself. Nobody in the bay area wants to move to affordable Red Bluff, CA, without a reason, much less the CEO of a major corporation moving their entire company there out of the kindness of his heart we he or she already has a house and friends in Atherton.

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

#378

Post by NewJazz »

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 end up sitting in traffic for an hour instead of standing on a bus or train for an hour for your commute

Why are you acting like driving a vehicle and being a passenger in a vehicle are the same experience? One is clearly more demanding and inhibiting than the other.

On a train you can work, read, listen to a podcast, sometimes eat... Lots of things you can't do while in a car. Unless your job is driving. Which, if you commute for work, it kinda is.

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

#379

Post by pojzon »

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…

There is no crisis. Its all artifical to keep ppl poor.

Infrastructure is centralized, if it was more spread out everyone could afford a nice house with own big garden and vegetables field.

Stop making it sound like its the ppl issue they want to live near nature and have own land.

Too high density of ppl per square meter has huge disadventages in well being of those ppl and their overall health.

There is so much unused land in the world - trying to say we dont have it is silly.

Our leaders just FORCE us to flock to cities cpz its cheaper on infrastructure.

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

#380

Post by sombrero_john »

akira2501 wrote: post #224
stronglikedan wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone likes to share a wall. I'm glad there are options, since I'm one of them. I can walk from my single family home to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars in 15 minutes. Not everyone likes to be that close to that stuff, and that's okay. I'm glad we have options, since I'm not one of them. There's plenty of space to build new homes of all types. It's an entitlement crisis.

Every time I see a giant timber framed apartment building being constructed I'm exceptionally glad that I don't have to consider living inside of it. It's fine for your early 30s, but if you hope to be part of the "professional class" then that form of living takes it's toll exceptionally quickly.

What kind of toll are you talking about?
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