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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

#381

Post by wolverine876 »

adamisom wrote: post #294
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…

I just went to Panda Express for lunch--yeah yeah, it's not fancy at all, but it's a step above McDonald's--and someone begged me for food. Cue a bunch of online warriors on their high horses implying I'm a bad person for not prioritizing their need over my negative experience. I'm still going to second-guess going out to eat a little bit, though. I want to create my own beautiful bubble, and that might be home. Ever…

What is your reasoning here? Cities are 'bad' from something as minor as that? We all deal with things we dislike, such as stoplights, rain, or bad news on TV. Let's not even start on traffic! Where will you find this idyllic place to call home?

FWIW, it might be alien at first but there's nothing to be afraid of from people who want some food, any more than from anyone else. That is based on long experience with zero problems in many places. Those are the vulnerable people; it's the powerful ones you need to watch out for.

> Cue a bunch of online warriors on their high horses

You violated HN guidelines before anyone even replied!

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

#382

Post by bombcar »

robocat wrote: post #288
tptacek wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're allowed to have preferences! You don't have to live next to a "gross apartment building". You can achieve your preferences by (a) paying more or (b) accepting a larger commute from the nearest urban center. Property values don't scale with your particular preference. Among many things, they're a function of: * (Probably foremost, in IL at least) the perceived quality of the school districts * The property tax…

Your list of drivers of property values is missing the single most important factor: • how much can one borrow? Mortgages drive house prices so long as demand outstrips supply: which it always does in desirable places. Demand can always increase in a healthy city - I want to have multiple houses in different parts of the city and I could even AirBnB them out to defray costs or make a profit. I live in Christchurch, w…

> We have more house supply but demand is outpacing that because we also have high immigration (30% of NZ population was born overseas and we still encourage immigration).

This is a huge part of it, as is anything that drives housing demand (for example, as more people end up divorced, more housing is needed).

And most people go to the bank and ask how much house they can buy (based on what monthly payment they can stomach), and then go looking for the best they can get for that.

But there is another floor even without banks and mortgages; the cost to build new housing. If the minimum viable house is $250,000 to build (assuming minor builder's profit, etc) than you're going to be hard pressed to find new housing less than that.

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

#383

Post by tschellenbach »

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 crisis is not related to the cost of building housing. It's due to regulatory hurdles preventing houses from being built.

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

#384

Post by drivers99 »

foxyv wrote: post #234
akira2501 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now our laws prevent us from building affordable and livable homes Which laws are those?

To Start: Zoning laws, land use restrictions, parking minimums, property covenants and restrictions, traffic flow requirements, and minimum offsets.

minimum lot size, setback requirements (not sure if that's the same as offsets you mentioned)

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

#385

Post by scoofy »

nradov wrote: post #319
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…

Strong Towns is not a reliable or neutral source. They aren't necessarily wrong , but they do cherry pick data to suit the urbanist narrative that they're trying to promote. It can be a useful source for understanding the issue but don't take anything you read there at face value.

What on earth do you mean "neutral" as if there are two sides to caring about long term infrastructure sustainability. If by "cherry-pick" you mean, explain a falsifiable hypothesis and then point to example of the hypothesis playing out exactly as predicted (Detroit, Jackson, etc.).

If you really think their hypothesis is totally wrong, we're currently living in a real time experiment of the thesis in the Phoenix metro area. Due to water concerns, the suburban development model is no longer feasible. It's unlikely that Phoenix will suddenly become density mecca (as it's not feasible with automobile transportation), so we should expect to see a massive hole in the metro cities' budgets sooner rather than later. If Phoenix turns out to be fine a in 15 years, I'll happily concede the point and will have learned a lot.

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

#386

Post by II2II »

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…

> 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?

We should be aiming for some degree of density. I would hazard a guess that size is largely dependent upon what a person wants out of life.

Infrastructure is very expensive to build and maintain, and everyone demands it in multiple forms (roads, water, sewage, and power at a minimum). Containing the costs by reducing either extent or capacity would allow us to allocate those resources to other things, things that could improve the collective quality of life.

As for decentralization, it depends upon how it is done. I've lived in or visited towns with a few thousand people. Nearly everything one needed was within walking distance, though people often left town for things they wanted. I've also lived in similarly sized urban communities where virtually nothing one needed was within a reasonable walking distance. Suburban communities often take the latter to the extreme. What was the difference? Everything in the small town was centralized, yet businesses and services in those urban communities were effectively decentralized.

Let's say you build a bunch of small towns to decentralize the population and get away from feeding money back into the hands of those who own and control cities. You now have another major consideration: are people going to live most of their daily lives in those towns, or are they going to live in one town and work in another? A big part of the reason why people spend so much of their life commuting, whether it is by car or train, is because opportunities (may it be home ownership or careers) don't necessarily fall in the same place.

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

#387

Post by bombcar »

creer wrote: post #235
xyzelement wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be coming from the perspective that people who don't live in a place should have more say over the nature of that place than those who do live there. To put it in your terms, why does it make more sense to tell existing residents "your place has to change and you can move if you don't like it" vs channel the new residents to other places where more housing is available and is available cheaper.

Which government? Your block? street? school district? Transit district? region? state? country? Even then, a country that needs immigrants to operate? Even then in a town here, most of the electrorate is renters, but most people who actually vote are homeowners. And a public library district found it better to "protect themselves" with a card fee for non-residents rather than open access to all state residents (like…

> Even then in a town here, most of the electorate is renters, but most people who actually vote are homeowners.

At some point you have to give up; if the electorate doesn't even bother caring enough to vote, what can you do?

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

#388

Post by pojzon »

nico_h wrote: post #336
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…

Uninhabited land is empty of people for a reason: - it’s protected - it’s undesirable (too hot/ dry/wet/far/steep/close to a pollution source) - it’s agricultural land If it’s not any of these it’s owned and thus controlled by someone.

Its owned and controlled by ppl who have millions of square meters for themselves.

^this is the real issue.

But we dont want to tackle the real issue of few ppl wanting to own the whole world :)

If we cut out that cancer ppl everyone on Earth could have a lot better living standards than we do now.

Yes the issue are ultra rich and yes they will propaganda everything to hide it keep it safe.

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

#389

Post by oramit »

__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…

I definitely listed the most egregious rules first. Those silly and overbearing laws exist though and have the same force as entirely valid ones like keeping trees along the coast to avoid erosion.

In isolation each rule is defensible (to varying degrees), but when we step back and look at the whole, we've created a regulatory environment that is hostile to development at every step. It's death by a thousand cuts. Big government through a massive collection of tiny rules.

Therein lies the real problem and why this keeps getting worse. There's no political will (probably because there's no political reward) in doing that sort of systemic analysis of the rules. What is actually essential? What is nice to have? What would be great but increases costs so much that it's not worth it?

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

#390

Post by lo_zamoyski »

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 [...] Everyone has their own bar, restaurant, theatre, and community center. [...] the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars.

Most families don't live in 3-4k sq homes. The average newly built house today is a little over 2k sqft, and most houses are not newly built. Unless you are seriously stretching their definitions, most do not have their own "bar", "restaurant", "theater", and "community center".

A house or apartment should follow a kind of "fractal" pattern that mirrors private and public spaces that encircle it or that it contains. A town should have a town center. This is the public square. For towns large enough, you'll have neighborhoods with squares or parks that are the public meeting place for the neighborhood, but more "private" in relation to the town. Each neighborhood is divided into housing units. An apartment building should have a public space for the apartment buildings, like a courtyard, that is proper to the building, but private in relation to the neighborhood. Within each apartment building, there should be a living room + dining area that function as the public space of the apartment, but which is private in relation to the apartment building (the same principle holds if we replace "apartment building + apartment unit" with "individual house"). The ultimate private space is the bedroom.

Of course, this is idealized, but this is a principle we see in traditional architecture and one that makes sense and respects human nature and supports human flourishing instead of trying to impose some weird, inhuman, Procrustean invention on people to check off some boxes. The things you mention, like bars, restaurants, theaters, and community centers, would appear chiefly in town and neighborhood centers. But they don't replace the living room, the kitchen, and the dining room.

EDIT: Ah, and I would define "neighborhood" in terms of walkability. I should be able to get to the town square by walking in a reasonable about of time.

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