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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

#391

Post by bombcar »

mhuffman wrote: post #181
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If they don't like it, they can move. Can't you say the same for people trying to move in? There's plenty of places in the US that you can still get a house for under 200k.

>There's plenty of places in the US that you can still get a house for under 200k. I bought 3 houses all for under $20k each over the past 2 years. I use them all as rental houses. You can get waaay under $200k. The problem when you bring this up to people online is they say, "well I would never want to live there". So they are very happy to tell people that already live somewhere that they can move if they don't wan…

And no matter what you do, there will always be people who would want what they have, but cheaper.

It's triply confounded by the huge group of people who simply don't understand the math behind renting (and this includes many landlords, sadly).

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

#392

Post by looofooo0 »

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…

With mixed zone neighbourhoods with 30.000+people/km² you get everything for daily needs in Walking distance and close by metro. There is also a 120 years old concept for such neighbourhoods. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockrandbebauung

Also can be done in today s time:

https://youtu.be/XfonhlM6I7w?si=ZcnbH6lmNWuQ6oE9

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

#393

Post by turtlebits »

ilamont wrote: post #219
D13Fd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are building from scratch, why do you need an asbestos survey? What are you surveying? And does your state really require spray foam insulation and solar? Or does it require an R-value for insulation and spray foam is the easiest way to get there with your design?

Demolition of existing structures from the 1920s and 1970s. R-value required. This was the easiest/least expensive option. Solar not required. If we didn't do it, we're paying ~$5k for power every year.

Spray foam is the most expensive way to get R-value. Unless you have space constraints, or existing air sealing concerns, you should not use spray foam.

Cheapest is double stud construction + blown in.

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

#394

Post by foxyv »

philwelch wrote: post #352
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…

That’s not the reason we have a housing crisis. If you look at cities like Houston, where housing is relatively affordable, the vast majority of people still have single family homes. The reason we have a housing crisis is because regulations make it too hard to build housing.

Despite their reputation for car centric design in the suburbs, Houston is actually building a LOT of multi-family dwellings. This is helping with affordability.

https://catalyst.independent.org/2019/12/18/how-houston-is-b...

I'm also really happy with how they have handled their homeless.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-...

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

#395

Post by bombcar »

II2II wrote: post #164
afavour wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's an interesting question. If I stop my neighbor from building an extension that's 1v1. Doesn't map easily to "democracy". Now, if I and the neighbor on the other side stop our middle neighbor building an extension... it's sort of democracy? The majority decides. But what if everyone else on our street wants to allow it? Now blocking is undemocratic. Thoughout all of this my neighbor might insist they don'…

The problem with your example, and the problem in real life, is that people are making decisions at too low of a level and property rights (never mind the needs of society) are being overridden. They end up voting on how something directly affects them, and place little to no consideration for the rights of others. They push the problem onto someone else, on people who have less of a voice in the democracy. You're ri…

The whole thing gets complicated because people end up not being willing to hash out exactly what they want, and what others want, and how to work out compromises.

And general ideas always lose out to specific ones (which is why you can have an entire city that is pro-affordable housing but each example thereof is strongly fought against).

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

#396

Post by falserum »

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.

Some of those reason might be change by government policy.

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

#397

Post by TheGRS »

Analemma_ wrote: post #307
tpmoney wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Interested to see how it shakes out in Portland, we put in infill laws a few years ago and I've seen a handful of multi-family additions on previously single-family land, and even a handful of trailer or tiny homes setup on driveways (this was approved in the infill laws). And it does seem like nobody is super happy because the neighborhoods are losing a lot of their classic aesthetic. But IMO we need to let go of that eventually, otherwise everyone just has to move out to suburbs and fill that space instead (which is also happening).

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

#398

Post by turtlebits »

Isn't this obvious? I thought it is well known that zoning is the biggest problem. Add to the fact that land values in cities are out of control.

For example, I'd like to rebuild my old house, but it doesn't make financial sense to build under 4000sf as I'd be losing out to potential value as well as matching the neighborhood. I can't build a duplex or detached ADU. I don't want to spend 2 million on giant house I can't use.

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

#399

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

someguydave wrote: post #334
shortsunblack wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is fine, if they are willing to pay the full cost of it. suburbia is massively subsidized.

that's a strong statement to make across hundreds of thousands of different tax/cost situations in localities spread over all 50 states.

I'm not an expert on municipal expenses, but I'd wager that it takes a pretty unusual cost situation to render it cheaper to pave/trench/replace more miles of road/pipe/wire and maintain more service entries to serve fewer people.

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

#400

Post by bombcar »

notahacker wrote: post #148
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…

Strong homeowner protection is almost universal throughout the developed world, including regions where the cost of housing is low relative to wage levels, so whilst it may be true to say that expensive parts of the US and Europe are homeowner friendly and have restrictive planning laws it doesn't indicate any actual correlation. New York isn't super expensive because other places take advantage of greater ability to…

Homeownership protection is strong because it's one of the things that people will most strongly fight for - it's "the castle".

And almost no matter where you live, there's someplace (even nearby!) that's better (and usually more expensive).

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