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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

#431

Post by foxyv »

tschellenbach wrote: post #383
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.

Also, the absurd level of car ownership is dragging us down a lot. The fact that old people who should absolutely not be driving HAVE to drive is absurd. If we could make it so only 50% of people NEED a car it would be a huge step in the right direction. Right now there are 0.9 cars per person in the United States. Those cars take up tons of valuable space and resources.

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

#432

Post by tomcar288 »

foxyv wrote: post #342
adamisom wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you want to live in a mansion and can afford it I say "All the power to you!" But all the rest of us will be happy to live in an affordable place where we can get a slice of pizza and a cold beer without driving 20 minutes. Also, I know I want to see that homeless person begging for food living in an affordable community that has plenty of extra economic power to provide all the Panda Express he can eat! You are n…

eating out at panda express or other fast food restaurants is quite the luxury and not achievable every day for most of society. I'm always perplexed that a poorer person would ask for something so costly. At costco I can get whole wheat for about 70c per pound. Which means I can make an entire days worth of bread for just 80c. Beans, 2$/day, greens are mostly free if you know what to look for and where, or grow it. These are all about x10 to x20 cheaper than panda express or other fast food.

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

#433

Post by typewithrhythm »

foxyv wrote: post #310
majormajor wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 absur…

Density spoils many of these examples, being in close proximity to a random collection of people has downsides. Why would I go to a theatre with people who cough and talk, when I can spend a couple of months wage to have a better experience? Why would I go to a crowded expensive bar when I could have the space to host at home?

People pay for the better experience, there are very few places where the apartment experience is desirable, only some where it's a bit less shit.

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

#434

Post by rayiner »

NewJazz wrote: post #378
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 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,…

You can do those things if you get a seat, which you generally cannot during commuting hours in any city where public transit is good enough to be popular.

I commuted for awhile between Baltimore and DC on Amtrak and apart from being hellaciously unreliable it was great for working. But my commute from the upper west side to east midtown when I lived in NYC was completely different—being crammed into the 1/2/3 and then fighting through the masses to take the S across town.

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

#435

Post by __egb__ »

MostlyStable wrote: post #361
__egb__ wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 squar…

> …hundreds to thousands of such rules and the vast majority of them are _not_ that important.

And you base that on…?

> How does not wanting houses to flood relate to setbacks, minimum square footage, lot size, etc. requirements?

Here, minimum lot sizes are based on public/private water/sewer. We’re on well water so we need room for the well. We’re on public sewer, however, so we don’t need room for a septic tank.

As mentioned in other comments, minimum lot size also relates to infrastructure requirements. Here, it’s not as simple as just widening the current road or building another road through the narrow parts of our peninsula.

Setbacks are also related to stormwater management. Tree protection requirements, again, stormwater management and erosion control.

> Literally no one is saying "get rid of every single development regulation".

But you think that there are only an “_extremely_ small” number of valid regulations. You and the other comment I replied to seemed dismissive of specific rules that are vital to the survival—not just value, but physical survival—of my neighborhood.

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

#436

Post by tomcar288 »

VintageCool wrote: post #353
akira2501 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do these laws serve no other purpose other than to prevent building? Which of these laws can be discarded to 'solve' the housing problem? Which should we keep?

https://indyweek.com/news/opinions/op-ed-the-purpose-of-zoni... https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/06/17/... Some of the housing regulations were legitimately put in place for safety reasons to protect people. Others were put in place to keep black and Asian people out. Especially after government initiatives to prevent discrimination in housing like the 1968 Fair Housing Act, efforts to keep out m…

but it's a lot more than that. Blue cities are by far the worst offenders at anti-housing regulations. part of it must be that people are funadamentally extremely conservative when it comes to housing.

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

#437

Post by lapetitejort »

rayiner wrote: post #424
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…

> 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. What’s a properly designed city? Even in Tokyo a car usually beats the train unless it’s an inter-regional trip. Im a huge Japan nerd and love their train system. But I just got back from carting three kids around Tokyo a…

I would rather sit in a train for 69 minutes than sit in a car for 45 minutes. In a car if my attention slips for a second I can kill myself and others. In a train if I fall asleep I may have to take another train.

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

#438

Post by foxyv »

majormajor wrote: post #327
foxyv wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 absur…

> 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. What theater are you used to that lets you pick what's shown for $10, vs just a dozen or two movies at once? > 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. What restaurants are you g…

I'm not saying that no one will want their own mansion far away from the city. I'm just saying that a lot of people don't want to pay for their own movie theatre and restaurant size kitchen. Some people just want a tiny kitchen in a house near a theatre and some amazing restaurants that costs 1/10th of what a mansion costs.

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

#439

Post by robocat »

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…

> That's the point of it being "forced saving".

It isn't really savings: it is a giant Ponzi scheme that depends upon the population cohorts aging and working and getting mortgages.

I'm in New Zealand and immigration is a primary driver for our house prices. Overseas owners will also drive house prices when we allow that again (our economy is strong but I suspect we will need to sell the family silver eventually).

If you are below 50 it is difficult to apply your implicit knowledge of the current steady-state to the future.

Italy and Japan have houses for sale at $0.

> saving [that] will typically be available to them in retirement

Currently.

I'm suggesting to try and take care to avoid inductive reasoning when looking locally at older cohorts and applying your knowledge of their experiences to your planning.

Of course as an individual you don't have a lot of choices to avoid the economics of your particular cohort. Understanding and mitigating your personal economic risks is trés difficult.

Using the word "savings" for your house is extremely self-deceptive in the longer term IMHO. Especially because the vast majority of what you spend is on interest not principal. I'm not saying paying for interest is avoidable or worthwhile, just that using the word savings misleads oneself.

Plus I deeply mistrust governments to do long term planning. The biggest drivers of our economic wealth seems to be unplanned emergent results of capitalism. Governments will turn to taxation and other means when an aging population turns out to be a problem. Our Green Party in New Zealand with about 10% of the MMP vote already suggested a policy of a wealth tax if you had saved over $1 million.

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

#440

Post by dividefuel »

foxyv wrote: post #310
majormajor wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 absur…

I think these preferences just aren't universal is the problem, as shown by the disagreement in this thread. For me, many of these things I'd rather enjoy in my own home because the additional comfort and privacy is something that I highly value. That is, I'm willing to pay more not because my community doesn't offer it, but because I value being able to define my own experience.

That said though, I do agree that community options are missing in many American towns/cities today, and I wish people at least had the choice.

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