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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

#601

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are not met by their community

An existing trend that was accelerated by years of lockdown.

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

#602

Post by nradov »

ip26 wrote: post #584
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…

I don’t think sfh have been foisted on us by stupid or conniving urban planners. It’s more interesting to ask why people don’t want to live in multi family dwellings. For example, if hearing your neighbors is a big part of the problem, would building code requiring sound baffling in every multi family start tipping the scales? Or if crazy neighbors was the issue, what about legal structures that let residents approve…

Some multi-family housing operates as co-ops where existing owners vote on who is allowed to buy a unit. That can help to an extent. But some boards abuse their authority to discriminate against protected classes. And a board can't necessarily prevent an existing owner from allowing a crazy relative to move in.

https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/law-and-et...

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

#603

Post by theendisney »

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…

It was facinating to see a pub ran by a landlord at the bottom floor of an 11 floor student dwelling with 16 rooms, 4 toilets, 4 shower a shared area with giant kitchen per floor. Each had something like 3 bar shifts usually taken up by someone else, the thing was "open" all night and beer on the tap was much cheaper than the store. It paid no rent, needed no licenses and didn't have any tax obligations. As no one knew what to do with the pinball profit it was frequently not allowed to pay for beer.

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

#604

Post by closeparen »

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…

We are decentralizing things. That's what the housing crisis is: people being forced to accept less central locations than they would like. It turns that being the one who gets decentralized sucks, people it happens to generally resent it, and others are willing to make serious tradeoffs to their household budgets or else the dignity of their living conditions, in order to remain central.

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

#605

Post by samirillian »

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…

Partially, yes, but you have to mix in the whole idea of treating your house or houses as your retirement plan, which is a screwy, self-perpetuating economic system. It takes a lot of capital to construct an apartment building, and greed seems the only way capital is directed towards housing in the US.

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

#606

Post by closeparen »

foxyv wrote: post #394
philwelch wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

These things are not in conflict. It's very easy to build 100% car-dependent high-density residential. Just cut a subdivision off an arterial and chuck a 5-over-1 or some townhouses in there. That's the vast majority of multifamily development by volume.

Multifamily housing is valuable against car-dependence in the context of a city street grid with mixed use zones or at least somewhat proximate neighborhood commercial zones. Then the people living there actually have destinations they can walk to, and routes they can bike or take transit on that aren't "snake around to the subdivison's one interface to the 6-lane arterial, and try not to die on it."

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

#607

Post by adamisom »

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…

I may have not been clear that someone begged me inside the Panda Express. Likewise, someone recently begged me inside a favorite cafe. These were both first-time incidents.

I assume--no, hope--people misread me, and thought I meant 'on the way to/back'. If not, I'm horrified: it is not normal, and should not be normalized.

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

#608

Post by failuser »

scoofy wrote: post #273
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…

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…

More like people who can afford houses want bigger houses. If selling more affordable smaller houses made more profit then they would be sold.

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

#609

Post by theendisney »

avar wrote: post #593
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…

> you don't SIT on the train > at all in rush hour! The horror!

Imagine the travelers all sitting in large cars and you have a good picture of how much space that consumes.

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

#610

Post by mjevans »

bobthepanda wrote: post #555
nradov wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who currently live in San Francisco/San Jose don't particularly want to turn it into a global metropolis and don't give a damn about abstract concepts like "cultural relevance". Cultural elitists should have some humility and not presume that they know best. Another option would be to set policies that encourage greater economic development and job growth in Stockton so that residents aren't forced to com…

The Los Angeles example pretty much proves that spinning out employment into multiple areas does not mean people will just move to the closest area to their job; it just adds another destination to the list of "places people drive an hour to." It is not really that people living in Stockton already are commuting into the Bay, but Bay Area workers are being displaced into Stockton. The Bay Area has added more jobs tha…

LA _could_ be much more like Tokyo if USA cared to make mass transit work.

    # Service accurate enough to set a clock by.
    # Service mesh that provides walk-able freedom.
    # Safety and cleanliness (both a culture and enforcement issue)
Yes, there would need to be a slight increase in density as well as much more transit service; but that metro area could scale up were there enough water.
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