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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

#691

Post by foofie »

bobthepanda wrote: post #75
foofie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. I think that most jurisdictions already have the legal tools they need to put the public good in front of special interest groups, in the form of eminent domain laws. It's just that the policial will is just not there.

Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. Really this is a case where states should pre-empt localities.

> Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights.

I don't understand what point you tried to make.

Fair market value is what you expect to pay anyway, and the point of eminent domain is not to fleece property owners.

Legal disputes are also not a problem, and quite expectable. It's part of the checks and balances of not having corrupt government officials just steal property to hand it over to the highest bidder.

The key factor is political will. Government officials need to fight to get this sort of project through, and be able to invest their time and effort to navigate political chicanery.

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

#692

Post by deepfriedchokes »

lispisok wrote: post #651

People debating about what kind of housing to build are getting ahead of themselves. The housing crisis is intentional. Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. They way to do that is to keep supply lower than demand. The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis tha…

Maybe we should just figure out different incentives to make housing people profitable?

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

#693

Post by kombookcha »

kortilla wrote: post #685
shiroiushi wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Another problem is a vast majority of people want to / have to live in a very few select places. It's been like this since the dawn of civilization, and it isn't going to change. There's no substitute for physical proximity, unless you can invent the teleporter. >We could alleviate housing costs by changing that as well; back to supply and demand. No, you can't. You can't force people to want to live in the sticks.…

> You can't force people to want to live in the sticks. Most people don’t dream of living in Sunnyvale. They are there because of the job. Any small city would be a fine substitution for many people.

Unfortunately I think the bump to WFH during the pandemic just further underlined this. A lot of tech people moved places away from where they work, or took distant remote jobs, only to suddenly have their employer demanded (some) physical presence.

If a significant amount of jobs truly were completely remote, those people could disseminate away from the big population centers and alleviate housing shortages, but that can't happen because full remote is fairly rare and can evaporate with an abruptness that isn't suitable to build big decisions like mortgages on. If you lose your job and your mortgage is tied to a place with a lot of work, you're probably okay. If it's tied to the sticks, you might find yourself trapped.

So everyone stays in Sunnyvale.

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

#694

Post by cameldrv »

hibikir wrote: post #623
cameldrv wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you don't want empty AVs roaming around the streets. There probably needs to be some sort of government intervention to discourage this behavior. Here's what's possible though: 1. Shared ride AVs can deliver multiple people per trip to their jobs, and they can also make multiple trips in the morning, and multiple trips in the evening. Private cars generally take one person, have to sit in a parking spot all day,…

Traffic is just cars times miles. If all your cars are parked far away from their final destination, all you are doing is adding total miles traveled. Those don't just have basic operation costs, but create yet another kind of traffic: Just like how an elementary school creates more traffic than a high school, because pickups and drop offs require more miles than just having the car parked in the right spots. So inst…

I'm a bit more positive on SDCs.

First, there's traffic, and there's parking. The claim you're making is that the lack of need for parking in dense areas creates traffic while the SDCs go to park. That may be true, but if the SDCs are delivering say, 5-9 people to work every day between shared rides and multiple trips, the fact that one SDC then has to make an extra drive out of the business district, at the end of the morning rush hour is not that significant.

The hope is also that SDC driving behavior is also a lot more consistent and predictable, leading to more smoothly flowing traffic. Sometimes a few crazy drivers, or worse, drivers that cause accidents, can foul up traffic massively. I'd expect that this would be reduced in a mostly SDC world.

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

#695

Post by donavanm »

SoftTalker wrote: post #677
whartung wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we recently upgraded to a new build, selling off our 50 year old house. We had to relocated to a different area, because the only houses in our area were...50 year old houses. And swapping from one 50 year old house to another one didn't make a lot of sense to us. Mind, we had done remodeling, new kitchen, new baths, new roof, new windows, new HVAC, insulation, "more sound proof" dry wall, structural engineering…

The tubing is called PEX I believe and it seems to be what is used these days, replacing cemented PVC and soldered copper. Some codes (commercial buildings?) may require copper but I believe PEX is used everywhere it can be, it's easy to work with, durable, and connections almost never leak.

Yes. PEX is a specific type, and general term for, modern polyethylene supply tubing. Both materials and labor costs are around half of residential copper. Unless you have a really specific reason new plumbing is going to be PEX supply and PVC/ABS waste. PEX service lifetime is in the 30-50 year range, copper is 50-100 depending on wall thickness.

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

#696

Post by alecco »

lispisok wrote: post #651

People debating about what kind of housing to build are getting ahead of themselves. The housing crisis is intentional. Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. They way to do that is to keep supply lower than demand. The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis tha…

s/homeowners/landlords/

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

#697

Post by Dylan16807 »

alecco wrote: post #696
lispisok wrote: post #651

People debating about what kind of housing to build are getting ahead of themselves. The housing crisis is intentional. Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. They way to do that is to keep supply lower than demand. The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis tha…

s/homeowners/landlords/

How many landlords are there, and how many homeowners are there?

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

#698

Post by akvadrako »

adverbly wrote: post #343
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…

I'd argue the solution is even simpler and has been known for decades. Land value tax.

I agree LVT is at least worth trying. There seems to be something about simple solutions that makes people distrust them.

We are more likely to get a 10000-page micro-managing land use policy with a whole new agency that can never hope to be as efficient as a single flat tax and free market.

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

#699

Post by giantg2 »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #663
giantg2 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Markets with a housing shortage have record low inventories and record low uninhabited units." So you admit there are markets that do not? That's my point - distribution of housing across the country .

Yes, we could all sleep in tents and live off the land if we truly wanted to. What a great point. Tell me where I could move where housing hasn't doubled in price in the last 5 years AND has employment for a family.

"Yes, we could all sleep in tents and live off the land if we truly wanted to."

Great strawman.

"Tell me where I could move where housing hasn't doubled in price in the last 5 years AND has employment for a family."

In the vast majority of country housing cost has gone up but has not doubled in the past 5 years. Many medium sized cities and suburbs have employment to support a family while not being outrageously priced. You can even find lists made by various organizations for the most affordable cities. Also, if you care to read the context in this thread, I do acknowledge that a part of the problem is people wanting/needing to live in the same place.

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

#700

Post by wwalexander »

alecco wrote: post #696
lispisok wrote: post #651

People debating about what kind of housing to build are getting ahead of themselves. The housing crisis is intentional. Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. They way to do that is to keep supply lower than demand. The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis tha…

s/homeowners/landlords/

s/homeowners/\0, landlords/
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