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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

#741

Post by thworp »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #730
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…

Why do housing prices go up? Partially inflation. But mostly because purchasing a house and renting it out is massively profitable, state subsidized, and a safe way to invest a store of wealth. Owners of capital seek out niches with good risk:value ratios. Look at housing prices over the last 5 years: even if your investment home sat empty, it's probably gone up 70% or more in price. Rent is just profit on top of tho…

If there was any validity to what you're saying, why do places with more permissive zoning and less insane permitting processes see consistently lower rent and property price growth (see: Austin, Minneapolis)?

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

#742

Post by lelanthran »

cheschire wrote: post #722
lelanthran wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter what you do, some places are more desirable than others to live in, and the end up attracting a premium. > Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. Bypassing the will of the voters is ... difficult. It's not impossible to force your moral mores onto voters who don't want it, but it sure ain't easy, and it ain't easy for good reason! > The first step to fixing the housing c…

While I agree with your general premise, I'm not convinced that remote work is the driver we should rely on. As a peer comment mentioned, infrastructure is a weak point right now, and remote work would add another dynamic that would make the situation more risky instead of less. Up front though, I should clarify I am a huge proponent FOR remote work. The rest of this is focused on why remote work should not be a foun…

> The instability we would introduce through this would likely lead to corporate funded infrastructure being stood up to ensure remote workers maintain access to cloud computing. I believe the company town concept [0] would make a comeback.

I'm not following this argument for two reasons:

1. I don't see corporate-funded infrastructure being stood up nationwide across a nation because the local services in a few places are not up to scratch. IMHO, those few places just won't get the migrants from the cities.

2. Even if the corporations built private infrastructure to support WFH, I don't see a probability of that leading to something like a company-town concept. IOW, I don't see how "Microsoft built private infrastructure to ensure WFH works" leads to "A Microsoft town in those places that has the MS infrastructure." After all, even if the alternative is unreliable, it's still there!. In company towns, your actual dollar was close to worthless - you had to spend it elsewhere.

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

#743

Post by opo »

nojvek wrote: post #726

Playing devil's advocate here. What causes housing shortage - more demand than supply. What causes more demand? - more people. IMO an ever increasing population isn't a good thing if the economy can't absorb them at an equilibrium of demand and supply. Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move. Great for house prices but it takes it's toll.

>...Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move.

Do you have a citation for that number? Most sources say Canada takes in about 1/2 that:

>...Currently, annual immigration in Canada amounts to almost 500,000 new immigrants – one of the highest rates per population of any country in the world. As of 2023, there were more than eight million immigrants with permanent residence living in Canada - roughly 20 percent of the total Canadian population.

https://www.statista.com/topics/2917/immigration-in-canada/#...

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

#744

Post by bombcar »

jghn wrote: post #739
bombcar wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll trade you my 40s house for a todayhouse any day of the week. Sure, there are bad builders and if you're having something custom built you need to educate yourself (or hire someone trustworthy to monitor), but there are so many things much better than a 50 year old house, at least if you're in a climate that has lots of degree days. Maybe in San Diego it doesn't matter as much. Of course, the shittiest 50 year ol…

It's a tradeoff, as you allude to at the end. Our house is a mid-1800s build. Thus it's safe to say that there's some survival bias at work and it was solid enough to persevere. There are things our friends with newer houses go through that we never experience. On other hand, we have our own issues. retrofitting modern benefits is difficult, at best.

It also varies on location, too - around here the 1800s houses are decent "all around" except for what you'd expect for an almost 200 year old building.

But in other areas I've lived houses that old will have major issues that have to be remedied eventually (as my builder there said, the tops and bottoms are shit, the middle is great - because the river rock foundation would crumble to dust eventually, and the roofs were basket cases) - costing hundreds of thousands.

And most of them were marked historic, making it even worse.

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

#745

Post by tonymet »

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…

now let's talk about the demand side

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

#746

Post by zo1 »

lelanthran wrote: post #705
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…

Doesn't matter what you do, some places are more desirable than others to live in, and the end up attracting a premium. > Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. Bypassing the will of the voters is ... difficult. It's not impossible to force your moral mores onto voters who don't want it, but it sure ain't easy, and it ain't easy for good reason! > The first step to fixing the housing c…

Just want to point out that people already "take a financial hit" in the form of taxes. I don't agree with it, but we pay taxes for a reason. So the answer may not lie in asking for "more", but rather in doing "better" or more "targeted" things with the money we already give out every month "for the greater good".

I've many times recommended we allow the populace to take a more hands-on approach when it comes to determining where tax-money should be allocated. E.g. I want 20% of federal war spending to be redirected to housing. Oh, what's that, we don't all agree? Well then, good sir, take 20% of my portion of tax money that currently goes to war spending and allocate only that to housing.

/not being snarky with the quotes, btw, that's just how it came out of my brain.

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

#747

Post by foxyv »

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…

> I don’t think sfh have been foisted on us by stupid or conniving urban planners.

No, it's been foisted on us by corrupt local city officials and massive suburban developers. They have systemically destroyed our city centers turning them into freeways while banning any other construction.

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

#748

Post by Tiktaalik »

shortsunblack wrote: post #732
Tiktaalik wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concrete is bad for the environment and strongly arguably worse than mass timber, which is a reason why folks are pushing mass timber. Concrete development for buildings produces a lot of CO2 and from that POV mass timber is better. Logging harms animal habitat, but so does gravel mining.

Concrete sequesters carbon from air. In its lifetime, it is expected to sequester all the carbon associated with its emissions. And of course, concrete lasts much longer than any timber structure even in idealized conditions for timber. And concrete industry is innovative. R&D is being done how to reduce emissions associated with kilns. Concrete will long be zero carbon before forestry becomes sustainable. We have ma…

I expect both the Concrete industry amongst every other industry is working hard to find ways to reduce emissions.

This does not change the fact that the Concrete industry generates an enormous amount of CO2 emissions right now. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46455844

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

#749

Post by wstrange »

opo wrote: post #743
nojvek wrote: post #726

Playing devil's advocate here. What causes housing shortage - more demand than supply. What causes more demand? - more people. IMO an ever increasing population isn't a good thing if the economy can't absorb them at an equilibrium of demand and supply. Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move. Great for house prices but it takes it's toll.

>...Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move. Do you have a citation for that number? Most sources say Canada takes in about 1/2 that: >...Currently, annual immigration in Canada amounts to almost 500,000 new immigrants – one of the highest rates per population of any country in the world. As of 2023, there were more than eight million immigrants with permanent residence liv…

BMO Economics: The government of Canada has overshot its immigration targets by 300%

https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/comments/1at7nbq/bmo...

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

#750

Post by wstrange »

donavanm wrote: post #695
SoftTalker wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And if you are a DIYer, PEX is super easy to work with.
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