Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage • Hacker News Board

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

#751

Post by foxyv » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 4:33 PM UTC

deadbabe wrote: post #638

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…

Stop trying to imply we should be in these 600 sqft shoeboxes where the only escape is to go outside in a dirty urban city and walk around. I want a large home I can decorate, with lots of light to keep me happy, and space to invite friends and host a variety of activities, a garden I can tend to and see animals, or just be at peace enjoying the quiet tranquility of not being attached to a neighbor. If I had no choic…

I'm not saying we should bulldoze all the single family homes and make everyone live in filing cabinets. What I'm saying is people should be free to choose. We want the people who enjoy living in cities to have a place to live IN the city. This makes it so they don't have to spread out across the country side ruining farms, natural areas, and stuff that is better out in the country.

In fact, this would make it easier for you to afford a single family home and make your experience much more pleasant. You wouldn't have 10 neighbors complaining about the sounds and smells of your animals or report you to code enforcement for your plants growing too tall. You also wouldn't have thousands of cars going by with broken exhausts as people commute to work.

In addition, you could live much closer to cities to go see sporting events and concerts because the availability of single family housing would be much better. Also, your race tracks, animal rescues, nature parks, hunting areas, and other rural features wouldn't be regulated to death by massive suburban developments taking over.

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

#752

Post by foxyv » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 4:38 PM UTC

Sophistifunk wrote: post #620

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…

This idea that the problem with western society is that we allow people to live in detached houses with yards instead of inner-city apartment buildings is bollocks. People need privacy, something to work on, freedom to move about, and agency over their environment to thrive psychologically. That's why prison is the opposite of this. "Something to work on" is partially being met by video games, and it's not going well…

I want people to have the freedom to build what they want on their own land. I want people to have the freedom to live where they want and how they want.

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

#753

Post by foxyv » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 4:44 PM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #269

ilamont wrote: post #186

I am building a house in a rural area, where land is cheap. Building is not. Timber is certainly expensive, but you know what else costs a lot? All the other stuff, much of it subject to state building codes that get more restrictive every year. Asbestos survey, assessment, abatement: $10k Asbestos air monitoring: $1k Tipping fees: 20k Spray foam insulation: $27k Foundation $50k Solar: 40k (not including rebates/ince…

Spray foam insulation: $27k Got to say using spray foam to insulate the wall cavities instead of using external insulation over the structural elements is about the worst idea ever. Also how much solar can you buy for $27k? Enough to supply 60kwh a day to run a heat pump.

Building a perfect wall with external insulation is kind of expensive and hard to get approved by an inspector. It's much easier to just do it the way everyone else does and follow national building code.

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

#754

Post by foxyv » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 4:47 PM UTC

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #703

We learned from the great fire of London not to build all your tall houses out of wood

Wood framing can be just as fireproof as steel and concrete. This is why drywall is so popular for interior finishing.

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

#755

Post by foxyv » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

dogman144 wrote: post #199

I hope large scale timber construction doesn’t occur exclusively because of the impact on our forests. Between the pine beetles, fires, the many many stumps from the last round of serious logging years… our national forests and surrounding un-designated forests could use a break from a possible sharp uptick in demand. If you support ideas like this which help largely sub/urban areas by using out of sight out of mind…

Mass timber construction will reduce the amount of lumber needed for housing. A large timber 100 unit multi-family dwelling will use WAY less material than a hundred single family homes.

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

#756

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 4:52 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #729

giantg2 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"that's 67% percent of the homeless." The data does not support that. You cannot simply subtract 33 from 100 and claim affordability is the primary factor. Mental illness is not the only factor affecting employability. You have substance abuse, criminal records, etc that all prevent people from finding employment.

> You have substance abuse, criminal records, etc that all prevent people from finding employment. Those all respectively represent a small fraction of the whole, and there's usually overlap. You cannot add them all up as though they are completely separate parts of that 100%. Ultimately affordability is the primary factor, it's indisputable.

I'm not saying to ads them up! Please read my comment, as I very clearly stated that there was overlap.

"Ultimately affordability is the primary factor, it's indisputable."

What comprises affordability? It's cost and income. It does not matter what the cost is if you have no income because you have employability issues. Until you fix the employment aspect, the cost aspect is moot.

You can point to a poor quality blog post that doesn't examine all the factors all you want. Perhaps that makes it "indisputable" in your own mind, but thats not going to convince people who want to have real conversation about the root of the issue.

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

#757

Post by tmnvix » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

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.

> What causes more demand? - more people.

Also, a speculative boom, cheap credit, and a burgeoning short term rental market among other things.

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

#758

Post by bobthepanda » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #694

hibikir wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

i mean, this behavior is similar to how surges work with taxis and rideshares, and the end result was that congestion increased. https://news.mit.edu/2021/ride-sharing-intensifies-urban-roa...

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

#759

Post by red-iron-pine » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

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.

the problem isn't the people, is that most of the country ranges from "fairly uninhabitable" to "dangerously uninhabitable".

foreigners aren't moving to rural Manitoba, they're all going to a handful of areas, most of which are in the furthers south parts of the country (e.g. Vancouver, and Greater Toronto), which also happen to have the mildest weather.

Australia is seeing a similar trend -- influx of people, not much (viable) land.

also keep in mind this demand is simply to keep up with population loss, and demand on the system for pensions, healthcare, and support for the Boomers. the Liberal party is ultimately still pro-capitalism, and they need to balance out these dying old people; "stonks only go up", so we need more consumption.

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

#760

Post by dionidium » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 5:19 PM UTC

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…

This is sort of true, but confused, because it's land that has value, not housing, and the value of land increases when it's upzoned. [0]

[0] It's of course not increased when government unilaterally constructs low-income housing without reference to market conditions, which is why it's important to assure homeowners that this is not what upzoning entails.