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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

#781

Post by SoftTalker »

wstrange wrote: post #750
donavanm wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm going to try it on my next project. I've done copper, I'm OK at soldering ("sweating") but far from a pro and sometimes I get leaks which is super annoying. And depending where you are working there's a real risk of starting a fire.

PVC and CPVC has never leaked for me but the cleaning solvent and the cement is messy, once you apply the cement you have only seconds to join the fittings, and the fumes give me a headache.

PEX sounds great because you can run it around bends (up to a point) without extra fittings and you don't need cement or solder.

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

#782

Post by shiroiushi »

sofixa wrote: post #567
rayiner wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 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 see lots of people watching movies/series or reading books (physical or ebooks) while standing up in various Paris transit during rush hour.

Same here in Tokyo. No eating though: you're not supposed to eat or drink on trains, for good reason. (Though sometimes people do sometimes)

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

#783

Post by lelanthran »

m_fayer wrote: post #766
rickydroll wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physical and mental health is better out of the city than in it. For some people. I'm one of those out-of-the-city-is-better people. However, I would never try to force it on anyone as it would make them miserable and ruin the country for people who want to be there. Sadly, it is difficult to keep city lights in the city.

I wrote medium-to-high density, which means anything between city and "walkable town with a core". This doesn't preclude detached homes. It does preclude sprawling car-centric suburbia, which is similar to rural isolation in terms of the effects it has on the most people's mental health.

> It does preclude sprawling car-centric suburbia, which is similar to rural isolation in terms of the effects it has on the most people's mental health.

Come on now: "Surburbia has more negative effects of people's mental health than high-density living" sounds like both pure conjecture and wishful thinking on your part.

Were there any measurements actually done? What are you basing this assertion on?

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

#784

Post by cpursley »

Symmetry wrote: post #777
cpursley wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the US approach you get more walkable neighborhoods Have you actually ever spent time in a post-Soviet country? Their cities are an order of magnitude more walkable than literally anywhere in the US. And that's ignoring their much better mix of uses (ground floor retail, etc) and access to public spaces (by foot).

No I haven't but I'm not trying to draw a distinction between the average post-Soviet neighborhood and the average US neighborhood. I'm trying to draw a distinction between Le Corbusier's vision of urbanism (still better than US suburbs!) and Jane Jacbos's, which in the rare cases where the US builds dense it actually hits decently well.

I’m unfamiliar with Jane Jacobs, where can I read up more on that?

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

#785

Post by [deleted] »

bombcar wrote: post #775
robocat wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is another floor; the cost to build new housing Mostly irrelevant in an older city so long as there is a large number of older less-desirable houses in the market. And new houses become old houses in 2-3 decades. Only the people that can afford a new home need to buy a new one. Building prices do drag up prices, but I don't believe they set a floor unless most everything available is greenfield.

But if you're densifying you're often knocking down those older homes. And so the only way to keep the older homes is to have newer homes being built somewhere - which fights against density.

[deleted]

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

#786

Post by tacocataco »

bombcar wrote: post #387
creer wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which government? Your block? street? school district? Transit district? region? state? country? Even then, a country that needs immigrants to operate? Even then in a town here, most of the electrorate is renters, but most people who actually vote are homeowners. And a public library district found it better to "protect themselves" with a card fee for non-residents rather than open access to all state residents (like…

> Even then in a town here, most of the electorate is renters, but most people who actually vote are homeowners. At some point you have to give up; if the electorate doesn't even bother caring enough to vote, what can you do?

You could make third parties viable with an alternative electoral system such as Ranked Choice voting.

Replacing First Past The Post voting with an alternative voting system will eliminate any chance of a spoiler effect. People could feel safe in the fact that if the party that best represents them doesn't make it, their vote will continue to be counted throughout the election.

More political parties means more representation, and a bigger portion of the population being involved in the electoral process.

More competition means higher quality representation, even from established parties.

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

#787

Post by Kbelicius »

lelanthran wrote: post #783
m_fayer wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote medium-to-high density, which means anything between city and "walkable town with a core". This doesn't preclude detached homes. It does preclude sprawling car-centric suburbia, which is similar to rural isolation in terms of the effects it has on the most people's mental health.

> It does preclude sprawling car-centric suburbia, which is similar to rural isolation in terms of the effects it has on the most people's mental health. Come on now: "Surburbia has more negative effects of people's mental health than high-density living" sounds like both pure conjecture and wishful thinking on your part. Were there any measurements actually done? What are you basing this assertion on?

Makes sense. A quick search shows that there is research on this subject and results seem to agree with GP.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230529/Study-shows-link-...

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

#788

Post by tacocataco »

mrkstu wrote: post #65
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…

Well, depends on the level of government you're talking about. If it is local, then if local homeowners (who are local voters) don't want the development, it is eminently 'democratic.'

Given how loosely the Interstate Commerce Clause has been interpreted in the past, why not say people from out of state want to live there and it's interstate commerce?

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

#789

Post by danlugo92 »

dionidium wrote: post #760
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.

I'm not american but if most people in America can right now classify as low income (paycheck to paycheck) then open up the floodgates on low-income housing everywhere?

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

#790

Post by danlugo92 »

thworp wrote: post #741
vanilla_nut wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

> consistently lower rent and property price growth

That's not a bad thing at all.

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