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

#81

Post by afavour » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:33 PM UTC

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.'

I think it's an interesting question.

If I stop my neighbor from building an extension that's 1v1. Doesn't map easily to "democracy". Now, if I and the neighbor on the other side stop our middle neighbor building an extension... it's sort of democracy? The majority decides. But what if everyone else on our street wants to allow it? Now blocking is undemocratic. Thoughout all of this my neighbor might insist they don't care what anyone thinks and they should be able to do whatever they want with their own land.

The citizens of a particular city neighborhood blocking development is democratic when looked at up close and undemocratic when looked at from afar. There aren't any easy answers and anyone pretending there are is fooling themselves.

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

#82

Post by tnel77 » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

dubcanada wrote: post #32

If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago. Saying a bunch of glulam will solve the issue is just incorrect. Wood is fantastic material. But using half a forest to build a 2000sqft house is certainly not the direction we should be going, we…

I’m not sure if this is entirely fair. I know people in the trades that have updated their technique and tools every few years the same way a software engineer would. They may be more resistant to change, but local building codes and such inherently force tradesmen to adapt at a certain point.

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

#83

Post by Althuns » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #39

How about converting offices to apartments? Thanks to home office there should be many otherwise useless offices.

The common argument against this is that these buildings were not built for residential units (plumbing, electrical, building codes) and bringing them up to residential code is prohibitively expensive. This is not untrue, but I think this is a cop-out.

What we need to do is create the systems that allow us to develop office spaces into residential spaces instead of complaining they don't exist. Create building technologies that safely convert these spaces into residential. Create the building codes that allow these conversions to be done safely but also economically. The demand is there, the supply is there, and our downtowns need this.

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

#84

Post by slothtrop » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #16

Of course timber won't fix the housing shortage. The housing shortage is artificial. There are plenty of empty units across the country. It's a distribution issue of: owners holding vacant units, people wanting/needing to live in specific locations, and individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes. With an almost stagnate population growth this isn't really a building issue even if i…

> owners holding vacant units

Check the vacancy rate in major cities.

> people wanting/needing to live in specific locations

Where the jobs are, yes.

> individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes

Mixed density and smaller builds are almost nowhere to be found, and small developers have incredible difficulty securing loans from banks to build them. The large developers focus on expensive projects that have more overhead and checks, and even there they don't build that much because they are few in number. People would opt for mixed density were it actually available.

Zoning and regs are actually among the factors that make certain projects riskier, so reform helps in this regard. Just see Minneapolis. Zoning reform works. It works so well that there is some push back from NIMBYs in those cities pissed off that their areas are changing fast.

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

#85

Post by hinkley » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:36 PM UTC

spankalee wrote: post #43

tempsy wrote: post #22

There's a shortage of detached single family homes in desirable cities and suburbs. If you just want to rent an apartment there's an oversupply from overbuilding during the pandemic.

I don't think there's much, if any, of an over supply of apartments. The people I've seen who try to teach vacancies show that new buildings get to nearly full occupancy within a year or so. That's pretty reasonable if you need to rent a few hundred units at once. If anything, there's a massive under-supply of 3+br apartments large enough for families, due to double-loaded corridor designs that are almost required to…

If you build a U shaped building you get a courtyard in the middle and you might be able to manage 6 per floor. Maybe eight with the inside corners?

But the last building I lived in shaped like that had a pair of 1 BRs at the corners, scalloped to get windows on 2 sides.

When I think of 3 bedroom apartments I think of college towns.

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

#86

Post by TylerE » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:36 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #59

spankalee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those studies are so often flawed will pieces. Houses begging sold or between tenants are counted as vacant. Vacancies in rural Pennsylvania and Kentucky don't matter much for the homeless in Oakland. What do you even do with that information? Ship the homeless around the country? Other studies should that the higher the vacancy rate the lower the homeless rate and the cheaper housing is. So we can just allow people…

If you do the right "step-up" programs and purchasable housing becomes extremely cheap around the country, it will solve itself. There are a lot of homeless people in Oakland that if found out they can buy a house in Kentucky and afford it with a restaurant dish-cleaning job, they would move. Stop treating the homeless as "shippable containers" they have agency.

Such houses do not exist. A minimum wage dish washing job barely pays enough to eat off of.

Your gross take home from a minimum wage part time job is $145/week. Before all taxes and deductions.

You can’t afford a closet is crack hiuse on that “salary” even in the boonies.

Even in my LCOL areas places that were like $400/month 5 or 6 years ago are over $1000/month.

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

#87

Post by dixie_land » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:36 PM UTC

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…

  If they don't like it, they can move.

It is funny how people criticize the US "colonialism" yet feel entitled that they should be able to move into any neighborhood and drive out current inhabitants.

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

#88

Post by lanfeust6 » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

dixie_land wrote: post #87

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…

If they don't like it, they can move. It is funny how people criticize the US "colonialism" yet feel entitled that they should be able to move into any neighborhood and drive out current inhabitants.

Who said anything about driving out? And neighborhoods belong to municipalities, voters ultimately decide, not your small cabal of neighbors.

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

#89

Post by hinkley » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

dwallin wrote: post #62

spankalee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's much, if any, of an over supply of apartments. The people I've seen who try to teach vacancies show that new buildings get to nearly full occupancy within a year or so. That's pretty reasonable if you need to rent a few hundred units at once. If anything, there's a massive under-supply of 3+br apartments large enough for families, due to double-loaded corridor designs that are almost required to…

The undersupply of 3 bedrooms is real, in many neighborhoods in my city you just can't find them. Anecdotally, the lack of 3-4 bedroom apartments has been the major driver of couples I know, who were aiming to start families and who would otherwise love to stay in my city, leaving the city for the suburbs. 3-4 bedroom units are also popular with younger folk, who are often happy to have roommates, and share amenities…

You can skate by for a few years on a 2BR, or even a 1 BR with a bonus room, but not all bonus rooms have windows and raising a baby in a cell is probably not conducive to success as an adult.

Once your second child hits grade school they should have a proper bedroom.

But in “you damn kids don’t know how good you got it” news, I’m of an age where I knew people who had to share a room with a sibling. And there was lots of talk about how that used to be more common. Those boomer kids with five siblings weren’t living in 7 bedroom mansions. They were doubled up in a four bedroom house.

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

#90

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Mar 13, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #80

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…

> the government no longer functions as intended. On the other hand it seems like it's functioning exactly as intended. The interests of the people who live in and who elect the city council are being represented just as they should be. The argument could equally be if you don't like it, build somewhere else. Do you believe communities have any right to self-determination? I would feel a bit peeved if I and all my ne…

This gets problematic as what is the right of others over your private property. What is the right of an individual property owners self determination versus the communities?