6 ms·

I used to be a structural engineer, and I can tell you _exactly_ what you're giving up if you're interested. The cost difference isn't $10k vs $700k because of

I used to be a structural engineer, and I can tell you _exactly_ what you're giving up if you're interested. The cost difference isn't $10k vs $700k because of building materials. The cost difference is $5k (land) + $5k (construction) vs $600k (land) vs $100k (construction). What I've seen is that most people in the West end up thinking that that $95k difference is worth it. Let me start with a true story of what happened to me the first time I represented myself in court back around 2005. Someone had moved my motorbike to make a bit more room to park their stupid oversized Hummer. My bike was now just past the legal line so I got a $45 ticket. Outraged I vowed to bring this to court. In the pre-meeting with the prosecutor the cop didn't even remember the location of the motorcycle, let alone what was around, whereas I had drawings and the license plate number of the Hummer owner. The prosecutor said that if I plead guilty with an explanation that they would drop the charges. So that is what we did. Right afterwards I got a $40 "courtroom fee" because I'd plead guilty. That's when I learned the adage "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client". 5000 years ago children died because they crawled between the banister railings. Our building code stops that oversight. 5000 years ago houses collapsed during hurricanes. Our building codes severely reduced that. I could go on and on. The main issue isn't the building code. The issue is that it is difficult in modern cities to get the local population to agree to expanding the housing stock with taller buildings. It ruins views, it's noisy, excess supply collapses housing prices. It changes the city's charm and culture. So they elect people that slow it down.

stegosaurus 11y ago
The issue is that taking away that choice is damaging to many people. I think that the statement "most people in the West agree" glosses over an important detail - perhaps most people who have the money agree, and the others are forced to go along with it. I would far rather have a home that has 'risky banister railings' if that meant I could actually afford it. Mental health is as important as physical health, if not moreso - what's worse, risk of eviction, or having to pay attention near the stairwell? I get that this is an isolated example, but I'd take worse insulation, no solar, worse security, everything, if it meant I could get a home and slowly improve it myself with time. If that means I have to live rurally - so be it - but as far as I can tell that means living outside of the country I was born in (UK), which is quite sad.
- 3pt14159 11y ago
  I have broadly libertarian leanings too. But this isn't just about _you_. This is about your guests, your children, the person that buys your house next, the person that lives next door (in the event of a fire). I agree that the housing situation sucks right now, but the solution is to embrace smaller residences and lots of tallish buildings. I'm currently vacationing in Vietnam. It's a terrible annoyance dealing with exposed wires and crappy houses. Someone didn't have money for a drain, so they threw their (still very hot) excess soup from their pot out the window and it got all over me.
  - stegosaurus 11y ago
    I don't have children. I can't afford them. I think the solution is to move away from cities. I'm planning to do so. I'm just going to be sad if it means leaving my country because you don't want me anywhere near you, even if it means I'm on the horizon from your window.
  - eggy 11y ago
    I think you should be able to build it the way you want, and if you wish to rent it, or sell it, then it has to brought up to standards. I bought a house with deck railings that were far apart even though I had a 3 month old baby. We kept the door to the deck locked, and I installed railings the following Spring. I grew up in Brooklyn, but I now live in rural East Java, Indonesia. Yep, life is very different, but I like it. You adapt. Some people choose not to, and that is their perogative. I think rent control is a big issue in the sense that it allows people who can truly afford a higher rent, a nice lifestyle. A friend lived in TriBeca NYC, paying $600 per month for a > 2000 sq. ft. loft in an area of million dollar lofts. She could afford it, or to move to Brooklyn at the time, but did not want to leave the luxury afforded to her by rent control. It's not old people eating cat food out of cans in unheated apartments as much as people protray it. I lived in Chelsea, NYC in the late 1990s. I paid a fair rent, a lot of older people paid rent control, or their grandkids who lived there while they lived elsewhere in the suburbs. I spoke to the owner of the building, who showed me the boiler that was constantly in need of repair. He said he wanted to buy a new one, but 90% of the tenants were paying around $400 per month rent. The boiler installed was over $100K. I like to see both sides. My belief is we should do away with rent control, let the market stabilize, build affordable housing up to code, and ride the wave until it becomes a better situation. Subsidies, and delaying the solution is only creating more disparity.
wrong_variable 11y ago
I agree about all the things about safety. However, for a isolated suburban house - it made little sense to put all that measures you are talking about. If we were living in a major city - it would make more sense to add some of those things. 4 walls and a roof should not make someone bankrupt.
- vacri 11y ago
  Most of the cost of housing is not construction, but land costs. Construction costs could be $0, and it wouldn't affect affordability all that much in currently expensive areas.
Rylinks 11y ago
>excess supply collapses housing prices If this motivation was held by anyone other than random individuals and families, it would be regarded with scorn.
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  Yes. Because it is effectively a cartel. "Home is where the Cartel is" http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6287.html http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6287.html
- hacknat 11y ago
  Hear, hear! It wouldn't be America if we didn't vote to make the government prop up our poor investment decisions.
hinkley 11y ago
The Japanese have been dealing with earthquakes for eons and the housing fashion from the previous era could still crush you like a bug if the pillars give out (those tile roofs are -heavy-). I think there's a quite different lesson in these codes. What's the difference between software developers that don't have a Code and electricians or plumbers who do? Not all that much. Except that we get to spend a lot of time trying to talk people out of doing stuff using reason and logic. People who got the job they did instead of your job because they weren't quite so good at reason and logic. Pull the sort of things we deal with every day on an electrician? Fuck you, I'm not doing that, it's not to code. Now cough up the time and materials to do it right, or we're done here. Don't like it? The next guy you call is going to tell you the exact same thing. Have a nice day.
- 3pt14159 11y ago
  Careful with things like survivorship bias. Even as recently as the mid 1800s there was an earthquake that took out ton of buildings, temples, and dams in Nagano, Japan (Google Zenkōji earthquake). But I do understand and partially agree with your primary point.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    I'm not sure I understand what the parent's point was, however I thought it would be interesting to point out that there are almost no old buildings in Japan. Especially for houses, you would be really hard pressed to find more than a handful of inhabited houses that are more than 30 years old in any given city. The Japanese fashion is to knock down the old house and build a new one in it's place. There is virtually no market for old houses (and, in fact, you will often get less money trying to sell land with a house on it than if you demolish the house yourself). Of course there are lots of old temples and shrines but even those have often had every single piece replaced. I was really surprised a couple of years ago when one of the local shrines tore down their building completely and rebuilt it exactly the same! Whether this has to do with earthquakes or not, I'm not entirely sure. My wife and I have been thinking of buying a house and I keep having to remind myself that I will lose money if I ultimately sell. Our current plan is to wait until we're a bit older and then buy a not-too-old used house at a discount ;-)
hacknat 11y ago
Charming? Drive through any single family detached neighborhood in America during the summer and count how many people are actually enjoying their yards. Where you see charm some of us see waste. Grass is ugly and so are single detached family homes. Row houses look nice, so do skyscrapers. Inventing a simulacrum for the country estate and calling it a "dream" is a bad joke I'd like everyone to start laughing at. This is it. This is the mother of all bad policies in the USA! From keeping African Americans out of our neighborhoods via red lining, to increased police presence, to one generation's artificial chokehold on the housing stock. Americans should feel nothing but disgust for most of our housing policy, and single family homes should be derided as one of single worst allocation of resources the American public makes. People defend these things as lifestyle choices, and almost never live into the carrying capacity of the asset they buy. It is one lifestyle choice I feel comfortable judging. Just so no one thinks I don't have any skin in the game I do have a child.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  I live in one of those areas. I mock their attachment to yards. I do love that we have plenty of space that's ours under our rules. That's front for public stuff, back for semi-private, an insulated house for noise reduction (love that), and so on. As often is with suburbs, it's close enough to big city to get its benefits without its problems. It's all that for under a grand a month. Is all that normal for the big cities with dense, multi-story housing?
- greggman 11y ago
  My father built our 20x30ft family room add on. He built it to be sound proof enough that he could practice his drumming and not annoy the neighbors. I don't think he'd be able to do that in most apartments
- mattmanser 11y ago
  You're a delusion fool if you think row houses are nice, especially as the aesthetic of the house is the least important part of living in it. I live in the UK where they are common, they're a nightmare to live in, you can hear people arguing or babies screaming 4 houses down. A lot of houses are detached but very close to each other or semi-detached (linked to one other house). Both are far more pleasant to live in than row houses or sky scrapers.
spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
Quite so Even such a small thing as the rake on stairs can make a difference to accidents an deaths from falls.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
"...5000 years ago children died because they crawled between the banister railings. Our building code stops that oversight. 5000 years ago houses collapsed during hurricanes. Our building codes severely reduced that. I could go on and on..." Interestingly, the same thing happens in large software development shops. Somebody breaks production by doing X. So now there's a process in place never to do X (Even when it might make sense). Somebody forgets Y. So now everybody has to do Y. And so on. Overall, over time it's much easier to take out the hammer and create one-size-fits-all answers to every catastrophe that occurs. Repeat and rinse this process over several years, and you've got a software shop that's running ten times slower than everybody else.
- jeremysmyth 11y ago
  Overall, over time it's much easier to take out the hammer and create one-size-fits-all answers to every catastrophe that occurs. Repeat and rinse this process over several years, and you've got a software shop that's running ten times slower than everybody else. ...and not killing anyone. "People have to channel their creativity into changing the process," says Keller, "not changing the software." "Most people choose to spend their money at the wrong end of the process," says Munson. "In the modern software environment, 80% of the cost of the software is spent after the software is written the first time — they don't get it right the first time, so they spend time flogging it. In shuttle, they do it right the first time." "The most important things the shuttle group does — carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code — are not expensive. The process isn't even rocket science. Its standard practice in almost every engineering discipline except software engineering." http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff
thaumasiotes 11y ago
> 5000 years ago children died because they crawled between the banister railings. Actually, it's very difficult to get babies to crawl into empty space, or even onto a glass surface that looks like empty space.

stegosaurus 11y ago

The issue is that taking away that choice is damaging to many people. I think that the statement "most people in the West agree" glosses over an important detail - perhaps most people who have the money agree, and the others are forced to go along with it. I would far rather have a home that has 'risky banister railings' if that meant I could actually afford it. Mental health is as important as physical health, if not moreso - what's worse, risk of eviction, or having to pay attention near the stairwell? I get that this is an isolated example, but I'd take worse insulation, no solar, worse security, everything, if it meant I could get a home and slowly improve it myself with time. If that means I have to live rurally - so be it - but as far as I can tell that means living outside of the country I was born in (UK), which is quite sad.

3pt14159 11y ago
I have broadly libertarian leanings too. But this isn't just about _you_. This is about your guests, your children, the person that buys your house next, the person that lives next door (in the event of a fire). I agree that the housing situation sucks right now, but the solution is to embrace smaller residences and lots of tallish buildings. I'm currently vacationing in Vietnam. It's a terrible annoyance dealing with exposed wires and crappy houses. Someone didn't have money for a drain, so they threw their (still very hot) excess soup from their pot out the window and it got all over me.
- stegosaurus 11y ago
  I don't have children. I can't afford them. I think the solution is to move away from cities. I'm planning to do so. I'm just going to be sad if it means leaving my country because you don't want me anywhere near you, even if it means I'm on the horizon from your window.
- eggy 11y ago
  I think you should be able to build it the way you want, and if you wish to rent it, or sell it, then it has to brought up to standards. I bought a house with deck railings that were far apart even though I had a 3 month old baby. We kept the door to the deck locked, and I installed railings the following Spring. I grew up in Brooklyn, but I now live in rural East Java, Indonesia. Yep, life is very different, but I like it. You adapt. Some people choose not to, and that is their perogative. I think rent control is a big issue in the sense that it allows people who can truly afford a higher rent, a nice lifestyle. A friend lived in TriBeca NYC, paying $600 per month for a > 2000 sq. ft. loft in an area of million dollar lofts. She could afford it, or to move to Brooklyn at the time, but did not want to leave the luxury afforded to her by rent control. It's not old people eating cat food out of cans in unheated apartments as much as people protray it. I lived in Chelsea, NYC in the late 1990s. I paid a fair rent, a lot of older people paid rent control, or their grandkids who lived there while they lived elsewhere in the suburbs. I spoke to the owner of the building, who showed me the boiler that was constantly in need of repair. He said he wanted to buy a new one, but 90% of the tenants were paying around $400 per month rent. The boiler installed was over $100K. I like to see both sides. My belief is we should do away with rent control, let the market stabilize, build affordable housing up to code, and ride the wave until it becomes a better situation. Subsidies, and delaying the solution is only creating more disparity.

wrong_variable 11y ago

I agree about all the things about safety. However, for a isolated suburban house - it made little sense to put all that measures you are talking about. If we were living in a major city - it would make more sense to add some of those things. 4 walls and a roof should not make someone bankrupt.

vacri 11y ago
Most of the cost of housing is not construction, but land costs. Construction costs could be $0, and it wouldn't affect affordability all that much in currently expensive areas.

Rylinks 11y ago

>excess supply collapses housing prices If this motivation was held by anyone other than random individuals and families, it would be regarded with scorn.

hkmurakami 11y ago
Yes. Because it is effectively a cartel. "Home is where the Cartel is" http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6287.html http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6287.html
hacknat 11y ago
Hear, hear! It wouldn't be America if we didn't vote to make the government prop up our poor investment decisions.

hinkley 11y ago

The Japanese have been dealing with earthquakes for eons and the housing fashion from the previous era could still crush you like a bug if the pillars give out (those tile roofs are -heavy-). I think there's a quite different lesson in these codes. What's the difference between software developers that don't have a Code and electricians or plumbers who do? Not all that much. Except that we get to spend a lot of time trying to talk people out of doing stuff using reason and logic. People who got the job they did instead of your job because they weren't quite so good at reason and logic. Pull the sort of things we deal with every day on an electrician? Fuck you, I'm not doing that, it's not to code. Now cough up the time and materials to do it right, or we're done here. Don't like it? The next guy you call is going to tell you the exact same thing. Have a nice day.

3pt14159 11y ago
Careful with things like survivorship bias. Even as recently as the mid 1800s there was an earthquake that took out ton of buildings, temples, and dams in Nagano, Japan (Google Zenkōji earthquake). But I do understand and partially agree with your primary point.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what the parent's point was, however I thought it would be interesting to point out that there are almost no old buildings in Japan. Especially for houses, you would be really hard pressed to find more than a handful of inhabited houses that are more than 30 years old in any given city. The Japanese fashion is to knock down the old house and build a new one in it's place. There is virtually no market for old houses (and, in fact, you will often get less money trying to sell land with a house on it than if you demolish the house yourself). Of course there are lots of old temples and shrines but even those have often had every single piece replaced. I was really surprised a couple of years ago when one of the local shrines tore down their building completely and rebuilt it exactly the same! Whether this has to do with earthquakes or not, I'm not entirely sure. My wife and I have been thinking of buying a house and I keep having to remind myself that I will lose money if I ultimately sell. Our current plan is to wait until we're a bit older and then buy a not-too-old used house at a discount ;-)

hacknat 11y ago

Charming? Drive through any single family detached neighborhood in America during the summer and count how many people are actually enjoying their yards. Where you see charm some of us see waste. Grass is ugly and so are single detached family homes. Row houses look nice, so do skyscrapers. Inventing a simulacrum for the country estate and calling it a "dream" is a bad joke I'd like everyone to start laughing at. This is it. This is the mother of all bad policies in the USA! From keeping African Americans out of our neighborhoods via red lining, to increased police presence, to one generation's artificial chokehold on the housing stock. Americans should feel nothing but disgust for most of our housing policy, and single family homes should be derided as one of single worst allocation of resources the American public makes. People defend these things as lifestyle choices, and almost never live into the carrying capacity of the asset they buy. It is one lifestyle choice I feel comfortable judging. Just so no one thinks I don't have any skin in the game I do have a child.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
I live in one of those areas. I mock their attachment to yards. I do love that we have plenty of space that's ours under our rules. That's front for public stuff, back for semi-private, an insulated house for noise reduction (love that), and so on. As often is with suburbs, it's close enough to big city to get its benefits without its problems. It's all that for under a grand a month. Is all that normal for the big cities with dense, multi-story housing?
greggman 11y ago
My father built our 20x30ft family room add on. He built it to be sound proof enough that he could practice his drumming and not annoy the neighbors. I don't think he'd be able to do that in most apartments
mattmanser 11y ago
You're a delusion fool if you think row houses are nice, especially as the aesthetic of the house is the least important part of living in it. I live in the UK where they are common, they're a nightmare to live in, you can hear people arguing or babies screaming 4 houses down. A lot of houses are detached but very close to each other or semi-detached (linked to one other house). Both are far more pleasant to live in than row houses or sky scrapers.

spacecowboy_lon 11y ago

Quite so Even such a small thing as the rake on stairs can make a difference to accidents an deaths from falls.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

"...5000 years ago children died because they crawled between the banister railings. Our building code stops that oversight. 5000 years ago houses collapsed during hurricanes. Our building codes severely reduced that. I could go on and on..." Interestingly, the same thing happens in large software development shops. Somebody breaks production by doing X. So now there's a process in place never to do X (Even when it might make sense). Somebody forgets Y. So now everybody has to do Y. And so on. Overall, over time it's much easier to take out the hammer and create one-size-fits-all answers to every catastrophe that occurs. Repeat and rinse this process over several years, and you've got a software shop that's running ten times slower than everybody else.

jeremysmyth 11y ago
Overall, over time it's much easier to take out the hammer and create one-size-fits-all answers to every catastrophe that occurs. Repeat and rinse this process over several years, and you've got a software shop that's running ten times slower than everybody else. ...and not killing anyone. "People have to channel their creativity into changing the process," says Keller, "not changing the software." "Most people choose to spend their money at the wrong end of the process," says Munson. "In the modern software environment, 80% of the cost of the software is spent after the software is written the first time — they don't get it right the first time, so they spend time flogging it. In shuttle, they do it right the first time." "The most important things the shuttle group does — carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code — are not expensive. The process isn't even rocket science. Its standard practice in almost every engineering discipline except software engineering." http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff

thaumasiotes 11y ago

> 5000 years ago children died because they crawled between the banister railings. Actually, it's very difficult to get babies to crawl into empty space, or even onto a glass surface that looks like empty space.