6 ms·

What a strange world this is where living in a shanty for over half your annual income is considered cool.

protomyth 9y ago
I keep looking at these things to find one that is actually affordable and can survive a winter. Every "tiny home" or "micro-?" is much more than a trailer. Its really disappointing that with all the advancements there is really no innovation in cheap housing.
- conception 9y ago
  There are things coming along, though they aren't mainstream as yet... 3D printed homes https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/3d-printed-houses_n_5773408.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/3d-printed-houses_... Hay Bales http://buildingwithawareness.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-straw-bale-wall-construction-in-green-building/ http://buildingwithawareness.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-straw-...
- tabeth 9y ago
  Isn't a shipping container + insulation on both sides + plywood on the outside + siding pretty cheap and easily able to survive a winter as long as its placed on a concrete slab?
  - protomyth 9y ago
    Despite the hype, shipping containers are a bit of a problem because of some of the nasty stuff they coat those things with to get them across the ocean. I haven't seen a commercial vendor who offers a safe one that can deal with a northern winter. I would love to be wrong on that.
    - marak830 9y ago
      Honest question, why not just sand blast it to remove the paint and recoat it?
      - arkades 9y ago
        Why not just skip the shipping container and throw up a simple wood frame? All the rest of the ingredients of a common American house are already there; the container doesn’t seem to add anything.
      - blacksmith_tb 9y ago
        But why start with a heavy windowless box that needs to have its toxic coatings removed? Something like an Earthship[1] is made out of free trash (like bottles and used tires) and dirt... (which may not even need to be trucked in to the build site).
        jdonaldson 9y ago
        Link assist! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship
        haldean 9y ago
        I think you forgot this: [1]: http://earthship.org/ http://earthship.org/
      - protomyth 9y ago
        I'm not sure I want to have that conversation with the local government safety inspector, never mind the disposal costs.
  - tinco 9y ago
    Replace the shipping container with some wood beams and you have a standard American house. There's no real reason to prefer a shipping container over simple timber framing that I know of.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  I find it more insane that people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on what amounts to be bad trailer homes. Trailer parks exist for a reason. They're the size of shipping containers and therefore are shipped and constructed very efficiently. They're standardized and manufactured on a mass scale. The cheap, affordable, practical house has been invented: its called a trailer park. The question is simply how to market them. https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/manufacturedhomesdefinition.asp https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/manufacturedhomesdef... https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/econo_gal.asp https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/econo_gal.asp If you have $20k you can buy a home. That's a fact.
  - DubiousPusher 9y ago
    It's funny how manufactured homes get a bad rap but the contemporary ones are actually quite good.
    - s_kilk 9y ago
      It's all class signalling. As you say, the homes themselves are nice, but they're "for poor people" so...
    - dragontamer 9y ago
      There's clearly a marketing problem at hand here. Some of the larger Modular Homes (built out of multiple "rooms") aren't bad. The main issue is that the US Society as a whole uses cost-of-living as a differentiator. Those who own $500,000 single family homes want to ensure that everyone around them also is paying ~$500,000ish for their homes, because money is a crude estimator for crime levels and educational opportunity. If you live in an area filled with $20k trailer homes, the assumption is that these areas are filled with criminals and drug lords. With that said: cost-of-living is a differentiator in reality, because taxes are ultimately collected from the area. Richer areas can afford better schools, while poorer areas with lower land values won't have the same infrastructure. And unfortunately, building "mixed income neighborhoods" always causes a mess because of NIMBY. The issue is one of societal expectations. Regardless, the question of "how to build cheap, dignified, affordable housing" is well solved in America. Trailer-park homes have power and running water. The main issue IMO, is marketing and figuring out how to build "mixed income" developments without without making rich people feel like they're living next to poor people. As silly as it sounds, if this problem can be solved we'd solve a lot of issues...
- DubiousPusher 9y ago
  I think if you're looking for sustainable alternative housing that costs about the same or less than a stick built house a dome might be the way to go. http://www.monolithic.org/homes http://www.monolithic.org/homes
  - jackhack 9y ago
    geodesic domes were a big thing in the 1970s/80s and were about the same price of a mobile home/trailer home. They could be easily assembled by a couple of people w/a small group of friends in a weekend, and added onto as needed. The problems came with zoning as anything novel is more difficult for the local inspector to assess, and the internal angled walls made for wasted space, so anything taller than a low desk (dresser, cabinet, or refrigerator) against an outside perimeter must stand out from the wall. Another option is to just buy an RV and/or a camper + a truck to pull it. The survivalist crowd has done quite a bit of this -- buying remote rural lots with good water and farm land and setting up a homestead.
- potta_coffee 9y ago
  It's pretty inexcusable that in this day and age, there's no affordable housing options. Even in most rural areas, regulation makes it impossible to live in a tiny-home/ small off-grid cabin, etc. I know there are reasons for regulation but personally I'm trying to escape the rat race and housing is one of the biggest obstacles to that.
  - andrepd 9y ago
    It's almost as if there are some people that greatly profit from the landowner-paradigm statu quo being kept. Hmm...

I keep looking at these things to find one that is actually affordable and can survive a winter. Every "tiny home" or "micro-?" is much more than a trailer. Its really disappointing that with all the advancements there is really no innovation in cheap housing.

conception 9y ago
There are things coming along, though they aren't mainstream as yet... 3D printed homes https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/3d-printed-houses_n_5773408.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/3d-printed-houses_... Hay Bales http://buildingwithawareness.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-straw-bale-wall-construction-in-green-building/ http://buildingwithawareness.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-straw-...
tabeth 9y ago
Isn't a shipping container + insulation on both sides + plywood on the outside + siding pretty cheap and easily able to survive a winter as long as its placed on a concrete slab?
- protomyth 9y ago
  Despite the hype, shipping containers are a bit of a problem because of some of the nasty stuff they coat those things with to get them across the ocean. I haven't seen a commercial vendor who offers a safe one that can deal with a northern winter. I would love to be wrong on that.
  - marak830 9y ago
    Honest question, why not just sand blast it to remove the paint and recoat it?
    - arkades 9y ago
      Why not just skip the shipping container and throw up a simple wood frame? All the rest of the ingredients of a common American house are already there; the container doesn’t seem to add anything.
    - blacksmith_tb 9y ago
      But why start with a heavy windowless box that needs to have its toxic coatings removed? Something like an Earthship[1] is made out of free trash (like bottles and used tires) and dirt... (which may not even need to be trucked in to the build site).
      - jdonaldson 9y ago
        Link assist! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship
      - haldean 9y ago
        I think you forgot this: [1]: http://earthship.org/ http://earthship.org/
    - protomyth 9y ago
      I'm not sure I want to have that conversation with the local government safety inspector, never mind the disposal costs.
- tinco 9y ago
  Replace the shipping container with some wood beams and you have a standard American house. There's no real reason to prefer a shipping container over simple timber framing that I know of.
dragontamer 9y ago
I find it more insane that people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on what amounts to be bad trailer homes. Trailer parks exist for a reason. They're the size of shipping containers and therefore are shipped and constructed very efficiently. They're standardized and manufactured on a mass scale. The cheap, affordable, practical house has been invented: its called a trailer park. The question is simply how to market them. https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/manufacturedhomesdefinition.asp https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/manufacturedhomesdef... https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/econo_gal.asp https://www.factorybuilthomesdirect.com/econo_gal.asp If you have $20k you can buy a home. That's a fact.
- DubiousPusher 9y ago
  It's funny how manufactured homes get a bad rap but the contemporary ones are actually quite good.
  - s_kilk 9y ago
    It's all class signalling. As you say, the homes themselves are nice, but they're "for poor people" so...
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    There's clearly a marketing problem at hand here. Some of the larger Modular Homes (built out of multiple "rooms") aren't bad. The main issue is that the US Society as a whole uses cost-of-living as a differentiator. Those who own $500,000 single family homes want to ensure that everyone around them also is paying ~$500,000ish for their homes, because money is a crude estimator for crime levels and educational opportunity. If you live in an area filled with $20k trailer homes, the assumption is that these areas are filled with criminals and drug lords. With that said: cost-of-living is a differentiator in reality, because taxes are ultimately collected from the area. Richer areas can afford better schools, while poorer areas with lower land values won't have the same infrastructure. And unfortunately, building "mixed income neighborhoods" always causes a mess because of NIMBY. The issue is one of societal expectations. Regardless, the question of "how to build cheap, dignified, affordable housing" is well solved in America. Trailer-park homes have power and running water. The main issue IMO, is marketing and figuring out how to build "mixed income" developments without without making rich people feel like they're living next to poor people. As silly as it sounds, if this problem can be solved we'd solve a lot of issues...
DubiousPusher 9y ago
I think if you're looking for sustainable alternative housing that costs about the same or less than a stick built house a dome might be the way to go. http://www.monolithic.org/homes http://www.monolithic.org/homes
- jackhack 9y ago
  geodesic domes were a big thing in the 1970s/80s and were about the same price of a mobile home/trailer home. They could be easily assembled by a couple of people w/a small group of friends in a weekend, and added onto as needed. The problems came with zoning as anything novel is more difficult for the local inspector to assess, and the internal angled walls made for wasted space, so anything taller than a low desk (dresser, cabinet, or refrigerator) against an outside perimeter must stand out from the wall. Another option is to just buy an RV and/or a camper + a truck to pull it. The survivalist crowd has done quite a bit of this -- buying remote rural lots with good water and farm land and setting up a homestead.
potta_coffee 9y ago
It's pretty inexcusable that in this day and age, there's no affordable housing options. Even in most rural areas, regulation makes it impossible to live in a tiny-home/ small off-grid cabin, etc. I know there are reasons for regulation but personally I'm trying to escape the rat race and housing is one of the biggest obstacles to that.
- andrepd 9y ago
  It's almost as if there are some people that greatly profit from the landowner-paradigm statu quo being kept. Hmm...