12 ms·

I guess that's to be expected when those parents are the ones going to all the planning commission and city council meetings to put a stop to the construction o

• bjornjaja 7y ago
  They also build—knowingly—on flood planes without concern for buyers. They also use shitty materials. Compare a modern house with century-or-more home which are often timeless art pieces.
  • claudiulodro 7y ago
    I think this is selection bias, because all of the junk old homes have fallen apart or been torn down by now. I get what you're saying though: older houses tend to use more real wood and bricks and other materials which are now done with cheaper, modern equivalents like drywall and plywood.
• beams_of_light 7y ago
  The problem old people have with apartments is that they attract perceived ne'er-do-wells with little financial resources. Harold the Retiree does not want to hear your Subaru with the fart cannon on the back going up and down the road while he's trying to watch the sun set on his back porch, doesn't want your drug dealer causing trouble on his block, and certainly doesn't care to see your piercings and tattoos in the grocery store.
  • non-entity 7y ago
    > doesn't care to see your piercings and tattoos in the grocery store. Harold can fuck right off then because that's not his business. The other two, could potentially be an issue, however, but in my experience, most apartments like that are not filled with retirees, but working class individuals and to an extent working class families.
    • davidw 7y ago
      I spent a lot of time in Italy, and there, rather than SFH for 'good' people here, and rent-only apartments for 'bad' people there, you have a lot more 4/6/8/10 unit buildings where you own the single unit and can either live in it or rent it out. So things are a lot more mixed. I think this leads to more integration and better outcomes.
      • war1025 7y ago
        The house I live in currently is exactly this. It's a block of townhouses (20ish total), grouped in sets of 4, where each person owns their individual unit. We have a pretty diverse mix of people, and I quite like it.
    • chongli 7y ago
      Harold has freedom of movement, just as you and I do. If Harold can afford to live in a neighbourhood where tattoos and piercings guy can’t, who are we to stop him? The real problem with gentrification is the unearned increase in property values that accrue to owners and not renters. This could be solved with Georgist land value taxes [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
    • CapricornNoble 7y ago
      >>>> doesn't care to see your piercings and tattoos in the grocery store. >>Harold can fuck right off then because that's not his business. Don't come to Japan then. [1][2] Like it or not, some cultures (including the older generation of Americans) hold certain social mores that include expectations of public appearance and decorum. [1]https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/12/19/national/stigma-legal-battles-show-japan-still-tattoo-complex-even-olympics-loom/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/12/19/national/stigma... [2]https://observers.france24.com/en/20170504-japanese-authorities-are-waging-war-against-tattoos https://observers.france24.com/en/20170504-japanese-authorit...
  • JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
    Ironically for Harold the Retiree, High income renters are the fastest growing segment within the rental population: https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rich-and-renting-understanding-the-surge-of-high-earning-renters/ https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rich-and-renting-u...
• thatfrenchguy 7y ago
  Really single-family-only zoning should be banned by federal law. Force cities to build duplexes/triplexes/four-plexes everywhere. We're stuck in this stupid single-family-or-idiotic-"luxury"-condo idiocy because of that.
  • wil421 7y ago
    Speak for you own state or city. My city has no problem with sane development of single family homes, townhomes, condos/apartments and high rise housing.
    • davidw 7y ago
      Which city?
      • wil421 7y ago
        Metro Atlanta. I watched 3 high rises go up in the span of a year when I worked downtown, 1 catering to Georgia Tech students and 2 for anyone (with a huge focus on young adults). The in-town area I just moved from started addressing concerns about single family homes by working with developers to build high density apartments and lofts. They passed “workforce” zoning for housing to combat gentrification[1]. [1] https://www.reporternewspapers.net/2018/12/15/brookhaven-pioneers-an-affordable-housing-requirement/ https://www.reporternewspapers.net/2018/12/15/brookhaven-pio...
  • davidw 7y ago
    Ending parking minimums is right up there too.
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Really single-family-only zoning should be banned by federal law. There's not even a shadow of Constitutional argument that that's a federal power.
    • CountSessine 7y ago
• seph-reed 7y ago
  What we really need is less people. Seriously though, no matter how efficient we get with our space, eventually we'll hit a wall and the solution is going to be exactly the same as it always was and is: reproduce less quickly. The only difference is how much nature will be left when we get to that point. I've started to look at houses with yards as miniature nature preserves. To Downvoters: I feel I've done a decent job outlining the futility of more and more compact housing. I'd like to know what your logic if you disagree.
  • bryanlarsen 7y ago
    We could house trillions of people on the earth in skyscrapers if we needed to. We could even feed them with nuclear powered greenhouses. There are lots of reasons we don't want to do that. Room isn't one of them.
    • drdeadringer 7y ago
      This reminds me of the now-complete podcast series "Our Fair City" and the HartLife Insurance tower.
  • bregma 7y ago
    Hey, this Soylent Green stuff isn't half bad.
  • philipkglass 7y ago
    The United States has had a below-replacement total fertility rate for a decade+: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINUSA Japan's total fertility rate has been consistently below-replacement since 1975: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINJPN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINJPN Nonetheless, it took until 2010 for Japan's total population to peak and begin to decline. It's estimated to take until 2042 for Japan's population to fall lower than it was in 1975: http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/japan-population/ http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/japan-population/ That's a 67 year lag between a country reducing birth rates below replacement and the country actually having more space available per capita. So I downvoted you on two counts: 1) You seemed to be unaware that the US is already reproducing less, to the extent that its population will eventually decline without immigration. 2) "Reproduce less" takes a very long time to reduce total population. It takes many decades even if there is no immigration. Its influence is far too slow to help today's young adults afford their own living spaces.
• duxup 7y ago
  Along similar lines of thinking it would be really nice if the young people would vote as consistently as the old people. I'm in between generations and watching the old vs young bickering / division is painful to see... but I've also got a low tolerance for a lot of the "OMG boomers" stuff out there from folks who as a whole have a really poor voting record. Get in the game people....
  • Dakizhu 7y ago
    Even if they did vote, a lot of the politically active young renters oppose new development since they see it as gentrification or only enriching real estate developers or only building luxury housing.
    • LurkersWillLurk 7y ago
      Why should they? If you increase the supply of housing, it puts downward pressure on rent. Am I missing something?
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • opportune 7y ago
        I think part of it is due to lack of understanding, you see new buildings being built that are going to rent out at the high range, and you think nobody actually affected by lack of housing will benefit from it. People who think differently ought to do a better job explaining to the general public why building luxury housing can help the people not living in luxury housing
        • leetcrew 7y ago
          luxury housing doesn't have a fixed luxury price; it just tends to be more expensive than lower end housing. I just moved into a relatively expensive apartment that is at the upper edge of what I can afford. rent in this area is actually experiencing a bit of downward pressure because several new high-end apartment buildings are going up at the same time. previously I was renting a place that was much cheaper. if the new place had been $100 more expensive, I wouldn't have moved. but I did move, and now someone with less money can live in the place I moved out of. the new building I moved into has many more units than the townhouses it replaced. if enough people like me move into it, they will no longer be bidding up the lower end housing.
• mc32 7y ago
  Well, similar thing happens in China with all the building they do and despite few single family detached housing...
  • CountSessine 7y ago
    China is so populous that their largest cities are running up against the current technological limits of housing density. Beijing is especially challenging - it’s hard to build any more densely there without very careful planning; the city’s development could be warped by the Marchetti constant. North American cities are sparse and are nowhere near our tech limits. Housing shortages in North America are due to nothing more than bad regulation.
• francisofascii 7y ago
  I guess parents can then justify the huge house and 3 car garage by hanging on to the children for a few extra years.
• dev_dull 7y ago
  What’s more amazing to me is that the young generation sees these central-planning bureaucrats lock down freedom to build (via increased legislation, permitting, etc) and then days “yeah! Send those people to the federal government!”
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• asdaddasdad 7y ago
  I would guess that comparison to be very misleading. Singles presumably don't want to live in the countryside, they want to live in big cities with jobs and other people they could meet. In big cities, there tends to be little space for building, so especially little space for building 3 car garages. So I would guess most 3 car garages are built in the countryside, where there is lots of space for building. The two numbers point to completely separate issues. If singles would be willing to move to the countryside, perhaps they wouldn't have a problem to find accommodation. (A job could be a different matter).
• easytiger 7y ago
  Or maybe the "going out and working" phase of life is delayed between 3 and 6 years longer than it used to be