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> (Missing middle) is also, to use your phrasing, "shittier housing." No, no it's not. I'm not advocating for luxury housing, just housing that meets the minim

> (Missing middle) is also, to use your phrasing, "shittier housing." No, no it's not. I'm not advocating for luxury housing, just housing that meets the minimum requirements by regulation and law. Missing middle is advocating for real legal housing -- the kind that have sinks and bathrooms and bedrooms and such. (And as you already mentioned, they generally don't advocate for "SRO/tenements", presumably for this same reason). > housing standards have steadily crept upwards for decades No, no they haven't. The average new construction sizes have crept way up, you are correct. The housing standards -- the minimum legal standards required by law have actually crept downward slightly over the past 10 years, in most areas. > This tradition lives on and is preserved in the form of college dorm rooms and military barracks. Yes, and it's bad there too? I don't need to get us off-track, but college dorm living is not healthy nor sustainable. > we need to lower our crazy high standards somewhere This is simply not true. There are no "crazy high standards". This is not a real thing that has ever existed. In San Francisco (as one example), I'm arguing that every human (regardless of income) is entitled to 220sqft of living space and a functional bathroom, that every housing unit should at least meet the bare minimum requirements of a "studio apartment" under relevant local and state law. This is not some crazy high standard that is impossible for society to afford. This is a stupidly-low requirement, that we could easily provide every single citizen in the US, with very little effort. And we should be very wary of any attempts to lower this already-stupidly-low requirement any further down, because lowering those standards will not help anyone in need, but will only be weaponized against everyone else. Hell, personal functional sinks and bathrooms are so cheap and easy to provide, we give them away for free to every violent criminal in prison. Surely everyone's housing quality should at least surpass a jail cell, right? -- We don't need to revert to SROs / Tenements to house the homeless, we don't need to "lower" any "standards". The minimum regulations are perfectly fine and completely reasonable here. We just need to build these things via public funding, and give them to the people who want/need them. We didn't "lower" our educational standards to teach school children. We didn't say "well, these regulations are too strict, I guess kids only need to learn to half-read and half-write". We just decided to offer real education to every child, automatically, and with no income restrictions or usage costs of any kind. We could do the same exact thing with housing. We should do the same thing with housing.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
I've enjoyed engaging you. But I don't agree with you. My first room was the smallest room in the building with just a sink and fridge. I didn't feel I could make a hotplate or similar work in that space. About two months ago, I moved to a larger room within the same building. I have a private bath and a George Foreman grill now. The fridge died like two days after we moved or something and I don't have the money to replace it. But the thing is that I and my oldest son both have a serious genetic disorder. Since moving to a unit with a private bath, he has thrown up every single time he has cleaned the toilet. We didn't want a toilet of our own at first. We didn't want to clean it. Management is responsible for cleaning the shared bathrooms in the building. But I am responsible for cleaning my private bath. Toilets are not something that see so much use that every single individual needs their own personal toilet. A large part of the increase in housing costs since the 1950s is due to rising standards and expectations. In the 1950s, that 1200 sqft new house probably had a heater, but no air conditioning. It probably had a washing machine, but no dryer. Instead, there was a clothesline out back in the yard. It probably was poorly insulated and had inferior electrical service compared to what we expect today. You didn't need a high electrical capacity and outlets everywhere. You had a radio and maybe a TV. Home computers didn't exist. Microwaves didn't exist. Etc etc etc. A lot that we consider standard and the minimum today was not either at that time. And there are developed countries which generally treat their citizens better than we do here in the US that have smaller homes, smaller refrigerators, etc. Europe has a lot of household stuff that exists precisely because they expect a high quality of life in spaces that are typically smaller than standard US homes. I'm not sure why you are so adamant that SROs are wholly unacceptable. I've studied the history of US housing and I have some knowledge of how things get handled in other developed countries. I've also lived this problem space and I'm currently in an SRO. So you aren't going to convince me that it's inherently evil to have dorm style rooms. I don't really believe housing is a "right." I believe we need to do what works in practical terms and I don't think that framing is productive. And lowering our crazy high standards that boil down to "We only build mansions in America" is something that must happen if we are to solve this. I continue to research how to do that in a way that lowers the right standards because I'm absolutely not interested in creating slum conditions. Anyway, thank you for speaking with me. But I'm not sure there's any real point in taking this discussion further.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I've enjoyed engaging you. But I don't agree with you. My first room was the smallest room in the building with just a sink and fridge. I didn't feel I could make a hotplate or similar work in that space. About two months ago, I moved to a larger room within the same building. I have a private bath and a George Foreman grill now. The fridge died like two days after we moved or something and I don't have the money to replace it. But the thing is that I and my oldest son both have a serious genetic disorder. Since moving to a unit with a private bath, he has thrown up every single time he has cleaned the toilet. We didn't want a toilet of our own at first. We didn't want to clean it. Management is responsible for cleaning the shared bathrooms in the building. But I am responsible for cleaning my private bath. Toilets are not something that see so much use that every single individual needs their own personal toilet. A large part of the increase in housing costs since the 1950s is due to rising standards and expectations. In the 1950s, that 1200 sqft new house probably had a heater, but no air conditioning. It probably had a washing machine, but no dryer. Instead, there was a clothesline out back in the yard. It probably was poorly insulated and had inferior electrical service compared to what we expect today. You didn't need a high electrical capacity and outlets everywhere. You had a radio and maybe a TV. Home computers didn't exist. Microwaves didn't exist. Etc etc etc. A lot that we consider standard and the minimum today was not either at that time. And there are developed countries which generally treat their citizens better than we do here in the US that have smaller homes, smaller refrigerators, etc. Europe has a lot of household stuff that exists precisely because they expect a high quality of life in spaces that are typically smaller than standard US homes. I'm not sure why you are so adamant that SROs are wholly unacceptable. I've studied the history of US housing and I have some knowledge of how things get handled in other developed countries. I've also lived this problem space and I'm currently in an SRO. So you aren't going to convince me that it's inherently evil to have dorm style rooms. I don't really believe housing is a "right." I believe we need to do what works in practical terms and I don't think that framing is productive. And lowering our crazy high standards that boil down to "We only build mansions in America" is something that must happen if we are to solve this. I continue to research how to do that in a way that lowers the right standards because I'm absolutely not interested in creating slum conditions. Anyway, thank you for speaking with me. But I'm not sure there's any real point in taking this discussion further.