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Only anecdotally, but a pattern I have noticed here in Sweden is that the government seems to not want to be in charge of building homes for people. Affordable

by belorn 7y ago

Only anecdotally, but a pattern I have noticed here in Sweden is that the government seems to not want to be in charge of building homes for people. Affordable housing projects historically tend to up as the worst part of any city, something which I suspect is part of why every politician treat the topic as the plague. Local government seems to instead try get private actors to handle the job of creating more affordable housing, and the common tool I keep hearing is decision that areas of newly built homes must have a certain amount of rent based apartments. Private actors however seems to want to build a house and then get paid and move on, either by building condos or have each resident buy a "share" in organization that is formed to "own" the building. The apartments are thus modeled after people who can afford that large initial investment, and the dictated portion that need to be rent based is sized similar and selected among those that didn't get initially sold for one reason or an other. So from what I see the problem is not that urban planners focus on the nuclear family, but rather that no one want to build houses in order to regain the investment through slowly renting it out to many low income residents. Of course this just an observation, so it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
The problem in the US is not urban planners. The main problem is that all of our financing mechanisms are basically aimed at supporting the development of single family detached homes and it's actively difficult to finance other stuff. Co-housing works in Europe to make mixed income developments. In the US, with no financing available, it can only be built be a group of well-heeled friends who may not have poor friends and may not think to design the space to include anyone but their circle of friends because they are looking for a certain social experience and failing to see there's more to co-housing than shared meals with friends. Single family detached housing financing and tax breaks and so forth has got our housing situation in a strangle hold. This was born of the events that led to the creation of the modern suburbs and most people aren't even aware of the history. Single family detached homes in the suburbs are a standard by which we measure all housing and everything else is automatically presumed to be second rate and less desirable. We are being haunted by these mental models and the nation as a whole doesn't really recognize it. So we go "Let's fix this problem!" and then we do more of the same, only bigger! prettier! more expensive! And we find ourselves stumped that the problem still persists and won't go away. A builder in the Atlanta area owned three large lots and asked to chop them up into five smaller lots so he could build something sane and his request was denied in the name of preserving neighborhood character because the existing homes have big yards. So rather than build five homes more in line with the neighborhood character, he built three McMansions in order to make the profit he wanted or needed. And this is part for the course. We have studies that show that the way to preserve rural character and farmland is to build dense housing on a small strip nearby and keep the farms. But Americans are very resistant to that. Instead, they insist on designating minimum lot sizes and the result is the destruction of farmland to replace it with suburbs with ridiculous, sprawling yards. We've got studies. We've got data. We know some things that actually work. We can't get people to approve it locally and make it happen. It's partly logistical obstacles in the form of policy and financing and partly some bizarre mental block where we idealize and worship suburban patterns of development in ways and to a degree that amounts to cutting out own throats. And it makes me spit nails. I don't even know how to begin talking with people in some kind of effective manner, much less begin developing stuff.

by belorn 7y ago

DoreenMichele 7y ago

The problem in the US is not urban planners. The main problem is that all of our financing mechanisms are basically aimed at supporting the development of single family detached homes and it's actively difficult to finance other stuff. Co-housing works in Europe to make mixed income developments. In the US, with no financing available, it can only be built be a group of well-heeled friends who may not have poor friends and may not think to design the space to include anyone but their circle of friends because they are looking for a certain social experience and failing to see there's more to co-housing than shared meals with friends. Single family detached housing financing and tax breaks and so forth has got our housing situation in a strangle hold. This was born of the events that led to the creation of the modern suburbs and most people aren't even aware of the history. Single family detached homes in the suburbs are a standard by which we measure all housing and everything else is automatically presumed to be second rate and less desirable. We are being haunted by these mental models and the nation as a whole doesn't really recognize it. So we go "Let's fix this problem!" and then we do more of the same, only bigger! prettier! more expensive! And we find ourselves stumped that the problem still persists and won't go away. A builder in the Atlanta area owned three large lots and asked to chop them up into five smaller lots so he could build something sane and his request was denied in the name of preserving neighborhood character because the existing homes have big yards. So rather than build five homes more in line with the neighborhood character, he built three McMansions in order to make the profit he wanted or needed. And this is part for the course. We have studies that show that the way to preserve rural character and farmland is to build dense housing on a small strip nearby and keep the farms. But Americans are very resistant to that. Instead, they insist on designating minimum lot sizes and the result is the destruction of farmland to replace it with suburbs with ridiculous, sprawling yards. We've got studies. We've got data. We know some things that actually work. We can't get people to approve it locally and make it happen. It's partly logistical obstacles in the form of policy and financing and partly some bizarre mental block where we idealize and worship suburban patterns of development in ways and to a degree that amounts to cutting out own throats. And it makes me spit nails. I don't even know how to begin talking with people in some kind of effective manner, much less begin developing stuff.