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Tiny Homes Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis

blakesterz 6y ago
I guess I never realized that tiny homes were supposed to fix the housing crisis? I'm not sure this article really said that they were either. Anyways, I think this is the main idea of the article: "The imagined owners of tiny homes, in other words, are likely childless and able-bodied, and they likely have at least ten grand to spare (plus, perhaps, the time or resources to build a home) and minimal familial responsibilities. If housing justice is truly our goal, then tiny living leaves a large contingent of people behind."
- gwbas1c 6y ago
  I always thought that tiny homes was a rejection of materialism, or a way to live cheaply? Or basically a fancy alternative to a trailer park?
  - anonfornoreason 6y ago
    I know two people I’d consider sorta materialistic (camera and tech gadget budget in the 10,000 a year territory), that are just ok living in a small space as long as it is the cheapest option. They don’t talk about the footprint of tiny home living, they talk about the cost savings.
AbrahamParangi 6y ago
When someone claims many reasons why a thing is good or bad, the actual reason is often unstated. “Tiny homes are bad because I like the idea of socialist communes and people won’t give them a try if they can have their own house”
greggman3 6y ago
I don't have a clue what any solution looks like or even what problem is trying to be solved. Growing up in the USA home "ownership" is always touted as an investment but for example in Japan, it's often more like buying a car. The moment you buy it it's a used house and the price goes down just like a car would. The point being home ownership is viewed differently. Also, the recent episode of the Flash Forward podcast pondered the idea of guaranteed housing. They complained that 60% of people on minimum wage can't afford a 2 bedroom apartment in the USA but coming from Tokyo my first thought was "why is the standard a 2 bedroom apartment?" There are 100s of thousands of studio apartments all around Tokyo and it's normal to live in one. From $400 a month and up. I'm sure Hong Kong it's even more normal.
- mettamage 6y ago
  Wait, so does that mean it's relatively cheap to rent or buy in Japan? I know Japan is not a cheap country, but I was wondering relative to other Western countries. I might want to research if I'd want to live in Japan for a couple of years then, and simply become a remote worker.
  - cammikebrown 6y ago
    Although Tokyo ranks among the most expensive real estate markets, I’d argue it’s comparable to many mid-size American cities, and deals can often be found on the cheap side, whereas the US has seen the floor on rental prices skyrocket in the last decade. Places tend to be much smaller in Tokyo, but you can still find a studio for well under $1,000/month, which is not really possible where I live (Portland, OR). A studio in Shinjuku, one of the most central and popular wards, can be had for ~$1,000/month. https://blog.gaijinpot.com/how-much-is-the-average-rent-in-tokyo-in-2019/ https://blog.gaijinpot.com/how-much-is-the-average-rent-in-t...
  - bane 6y ago
    I would highly recommend watching the youtube channel "life where I'm from". He's a Canadian from Vancouver who lives in Japan with his family and makes some of the best documentary style films on topics about Japan anywhere. He has quite a few videos on housing at various levels, and a great series on homelessness in Japan (including cheap housing alternatives). Sharehouses are also relatively common in Tokyo and tend to attract young single people and expats. They're basically dorms with a central kitchen and bathroom and quality varies tremendously. But you can live for hundreds of dollars per month ($500-700) pretty easily (once you learn about all the weird fees that sorta only exist in the Tokyo housing market) and be about 35 minutes from a downtown hub area. Seoul also has similar cheap housing options. An entire market exists for ultra tiny "study rooms" (goshiwons) that are not much more than a bed, desk and bathroom and might run around $250/mo. Seoul also has Share houses and very small single room apartments that can be amazingly cheap per month if you don't mind paying a large (refundable) deposit up front -- for example, a $10k deposit might find you a decent sizes 2 bedroom 30 minutes from downtown on the subway for $500-600/mo. Both cities of course have Airbnbs which can be surprisingly reasonable and long-term stays are available. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/c/LifeWhereImFrom/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/LifeWhereImFrom/videos
seibelj 6y ago
The best solution to the housing crisis ever discovered thus far is widespread remote work. This allows people who don’t want to live in major cities the ability to live anywhere, reducing the cost for those that do want to live in a city.
- Dork1234 6y ago
  I am surprised no one has a website that compares internet quality to land price when searching for lots to purchase.
- mellavora 6y ago
  this might actually solve the problem with robot waitstaff. Mechanical turk them, allowing the actual service people to work remotely!
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  I don't think this will help much at all. Maybe for a few, but I doubt it will reduce costs for city-dwellers. If you have any ambition, your networking is severely limited. If you have any desire to find a mate, your pool has decreased rapidly. If you want to see a concert or go to a new restaurant, you have far less options.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Some cities make it really hard to reasonably commute (for business or pleasure) from more moderately-priced properties. For many other cities though, a 60-90 minute drive--or sometimes train--does, which is generally reasonable for a sometimes commute or a night on the town. (And remember that many of the tech and other good jobs aren't even in the city; they're out in the suburbs somewhere.)
anovikov 6y ago
There is no housing crisis. U.S. has more than plenty of good quality, large, and more than affordable houses (many of them are probably beyond repair but this is a consequence of their abundance and lack of demand). Housing crisis is only about the very few already overpopulated spots being hyper-attractive for people to move in because that's where opportunities are. There is no way to "fix" this because even if housing is by some magic affordable, so many people will flock there that commute times will increase beyond survivability and people will pay with their time instead of money (that works in exactly the same way as home prices rise when mortgage fall: this is a free market). If you want to fix it, you need to stop these places from being attractive, or prevent people from moving. Both sound like a Soviet Union-style dystopia. It's better to just concede to the fact that housing in attractive areas is a scarce resource for which there is always a competition and most people who are there, simply shouldn't be there, them being there is just a result of their Dunning-Kruger effect. There is a middle ground of "regulated rental" but this is precisely a compromise, a middle ground between buying and market renting. Buying a place in attractive location is winning a lottery: if place is ALREADY attractive, the rental yield there is low because price to buy is sky high due to countless trillions of printed money sloshing around, so it makes no sense buying, it only makes sense buying before it gets attractive, but it can't be predicted. Regulated rental gives you same opportunity: rent now and if in 30 years the place became attractive, you are renting at a small fraction of real cost, you won. This is not a solution, it is just a step halfway to the Soviet Union where the Party decided where you should live.
- Pet_Ant 6y ago
  > Housing crisis is only about the very few already overpopulated spots being hyper-attractive for people to move in because that's where opportunities are. Why not build hyper-dense housing? If you have functional public spaces you don't need as much private space. We used to have boarding houses etc. I don't need my own bathroom, I need a bathroom. I rarely use my kitchen, I just need access to one.
  - anovikov 6y ago
    How about commuting? Pollution? School, hospital and other public services capacity? Crime arising from simply the rich place being affordable, inviting undesirables?
leoedin 6y ago
The idea that tiny homes are the solution to the housing crisis ignores the fact that the housing crisis is really a land-in-desirable-places crisis, and a result of a natural pyramid scheme which has emerged due to population growth and increasing popularity of cities (amplified by low interest rates). Tiny houses don't fix that problem.
- ghaff 6y ago
  One of the things with both tiny houses and micro-apartments--leaving aside precise definitions--is that by the time you account for some minimal set of amenities such as bathroom, a kitchenette even, corridors/stairwell in the case of apartments, etc. cutting space to the bone doesn't really save you all that much in absolute terms while forcing a lot of compromises.
  - leppr 6y ago
    Indeed. The only thing the current "tiny house" concept is a solution to is bad building laws. Clever design and engineering allow people to live in an alternative way that lawmakers forgot to outlaw, but there's nothing ideal in the tiny trailer dimensions. If we want to get an idea of a minimal humane living space, look at the cheap houses people build for themselves in countries without oppressive real-estate investment protection laws. They are rarely as small, or rely heavily on outdoor/shared spaces.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Canadians have a strong aversion to living in anything but a detached house after 30ish. Most people were would have grown up sharing fences with their neighbors, not walls. So tiny houses allow for more efficient detached housing.
- thereisnospork 6y ago
  > land-in-desirable-places crisis If that were true construction costs would be the primary driver of housing prices, increasing as more exotic and expensive methods (steel skyscrapers vs mid-rise podium, for instance) are employed to fit more housing on less land.
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
To put it in context, this is a Canadian magazine, and here in Canada the housing market is just absolutely insanely irrational. There has been no downwards housing price "correction" since the early 90s. The 2008 bubble-pop never happened here. Interest rates remain at record lows and the COVID-19 crisis seems to have led to massive _increase_ in housing prices rather than a decrease. It's a huge distorted market with real estate, construction, and renovations etc. being the largest part of our Ontario provincial economy with primary industry, etc. declining every year. It all feels just insane. My little hobby farm has probably "doubled" in the 8.5 years I've owned it, but I don't feel great about it -- where will my kids live? Where will I retire to? When will this all blow up in our faces? My 70 year old father in law would love to retire, and sell his place and somehow reduce his costs and move closer to us... but my area has become completely unaffordable as Toronto money is suddenly blowing up the market out here with bidding wars and no-conditions offers and the like, stuff we never saw before. So yeah in that context I can't even imagine being working class and trying to make a go of it. It was bad before, but it is only getting worse. Rents are absolutely mental even in outlying areas that should be cheap. And most importantly given that these outlying areas around Toronto (Hamilton, Oshawa, London, Cambridge, Woodstock etc.) are often where the few remaining manufacturing sector jobs are, what happens to the manufacturing sector when their employees can no longer afford housing near the factory?
- refurb 6y ago
  This is a problem that will solve itself. Sure, it will be a painful few decades, but we've already seen that shift. Toronto used to be the cluster of high prices homes, now it's spread all the way down to Hamilton. That process will continue - people will purchase homes in lower cost areas and businesses won't have much choice but to hire closer to those locations as well. That's of course ignoring the potential for some major housing correction in Canada which resets the clock somewhat. It's not like it hasn't before. I had family buy a home in a Toronto suburb in the 1980's. They sold at the peak in 1990 and the housing market crashed hard. Prices didn't recover until the mid-2000's.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
Pet_Ant 6y ago
We need to start building tiny soviet style apartments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQgaCwrQQy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQgaCwrQQy8 Add to that some "coffin" motels. Once people have a place to sleep near a place they can work they can start moving upwards. My mom grew up in one, and I stayed with my grandma in one every time I visited. Sure, I slept on the kitchen floor, but it's not that bad.
- sesuximo 6y ago
  Or we could stop putting everyone’s jobs in the same 10 towns and use a bit more space
  - Pet_Ant 6y ago
    When Obama asked Steve Jobs about those manufacturing jobs coming back to the US Jobs said it ain't gonna happen. The benefits of centralizing and critical mass are just too important. Being able to lunch with people and get into the same space to innovate, to read body language. It's to big of an advantage. Just like independent rural homestead living collapsed into small town and cities, small towns are cities are collapsing into metropolises. It is inevitable. Geographic centralisation gives you so much more efficiency it's undeniable. > and use a bit more space Have you looked at a satellite map of the US? So little of it remains natural. The last thing we need is even more sprawl.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sesuximo 6y ago
      Perhaps we could use more cities instead of more suburbs.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      There's ample unused built space, infill opportunity, or brownfields development (assuming the brown isn't overly toxic, and much is).
- 6y ago
dirtyid 6y ago
The fact that a country as large and sparse as Canada has to contemplate tiny homes to address housing is ridiculous. Never mind that the speculative construction market has been churning out tiny condo equivalents. I lived in _much_ denser cities with their own speculative real estate market, but the developers haven't resorted to "optimizing" units as aggressively as the micro-condos I've seen in Toronto. The one bedrooms / studios are about as large as apartments in Beijing / Shanghai. But 2-3 bedrooms new constructions feel dramatically smaller. Being Canada, these units will negatively impact generations.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Nobody is willing to live outside of a few major cities and everyone here demands a detached house. There is a very strong stigma about living in anything without a lawn after 30ish.
ironman1478 6y ago
Imo, the fix for the housing crisis is for governments to invest in the economies of small towns and cities with lots of land that can be built on or property that is vacant. Everybody wants to live in sf, new york, seattle, etc. because they are where the jobs are and that also attracts culture. If state governments could give grants or tax credits for companies to start or expand out to other parts of states that are under utilized, this could cause people to move to those areas and relieve pressure on the overpopulated areas.
- Dork1234 6y ago
  Which basically boils down to internet at this point. Many small towns just have no or slow internet. Water - Drill Well. Sewer - Build Septic Tank Power Problems - Generator / Battery Backup Education - Home School Internet - No Solution??
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    Exactly, a tech job would fire me after realizing how inconsistent and slow the internet is at the house I grew up at in rural Wisconsin. Even my cell phone hardly works if it rains or snows. I can’t even port my number to Verizon because they apparently won’t service 715 prefixed numbers.
  - ironman1478 6y ago
    It's definitely a problem, but it's solvable. It's just a function of political will and funding for local internet... Or just hoping starlink brings internet to everybody. But I also think the government needs to give people/companies straight up money to move there or give them some other incentive. It's not enough just to have schools and remote workers in houses. We need to incentivize artists, entertainers, service workers, chefs, etc. to want to work in these places. Otherwise these locations won't last long term.
MattGaiser 6y ago
The housing crisis is really a people refuse to leave Toronto and Vancouver crisis, no matter how little they make. It is also a refusal to live in anything without a lawn. Imagine if San Francisco had wages which were often lower than Cleveland for many jobs, but had the same housing prices. That is the state of Toronto and Vancouver. Incomes there are lower than other Canadian cities. The other issue is that Canadians are very used to lots and lots of space. 500 sqft per person kind of space. Lots of lawn for the kids to run around on kind of space. Combine a refusal of people to leave those two cities and the desire for detached spread out housing, and you get this. Wages can't rise either as there are tons of people who are willing to stay in Toronto no matter how relatively poorer they are as a result. In an economically rational market, people would leave Toronto over the costs and salaries would rise (like they have in San Francisco, where people have left to Seattle and Denver and remote work over pay not going very far). That is not happening in any meaningful quantity.
- bsder 6y ago
  > The housing crisis is really a people refuse to leave Toronto and Vancouver crisis, no matter how little they make. This is because there are two working adults in most families nowadays and not just one. So, if you move, your salary increase must account for the time your partner doesn't have salary or has decreased salary. In addition, your salary increase needs to account for the fact that you will have to move back to the city when, not if, your job disappears. That means that your salary has to go up a LOT in order to leave the city area. A 25% salary increase isn't enough incentive--your salary effectively needs to double. And the way you make that happen? You hook up with a FAANG and move to one of the overcrowded, overpriced cities. A lot of our current economic ills are because you need two salaries in order to survive in this economy, and it freezes the migration of labor.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > Wages can't rise either as there are tons of people who are willing to stay in Toronto no matter how relatively poorer they are as a result. In an economically rational market, people would leave Toronto over the costs and salaries would rise (like they have in San Francisco, where people have left to Seattle and Denver and remote work over pay not going very far). That is not happening in any meaningful quantity. That's because of the out of control immigration quotas. It's still a better deal to live in Toronto than in their home country for a lot of people around the world. Combine this with an extremely conservative investment landscape and that's what you get, over speculation on "safe" assets and a lack of funding for other businesses.
Dork1234 6y ago
This seems to be Canada focus, but the US seems very similar with affordability issues in major cities. Everything I am seeing an hearing about housing cost in the US related to land, labor and lumber. Cost per sqft is crazy high and getting higher, builders would be able to build more but there just isn't enough highly qualified labor in the US, and the shutdown is preventing lumber from being milled. We cannot do anything about Covid lumber shortage or the land shortage but we can do something about the Labor shortage. When I was in high school, there were shop classes, and home building classes that focused on the building trades. These classes were in the processed of being phased out to focus on students going to college and STEM. The US education system needs to focus on being an on ramp for College and Trade-schools and stop selling on students short.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  The labor shortage exists because labor doesn't pay, it's that simple. Trades are not mass labor needed to drive costs down, and it's unlikely costs will be driven down further there because of foreign competition.
kube-system 6y ago
Is there any significant number of professionals who think tiny homes are a solution to anything? I am more under the impression that the people touting these were mainly arm-chair urban planners, more motivated by pinterest than safe and efficient resource allocation. Apartments are safer, cheaper, more efficient, easier to build, etc.
protomyth 6y ago
I was actually hoping for some actual production of tiny homes to bring the price down for a mass buy of single and couples housing. Instead we have extended family living in the same home during a pandemic with predictable results.
senko 6y ago
Ah, the difference between Europe and America. Here, a 300-400sqft single-bedroom apartmant would be considered standard and suitable for a single or 2-person household with median income. A two-bedroom 500-600 sqft apt would be considered just fine for most families with 1 or two kids (esp. if those kids are same gender or while they're small). Anything above that gets you into upper-middle class or above. Alternatively, a 4-member family with two minimum incomes could get by with 400sqft (it'd be cramped but wouldn't be considered outrageously small). The difference is also that these are almost exclusively in an apartment building, where your neighbours help insulate you from the elements, resulting in lower heating/cooling costs. I'm amazed whenever I read an article mentioning home sizes in the States (or in this case Canada) and have to double-check whether my sqft<->m2 conversion is okay because I can't believe how much more room is considered "normal" over there. Tiny homes wouldn't solve the housing crises, but looking across the pond, I'm thinking it'd still be a boon for low-wage earners. I know I'd rather be in my own 200sqft than have to pay off huge mortgage or rent a 600sqft of "wasted" space. Even if I prefer or have to rent, smaller units would be cheaper, while still more expensive per sqft, in theory netting the landlord more profit for the same apt. complex. Sounds like a win/win, what am I missing?
- cammikebrown 6y ago
  600? Ha! The average new home sale last year in the US was over 2,300 square feet. https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html My current place is 650 square feet and I’m looking to downsize. The problem is, the prices tend to stay static, even if you want a smaller place.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > Here, a 300-400sqft single-bedroom apartmant would be considered standard and suitable for a single or 2-person household with median income. A two-bedroom 500-600 sqft apt would be considered just fine for most families with 1 or two kids (esp. if those kids). Anything above that gets you into upper-middle class or above. Alternatively, a 4-member family with two minimum incomes could get by with 400sqft (it'd be cramped but wouldn't be considered outrageously small). As a Canadian, that seems like so little space. In university, I rented a condo with my brother and it was 900 sqft for two. I have considered what kind of property I would want for my first and 1100 sqft is probably what I would buy and my family might convince me to buy a full fledged detached (1900 sqft). Keep in mind that neither sqft figure counts any basement space. My parents have 1900 sqft and find that cramped with work from home.
Pfhreak 6y ago
Tiny houses might not, but a wholesale decommodification of housing could. We shouldn't be trying to price housing on the market, we should be pricing housing and land based on how well it houses people. If we started taxing the land rather than the land plus improvements and gave a credit for every housing unit I guarantee you we'd see parking lots turned into housing. Other approaches include: removing minimum parking requirements, rent control, strong tenants unions, stronger eviction protections, publishing landlord statistics on eviction rates, low rise distributed public housing with protected operating budgets, right to buy laws, prohibitions or increased regulations around short term rentals, support for community land trusts, up zoning, tax incentives for increasing the affordable housing supply, and yes, mother in law apartments, cottages, and other permissive zoning for additional housing can help too. There are very tractable ways we can chip away at this problem at a local and regional way. We shouldn't be speculating on housing as an asset, we should be ensuring everyone has a place to live.
deleted 6y ago
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briancp 6y ago
I work as a structural engineer and write a newsletter about, among other things, technology for lowering construction costs. A tiny house will be cheaper than conventional housing by virtue of being a lot smaller (building costs are usually expressed per square foot or square meter). But as the article points out, these are usually built with fairly high end finishes (wood paneling, granite counters, etc) - their cost per unit area is actually somewhat high. Actual low-cost construction, like the sort used on mobile homes, eliminates most of these expensive finishes, because they’re a major cost driver. And in the US at least, a house not permanently attached to land has to be financed as property, like a car, rather than real estate, which means the tiny houses attached to trailers will be financed at a much higher interest rate than a traditional mortgage. Generally I think these are more of a niche lifestyle product, a mobile home for people who don’t want to buy a mobile home, more than any sort of affordable housing solution.
Overtonwindow 6y ago
I lived in a Tiny House in Florida while I was on contract work. The rent was free and came with the job, and at first it was pretty cool, but then it quickly was not. The main issue is that to live and work with any level of efficiency requires you pal everything. Vacuum? Need a plan. Cooking dinner, need a plan. It’s like trying to find a charger for a Tesla Roadster in the first few years - everything required careful planning. After the contract, I moved into a hotel and it was instantly better.
markhahn 6y ago
The article is about "Tiny Homes ALONE Won't fix the Housing Crisis". Of course, trivialized solutions don't fix any realworld problems, so this article doesn't provide much light...
boyadjian 6y ago
When you have a city, where every surface is built, can you still say that there is a housing crisis? Maybe now, it is time to talk about real problems ?
tmnvix 6y ago
I don’t believe that there is a shortage of homes. The demand we are seeing is driven by investment. There are many more empty and low-use properties out there than most would suspect. Hear me out. Reported vacancy rates (the ones you’ll hear quoted in the media) are usually discovered by asking real estate agencies how many of the properties on their books are currently available to rent. Actual empty residences are harder to quantify. There are two studies I’m aware of that attempt to do this. In Melbourne, Australia (one of the ‘anglo’ places that suffers from this rampant property investment problem) there is the Speculative Vacancies Report[0] published each year by Prosper Australia. They determine which properties are empty using data from the water utilities companies. In the UK there is this study[1] where council data is used to determine the number of ‘Low Use Properties’ (LUP’s) in various jurisdictions. From the first study (Melbourne), I remember one interesting finding was that the higher the capital gains in an area, the higher the vacancy rate tended to be. And the vacancy rates were sometimes very high. I remember them being over 25% in Docklands (Melbourne’s Canary Wharf) and around 10% in many other areas maybe five years ago. Completely unintuitive. Surely those places should have a relatively low rate of empty properties if they are such desirable places to live (as the rapidly rising prices suggest). From the second study (UK), it’s clear that the higher the value of properties in an area, the higher the number of LUP’s. Curious about what the case might be in New Zealand (where the property market is similar - if not worse - than places like Canada, the UK, and Australia) I went looking for statistics. I found two that are relevant. The number of households and the number of private dwellings. Obviously every household must have a dwelling, so the difference should give an indication of the situation. This data goes back to the mid 90s. Turns out that back then (when house prices were sane) the difference was around 3.5%. Today it is more like 7%. Those are national averages. From the studies mentioned above I expect that the percentage of empty and low use properties would be highest in the major cities (where prices and capital gains are highest). I wouldn’t be surprised if 10% of properties in the cities are empty or getting very little use. I used to work as a postie (mailman). I saw firsthand how many houses were empty. The wealthiest streets always had the most (owners were away on holiday for 6 months or a year at a time, living elsewhere while renovating or planning to ‘flip’, the property was on the market, it was a second home, etc). In one particularly nice street, over 25% of the houses didn’t have residents at any one time. This housing affordability issue doesn’t need a supply side solution. A speculative boom creates extra demand. The solution is to make property a less attractive investment. [0] https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Speculative-Vacancies-9.pdf https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Specul... [1] https://theodi.org/event/friday-lunchtime-lecture-empty-homes-and-house-prices-is-there-a-relationship/ https://theodi.org/event/friday-lunchtime-lecture-empty-home... Edit: A holiday home used to be an expense. Now it's an investment. That's a problem.
darepublic 6y ago
Ultimate solution is a mind machine unification and living on a server farm travelling through the cosmos

I guess I never realized that tiny homes were supposed to fix the housing crisis? I'm not sure this article really said that they were either. Anyways, I think this is the main idea of the article: "The imagined owners of tiny homes, in other words, are likely childless and able-bodied, and they likely have at least ten grand to spare (plus, perhaps, the time or resources to build a home) and minimal familial responsibilities. If housing justice is truly our goal, then tiny living leaves a large contingent of people behind."

gwbas1c 6y ago
I always thought that tiny homes was a rejection of materialism, or a way to live cheaply? Or basically a fancy alternative to a trailer park?
- anonfornoreason 6y ago
  I know two people I’d consider sorta materialistic (camera and tech gadget budget in the 10,000 a year territory), that are just ok living in a small space as long as it is the cheapest option. They don’t talk about the footprint of tiny home living, they talk about the cost savings.

AbrahamParangi 6y ago

When someone claims many reasons why a thing is good or bad, the actual reason is often unstated. “Tiny homes are bad because I like the idea of socialist communes and people won’t give them a try if they can have their own house”

greggman3 6y ago

I don't have a clue what any solution looks like or even what problem is trying to be solved. Growing up in the USA home "ownership" is always touted as an investment but for example in Japan, it's often more like buying a car. The moment you buy it it's a used house and the price goes down just like a car would. The point being home ownership is viewed differently. Also, the recent episode of the Flash Forward podcast pondered the idea of guaranteed housing. They complained that 60% of people on minimum wage can't afford a 2 bedroom apartment in the USA but coming from Tokyo my first thought was "why is the standard a 2 bedroom apartment?" There are 100s of thousands of studio apartments all around Tokyo and it's normal to live in one. From $400 a month and up. I'm sure Hong Kong it's even more normal.

mettamage 6y ago
Wait, so does that mean it's relatively cheap to rent or buy in Japan? I know Japan is not a cheap country, but I was wondering relative to other Western countries. I might want to research if I'd want to live in Japan for a couple of years then, and simply become a remote worker.
- cammikebrown 6y ago
  Although Tokyo ranks among the most expensive real estate markets, I’d argue it’s comparable to many mid-size American cities, and deals can often be found on the cheap side, whereas the US has seen the floor on rental prices skyrocket in the last decade. Places tend to be much smaller in Tokyo, but you can still find a studio for well under $1,000/month, which is not really possible where I live (Portland, OR). A studio in Shinjuku, one of the most central and popular wards, can be had for ~$1,000/month. https://blog.gaijinpot.com/how-much-is-the-average-rent-in-tokyo-in-2019/ https://blog.gaijinpot.com/how-much-is-the-average-rent-in-t...
- bane 6y ago
  I would highly recommend watching the youtube channel "life where I'm from". He's a Canadian from Vancouver who lives in Japan with his family and makes some of the best documentary style films on topics about Japan anywhere. He has quite a few videos on housing at various levels, and a great series on homelessness in Japan (including cheap housing alternatives). Sharehouses are also relatively common in Tokyo and tend to attract young single people and expats. They're basically dorms with a central kitchen and bathroom and quality varies tremendously. But you can live for hundreds of dollars per month ($500-700) pretty easily (once you learn about all the weird fees that sorta only exist in the Tokyo housing market) and be about 35 minutes from a downtown hub area. Seoul also has similar cheap housing options. An entire market exists for ultra tiny "study rooms" (goshiwons) that are not much more than a bed, desk and bathroom and might run around $250/mo. Seoul also has Share houses and very small single room apartments that can be amazingly cheap per month if you don't mind paying a large (refundable) deposit up front -- for example, a $10k deposit might find you a decent sizes 2 bedroom 30 minutes from downtown on the subway for $500-600/mo. Both cities of course have Airbnbs which can be surprisingly reasonable and long-term stays are available. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/c/LifeWhereImFrom/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/LifeWhereImFrom/videos

seibelj 6y ago

The best solution to the housing crisis ever discovered thus far is widespread remote work. This allows people who don’t want to live in major cities the ability to live anywhere, reducing the cost for those that do want to live in a city.

Dork1234 6y ago
I am surprised no one has a website that compares internet quality to land price when searching for lots to purchase.
mellavora 6y ago
this might actually solve the problem with robot waitstaff. Mechanical turk them, allowing the actual service people to work remotely!
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
I don't think this will help much at all. Maybe for a few, but I doubt it will reduce costs for city-dwellers. If you have any ambition, your networking is severely limited. If you have any desire to find a mate, your pool has decreased rapidly. If you want to see a concert or go to a new restaurant, you have far less options.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Some cities make it really hard to reasonably commute (for business or pleasure) from more moderately-priced properties. For many other cities though, a 60-90 minute drive--or sometimes train--does, which is generally reasonable for a sometimes commute or a night on the town. (And remember that many of the tech and other good jobs aren't even in the city; they're out in the suburbs somewhere.)

anovikov 6y ago

There is no housing crisis. U.S. has more than plenty of good quality, large, and more than affordable houses (many of them are probably beyond repair but this is a consequence of their abundance and lack of demand). Housing crisis is only about the very few already overpopulated spots being hyper-attractive for people to move in because that's where opportunities are. There is no way to "fix" this because even if housing is by some magic affordable, so many people will flock there that commute times will increase beyond survivability and people will pay with their time instead of money (that works in exactly the same way as home prices rise when mortgage fall: this is a free market). If you want to fix it, you need to stop these places from being attractive, or prevent people from moving. Both sound like a Soviet Union-style dystopia. It's better to just concede to the fact that housing in attractive areas is a scarce resource for which there is always a competition and most people who are there, simply shouldn't be there, them being there is just a result of their Dunning-Kruger effect. There is a middle ground of "regulated rental" but this is precisely a compromise, a middle ground between buying and market renting. Buying a place in attractive location is winning a lottery: if place is ALREADY attractive, the rental yield there is low because price to buy is sky high due to countless trillions of printed money sloshing around, so it makes no sense buying, it only makes sense buying before it gets attractive, but it can't be predicted. Regulated rental gives you same opportunity: rent now and if in 30 years the place became attractive, you are renting at a small fraction of real cost, you won. This is not a solution, it is just a step halfway to the Soviet Union where the Party decided where you should live.

Pet_Ant 6y ago
> Housing crisis is only about the very few already overpopulated spots being hyper-attractive for people to move in because that's where opportunities are. Why not build hyper-dense housing? If you have functional public spaces you don't need as much private space. We used to have boarding houses etc. I don't need my own bathroom, I need a bathroom. I rarely use my kitchen, I just need access to one.
- anovikov 6y ago
  How about commuting? Pollution? School, hospital and other public services capacity? Crime arising from simply the rich place being affordable, inviting undesirables?

leoedin 6y ago

The idea that tiny homes are the solution to the housing crisis ignores the fact that the housing crisis is really a land-in-desirable-places crisis, and a result of a natural pyramid scheme which has emerged due to population growth and increasing popularity of cities (amplified by low interest rates). Tiny houses don't fix that problem.

ghaff 6y ago
One of the things with both tiny houses and micro-apartments--leaving aside precise definitions--is that by the time you account for some minimal set of amenities such as bathroom, a kitchenette even, corridors/stairwell in the case of apartments, etc. cutting space to the bone doesn't really save you all that much in absolute terms while forcing a lot of compromises.
- leppr 6y ago
  Indeed. The only thing the current "tiny house" concept is a solution to is bad building laws. Clever design and engineering allow people to live in an alternative way that lawmakers forgot to outlaw, but there's nothing ideal in the tiny trailer dimensions. If we want to get an idea of a minimal humane living space, look at the cheap houses people build for themselves in countries without oppressive real-estate investment protection laws. They are rarely as small, or rely heavily on outdoor/shared spaces.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Canadians have a strong aversion to living in anything but a detached house after 30ish. Most people were would have grown up sharing fences with their neighbors, not walls. So tiny houses allow for more efficient detached housing.
thereisnospork 6y ago
> land-in-desirable-places crisis If that were true construction costs would be the primary driver of housing prices, increasing as more exotic and expensive methods (steel skyscrapers vs mid-rise podium, for instance) are employed to fit more housing on less land.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago

To put it in context, this is a Canadian magazine, and here in Canada the housing market is just absolutely insanely irrational. There has been no downwards housing price "correction" since the early 90s. The 2008 bubble-pop never happened here. Interest rates remain at record lows and the COVID-19 crisis seems to have led to massive _increase_ in housing prices rather than a decrease. It's a huge distorted market with real estate, construction, and renovations etc. being the largest part of our Ontario provincial economy with primary industry, etc. declining every year. It all feels just insane. My little hobby farm has probably "doubled" in the 8.5 years I've owned it, but I don't feel great about it -- where will my kids live? Where will I retire to? When will this all blow up in our faces? My 70 year old father in law would love to retire, and sell his place and somehow reduce his costs and move closer to us... but my area has become completely unaffordable as Toronto money is suddenly blowing up the market out here with bidding wars and no-conditions offers and the like, stuff we never saw before. So yeah in that context I can't even imagine being working class and trying to make a go of it. It was bad before, but it is only getting worse. Rents are absolutely mental even in outlying areas that should be cheap. And most importantly given that these outlying areas around Toronto (Hamilton, Oshawa, London, Cambridge, Woodstock etc.) are often where the few remaining manufacturing sector jobs are, what happens to the manufacturing sector when their employees can no longer afford housing near the factory?

refurb 6y ago
This is a problem that will solve itself. Sure, it will be a painful few decades, but we've already seen that shift. Toronto used to be the cluster of high prices homes, now it's spread all the way down to Hamilton. That process will continue - people will purchase homes in lower cost areas and businesses won't have much choice but to hire closer to those locations as well. That's of course ignoring the potential for some major housing correction in Canada which resets the clock somewhat. It's not like it hasn't before. I had family buy a home in a Toronto suburb in the 1980's. They sold at the peak in 1990 and the housing market crashed hard. Prices didn't recover until the mid-2000's.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago

Pet_Ant 6y ago

We need to start building tiny soviet style apartments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQgaCwrQQy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQgaCwrQQy8 Add to that some "coffin" motels. Once people have a place to sleep near a place they can work they can start moving upwards. My mom grew up in one, and I stayed with my grandma in one every time I visited. Sure, I slept on the kitchen floor, but it's not that bad.

sesuximo 6y ago
Or we could stop putting everyone’s jobs in the same 10 towns and use a bit more space
- Pet_Ant 6y ago
  When Obama asked Steve Jobs about those manufacturing jobs coming back to the US Jobs said it ain't gonna happen. The benefits of centralizing and critical mass are just too important. Being able to lunch with people and get into the same space to innovate, to read body language. It's to big of an advantage. Just like independent rural homestead living collapsed into small town and cities, small towns are cities are collapsing into metropolises. It is inevitable. Geographic centralisation gives you so much more efficiency it's undeniable. > and use a bit more space Have you looked at a satellite map of the US? So little of it remains natural. The last thing we need is even more sprawl.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sesuximo 6y ago
    Perhaps we could use more cities instead of more suburbs.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    There's ample unused built space, infill opportunity, or brownfields development (assuming the brown isn't overly toxic, and much is).
6y ago

dirtyid 6y ago

The fact that a country as large and sparse as Canada has to contemplate tiny homes to address housing is ridiculous. Never mind that the speculative construction market has been churning out tiny condo equivalents. I lived in _much_ denser cities with their own speculative real estate market, but the developers haven't resorted to "optimizing" units as aggressively as the micro-condos I've seen in Toronto. The one bedrooms / studios are about as large as apartments in Beijing / Shanghai. But 2-3 bedrooms new constructions feel dramatically smaller. Being Canada, these units will negatively impact generations.

MattGaiser 6y ago
Nobody is willing to live outside of a few major cities and everyone here demands a detached house. There is a very strong stigma about living in anything without a lawn after 30ish.

ironman1478 6y ago

Imo, the fix for the housing crisis is for governments to invest in the economies of small towns and cities with lots of land that can be built on or property that is vacant. Everybody wants to live in sf, new york, seattle, etc. because they are where the jobs are and that also attracts culture. If state governments could give grants or tax credits for companies to start or expand out to other parts of states that are under utilized, this could cause people to move to those areas and relieve pressure on the overpopulated areas.

Dork1234 6y ago
Which basically boils down to internet at this point. Many small towns just have no or slow internet. Water - Drill Well. Sewer - Build Septic Tank Power Problems - Generator / Battery Backup Education - Home School Internet - No Solution??
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  Exactly, a tech job would fire me after realizing how inconsistent and slow the internet is at the house I grew up at in rural Wisconsin. Even my cell phone hardly works if it rains or snows. I can’t even port my number to Verizon because they apparently won’t service 715 prefixed numbers.
- ironman1478 6y ago
  It's definitely a problem, but it's solvable. It's just a function of political will and funding for local internet... Or just hoping starlink brings internet to everybody. But I also think the government needs to give people/companies straight up money to move there or give them some other incentive. It's not enough just to have schools and remote workers in houses. We need to incentivize artists, entertainers, service workers, chefs, etc. to want to work in these places. Otherwise these locations won't last long term.

MattGaiser 6y ago

The housing crisis is really a people refuse to leave Toronto and Vancouver crisis, no matter how little they make. It is also a refusal to live in anything without a lawn. Imagine if San Francisco had wages which were often lower than Cleveland for many jobs, but had the same housing prices. That is the state of Toronto and Vancouver. Incomes there are lower than other Canadian cities. The other issue is that Canadians are very used to lots and lots of space. 500 sqft per person kind of space. Lots of lawn for the kids to run around on kind of space. Combine a refusal of people to leave those two cities and the desire for detached spread out housing, and you get this. Wages can't rise either as there are tons of people who are willing to stay in Toronto no matter how relatively poorer they are as a result. In an economically rational market, people would leave Toronto over the costs and salaries would rise (like they have in San Francisco, where people have left to Seattle and Denver and remote work over pay not going very far). That is not happening in any meaningful quantity.

bsder 6y ago
> The housing crisis is really a people refuse to leave Toronto and Vancouver crisis, no matter how little they make. This is because there are two working adults in most families nowadays and not just one. So, if you move, your salary increase must account for the time your partner doesn't have salary or has decreased salary. In addition, your salary increase needs to account for the fact that you will have to move back to the city when, not if, your job disappears. That means that your salary has to go up a LOT in order to leave the city area. A 25% salary increase isn't enough incentive--your salary effectively needs to double. And the way you make that happen? You hook up with a FAANG and move to one of the overcrowded, overpriced cities. A lot of our current economic ills are because you need two salaries in order to survive in this economy, and it freezes the migration of labor.
908B64B197 6y ago
> Wages can't rise either as there are tons of people who are willing to stay in Toronto no matter how relatively poorer they are as a result. In an economically rational market, people would leave Toronto over the costs and salaries would rise (like they have in San Francisco, where people have left to Seattle and Denver and remote work over pay not going very far). That is not happening in any meaningful quantity. That's because of the out of control immigration quotas. It's still a better deal to live in Toronto than in their home country for a lot of people around the world. Combine this with an extremely conservative investment landscape and that's what you get, over speculation on "safe" assets and a lack of funding for other businesses.

Dork1234 6y ago

This seems to be Canada focus, but the US seems very similar with affordability issues in major cities. Everything I am seeing an hearing about housing cost in the US related to land, labor and lumber. Cost per sqft is crazy high and getting higher, builders would be able to build more but there just isn't enough highly qualified labor in the US, and the shutdown is preventing lumber from being milled. We cannot do anything about Covid lumber shortage or the land shortage but we can do something about the Labor shortage. When I was in high school, there were shop classes, and home building classes that focused on the building trades. These classes were in the processed of being phased out to focus on students going to college and STEM. The US education system needs to focus on being an on ramp for College and Trade-schools and stop selling on students short.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
The labor shortage exists because labor doesn't pay, it's that simple. Trades are not mass labor needed to drive costs down, and it's unlikely costs will be driven down further there because of foreign competition.

kube-system 6y ago

Is there any significant number of professionals who think tiny homes are a solution to anything? I am more under the impression that the people touting these were mainly arm-chair urban planners, more motivated by pinterest than safe and efficient resource allocation. Apartments are safer, cheaper, more efficient, easier to build, etc.

protomyth 6y ago

I was actually hoping for some actual production of tiny homes to bring the price down for a mass buy of single and couples housing. Instead we have extended family living in the same home during a pandemic with predictable results.

senko 6y ago

Ah, the difference between Europe and America. Here, a 300-400sqft single-bedroom apartmant would be considered standard and suitable for a single or 2-person household with median income. A two-bedroom 500-600 sqft apt would be considered just fine for most families with 1 or two kids (esp. if those kids are same gender or while they're small). Anything above that gets you into upper-middle class or above. Alternatively, a 4-member family with two minimum incomes could get by with 400sqft (it'd be cramped but wouldn't be considered outrageously small). The difference is also that these are almost exclusively in an apartment building, where your neighbours help insulate you from the elements, resulting in lower heating/cooling costs. I'm amazed whenever I read an article mentioning home sizes in the States (or in this case Canada) and have to double-check whether my sqft<->m2 conversion is okay because I can't believe how much more room is considered "normal" over there. Tiny homes wouldn't solve the housing crises, but looking across the pond, I'm thinking it'd still be a boon for low-wage earners. I know I'd rather be in my own 200sqft than have to pay off huge mortgage or rent a 600sqft of "wasted" space. Even if I prefer or have to rent, smaller units would be cheaper, while still more expensive per sqft, in theory netting the landlord more profit for the same apt. complex. Sounds like a win/win, what am I missing?

cammikebrown 6y ago
600? Ha! The average new home sale last year in the US was over 2,300 square feet. https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html My current place is 650 square feet and I’m looking to downsize. The problem is, the prices tend to stay static, even if you want a smaller place.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> Here, a 300-400sqft single-bedroom apartmant would be considered standard and suitable for a single or 2-person household with median income. A two-bedroom 500-600 sqft apt would be considered just fine for most families with 1 or two kids (esp. if those kids). Anything above that gets you into upper-middle class or above. Alternatively, a 4-member family with two minimum incomes could get by with 400sqft (it'd be cramped but wouldn't be considered outrageously small). As a Canadian, that seems like so little space. In university, I rented a condo with my brother and it was 900 sqft for two. I have considered what kind of property I would want for my first and 1100 sqft is probably what I would buy and my family might convince me to buy a full fledged detached (1900 sqft). Keep in mind that neither sqft figure counts any basement space. My parents have 1900 sqft and find that cramped with work from home.

Pfhreak 6y ago

Tiny houses might not, but a wholesale decommodification of housing could. We shouldn't be trying to price housing on the market, we should be pricing housing and land based on how well it houses people. If we started taxing the land rather than the land plus improvements and gave a credit for every housing unit I guarantee you we'd see parking lots turned into housing. Other approaches include: removing minimum parking requirements, rent control, strong tenants unions, stronger eviction protections, publishing landlord statistics on eviction rates, low rise distributed public housing with protected operating budgets, right to buy laws, prohibitions or increased regulations around short term rentals, support for community land trusts, up zoning, tax incentives for increasing the affordable housing supply, and yes, mother in law apartments, cottages, and other permissive zoning for additional housing can help too. There are very tractable ways we can chip away at this problem at a local and regional way. We shouldn't be speculating on housing as an asset, we should be ensuring everyone has a place to live.

deleted 6y ago

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briancp 6y ago

I work as a structural engineer and write a newsletter about, among other things, technology for lowering construction costs. A tiny house will be cheaper than conventional housing by virtue of being a lot smaller (building costs are usually expressed per square foot or square meter). But as the article points out, these are usually built with fairly high end finishes (wood paneling, granite counters, etc) - their cost per unit area is actually somewhat high. Actual low-cost construction, like the sort used on mobile homes, eliminates most of these expensive finishes, because they’re a major cost driver. And in the US at least, a house not permanently attached to land has to be financed as property, like a car, rather than real estate, which means the tiny houses attached to trailers will be financed at a much higher interest rate than a traditional mortgage. Generally I think these are more of a niche lifestyle product, a mobile home for people who don’t want to buy a mobile home, more than any sort of affordable housing solution.

Overtonwindow 6y ago

I lived in a Tiny House in Florida while I was on contract work. The rent was free and came with the job, and at first it was pretty cool, but then it quickly was not. The main issue is that to live and work with any level of efficiency requires you pal everything. Vacuum? Need a plan. Cooking dinner, need a plan. It’s like trying to find a charger for a Tesla Roadster in the first few years - everything required careful planning. After the contract, I moved into a hotel and it was instantly better.

markhahn 6y ago

The article is about "Tiny Homes ALONE Won't fix the Housing Crisis". Of course, trivialized solutions don't fix any realworld problems, so this article doesn't provide much light...

boyadjian 6y ago

When you have a city, where every surface is built, can you still say that there is a housing crisis? Maybe now, it is time to talk about real problems ?

tmnvix 6y ago

I don’t believe that there is a shortage of homes. The demand we are seeing is driven by investment. There are many more empty and low-use properties out there than most would suspect. Hear me out. Reported vacancy rates (the ones you’ll hear quoted in the media) are usually discovered by asking real estate agencies how many of the properties on their books are currently available to rent. Actual empty residences are harder to quantify. There are two studies I’m aware of that attempt to do this. In Melbourne, Australia (one of the ‘anglo’ places that suffers from this rampant property investment problem) there is the Speculative Vacancies Report[0] published each year by Prosper Australia. They determine which properties are empty using data from the water utilities companies. In the UK there is this study[1] where council data is used to determine the number of ‘Low Use Properties’ (LUP’s) in various jurisdictions. From the first study (Melbourne), I remember one interesting finding was that the higher the capital gains in an area, the higher the vacancy rate tended to be. And the vacancy rates were sometimes very high. I remember them being over 25% in Docklands (Melbourne’s Canary Wharf) and around 10% in many other areas maybe five years ago. Completely unintuitive. Surely those places should have a relatively low rate of empty properties if they are such desirable places to live (as the rapidly rising prices suggest). From the second study (UK), it’s clear that the higher the value of properties in an area, the higher the number of LUP’s. Curious about what the case might be in New Zealand (where the property market is similar - if not worse - than places like Canada, the UK, and Australia) I went looking for statistics. I found two that are relevant. The number of households and the number of private dwellings. Obviously every household must have a dwelling, so the difference should give an indication of the situation. This data goes back to the mid 90s. Turns out that back then (when house prices were sane) the difference was around 3.5%. Today it is more like 7%. Those are national averages. From the studies mentioned above I expect that the percentage of empty and low use properties would be highest in the major cities (where prices and capital gains are highest). I wouldn’t be surprised if 10% of properties in the cities are empty or getting very little use. I used to work as a postie (mailman). I saw firsthand how many houses were empty. The wealthiest streets always had the most (owners were away on holiday for 6 months or a year at a time, living elsewhere while renovating or planning to ‘flip’, the property was on the market, it was a second home, etc). In one particularly nice street, over 25% of the houses didn’t have residents at any one time. This housing affordability issue doesn’t need a supply side solution. A speculative boom creates extra demand. The solution is to make property a less attractive investment. [0] https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Speculative-Vacancies-9.pdf https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Specul... [1] https://theodi.org/event/friday-lunchtime-lecture-empty-homes-and-house-prices-is-there-a-relationship/ https://theodi.org/event/friday-lunchtime-lecture-empty-home... Edit: A holiday home used to be an expense. Now it's an investment. That's a problem.

darepublic 6y ago

Ultimate solution is a mind machine unification and living on a server farm travelling through the cosmos