6 ms·

One thing I wish was brought up more is the missing middle [1]. Having denser neighbourhoods is good for a ton of reasons, and having more available housing uni

by rsaz 4y ago

One thing I wish was brought up more is the missing middle [1]. Having denser neighbourhoods is good for a ton of reasons, and having more available housing units would be super helpful for this. Of course, zoning laws restrict this heavily, and car dependent infrastructure also encourages single-family homes with space for multiple vehicles easily accessible in a driveway/garage. Obviously this wouldn't be a silver bullet, but I really wish North American urban planning would allow for more freedom in housing structures, and put more emphasis on public transportation. Hard to have faith though. [1] https://missingmiddlehousing.com/ https://missingmiddlehousing.com/

frumper 4y ago
Great news for Californians. All single family homes are now zoned for up to 4 dwellings. I doubt it'll change much, but we'll see if the missing middle proponents are on to something.
softfalcon 4y ago
We have this here in Canada. What happens is that investors buy up the entire unit/condominium/apartment-tower and rent it out. Many of them don't even care if they have 50% vacancy because the investment of the property/land is worth more to them than anything. Lastly, many of these investors are foreign or even money laundering and just want to dump their massive cash flow into some kind of a physical investment (in this case, Canadian land/property). We have whole malls that are just ghost towns sitting in the Northern part of my city that aren't even properly built (incorrect piping/HVAC) to function solely for the purpose of legitimizing money laundering and foreign ownership of Canadian land. Building more housing is good, I won't argue that, but the players in this market are so rich they will just buy ALL of it the moment it appears on the market and our local builders are all so corrupt they would love nothing more than to sign a deal to build 20,000 apartment units and immediately sell them all over to these crooked investors. There are literal video recordings of our 3 major builders bragging to one another about how "they own this city" and "we can keep selling these empty properties forever, the city can't do anything about it" and "if anyone opposes us, we'll show them who owns whose ass". This is becoming so obvious it's ridiculous here. We have had a 15-30% vacancy rate for both business and residential near our downtown sector for the last 3 years during COVID, yet we have a record high of buildings being built. The foreign investment is so huge that they just keep building even when there is no market for the space. They don't care, it's all about moving money out of foreign assets into concrete assets here in Canada. Canada has become the money laundering capital of the world: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-canada-became-a-money-laundering-capital-while-ottawa-slept https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-canada-bec...
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  Canadian here who is in favour of truly punitive vacancy taxes. Our housing crisis has been ignored for decades and now drastic action is required on a number of fronts, including combating vacancy (I'd also like to see zoning laws and development objections in urban areas die in a fire). The issue is now so acute I'd be in favour of vacancy taxing any address in major metros that isn't someone's filing address with CRA. At the very least the owner should need to demonstrate there is a long term, legal tenant at any address CRA didn't get a filing from. Vancouver tried, but I don't think they aimed high enough; many speculators just view the tax as the cost of doing business and subtracted it from their gains. At least it's up to 3% now; the 1% initial was way too small. Added bonus if we measure vacancy right it will kill the short term air bnb market at the same time. I have no issue with people renting their home out a few weeks a year while they are on vacation for some extra cash, but it's heinous there are apartments owned solely for short term rental when tons of people can't afford homes.
kory 4y ago
I don't buy that Americans on average actually want to live in the "missing middle". They want a small detached house. Lower income folks were able to afford small detached houses for nearly half of the 20th century. The recent push for "missing middle" housing is a coping mechanism for the fact that most of our population just can't live as well as it did only a generation ago. The solution is to spread out from concentrated megacities. Overcrowding happens in cycles historically, and every time it happens it's bad for human health and the health of human society. Everyone wants the space of a single family home and the slew of "modern amenities" a city offers, while lamenting they can't afford it. Our parents and their parents lived in far out areas that were cheap / semirural at time of purchase and matured to very nice places to live over decades of hard work put in by the local community. Of course those well-built-up areas are expensive, and of course the people that created those communities don't want to see them completely changed by density. We just need to build more opportunities like these, and people need to be willing to sacrifice on location at the start to see the area build up around them over time.
- uoaei 4y ago
  As with the vast majority of consumer preferences it is a combination of: 1. Not being introduced to the breadth of options that are available 2. Being told, or else insinuated to, that certain options represent higher status or achievement than others Americans want small detached houses because the ubiquity of the social construct known as "the American dream" drilled it into everyone's heads from the postwar period onward. Sitcoms through the television era both represented and reinforced this ideal. But choices can be unmade as easily as they are made.
  - salawat 4y ago
    >But choices can be unmade as easily as they are made. ...Do...do you even program? Or build? Because that right there tells me that you've never, ever been realistically engaged with a long term decision with long tails (read: other people that aren't you as stakeholders, or strings of dependent decisions). There is nothing more permanent than a temporary stopgap, and bells that can be unrung are exceedingly rare, and never ever trivial to implement.

by rsaz 4y ago

frumper 4y ago

Great news for Californians. All single family homes are now zoned for up to 4 dwellings. I doubt it'll change much, but we'll see if the missing middle proponents are on to something.

softfalcon 4y ago

We have this here in Canada. What happens is that investors buy up the entire unit/condominium/apartment-tower and rent it out. Many of them don't even care if they have 50% vacancy because the investment of the property/land is worth more to them than anything. Lastly, many of these investors are foreign or even money laundering and just want to dump their massive cash flow into some kind of a physical investment (in this case, Canadian land/property). We have whole malls that are just ghost towns sitting in the Northern part of my city that aren't even properly built (incorrect piping/HVAC) to function solely for the purpose of legitimizing money laundering and foreign ownership of Canadian land. Building more housing is good, I won't argue that, but the players in this market are so rich they will just buy ALL of it the moment it appears on the market and our local builders are all so corrupt they would love nothing more than to sign a deal to build 20,000 apartment units and immediately sell them all over to these crooked investors. There are literal video recordings of our 3 major builders bragging to one another about how "they own this city" and "we can keep selling these empty properties forever, the city can't do anything about it" and "if anyone opposes us, we'll show them who owns whose ass". This is becoming so obvious it's ridiculous here. We have had a 15-30% vacancy rate for both business and residential near our downtown sector for the last 3 years during COVID, yet we have a record high of buildings being built. The foreign investment is so huge that they just keep building even when there is no market for the space. They don't care, it's all about moving money out of foreign assets into concrete assets here in Canada. Canada has become the money laundering capital of the world: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-canada-became-a-money-laundering-capital-while-ottawa-slept https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-canada-bec...

theluketaylor 4y ago
Canadian here who is in favour of truly punitive vacancy taxes. Our housing crisis has been ignored for decades and now drastic action is required on a number of fronts, including combating vacancy (I'd also like to see zoning laws and development objections in urban areas die in a fire). The issue is now so acute I'd be in favour of vacancy taxing any address in major metros that isn't someone's filing address with CRA. At the very least the owner should need to demonstrate there is a long term, legal tenant at any address CRA didn't get a filing from. Vancouver tried, but I don't think they aimed high enough; many speculators just view the tax as the cost of doing business and subtracted it from their gains. At least it's up to 3% now; the 1% initial was way too small. Added bonus if we measure vacancy right it will kill the short term air bnb market at the same time. I have no issue with people renting their home out a few weeks a year while they are on vacation for some extra cash, but it's heinous there are apartments owned solely for short term rental when tons of people can't afford homes.

kory 4y ago

I don't buy that Americans on average actually want to live in the "missing middle". They want a small detached house. Lower income folks were able to afford small detached houses for nearly half of the 20th century. The recent push for "missing middle" housing is a coping mechanism for the fact that most of our population just can't live as well as it did only a generation ago. The solution is to spread out from concentrated megacities. Overcrowding happens in cycles historically, and every time it happens it's bad for human health and the health of human society. Everyone wants the space of a single family home and the slew of "modern amenities" a city offers, while lamenting they can't afford it. Our parents and their parents lived in far out areas that were cheap / semirural at time of purchase and matured to very nice places to live over decades of hard work put in by the local community. Of course those well-built-up areas are expensive, and of course the people that created those communities don't want to see them completely changed by density. We just need to build more opportunities like these, and people need to be willing to sacrifice on location at the start to see the area build up around them over time.

uoaei 4y ago
As with the vast majority of consumer preferences it is a combination of: 1. Not being introduced to the breadth of options that are available 2. Being told, or else insinuated to, that certain options represent higher status or achievement than others Americans want small detached houses because the ubiquity of the social construct known as "the American dream" drilled it into everyone's heads from the postwar period onward. Sitcoms through the television era both represented and reinforced this ideal. But choices can be unmade as easily as they are made.
- salawat 4y ago
  >But choices can be unmade as easily as they are made. ...Do...do you even program? Or build? Because that right there tells me that you've never, ever been realistically engaged with a long term decision with long tails (read: other people that aren't you as stakeholders, or strings of dependent decisions). There is nothing more permanent than a temporary stopgap, and bells that can be unrung are exceedingly rare, and never ever trivial to implement.