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America's affordable house of the future failed
- arh68 3y ago> “My experience, as you see,” said Fruehauf, “lends support to the complaint . . . that some RFC officials were determined all along to wreck Lustron unless they could get control for their friends.” [1] A curious tale. Sounds like a political failure, more than anything else. I also wonder how, in August of '48, Time reported that Lustron has got no steel to build its houses. [2] [1] http://www.singingwheels.com/business-week-article.html http://www.singingwheels.com/business-week-article.html [2] https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,888433,00.html https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,888...
- kwhitefoot 3y agoHow does one stop a metal box getting damp? The last thing you usually want to make walls from is something that has such high thermal conductivity.
- ghaff 3y agoManufactured homes that aren't "mobile homes" do exist, mostly in lower cost non-dense US areas where land can be relatively cheap. The cost of building a small single family house in an arbitrary location isn't really the main driver of pricing in the most in-demand areas.
- rayiner 3y agoThere’s something similar to Amdahl's law at work here. A lot of house building isn’t amenable to mass manufacture, so mass manufacturing the parts that are doesn’t speed up the overall process that much. Maybe it’s different in the Midwest, but in Maryland virtually every house has a basement. Our neighbor has a modular home (a nice one with two stories and three bedrooms—looks just like a stick built house) and they wanted a basement too. Grading the plot, digging out the basement, and dealing with drainage and whatnot takes a lot of time and skilled labor. The actual framing and finishing proceeds surprisingly quickly in comparison. Then, electrical, plumbing, insulation, HVAC, and other skilled trades take forever and cost a fortune. So speeding up and reducing the cost of throwing the structure together doesn’t revolutionize the pricing.
- pfdietz 3y agoYou want the basement floor to be below the frost line, so I'd imagine going north of Maryland (or anywhere with colder winters) would encourage basements at least as deep. Also: for discussions of construction and cost, see this blog: https://www.construction-physics.com/ https://www.construction-physics.com/
- CharlieDigital 3y agoThere are new-ish monolithic pour techniques that enable slab foundations in frost prone areas. In particular, the usage of rigid XPS insulation in the soil and maintaining a minimum temp in the structure allow more efficient foundation construction.
- sokoloff 3y agoI grew up with a basement (in MD) and have one now (in MA). Basements seem so incredibly practical and useful that if I could have one, I’d choose one for sure.
- CharlieDigital 3y agoNot disagreeing (have a finished basement myself), but what's in question here is affordability and efficiency. In that context, a monolithic slab has a lot of benefits including reduced material that has to be removed, reduced site prep, reduced construction time, reduced material costs, reduced labor costs, and reduced complexity. If the goal is to make more housing, more accessible economically, then it makes sense in that context.
- ghaff 3y agoIt depends somewhat on how dry they are. Mine isn't very. But there's generally a fair bit of utility infrastructure that has to go somewhere. And even if it's not a finished basement it provides a lot of storage which is really useful if you don't have an attic.
- ryandrake 3y ago
- Waterluvian 3y agoAhh is this basically the house that homes in the Fallout series are imitating?
- ajross 3y agoCost of construction is not the problem with housing policy. In point of fact housing has been getting cheaper to build steadily over the decades. An all-steel (!!) home just intuitively seems ridiculous to launch into a market trying to compete with OSB and drywall. We need places to put the homes and rules that allow for denser homes. We're doing just fine on "cheap homes".
- davidw 3y agoYes. Some of the biggest problems with housing are political, not technological. Oregon, for instance, built more apartments (low-rise apartments are the least expensive form of housing here) in the 1970ies than today: https://www.sightline.org/2023/02/07/yes-oregon-there-is-a-way-to-build-enough-homes/ https://www.sightline.org/2023/02/07/yes-oregon-there-is-a-w... Of course, it is expensive to build things in the US in general, and that's a problem worth pursuing as well.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago> The Lustron, for all its failings, certainly proved its durability. Of the ~2.5k built, ~1.8k are still standing, Doesn't sound like much of an achievement. The town I live in (in Norway) is full of wooden housing built in the same period or earlier. I'm pretty confident that far more than 75% of them are still standing. The brick built house I owned in the early 80s in Southampton, England, was one of a street of hundreds of houses built in 1890. The whole street is still there together with dozens of others of similar or greater age.
- Daunk 3y agoThe expectations are lower outside of Scandinavia.
- mason55 3y agoI imagine that both of those were quite a bit more expensive to build. The point isn’t that houses from the 40s are still standing. The US also has tons and tons of those. The point is that the cheap, modular, assembly-line houses are still standing. Cheap usually equates to non-durable so it’s notable that these cheap houses are an exception.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoBut were they more expensive in the long term?
- zdragnar 3y agoThe article mentions that the houses were often razed because the land was more valuable than the building. I don't know about the parts that were enamel coated, but I imagine some of the cost might be recouped from recycling the steel. I don't think I've lived in a building newer than this era since I was a child, and I've moved quite a bit in both brick and wood framed houses in the Midwest US.
- jethkl 3y agoOne amazing feature of Lustron houses is that their enameled exterior has aged amazingly well. I live near several of them, and all of them, without exception, appear to have survived 7 decades in a harsh northern climate. The enamel appears to be colorfast, does not chip or stain, and the material must be nearly indestructible. It isn't obvious from the photos, but the roofs are also enameled, and I believe all the houses near me still have the original roofs. I'm guessing the individual panels are basically impossible to replace or repair. They have survived well in a very tough environment.
- knowaveragejoe 3y agoI don't know if it's mentioned in the article, but is living in these particularly noisy in rain/wind? How is sound transmission in general within them?
- HankB99 3y agoOne of the strength of Weber kettles (Charcoal cookers) is that they are enamel, not painted and unless chipped or dented can last a long time.
- adolph 3y agoBut the US never developed two qualities fundamental to the Lustron: the idea that houses should be consumed like cars and the ability to mass-produce modular housing. “Houses . . . consumed like cars” makes for an interesting thought experiment, like “The Roads Must Roll”[0] but doesn’t strike me as a meeting an actual need. Maybe I’m wrong. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll
- davidw 3y agoApparently, in Japan they view housing as more of a 'consumption good' than we do in the US, and that has some benefits in terms of being more amenable to building enough and being less NIMBY about things.
- nonethewiser 3y agoI imagine Japan’s “view” on housing is downstream of macroeconomic conditions like deflation and population decline. Ie, houses don’t appreciate much in price therefore people dont look at them like investments, not the other way around. In support of this is China, where there are similar cultural views about “used” homes being undesirable. Yet (to this point) prices have appreciated and they have used them as investment vehicles. To put it another way, would Japanese homes really depreciate with rapid population and economic growth? There is just no way.
- davidw 3y agoIt's true even for cities like Tokyo that are still attracting people despite the population of the country declining.
- nonethewiser 3y agoI believe Tokyo requires demolition after a certain amount of time or ownership change right? Not entirely sure, and Ive also seen some info that suggest real estate has appreciated in Tokyo lately. Point being maybe its demographics and regulation, with a cultural attitude that jives with it and even explains the regulation to demolish, but not attitude being operative.
- mistrial9 3y agoa mass producer of roof frames in the Western USA succeeded in making the parts at low cost and high volumes, but the immediate middle-men could not stop cheating each other and their sub-contractors using crooked contracts and hidden costs. The whole effort backed up and stalled after several years.. some parties took more than their share of profit, and others were cheated and went broke. The production may have halted completely. source: discussion with a small business person around 2005
- boringuser2 3y agoIf you want to secure the future for your people, you need to execute large government infrastructure programs. Turns out leaving all of this to the profit motive puts people on the street. Amazing.
- mistrial9 3y agonah - between govvies, frat guy investors, or giant companies .. none of those are guaranteed successful. Each of those can and will fail miserably, or get a lot done.
- boringuser2 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoOne edgy comment that might be misinterpreted is one thing; a dozen is quite another. You can't do this here and I've banned the account.
- big_ole_babby 3y agoFirstly, simply mentioning Jews is against the rules? Secondly, banning a software engineer is like trying to stick your finger in a dam with a leak. You don't have an impartial moderation style and that self-conceit is the absolute most revolting thing about your whole shtick.
- DataDive 3y agoAmerica has plenty of affordable housing; it is just in the wrong place. There are enormous swaths of land with low populations and ultra-cheap homes. We don't have a housing problem; the problem is that affordable housing has undesirable locations. Make the locations attractive, and all of a sudden, there is no housing problem. (I don't claim to know how to achieve that)
- swells34 3y agoAnd those low population areas carry low paying jobs, which are proportional to high population areas. Yes, we have a housing problem. For the average person on an average local income, a house is unaffordable. If you look back at the 70s, 80s, and 90s, houses cost many times more (before and after adjustment for local average income) now, regardless of where you look.
- DataDive 3y agoThe key measure to compare everything is disposable income rather than inflation-adjusted this or that. Disposable income of the 70s was a tiny fraction, many orders of magnitude smaller than the disposable income of 2024. In addition, houses in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s are not comparable to houses today. Modern houses and cars should cost a lot more because they offer a lot more. All I am saying here is that the picture is a lot more complicated and nuanced and needs a more detailed evaluation than a simplistic scaling factor into the past.
- swells34 3y agoWell, it is average locally earned disposable income compared to local housing cost, as a percentage. And in that case, houses are ridiculously expensive now. Most of my prior generation relatives purchased homes in the 70s in their early 20s while working minimum wage jobs as single income households. They were forklift drivers and steel workers, required no education, yet somehow a house was cheaper than 2 years income. I think you need to question your understanding a little more thoroughly. Also look at how ridiculously cheap the average rent was... if you don't own, you rent, and rent was something like half of a paycheck, making saving for a house much easier.
- WalterBright 3y agoYou used to be able to buy a house from Sears, which you assembled on site. http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm
- dghughes 3y agoI thought this was going to be about Edison Houses the invention of Thomas Edison meant to be affordable to help the poor (and he just bought a cement company). His idea of an all concrete house made using a single pour of concrete. Even the cabinets, beds, toilet were supposedly part of design and created during the concrete pour. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/06/thomas-edisons-forgotten-passion.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/06/thomas-edisons-forgott...
- kkfx 3y agoIME all prefabricated homes I've seen so far are of VERY dirty-cheap quality, not at all easy to repair, not at all accessible (in terms of owner ability to change wiring, piping, ...), not durable, not really cheap given the rest. Beside that homes are not for single individuals, but for families and families are not that standard... So well, they are a hard task for mass manufacturing and those who have tried mass manufacturing them have designed almost only crap. IME: - first choose wood :: it's easier to rework/extend/modify by the owner, if someone want to buy a cheap home ALSO plan to do plenty of stuff alone to lower the final price; - second carefully designs flexibility :: let's say just electricity, consider a modern "start-like" distribution BUT every room just get a derivation box with all relevant power circuits and anything depart from it, it's not super cheap, but in gross terms it does not count much and allow much flexibility, similarly design easy access to plumbery; - third do not assume furniture :: just design the home, offering some options but allow the owner to choose all the rest; - fourth take easy repair into account :: let's say just windows, if they are mounted with some factory-assembled strange setups are a nightmare to substitute thereafter, mount them in ways they can be unmounted with very little effort, use as much as possible "common", "standard" components and so on. PERHAPS at that point you get some meaningful results.