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Where possible, states should build more tiny house communities, or have land where putting up a tiny house is legal and pain-free. There should also be a law p
by vouaobrasil 2y ago
Where possible, states should build more tiny house communities, or have land where putting up a tiny house is legal and pain-free. There should also be a law prohibiting a person from owning more than one of them, except for temporary periods of moving out of one and into another. (The same should hold for regular houses, too.) Effectively, land is a different sort of commodity than most others: it is truly finite, and people should not be able to make as much money off it as an investment as they currently do.
- llamaimperative 2y agoA Land Value Tax is much simpler to enforce, more generally applicable across all housing product types, and a lot less artificially constraining of local decision making. Agreed land is totally unique and should be handled very differently from other forms of wealth.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoYes, that is true. Though I would argue that we still need some rules on land ownership to begin with that is independent of the prices set by a market.
- yourusername 2y ago>Where possible, states should build more tiny house communities, or have land where putting up a tiny house is legal and pain-free. But let's just call them what they are: Trailer parks. I just don't see how trailer parks are going to solve the problem. You may have cheap land but if you put 500 trailers on a plot you're still going to need sewage hookup, power and water for 500 homes.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoThey don't have to look like traditional trailer parks -- at least not the kind that I've seen. But besides that, they will be cheaper. That's the point.
- yourusername 2y agoHow much of the cost of housing is construction vs land costs, utility hookups, developer profit and permits? Tiny houses are relatively energy inefficient (a lot of wall surface for the living space), inefficient in land usage and very expensive per square meter. And they are not suited for families with children. I wonder if these trade offs are worth it against building a reasonably sized prefab home.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoOne must also ask in addition to your pertinent questions, can the market bear putting the same price on a tiny house as it can with a large house? It's about perceived value. It's the same as anything "wedding". The price will go up just because the word "wedding" is there: wedding photography, wedding invitations, wedding catering. With tiny houses, you're going to get the opposite effect of the price being lower because if of the "tiny" aspect.
- Aeolun 2y agoWhat the US needs is some expectation adjustment. If you make all your houses and lots 2x smaller suddenly you can fit four times as many people in the same space.
- 0_____0 2y agoIf you work this problem long enough you're going to converge on apartments/condos. It solves the problem you care about and all the caveats mentioned.
- c22 2y agoUrbanization facilitates specialization which is the engine that drives inequality. So, make all your houses and lots 2x smaller and suddenly you can have more density and higher levels of inequality. Yay?
- Aeolun 2y agoThis does not bear out in any location I have lived.
- Filligree 2y agoWhat’s the issue? Utilities benefit from density; it’s much chapter to run pipes when they’re shorter per house.
- nradov 2y agoSure, it's cheaper to construct utilities on a per-unit basis in dense areas. The problem is that in medium-density areas the utilities were built out decades ago and are near capacity now. So, in order to add more housing units and residents in a neighborhood they have to rip out and replace many of the utilities. This is extremely expensive, and disruptive for existing residents.
- immibis 2y agoThen do that. That isn't nearly the majority of the cost of a home.
- lucidguppy 2y agoHow about developing the "missing middle" in urban development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing Efficient and healthy land use for housing was solved in the 1900s - we don't need tiny homes.
- schnitzelstoat 2y agoYeah, American houses are massive compared to what we have in Europe and often have large amounts of space around the house too. In England, row housing is quite common and that seems a good compromise between density and comfort. I live in an apartment block in Spain and it's quite a lot worse than even row housing due to noise from neighbours, lack of parking etc. It's okay for young people, but it'll be hard to raise a family in, which is probably partly why we have such low birth rates here.
- prawn 2y agoAnd Australian houses are, as I understand it, bigger again. There was a thread somewhere about where to put your washing machine: bathroom or kitchen. And every Australian was in there getting completely confused because the vast majority of houses in Australia have a dedicated laundry room usually with a trough, bench top, washing machine, dryer, etc.
- throwaway1105q 2y agoI have lived in an apartment my entire life. I'm in a building with 15 floors and 5 flats on each right now. My direct neighbors have a newborn baby. I don't hear a thing, literally - I wouldn't know there are other people if I wasn't 20 meters above the ground. Don't compromise on build quality like the Spanish do, build it like the Germans, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks do - and you won't have any issues.
- schnitzelstoat 2y agoYeah, that's true. I guess I don't trust developers to build decent buildings, especially affordable ones. In England, the new-build homes are often of a far inferior build quality to the older ones built after the war.
- cush 2y agoRow houses and flats are better. Zoning laws prohibit them in most neighborhoods though.
- imperfect_light 2y agoWe used to have housing of last resort, places like SROs that were unpleasant but cheap (and to be fair, they were often firetraps). But then we decided it was inhumane so we banned or greatly restricted them, and surprise, the people that would have been in an SRO now live in cars or tents, definitely not an improvement.
- downrightmike 2y agoWe used to just have boarding houses, apartment buildings for this sort of thing.