People debating about what kind of housing to build are getting ahead of themselves. The housing crisis is intentional. Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. They way to do that is to keep supply lower than demand. The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis that needs fixing.
This is sort of true, but confused, because it's land that has value, not housing, and the value of land increases when it's upzoned. [0]
[0] It's of course not increased when government unilaterally constructs low-income housing without reference to market conditions, which is why it's important to assure homeowners that this is not what upzoning entails.
That same logic applies to cryptocurrencies. Nobody actually cares about the "utility" of Bitcoin or Ethereum. An expensive cryptocurrency also means expensive fees which diminishes the net benefit of the cryptocurrency. So in practice homeowners and cryptocurrency speculators are making money off the collapse of their community.
Doesn't matter what you do, some places are more desirable than others to live in, and the end up attracting a premium.
> Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote.
Bypassing the will of the voters is ... difficult. It's not impossible to force your moral mores onto voters who don't want it, but it sure ain't easy, and it ain't easy for good reason!
> The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis that needs fixing.
The "convincing" is never going to be persuasive enough to convince the specific voters that they need to take a financial hit of several years of salaries "for the greater good".
The only permanent fix is to make less desirable places more desirable. With remote work a large and significant percent of the population can just buy somewhere cheap and far off from where they work.
By draining the currently highly contended places of workers, those accommodations will cost less, and the migrating workers will pay less anyway because they are, by definition, buying in a cheaper CoL area.
Highly contended centers that everyone migrates to is going to expensive no matter what you do. it doesn't matter if you double the housing in the next year, the demand will grow to fill it at current prices anyway.
The only solution is to reduce the contention for those centers. It's not a full solution, but it's a damn good start: leave the downtown offices all empty of workers and prices will adjust to reflect reality.
I'd argue that this is caused by two factors, both which would be really simple to fix if we cared enough.
Easy access to large amounts of debt allow people to become heavily dependent to the value of their home, and we have been sold a story that your home is an investment that should play a large factor in your future net worth.
Go back in history and two things are true, debt wasn't much less common in general and homes were more often built to last. I honestly don't understand considering most homes built in the US today as an investment. The average home is poorly built using cheap materials that won't last. Most major components of the home will need to be replaced in a couple decades if not sooner, meaning you're left chasing large repairs and remodels when you should be paying off the loan and building equity.
I'd propose that the best way to solve the housing crisis is for us to stop treating it as a get rich quick scheme.
Another problem is a vast majority of people want to / have to live in a very few select places. We could alleviate housing costs by changing that as well; back to supply and demand. I hope that StarLink and WFH are big pieces of the puzzle that will move people away from mega-dense population centers. We certainly have the acreage.
if this is true won't market forces attract more builders? If there is no promise of a healthy profit (and with growing material prices worldwide you can't keep property prices flat) - there won't be a lot of construction? If anything you need to address construction materials shortage/supply issues.
Why do housing prices go up? Partially inflation. But mostly because purchasing a house and renting it out is massively profitable, state subsidized, and a safe way to invest a store of wealth. Owners of capital seek out niches with good risk:value ratios. Look at housing prices over the last 5 years: even if your investment home sat empty, it's probably gone up 70% or more in price. Rent is just profit on top of those (also state-subsidized, way more than any other asset class!) asset gains. Mortgages that are all-but-guaranteed by the state allow even the least-qualified investors to massively leverage themselves into multiple million dollar properties.
The housing market is broken because moneymakers would rather maximize profits and render everyone else homeless than participate in a functional society. Consider a world where investors own 80% of housing in the USA: would they rent it all out? Or would the small number of corporations collaborate to keep _most_ units off the market, massively spiking the cost of housing and increasing the value of their portfolios? Our healthcare market suggests that when it comes to necessities, people are willing to pay literally any price. And our society has become more and more unequal in the past couple of decades, with the top 1% controlling as much capital as the bottom 50%. Logic dictates that the small number of that 1%, or perhaps the top 10%, if forced to pay insane rents for housing, will provide more profit than setting rent prices that everyone can afford.
I don't think we should vilify the average homeowner who doesn't want to end up underwater on their mortgage. We should vilify the government that has allowed market forces to increasingly distort the residential real estate market, to the point where we're starting to squeeze essential jobs like teacher, firefighter, waitress, and nurse out of the market entirely. Both for rentals and purchases.
Right now it doesn't matter if we double the US housing supply in the next year: it'll still get bought up by investors with far deeper pockets than the average family, because those investors have a strong incentive to prop up the real estate bubble -- they've got more skin in the game than anyone else. And they're less discerning, waiving inspections and paying 10% over asking in cash because if the house turns out to be a lemon they'll just absorb it into margins. Or write it off as a business expense -- depreciation!
The US housing market needs a massive overhaul to disincentivize residential property ownership for anything other than owner-dwellings, co-ops, and small, local landlords (to provide flexible rental options for those who move around too much to justify one-time buying costs). Much like a monopoly or oligopoly in the any other industry, large market forces in the housing industry have deeper pockets, more lawyers, more lobbyists, and more time than any small-time player. And those large market forces have a tendency to squeeze everyone else out.
Housing should, first and foremost, put a roof over the head of every person in the country before anyone profits at all. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either directly or indirectly profiting from homelessness.
This was built close to my house, so I got to watch the frame rise. It was an interesting process, and it makes a certain amount of sense to emphasize timber construction in this heavily-forested region. I have to agree with the headline, though.
If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago.
Saying a bunch of glulam will solve the issue is just incorrect. Wood is fantastic material. But using half a forest to build a 2000sqft house is certainly not the direction we should be going, we should be finding ways to build with 1/2 the amount of wood we currently use. Or perhaps melt down all of that trash and form it into a house somehow...
> There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago.
This is at best a huge exaggeration. For one thing, roofing is not a 50-year career. If you know any 70 year old roofers, they've either been retired or moved on to other things decades ago - the toll that roofing takes on a body makes it a 10-15 year career at best.
Secondly, I've been working with roofers a lot lately - I have a very old style of roof that was common 50 years ago, and it's very hard to find people who can work on it, because everyone wants to do things the modern way.
Counterpoint: I spent several years in construction, and the assistant superintendent on the project, who was at the end of a ~50 year career, often complained that so much had changed he had no idea what was going on. The tools, machines, materials, techniques, schedules, laws, etc. all changed so dramatically he was really only able to remain expert at the human elements.
Melting down trash that will offgas for the next few decades and putting it in close proximity to people sounds like a great way to boost cancer rates.
> Wood is fantastic material. But using half a forest to build a 2000sqft house is certainly not the direction we should be going, we should be finding ways to build with 1/2 the amount of wood we currently use
Wood is inherently a carbon sink. I suspect stimulating forest production via added lumber demand (similar to how Christmas tree demand stimulates tree farms) would be a net pollution win, albeit potentially at the cost of a nice looking forest somewhere.
Timber is a crop. Wanting to build houses with less wood is like wanting to make clothes with less cotton or wool; there’s no fundamental reason to economize on a renewable resource.
Any industry that warranties it's work. They're far less likely to take on new and disruptive technologies if there's no guarantee they're going to be supported for the necessary amount of time.
> we should be finding ways to build with 1/2 the amount of wood we currently use.
Different houses have different requirements. Some roofs see snow, others don't. Some roofs see hurricane winds, others don't.
I’m not sure if this is entirely fair. I know people in the trades that have updated their technique and tools every few years the same way a software engineer would. They may be more resistant to change, but local building codes and such inherently force tradesmen to adapt at a certain point.
Honestly, if I had to choose between buying a house built 50 years ago, or one today - I personally would take the older one. Nothing scares me more (relative to owning a house) than buying a brand new one.
If it has been around for fifty years, it has been tested - may have some things wrong with them, but you usually know what you are dealing with and usually the skill was better and materials better. Heck, my parents house is now 250 years old, and still as solid as can be.
A brand new one where the builder was trying to save money by using the latest and greatest techie products, and may or may not how to install it properly? No thanks.
To each their own though - I know plenty of folks that wouldn't even consider buying a 'used' house.
> If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago.
I think your comment is misguided and lacks reflection. Change for the sake of change is never good because by definition there is no upside. Construction technology is also expected to be reliable and have long service life, and traditional techniques ensure that by the fact that the are tried and true.
I am building a house in a rural area, where land is cheap. Building is not.
Timber is certainly expensive, but you know what else costs a lot? All the other stuff, much of it subject to state building codes that get more restrictive every year.
Asbestos survey, assessment, abatement: $10k
Asbestos air monitoring: $1k
Tipping fees: 20k
Spray foam insulation: $27k
Foundation $50k
Solar: 40k (not including rebates/incentives)
Requirements for outlets. Requirements for windows. Setbacks from a utility pole on our property, 50 yards/meters from the nearest road. We have to deal with that mess and pay extra to site the foundation, not National Grid!
Even if we were getting a manufactured home (built to looser FEMA standards) we would still have to deal with some of these costs, such as asbestos, tipping fees and foundation. And the cheapest double wide is $300k.
If you are building from scratch, why do you need an asbestos survey? What are you surveying?
And does your state really require spray foam insulation and solar? Or does it require an R-value for insulation and spray foam is the easiest way to get there with your design?
Got to say using spray foam to insulate the wall cavities instead of using external insulation over the structural elements is about the worst idea ever.
Also how much solar can you buy for $27k? Enough to supply 60kwh a day to run a heat pump.
When land is cheap, do what the locals do - out buildings abound!
It can be worth your while to sit down and map out house areas, purposes, and requirements, and change as many of them as you can to avoid mandatory features.
Isn't this obvious? I thought it is well known that zoning is the biggest problem. Add to the fact that land values in cities are out of control.
For example, I'd like to rebuild my old house, but it doesn't make financial sense to build under 4000sf as I'd be losing out to potential value as well as matching the neighborhood. I can't build a duplex or detached ADU. I don't want to spend 2 million on giant house I can't use.
I think that construction timber benefit as a Carbon sequester is too often downplayed or simply ignored while it could be significant.
Timber has many advantages compared to concrete, including longevity.
The housing shortage won’t last forever thanks to demography, but we’ll need to replace many badly aging buildings anyway, and it takes time to grow trees and build the whole infrastructure around this construction technique, we should try to not sit and wait for a change.
Ability for timber to sequester carbon is really complicated. Most studies that arrive at positive conclusions for industry ignore land-use change associated emissions. I.e razing an old-growth forest only to plant plantation trees. Old growth forests sequester carbon in the soil and their roots. They also allow for an ecosystems that itself sequester carbon (various bacteria). Forestry IS not currently sustainable managed. All the IKEA and FSC scandals attest to that. European old growth forests are for some reason disappearing.
It's really irresponsible to gesture at this vague idealist future when the present is anything but. Yes, technically wood sequesters carbon. Yes, when trees rot and decompose they release carbon. Yes, if you turn the tree into timber or furniture that carbon will be then locked for very least couple decades.
No, forestry is not sustainably managed. Nowhere close. Europeans are razing down their old growth forests for heating. And wood pellets have higher carbon emissions than coal per unit of energy produced. See NYTimes coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/07/world/europe/...
Of course timber won't fix the housing shortage. The housing shortage is artificial. There are plenty of empty units across the country. It's a distribution issue of: owners holding vacant units, people wanting/needing to live in specific locations, and individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes. With an almost stagnate population growth this isn't really a building issue even if it is a supply side issue.
Owners holding vacant units is not a significant cause of the housing shortage. Overly restrictive zoning and subjective reviews exploited by NIMBYs explains almost all of it.
Mixed density and smaller builds are almost nowhere to be found, and small developers have incredible difficulty securing loans from banks to build them. The large developers focus on expensive projects that have more overhead and checks, and even there they don't build that much because they are few in number. People would opt for mixed density were it actually available.
Zoning and regs are actually among the factors that make certain projects riskier, so reform helps in this regard. Just see Minneapolis. Zoning reform works. It works so well that there is some push back from NIMBYs in those cities pissed off that their areas are changing fast.
Raise prop taxes for non-rented vacation units by 150%
Raise prop taxes for rentals by %350.
Raise prop taxes for airbnbs by %500.
Everyone will own a home, and home prices will plummet as people try to unload extremely expensive property taxes.
And if it doesn't work, double my percentages. Or just make it 100k per year. Those people crazy enough to keep holding them, will fund the creation of homeless housing. DV's are just landlords and other types of bottom feeders.
The article says it's trying to rebut a recent FAS article - which starts with:
> Mass timber can help solve the housing shortage, yet the building material is not widely adopted because old building codes ...
> Mass timber can help with housing abundance and the climate transition.
And the FAS article's call to action seems to be "Congress needs to increase the USDA's budget".
So, yes. Easier than rebutting "warm water is dry and crumbly". One wonders whether the Federation of American Scientists has ever heard of "NIMBY", "zoning", or "environmental impact". Let alone "house-poor" or "local government".
Not a very convincing article. The fact that mass timber uses more wood is right there in the name. Everyone knows this. The point is you get a better building. The cavities in a wood-framed building cause all manner of problems with respect to heat, draft, cold, damp, and noise. Filling the cavity with solid wood variously solves such problems.
All the stuff about the capital cost of making laminated wood is irrelevant. Only the marginal cost of the assembly matters.
Mass timber isn’t meant to replace stick built buildings that are 5 stories or less, it’s meant to replace reinforced concrete for buildings over 5 stories, up to around ~25 stories [0]
> Filling the cavity with solid wood variously solves such problems.
Solves some problems, sure, but not heat/cold. Wood has just over a third the R-value of fiberglass batting, IIRC. Better to increase the cavity size and uncouple the inner and outer studs.
It’s not mentioned in the article, but the Brock Commons that was the tallest timber building is at UBC! I was there as it was built and finished. It’s an 18 story dorm building one of several nearly equally sized dorms (!!) on campus. It went up fast - it was started and done between the 2 years I was there.
UBC is huge for specifically timber engineering research, they claimed at one point to be the best in the world.
>...Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move.
Do you have a citation for that number? Most sources say Canada takes in about 1/2 that:
>...Currently, annual immigration in Canada amounts to almost 500,000 new immigrants – one of the highest rates per population of any country in the world. As of 2023, there were more than eight million immigrants with permanent residence living in Canada - roughly 20 percent of the total Canadian population.
the problem isn't the people, is that most of the country ranges from "fairly uninhabitable" to "dangerously uninhabitable".
foreigners aren't moving to rural Manitoba, they're all going to a handful of areas, most of which are in the furthers south parts of the country (e.g. Vancouver, and Greater Toronto), which also happen to have the mildest weather.
Australia is seeing a similar trend -- influx of people, not much (viable) land.
also keep in mind this demand is simply to keep up with population loss, and demand on the system for pensions, healthcare, and support for the Boomers. the Liberal party is ultimately still pro-capitalism, and they need to balance out these dying old people; "stonks only go up", so we need more consumption.
The housing shortage is so straightforward to solve, but government officials and citizens alike block most measures that would easily solve it. It's very frustrating. Rents in Austin are down double digits, and the reason? They changed zoning laws and built more housing. Seems like every major city should be doing that, but apparently, it's too complex.
There are actual mass timber projects to look at. The article mentions one in Milwaukee. I am familiar with the T3 project [0].
It was delivered ahead of schedule and below cost relative to a traditional steel/concrete plan. No huge issues of which I am aware in the 5 or so years since occupancy, but someone else may know better.
Los Angeles has a housing shortage. It also has a car traffic problem a d argubly needs 40 train/subway lines, tons of bike infra, and re-zoning so more small business can open in walking distance to people. building twice ssany homes won't work if we can move around twice as many people
> the mass timber framing uses four to five times the volume of wood as the light-framed wood framing.
I recall helping nail 2x6's together into big composite beams, in the 80s in Florida. something like a 32 foot clear roof span was needed and I think we were doing 3 layers for a 6in x 6in final profile. Good job for a kid: "Here's a box of 150 nails. put them all in these boards"
I've seen a meeting hall floor that was made by laying 2x4's up side by side and nailing them together. They were knotted, warped, reject pile boards and someone collected a big pile and planed one side straight then laminated them into a 20ft or so floor over the basement of a church building. Big massive center beam under it and no other supports but the walls. 3+ in thick and that heavily nailed; no worries.
It was fine finished and lovely from the top; the bottom was moreso to my eye: you could see how woven together it was and how far from perfect the individual boards were.
In both cases the design was inefficient and used profligate amounts of wood compared to what could have been done with steel or other methods. In both cases the wood was extra cheap or free and someone was making expedient use of it.
> It was fine finished and lovely from the top; the bottom was moreso to my eye: you could see how woven together it was and how far from perfect the individual boards were.
This seems like a fitting description of society in general.
I had an addition done where they had to bolt LVL and steel plate together for a rather large span with cantilever. That bit of support isn't ever moving.
Of course mass timber won't solve the housing shortage.
The housing shortage is entirely a self-inflicted problem arising chiefly from insanely restrictive zoning laws that prevent construction of high-density walkable neighborhoods.
It's not only about NIMBYism, though that alone is enough to cause the current crisis. Building an apartment complex in an area fille with single-family units is nearly impossible. Building a high-rise? Forget about it.
It's also the fact that mixed-use buildings are still a taboo in the US (God forbid people could work and shop where they live, just look at the hell that is Brooklyn, the EU, and Japan, and ..!).
And sticking a high-rise in the middle of a suburban sprawl immediately faces the classic opposition of "but what about traffic and parking", because we can't build public transportation networks either (the opposition to those, of course, is "but nobody uses public transport").
That's why the article misses the point: housing shortage is not a problem about houses.
European here, I recently build my home in wood-frame with thick enough elements I suppose they fall in this "mass timber" category, well... It was NOT cheaper than concrete, I choose wood for various reasons but well, cheapness was not one of them at least not in France where this tech is not much widespread.
I have some advantages:
- much more personal future changes are possible, it's far easier posing new wires/pipes and so on since all I need are small tools, I do not made much dust with them and so on;
- thinner perimeters walls (with good insulation), in some cases they are a nice thing;
and some disadvantages:
- exterior exposed wood last far less than concrete and demand more regular upkeep work (though it's relatively easy);
- eventual water spills might be more impacting;
- last but not least, noise insulation from the ground floor and the second one are far LESS good than concrete.
So well, I'm happy of my choice for various reasons, but I do agree with the author, only adding a point: homes need to change as tech change. Having homes we can "recycle" an create again after let's say 50-70 years means having a kind-of industrial home evolution path that allow for well performant and well designed homes in the long terms, a thing we can't much have with concrete. At a certain rates trees re-grow, rocks do as well, but in a sooooooo large timeframe we can't count as "renewable", so potentially a wood based civilization might be nearly circular, a concrete based one can't (at least, seen the actual known tech).
Aside while light buildings suffer more extreme weather, they suffer less some kind of hydro-geological problems like soil stability, earthquakes and so on, all demanding far simpler foundations.
You don't even have to do that - a lot of 3/4/5 story style flats (can be owned or rented) that are not concrete soviet blocks would do wonders in most cities. See: western Europe.
The Chinese/Soviet style of a tower in a park builds tall, but it doesn't actually tend to give more density than more US style dense areas with 3-5 stories mostly filling a block. With the Chinese approach you get better views, but with the US approach you get more walkable neighborhoods and I'll take the later.
// To solve the housing crisis you have to build up like the Soviets
My family lived in a communal apartment[0] for about 30 years in the USSR waiting for a place of our own. Whatever definition of "housing crisis" you are operating with, is heaven on earth compared to the Soviet housing reality.
Why not bricks - they are eco friendly, we are not running out of clay soon, amazing thermal buffers and isolation, while energy intensive to produce you could fire them with renewables eventually. Change the shape a bit so they are easier to lay fill the cavities and we are in the business.
I bet it's less expensive in the PNW and more expensive in the midwest and southwest. There is a LOT of timber here and a lot of mills to take advantage of plantation-grown trees that don't exist elsewhere.
I hope large scale timber construction doesn’t occur exclusively because of the impact on our forests.
Between the pine beetles, fires, the many many stumps from the last round of serious logging years… our national forests and surrounding un-designated forests could use a break from a possible sharp uptick in demand.
If you support ideas like this which help largely sub/urban areas by using out of sight out of mind rural resources, and you also go out to Yellowstone and the West once in a while and see/wish how our forests weren’t in such bad shape, then consider not supporting this.
I wonder what the impact of the production of concrete and steel has on the environments where it takes place. I like the part of the article where they point out that mass timber would be better for carbon sequestration. I also think that buildings should mostly be built with a death period in mind because everything in this world requires maintenance and can be upgraded lol. So why not use a building material that literally grows itself? I agree with your point that destroying all the forests to build housing would be a bad idea, but we can and do sustainably log---all you have to do is plant some trees and wait!
Mass timber construction will reduce the amount of lumber needed for housing. A large timber 100 unit multi-family dwelling will use WAY less material than a hundred single family homes.
All of the construction related solutions to housing problems are missing the point. Housing is not expensive because it's difficult to physically build. We are pretty good at construction. A single family home could probably be put up in two weeks or less if all that mattered was doing the actual construction.
The problem is zoning and all the red tape and NIMBYism that prevents the construction from taking place.
Much of the conversation here derails the original post: we desperately need less expensive construction processes (overall, including permitting etc). Even when the local community makes it not-worthwhile to build affordable housing.
The article points out a range of tradeoffs for mass timber (and I'm not arguing that mass timber should by itself solve the construction cost issue - it's more interesting as one more very different direction). More directions will be helpful for finding more cost effective solutions for different buildings.
For one thing mass timber allows far more floors than current "5 over 1" construction - because of better fire behavior. In current cities that is certainly a useful feature. At least in cities that do grant construction permits...
That should be helpful even in cities that grant ENOUGH construction permits for that to influence unit affordability.
Not sure the article ("original post") makes that claim either. It just asserts that mass timber is (probably) not in fact cheaper, and has not been/is not going to accelerate building of more housing. A solution, i.e. what "we desperately need", is not covered in the article.
It's a false equivalence, light-wood framing is typically used in single-family homes or shorter (<5 stories) multi-family homes.
Steel and concrete is typically used for 10-20 story multifamily housing.
Mass timber is being pushed by the timber manufacturers as an alternative to steel and concrete, no one's seriously proposing you build your 2-story 2500 sqft home out of laminated beams instead of studs, trusses, and joists.
You can do things with it that you can't do otherwise. For instance, you can create extremely large spans that weren't otherwise possible in wood framed construction. This creates really cool opportunities when designing the interior of a home.
Framing can be done with LVL as well and the benefit is that it's very stiff. This means a better frame when you have high ceilings and the ability to go 24" off center so you can have more insulation. Can do this with 2x6 as well.
The common argument against this is that these buildings were not built for residential units (plumbing, electrical, building codes) and bringing them up to residential code is prohibitively expensive. This is not untrue, but I think this is a cop-out.
What we need to do is create the systems that allow us to develop office spaces into residential spaces instead of complaining they don't exist. Create building technologies that safely convert these spaces into residential. Create the building codes that allow these conversions to be done safely but also economically. The demand is there, the supply is there, and our downtowns need this.
We’ve heard from people in construction that this is often a tear down situation. The needs of office space and apartments are very different. Somehow they see this as different from the old warehouse-loft conversion process.
This can work but many buildings are unsuitable. Office buildings tend to have too much interior space where it’s difficult to give all residential units access to natural light. There are also differences in building code for safety issues.
Obviously someone who is familiar with the field but it's kind of strange that they compare these two technologies since they aren't used for the same construction. You've not going to use glulam and CLT to build your one story house. It's about building taller places.
Actually CLT is wonderful for one story house. The foundation becomes much cheaper because of walls being low weight. This can massively reduce home cost (as concrete is expensive). The bad thing is that CLT itself is more expensive. The costs need to go down. Edit: I realize I made a mistake here. Americans use stick framing, which already is low weight. This was in reference to bricks and concrete (cast on site or pre-cast) construction. CLT allows to use its members much like concrete (slabs get mounted exactly same way as concrete slabs, etc). In such sense CLT is much better than stick framing.
I bet there are some single story houses with glulams. Certainly plenty of two-story houses do. I have a 30 inch tall glulam that spans 35 feet across my garage holding up a good chunk of the second floor.
I don't think there's much, if any, of an over supply of apartments. The people I've seen who try to teach vacancies show that new buildings get to nearly full occupancy within a year or so. That's pretty reasonable if you need to rent a few hundred units at once.
If anything, there's a massive under-supply of 3+br apartments large enough for families, due to double-loaded corridor designs that are almost required to meet fire codes. The only good spot for 3brs is in the corners, so you get at most 4 per floor.
> There's a shortage of detached single family homes in desirable cities and suburbs.
You have this backwards, it's essentially physically impossible for this to not be the case. Past a certain point you just cannot squeeze more detached single family homes into a reasonable distance from a city. Single family homes, suburbs, and the required car-centric transit they require are massively space and transit inefficient. If you want there to be affordable detached single family homes within a reasonable distance to a desirable city your best bet is to push for increased density within and around the core of the city, with walkable streets and excellent public transportation. The increase in livability and affordability in the center encourages more people who might otherwise be pushed out to stay and leaves more single family homes for those who really want them.
There is absolutely not an oversupply of apartments in my city, nor in Seattle proper. it should be non-controversial to let the market supply as many apartments in the locations people want to be as people are willing to rent. Especially any regulatory changes that enable family sized apartments to be built at relatively lower cost should be encouraged.
Even if there were an “oversupply”, if someone could build new apartment buildings at 50% the cost with larger, safer, more comfortable units than most apartments nearby, it would drive rents down for existing buildings while still allowing the developer to make a profit. We should be enabling these opportunities as much as possible.
There’s generally not room to build the desired number of detached single family homes (with desirable lot sizes) in desirable cities and suburbs. Which is why you end up with exurbs and hour long commutes.
We need to build higher density housing in the desirable areas, which is often disallowed by zoning.
There will always be a shortage of detached single family homes in desirable cities and suburbs, because that style of housing takes up a great deal of land. The only way out is up.
Every single major population center that has distorted (high) housing costs relative to income, also has very strong protections for the existing home owners (NIMBY).
"There are no coincidences..."
The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move.
This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer functions as intended.
The incredible thicket of state, county, and municipal rules all layer and combine to make housing incredibly difficult to build. It's the technical debt of the material world.
Seriously, look up your local zoning rules. It's not "you can't build a chemical plant next to a preschool" like it's so often portrayed. It's minimum size for the lot, max square footage of the house based on lot size, max/min frontage, height allowances, max garage sizes, minimum number of trees, number of windows.... etc.
It really just goes on like that, and then to top it off, you can be totally compliant with code and still not be approved. Either because of local incompetence (building permits stuck "in review" for years) or because of local opposition.
> because the government no longer functions as intended
This seems contrary to what you're stating - local government exists to represent the interests of local residents. Protecting those residents from external forces is completely in-line with their mandate.
> If they don't like it, they can move.
A person who owns land somewhere should have more sway over local politics than a megacorp developer from another state or country. How about that developer moves their project somewhere else if they don't like it?
Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? There's plenty of affordable housing in the country, but it doesn't all exist in the places people want to live.
A major issue with housing is that it is a primary driver of wealth for many Americans. Obviously, this comes at the expense of our fellow Americans who do not own a home. I was able to buy shortly out of college (1% down loan) so rising home prices don’t impact me as much since my home has also gone up in value. I was able to sell the first house and roll that equity into the next house.
As long as it’s the main store of wealth for your average citizen, there will be very little incentive to change that.
You seem to be coming from the perspective that people who don't live in a place should have more say over the nature of that place than those who do live there.
To put it in your terms, why does it make more sense to tell existing residents "your place has to change and you can move if you don't like it" vs channel the new residents to other places where more housing is available and is available cheaper.
Well, depends on the level of government you're talking about. If it is local, then if local homeowners (who are local voters) don't want the development, it is eminently 'democratic.'
It takes significantly less materials to build a multi-dwelling apartment/condo/townhouse structure than a single family home. In addition, the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars.
We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are not met by their community. Everyone has their own bar, restaurant, theatre, and community center. There are 8 unit apartment buildings that are smaller than some of these houses.
I find it amusing that many folks here are ready to clap back at this comment about how "but people want single family homes" as if that weren't why we are in a housing crisis. Yes... people want single family homes, it's just not feasible to put 3M people into single family homes in a metro area without absorbing an unsustainable amount of costs.
Here we are talking literally the cost of construction, but there is also the cost of infrastructure, and the cost of transport. The reason we have a housing crisis is because as much as we all love single family homes, they aren't universalizable. If everyone were to live in a single family home, then after the transportation infrastructure reaches capacity, there is a cascade of issues that leads a region becoming totally unaffordable and ultimately unsustainable.
I would recommend the Strong Towns organization for anyone more interested in the interaction between long-term affordability issues and surburban infrastructure problems: https://www.strongtowns.org
I would argue more than that the housing crisis is an “urban crisis” and a “fraying of the social fabric” crisis.
By the first I mean the continued destruction of smaller towns and semi-rural areas. Even if single family homes are more expensive to build than multi family apartments, the fact is we have ridiculous amounts of space in this country. But most people for various reasons don’t want to live where the space and “affordable” housing is or can be built. The more our population drifts to major metro areas for economic reasons and the more jobs go to where the people are, the worse housing affordability will be, even if we build huge sky rises and cram everyone into Tokyo size apartments.
By the second I mean that people want their own bars, theaters and restaurants at home because in a lot of cases going out to the shared versions of these sucks, sometimes a lot. There’s an overall lack of respect for being in public that just seems to permeates the American culture right now.
In my own experience just this past week someone was completely oblivious to the fact that I was leaving a parking space and their doors were open and they were flitting about making leaving unsafe. It only broke through to them when a gust of wind caught their door and slammed it into my car, to which they hurriedly apologized and swore it would “buff out” and then ran away.
Or the taxi driver who parked in the middle of the lot lane waiting for their fare blocking the whole exit.
There was the restaurant patron loudly having an argument on their cell phone. The cashier who was so stoned or distracted they needed 3 tries to get the order right. Or the waiter who got into a literal shouting match with their co-worker to which management did nothing but watch.
The theater floor is stickier than a fly trap and the seats aren’t much better. The food is awful, and over priced. The cost of just a few games of pool at the bar is crazy, even before factoring in your drink will cost you 4-6x what you could get it for at home and be lukewarm.
Why would people want to go to these shared places or live where they can’t have the space for their own version when this is more and more the norm.
>> Everyone has their own bar, restaurant, theatre, and community center.
As opposed to all the "urban lifestyle" people who readily offload their basic needs onto others. Some people are happy cooking their own basic foods. Others want them to be prepared, and their dished cleaned, by a team. Some people are happy with a beer fridge. Others want to go to a bar and pay a young person to smile and flirt while concocting a fancy drink in a silly glass. To each their own. But having a basic kitchen in an apartment is not a luxury any more than having a cupboard for cleaning supplies, a service that can also be outsourced by those too lazy to clean up after themselves. A desire for a modicum of self-sufficiency is not a vice.
It was facinating to see a pub ran by a landlord at the bottom floor of an 11 floor student dwelling with 16 rooms, 4 toilets, 4 shower a shared area with giant kitchen per floor. Each had something like 3 bar shifts usually taken up by someone else, the thing was "open" all night and beer on the tap was much cheaper than the store. It paid no rent, needed no licenses and didn't have any tax obligations. As no one knew what to do with the pinball profit it was frequently not allowed to pay for beer.
This idea that the problem with western society is that we allow people to live in detached houses with yards instead of inner-city apartment buildings is bollocks. People need privacy, something to work on, freedom to move about, and agency over their environment to thrive psychologically. That's why prison is the opposite of this. "Something to work on" is partially being met by video games, and it's not going well for us. The rest are much harder to fake out. It's possible to have those things in the city, but only if you are extremely wealthy. For everybody else, it's a life of being tolerated by the people who own and control your world, so long as you keep paying out most of what you earn, don't make any noise or waves, and aren't interested in doing anything that doesn't already have the required space or vendor already within your designated, walkable, or public transport-safe area.
I think this article is a great example of how technical people have become so intoxicated by the relatively few instances in which an advance in technology has genuinely solved an entrenched social or power problem by making a new thing possible or reducing costs that they basically only argue in those terms
The fact is, the housing crisis is and always was a policy failure and a "distributional outcomes" issue, and and no amount of improving housing construction's speed, costs, or legality will fix it if we don't both change policy and reduce inequality
There are tons of building that are or could be residential housing that are owned by massive investment firms as a speculative asset. The FTC's recently published brief mentioned that keeping units empty rather than lowering prices is common practice among landlords. Even among individuals, an incredible amount of older, wealthy people own multiple homes and view most of them as a source of passive income. When I talk to people in that category, if they are doing well, they are often thinking about buying more homes to generate more income directly from renters or as a speculative investment (IE to hold and sell later)
As it stands, people are not homeless because there is nowhere they could live. Not even close. Increasing housing supply without making any significant dent in the financial and regulatory situation surrounding housing will more likely just put more real estate in the hands of the entrenched winners, who have already demonstrated the willingness and ability to hoard housing
Vacancy rates are misleading and includes things like being unoccupied briefly between owners or houses that are unlivable in areas with no buyers. The number of homes where people want them is quite low, there is simply a shortage.
Houses as an asset is a major contributor for sure. It's long been a rival to stocks or exceeded it as an investment and makes a powerful political base. But it also includes a lot of people who view their primary residence as one and aren't landlording other properties.
It's hard to find solutions to this that are politically and socially viable. To create more homes requires capital and doing so will lower the value of existing assets. I think people reach for easy solutions because they don't want to face some deep contradictions in our way of life.
I hope we can be better about addressing issues like this. Taxing empty houses, like most negative incentives, fails to address the existing incentives that cause the problem in the first place which will lead to different market imbalances.
The biggest challenge we face is that the best way to protect wealth is to own assets and properties are assets we can live in. If wealth didn't naturally sublimate this would be less of an issue. Likewise if it were easier to protect wealth by doing something productive, it would happen.
Where to even start with this? Homes occupied by renters are not being "hoarded." At most this is a concern about homeownership rate, which is not nothing, but a distant second to whether people have places to live or not. Because rents are tethered to incomes, the rental market is a relief valve for speculative excesses in the ownership market. That's why it costs less than half as much to rent as to buy the same property in San Francisco right now. Landlords are not getting a return from collecting rent, they're getting a return from appreciation due to scarcity. And the more concerned voters get about capitalism and inequality, the surer a bet that scarcity becomes.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
lispisok|1 year ago
dionidium|1 year ago
[0] It's of course not increased when government unilaterally constructs low-income housing without reference to market conditions, which is why it's important to assure homeowners that this is not what upzoning entails.
imtringued|1 year ago
lelanthran|1 year ago
> Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote.
Bypassing the will of the voters is ... difficult. It's not impossible to force your moral mores onto voters who don't want it, but it sure ain't easy, and it ain't easy for good reason!
> The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis that needs fixing.
The "convincing" is never going to be persuasive enough to convince the specific voters that they need to take a financial hit of several years of salaries "for the greater good".
The only permanent fix is to make less desirable places more desirable. With remote work a large and significant percent of the population can just buy somewhere cheap and far off from where they work.
By draining the currently highly contended places of workers, those accommodations will cost less, and the migrating workers will pay less anyway because they are, by definition, buying in a cheaper CoL area.
Highly contended centers that everyone migrates to is going to expensive no matter what you do. it doesn't matter if you double the housing in the next year, the demand will grow to fill it at current prices anyway.
The only solution is to reduce the contention for those centers. It's not a full solution, but it's a damn good start: leave the downtown offices all empty of workers and prices will adjust to reflect reality.
BurningFrog|1 year ago
What's needed is to Legalize Housing!
_heimdall|1 year ago
Easy access to large amounts of debt allow people to become heavily dependent to the value of their home, and we have been sold a story that your home is an investment that should play a large factor in your future net worth.
Go back in history and two things are true, debt wasn't much less common in general and homes were more often built to last. I honestly don't understand considering most homes built in the US today as an investment. The average home is poorly built using cheap materials that won't last. Most major components of the home will need to be replaced in a couple decades if not sooner, meaning you're left chasing large repairs and remodels when you should be paying off the loan and building equity.
I'd propose that the best way to solve the housing crisis is for us to stop treating it as a get rich quick scheme.
Clubber|1 year ago
deepfriedchokes|1 year ago
democracy|1 year ago
vanilla_nut|1 year ago
The housing market is broken because moneymakers would rather maximize profits and render everyone else homeless than participate in a functional society. Consider a world where investors own 80% of housing in the USA: would they rent it all out? Or would the small number of corporations collaborate to keep _most_ units off the market, massively spiking the cost of housing and increasing the value of their portfolios? Our healthcare market suggests that when it comes to necessities, people are willing to pay literally any price. And our society has become more and more unequal in the past couple of decades, with the top 1% controlling as much capital as the bottom 50%. Logic dictates that the small number of that 1%, or perhaps the top 10%, if forced to pay insane rents for housing, will provide more profit than setting rent prices that everyone can afford.
I don't think we should vilify the average homeowner who doesn't want to end up underwater on their mortgage. We should vilify the government that has allowed market forces to increasingly distort the residential real estate market, to the point where we're starting to squeeze essential jobs like teacher, firefighter, waitress, and nurse out of the market entirely. Both for rentals and purchases.
Right now it doesn't matter if we double the US housing supply in the next year: it'll still get bought up by investors with far deeper pockets than the average family, because those investors have a strong incentive to prop up the real estate bubble -- they've got more skin in the game than anyone else. And they're less discerning, waiving inspections and paying 10% over asking in cash because if the house turns out to be a lemon they'll just absorb it into margins. Or write it off as a business expense -- depreciation!
The US housing market needs a massive overhaul to disincentivize residential property ownership for anything other than owner-dwellings, co-ops, and small, local landlords (to provide flexible rental options for those who move around too much to justify one-time buying costs). Much like a monopoly or oligopoly in the any other industry, large market forces in the housing industry have deeper pockets, more lawyers, more lobbyists, and more time than any small-time player. And those large market forces have a tendency to squeeze everyone else out.
Housing should, first and foremost, put a roof over the head of every person in the country before anyone profits at all. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either directly or indirectly profiting from homelessness.
tonymet|1 year ago
alecco|1 year ago
marssaxman|1 year ago
https://timberlab.com/projects/heartwood
This was built close to my house, so I got to watch the frame rise. It was an interesting process, and it makes a certain amount of sense to emphasize timber construction in this heavily-forested region. I have to agree with the headline, though.
ducttapecrown|1 year ago
dubcanada|1 year ago
Saying a bunch of glulam will solve the issue is just incorrect. Wood is fantastic material. But using half a forest to build a 2000sqft house is certainly not the direction we should be going, we should be finding ways to build with 1/2 the amount of wood we currently use. Or perhaps melt down all of that trash and form it into a house somehow...
happyopossum|1 year ago
This is at best a huge exaggeration. For one thing, roofing is not a 50-year career. If you know any 70 year old roofers, they've either been retired or moved on to other things decades ago - the toll that roofing takes on a body makes it a 10-15 year career at best.
Secondly, I've been working with roofers a lot lately - I have a very old style of roof that was common 50 years ago, and it's very hard to find people who can work on it, because everyone wants to do things the modern way.
taion|1 year ago
Sometimes practices do reflect real constraints, rather than just path-dependence.
efsavage|1 year ago
pixl97|1 year ago
benced|1 year ago
Wood is inherently a carbon sink. I suspect stimulating forest production via added lumber demand (similar to how Christmas tree demand stimulates tree farms) would be a net pollution win, albeit potentially at the cost of a nice looking forest somewhere.
philwelch|1 year ago
simonklitj|1 year ago
jcgrillo|1 year ago
akira2501|1 year ago
Any industry that warranties it's work. They're far less likely to take on new and disruptive technologies if there's no guarantee they're going to be supported for the necessary amount of time.
> we should be finding ways to build with 1/2 the amount of wood we currently use.
Different houses have different requirements. Some roofs see snow, others don't. Some roofs see hurricane winds, others don't.
tnel77|1 year ago
ejb999|1 year ago
If it has been around for fifty years, it has been tested - may have some things wrong with them, but you usually know what you are dealing with and usually the skill was better and materials better. Heck, my parents house is now 250 years old, and still as solid as can be.
A brand new one where the builder was trying to save money by using the latest and greatest techie products, and may or may not how to install it properly? No thanks.
To each their own though - I know plenty of folks that wouldn't even consider buying a 'used' house.
HumblyTossed|1 year ago
https://www.equipter.com/equipter-articles/roofing-tools-tha...
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
foofie|1 year ago
I think your comment is misguided and lacks reflection. Change for the sake of change is never good because by definition there is no upside. Construction technology is also expected to be reliable and have long service life, and traditional techniques ensure that by the fact that the are tried and true.
aaron695|1 year ago
[deleted]
fsckboy|1 year ago
they weren't using nail guns 50 years ago, and they surely are now.
ilamont|1 year ago
Timber is certainly expensive, but you know what else costs a lot? All the other stuff, much of it subject to state building codes that get more restrictive every year.
Asbestos survey, assessment, abatement: $10k
Asbestos air monitoring: $1k
Tipping fees: 20k
Spray foam insulation: $27k
Foundation $50k
Solar: 40k (not including rebates/incentives)
Requirements for outlets. Requirements for windows. Setbacks from a utility pole on our property, 50 yards/meters from the nearest road. We have to deal with that mess and pay extra to site the foundation, not National Grid!
Even if we were getting a manufactured home (built to looser FEMA standards) we would still have to deal with some of these costs, such as asbestos, tipping fees and foundation. And the cheapest double wide is $300k.
Loughla|1 year ago
And what market are you in where a double wide is 300k?
And why are you doing anything with asbestos if it's a new build?
There is a lot in this that doesn't really add up to me.
We didn't have to worry about code, because it's not enforced by the state, but local governments. We did build to code though.
A double wide was 125k fully installed. We chose to build a little smaller stick frame for 100k.
Asbestos. Um. Why?
And spray foam insulation is a terrible choice, unless the wall is already up. Why would you not do the much much cheaper blown in?
D13Fd|1 year ago
And does your state really require spray foam insulation and solar? Or does it require an R-value for insulation and spray foam is the easiest way to get there with your design?
Gibbon1|1 year ago
Got to say using spray foam to insulate the wall cavities instead of using external insulation over the structural elements is about the worst idea ever.
Also how much solar can you buy for $27k? Enough to supply 60kwh a day to run a heat pump.
bombcar|1 year ago
It can be worth your while to sit down and map out house areas, purposes, and requirements, and change as many of them as you can to avoid mandatory features.
jghn|1 year ago
What is a tipping fee
turtlebits|1 year ago
For example, I'd like to rebuild my old house, but it doesn't make financial sense to build under 4000sf as I'd be losing out to potential value as well as matching the neighborhood. I can't build a duplex or detached ADU. I don't want to spend 2 million on giant house I can't use.
stephc_int13|1 year ago
Timber has many advantages compared to concrete, including longevity.
The housing shortage won’t last forever thanks to demography, but we’ll need to replace many badly aging buildings anyway, and it takes time to grow trees and build the whole infrastructure around this construction technique, we should try to not sit and wait for a change.
shortsunblack|1 year ago
It's really irresponsible to gesture at this vague idealist future when the present is anything but. Yes, technically wood sequesters carbon. Yes, when trees rot and decompose they release carbon. Yes, if you turn the tree into timber or furniture that carbon will be then locked for very least couple decades.
No, forestry is not sustainably managed. Nowhere close. Europeans are razing down their old growth forests for heating. And wood pellets have higher carbon emissions than coal per unit of energy produced. See NYTimes coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/07/world/europe/...
MagicMoonlight|1 year ago
giantg2|1 year ago
spankalee|1 year ago
pitaj|1 year ago
Vacancy is good - higher vacancy is related to lower prices. Vacancy rates are the lowest they've been in decades.
We just need to build.
slothtrop|1 year ago
Check the vacancy rate in major cities.
> people wanting/needing to live in specific locations
Where the jobs are, yes.
> individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes
Mixed density and smaller builds are almost nowhere to be found, and small developers have incredible difficulty securing loans from banks to build them. The large developers focus on expensive projects that have more overhead and checks, and even there they don't build that much because they are few in number. People would opt for mixed density were it actually available.
Zoning and regs are actually among the factors that make certain projects riskier, so reform helps in this regard. Just see Minneapolis. Zoning reform works. It works so well that there is some push back from NIMBYs in those cities pissed off that their areas are changing fast.
throwitaway222|1 year ago
Raise prop taxes for rentals by %350.
Raise prop taxes for airbnbs by %500.
Everyone will own a home, and home prices will plummet as people try to unload extremely expensive property taxes. And if it doesn't work, double my percentages. Or just make it 100k per year. Those people crazy enough to keep holding them, will fund the creation of homeless housing. DV's are just landlords and other types of bottom feeders.
pksebben|1 year ago
bell-cot|1 year ago
> Mass timber can help solve the housing shortage, yet the building material is not widely adopted because old building codes ...
> Mass timber can help with housing abundance and the climate transition.
And the FAS article's call to action seems to be "Congress needs to increase the USDA's budget".
So, yes. Easier than rebutting "warm water is dry and crumbly". One wonders whether the Federation of American Scientists has ever heard of "NIMBY", "zoning", or "environmental impact". Let alone "house-poor" or "local government".
jeffbee|1 year ago
All the stuff about the capital cost of making laminated wood is irrelevant. Only the marginal cost of the assembly matters.
quickthrowman|1 year ago
[0] https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/apply/w...
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
rootusrootus|1 year ago
Solves some problems, sure, but not heat/cold. Wood has just over a third the R-value of fiberglass batting, IIRC. Better to increase the cavity size and uncouple the inner and outer studs.
buildbot|1 year ago
UBC is huge for specifically timber engineering research, they claimed at one point to be the best in the world.
nojvek|1 year ago
IMO an ever increasing population isn't a good thing if the economy can't absorb them at an equilibrium of demand and supply.
Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move. Great for house prices but it takes it's toll.
opo|1 year ago
Do you have a citation for that number? Most sources say Canada takes in about 1/2 that:
>...Currently, annual immigration in Canada amounts to almost 500,000 new immigrants – one of the highest rates per population of any country in the world. As of 2023, there were more than eight million immigrants with permanent residence living in Canada - roughly 20 percent of the total Canadian population.
https://www.statista.com/topics/2917/immigration-in-canada/#...
tmnvix|1 year ago
Also, a speculative boom, cheap credit, and a burgeoning short term rental market among other things.
red-iron-pine|1 year ago
foreigners aren't moving to rural Manitoba, they're all going to a handful of areas, most of which are in the furthers south parts of the country (e.g. Vancouver, and Greater Toronto), which also happen to have the mildest weather.
Australia is seeing a similar trend -- influx of people, not much (viable) land.
also keep in mind this demand is simply to keep up with population loss, and demand on the system for pensions, healthcare, and support for the Boomers. the Liberal party is ultimately still pro-capitalism, and they need to balance out these dying old people; "stonks only go up", so we need more consumption.
partiallypro|1 year ago
KaiserPro|1 year ago
Edit I should say _affordable_ land. Or land that isn't blocked by nimbys
dangus|1 year ago
49% of San Bernidino’s central city area is dedicated to parking.
spankalee|1 year ago
bombcar|1 year ago
Around here houses are going up, land is being subdivided, everything is moving.
shawn-butler|1 year ago
It was delivered ahead of schedule and below cost relative to a traditional steel/concrete plan. No huge issues of which I am aware in the 5 or so years since occupancy, but someone else may know better.
[0]: https://structurecraft.com/projects/t3-minneapolis
nox101|1 year ago
h2odragon|1 year ago
I recall helping nail 2x6's together into big composite beams, in the 80s in Florida. something like a 32 foot clear roof span was needed and I think we were doing 3 layers for a 6in x 6in final profile. Good job for a kid: "Here's a box of 150 nails. put them all in these boards"
I've seen a meeting hall floor that was made by laying 2x4's up side by side and nailing them together. They were knotted, warped, reject pile boards and someone collected a big pile and planed one side straight then laminated them into a 20ft or so floor over the basement of a church building. Big massive center beam under it and no other supports but the walls. 3+ in thick and that heavily nailed; no worries.
It was fine finished and lovely from the top; the bottom was moreso to my eye: you could see how woven together it was and how far from perfect the individual boards were.
In both cases the design was inefficient and used profligate amounts of wood compared to what could have been done with steel or other methods. In both cases the wood was extra cheap or free and someone was making expedient use of it.
xattt|1 year ago
This seems like a fitting description of society in general.
nemo44x|1 year ago
romwell|1 year ago
The housing shortage is entirely a self-inflicted problem arising chiefly from insanely restrictive zoning laws that prevent construction of high-density walkable neighborhoods.
It's not only about NIMBYism, though that alone is enough to cause the current crisis. Building an apartment complex in an area fille with single-family units is nearly impossible. Building a high-rise? Forget about it.
It's also the fact that mixed-use buildings are still a taboo in the US (God forbid people could work and shop where they live, just look at the hell that is Brooklyn, the EU, and Japan, and ..!).
And sticking a high-rise in the middle of a suburban sprawl immediately faces the classic opposition of "but what about traffic and parking", because we can't build public transportation networks either (the opposition to those, of course, is "but nobody uses public transport").
That's why the article misses the point: housing shortage is not a problem about houses.
kkfx|1 year ago
I have some advantages:
- much more personal future changes are possible, it's far easier posing new wires/pipes and so on since all I need are small tools, I do not made much dust with them and so on;
- thinner perimeters walls (with good insulation), in some cases they are a nice thing;
and some disadvantages:
- exterior exposed wood last far less than concrete and demand more regular upkeep work (though it's relatively easy);
- eventual water spills might be more impacting;
- last but not least, noise insulation from the ground floor and the second one are far LESS good than concrete.
So well, I'm happy of my choice for various reasons, but I do agree with the author, only adding a point: homes need to change as tech change. Having homes we can "recycle" an create again after let's say 50-70 years means having a kind-of industrial home evolution path that allow for well performant and well designed homes in the long terms, a thing we can't much have with concrete. At a certain rates trees re-grow, rocks do as well, but in a sooooooo large timeframe we can't count as "renewable", so potentially a wood based civilization might be nearly circular, a concrete based one can't (at least, seen the actual known tech).
Aside while light buildings suffer more extreme weather, they suffer less some kind of hydro-geological problems like soil stability, earthquakes and so on, all demanding far simpler foundations.
cpursley|1 year ago
It’s really not difficult; just takes some brave people to change the zoning laws and rethink some of the building codes combined with financing it.
davidw|1 year ago
Symmetry|1 year ago
whynotmaybe|1 year ago
https://youtu.be/DkGMY63FF3Q
cpursley|1 year ago
xyzelement|1 year ago
My family lived in a communal apartment[0] for about 30 years in the USSR waiting for a place of our own. Whatever definition of "housing crisis" you are operating with, is heaven on earth compared to the Soviet housing reality.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment
ReptileMan|1 year ago
ducttapecrown|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
throwway120385|1 year ago
dogman144|1 year ago
Between the pine beetles, fires, the many many stumps from the last round of serious logging years… our national forests and surrounding un-designated forests could use a break from a possible sharp uptick in demand.
If you support ideas like this which help largely sub/urban areas by using out of sight out of mind rural resources, and you also go out to Yellowstone and the West once in a while and see/wish how our forests weren’t in such bad shape, then consider not supporting this.
ducttapecrown|1 year ago
foxyv|1 year ago
tacocataco|1 year ago
briantakita|1 year ago
maxglute|1 year ago
tacocataco|1 year ago
apparently
imgabe|1 year ago
The problem is zoning and all the red tape and NIMBYism that prevents the construction from taking place.
kingkawn|1 year ago
rmbyrro|1 year ago
[1] https://www.woodtechsystems.com/legal-mumbo-jumbo/
creer|1 year ago
creer|1 year ago
For one thing mass timber allows far more floors than current "5 over 1" construction - because of better fire behavior. In current cities that is certainly a useful feature. At least in cities that do grant construction permits...
That should be helpful even in cities that grant ENOUGH construction permits for that to influence unit affordability.
gertlex|1 year ago
mikece|1 year ago
So... basically "buy more wood?" I think I'll pass.
LeifCarrotson|1 year ago
Steel and concrete is typically used for 10-20 story multifamily housing.
Mass timber is being pushed by the timber manufacturers as an alternative to steel and concrete, no one's seriously proposing you build your 2-story 2500 sqft home out of laminated beams instead of studs, trusses, and joists.
nemo44x|1 year ago
Framing can be done with LVL as well and the benefit is that it's very stiff. This means a better frame when you have high ceilings and the ability to go 24" off center so you can have more insulation. Can do this with 2x6 as well.
adversaryIdiot|1 year ago
tacocataco|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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croes|1 year ago
Thanks to home office there should be many otherwise useless offices.
Althuns|1 year ago
What we need to do is create the systems that allow us to develop office spaces into residential spaces instead of complaining they don't exist. Create building technologies that safely convert these spaces into residential. Create the building codes that allow these conversions to be done safely but also economically. The demand is there, the supply is there, and our downtowns need this.
hinkley|1 year ago
dangus|1 year ago
MagicMoonlight|1 year ago
foxyv|1 year ago
renewiltord|1 year ago
shortsunblack|1 year ago
rootusrootus|1 year ago
psychlops|1 year ago
tempsy|1 year ago
If you just want to rent an apartment there's an oversupply from overbuilding during the pandemic.
spankalee|1 year ago
If anything, there's a massive under-supply of 3+br apartments large enough for families, due to double-loaded corridor designs that are almost required to meet fire codes. The only good spot for 3brs is in the corners, so you get at most 4 per floor.
dwallin|1 year ago
You have this backwards, it's essentially physically impossible for this to not be the case. Past a certain point you just cannot squeeze more detached single family homes into a reasonable distance from a city. Single family homes, suburbs, and the required car-centric transit they require are massively space and transit inefficient. If you want there to be affordable detached single family homes within a reasonable distance to a desirable city your best bet is to push for increased density within and around the core of the city, with walkable streets and excellent public transportation. The increase in livability and affordability in the center encourages more people who might otherwise be pushed out to stay and leaves more single family homes for those who really want them.
mjmahone17|1 year ago
Even if there were an “oversupply”, if someone could build new apartment buildings at 50% the cost with larger, safer, more comfortable units than most apartments nearby, it would drive rents down for existing buildings while still allowing the developer to make a profit. We should be enabling these opportunities as much as possible.
CrazyStat|1 year ago
We need to build higher density housing in the desirable areas, which is often disallowed by zoning.
marssaxman|1 year ago
patrickhogan1|1 year ago
nazgulnarsil|1 year ago
rybosworld|1 year ago
"There are no coincidences..."
The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move.
This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer functions as intended.
oramit|1 year ago
Seriously, look up your local zoning rules. It's not "you can't build a chemical plant next to a preschool" like it's so often portrayed. It's minimum size for the lot, max square footage of the house based on lot size, max/min frontage, height allowances, max garage sizes, minimum number of trees, number of windows.... etc.
It really just goes on like that, and then to top it off, you can be totally compliant with code and still not be approved. Either because of local incompetence (building permits stuck "in review" for years) or because of local opposition.
happyopossum|1 year ago
This seems contrary to what you're stating - local government exists to represent the interests of local residents. Protecting those residents from external forces is completely in-line with their mandate.
> If they don't like it, they can move.
A person who owns land somewhere should have more sway over local politics than a megacorp developer from another state or country. How about that developer moves their project somewhere else if they don't like it?
zdragnar|1 year ago
Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? There's plenty of affordable housing in the country, but it doesn't all exist in the places people want to live.
tnel77|1 year ago
As long as it’s the main store of wealth for your average citizen, there will be very little incentive to change that.
xyzelement|1 year ago
To put it in your terms, why does it make more sense to tell existing residents "your place has to change and you can move if you don't like it" vs channel the new residents to other places where more housing is available and is available cheaper.
mrkstu|1 year ago
ApolloFortyNine|1 year ago
Can't you say the same for people trying to move in? There's plenty of places in the US that you can still get a house for under 200k.
cellinaabram|1 year ago
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foxyv|1 year ago
We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are not met by their community. Everyone has their own bar, restaurant, theatre, and community center. There are 8 unit apartment buildings that are smaller than some of these houses.
The housing crisis is an urban planning crisis.
scoofy|1 year ago
Here we are talking literally the cost of construction, but there is also the cost of infrastructure, and the cost of transport. The reason we have a housing crisis is because as much as we all love single family homes, they aren't universalizable. If everyone were to live in a single family home, then after the transportation infrastructure reaches capacity, there is a cascade of issues that leads a region becoming totally unaffordable and ultimately unsustainable.
I would recommend the Strong Towns organization for anyone more interested in the interaction between long-term affordability issues and surburban infrastructure problems: https://www.strongtowns.org
nightski|1 year ago
tpmoney|1 year ago
By the first I mean the continued destruction of smaller towns and semi-rural areas. Even if single family homes are more expensive to build than multi family apartments, the fact is we have ridiculous amounts of space in this country. But most people for various reasons don’t want to live where the space and “affordable” housing is or can be built. The more our population drifts to major metro areas for economic reasons and the more jobs go to where the people are, the worse housing affordability will be, even if we build huge sky rises and cram everyone into Tokyo size apartments.
By the second I mean that people want their own bars, theaters and restaurants at home because in a lot of cases going out to the shared versions of these sucks, sometimes a lot. There’s an overall lack of respect for being in public that just seems to permeates the American culture right now.
In my own experience just this past week someone was completely oblivious to the fact that I was leaving a parking space and their doors were open and they were flitting about making leaving unsafe. It only broke through to them when a gust of wind caught their door and slammed it into my car, to which they hurriedly apologized and swore it would “buff out” and then ran away.
Or the taxi driver who parked in the middle of the lot lane waiting for their fare blocking the whole exit.
There was the restaurant patron loudly having an argument on their cell phone. The cashier who was so stoned or distracted they needed 3 tries to get the order right. Or the waiter who got into a literal shouting match with their co-worker to which management did nothing but watch.
The theater floor is stickier than a fly trap and the seats aren’t much better. The food is awful, and over priced. The cost of just a few games of pool at the bar is crazy, even before factoring in your drink will cost you 4-6x what you could get it for at home and be lukewarm.
Why would people want to go to these shared places or live where they can’t have the space for their own version when this is more and more the norm.
sandworm101|1 year ago
As opposed to all the "urban lifestyle" people who readily offload their basic needs onto others. Some people are happy cooking their own basic foods. Others want them to be prepared, and their dished cleaned, by a team. Some people are happy with a beer fridge. Others want to go to a bar and pay a young person to smile and flirt while concocting a fancy drink in a silly glass. To each their own. But having a basic kitchen in an apartment is not a luxury any more than having a cupboard for cleaning supplies, a service that can also be outsourced by those too lazy to clean up after themselves. A desire for a modicum of self-sufficiency is not a vice.
theendisney|1 year ago
Sophistifunk|1 year ago
advael|1 year ago
The fact is, the housing crisis is and always was a policy failure and a "distributional outcomes" issue, and and no amount of improving housing construction's speed, costs, or legality will fix it if we don't both change policy and reduce inequality
There are tons of building that are or could be residential housing that are owned by massive investment firms as a speculative asset. The FTC's recently published brief mentioned that keeping units empty rather than lowering prices is common practice among landlords. Even among individuals, an incredible amount of older, wealthy people own multiple homes and view most of them as a source of passive income. When I talk to people in that category, if they are doing well, they are often thinking about buying more homes to generate more income directly from renters or as a speculative investment (IE to hold and sell later)
As it stands, people are not homeless because there is nowhere they could live. Not even close. Increasing housing supply without making any significant dent in the financial and regulatory situation surrounding housing will more likely just put more real estate in the hands of the entrenched winners, who have already demonstrated the willingness and ability to hoard housing
nateglims|1 year ago
Houses as an asset is a major contributor for sure. It's long been a rival to stocks or exceeded it as an investment and makes a powerful political base. But it also includes a lot of people who view their primary residence as one and aren't landlording other properties.
It's hard to find solutions to this that are politically and socially viable. To create more homes requires capital and doing so will lower the value of existing assets. I think people reach for easy solutions because they don't want to face some deep contradictions in our way of life.
mortify|1 year ago
The biggest challenge we face is that the best way to protect wealth is to own assets and properties are assets we can live in. If wealth didn't naturally sublimate this would be less of an issue. Likewise if it were easier to protect wealth by doing something productive, it would happen.
closeparen|1 year ago