The absolute state of online housing discourse
The absolute state of online housing discourse
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I don't think you live where I live. Because where I live there is just no room to build many more houses without demolishing other houses first. There is a lot of discussion about moving away from single-family houses and increasing the density of living space. I don't see how this would be solved by making it easier to build.
ETA: Just to be clear, I absolutely am not advocating for deporting immigrants.
Do some reading about "the missing middle." In many cases the sort of medium-density housing like row houses or duplex/triplex/quadruplex designs that offer more comfort and privacy than a massive apartment complex but are more affordable than single family houses on large lots are explicitly regulated against in American cities, and local codes need to change in order to allow the sort of humane-but-cost-effective housing that will make a dent in the affordability crisis. Problem is, though, that existing homeowners see denser housing as a threat, both to the value of their own properties, and to the comfortable social homogeneity of their neighborhoods. At some level you need to have the power to force these developments through over the objections of the neighbors, undemocratic as that is, or else the problem never gets solved.
The ones who find social homogeneity "comfortable" are the boomer bigots in power. That is one of the main obstacles to progress in this despicable & irrational inequality: removing the churchy racist fucks from office.
In truth, NIMBYism is a gigantic problem even (especially!) in places where people profess to hold liberal and/or progressive values. It's a massive contributor to the housing crisis in California, for instance... and the attitude is not limited to Boomers, who are reaching the age now where they're as likely to be entering assisted living homes as they are to be stubbornly holding on to a house in the 'burbs that's appreciated 1000% since they bought it. GenX and even those us Millennials who are fortunate enough to own can be and often are just as guilty of NIMBYism as the old folks.
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Thank you for the clarification in your "ETA".
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Evolving the (sub)urban planning directive beyond "single-family houses" while also "increasing the density of living space” is "making it easier to build", TBH. 😅
- I realised afterwards that I said nothing about executing landlords. I'm also not in favour, in case anyone was wondering.
- Hm, I guess it comes down to what is meant by "make it easier".
The only way to reduce the proportion of single-family houses around here seems to be by adding rules and restrictions. Adding more rules is usually not what people mean when they say "make it easier". But I get your point.
One example is allowing the construction of ADUs. Throwing a small apartment on top of a garage is an extremely common addition these days that requires minimal waste.
Similarly even without ADUs, many homes in my neighborhood just outside of Boston have been remodeled from single family 5 beds to 2/3 family condos without being completely demolished. This was largely made possible by eliminating rules and regulations like the parking requirements for houses near public transit and loosening restrictions on conversions themselves by reducing restrictions for setbacks and similar rules. My own home is a condo conversion and it’s the only reason we could afford to own here.
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If housing is expensive where you live, and most of the land is tied up in single-family homes, what's stopping people from just converting their homes into plexes, or straight-up selling to someone who will turn a couple single-family lots into an apartment complex that houses hundreds?
If you're anywhere in North America, chances are it's literally illegal to do so, because of restrictive zoning and other NIMBY land use policies that make it literally illegal to build enough housing in the places that need it most.
So the solution, then, is to make it legal and easy to build housing so people don't have to fight over scraps.
If you're anywhere in North America
I am not and every argument in this thread seems to assume I am and argues with some rules in the US or Canada. This was exactly my point. The situation seems to be wildly different than my experience.
I only mention North America because the US and Canada are the only two countries I have lived in, and thus have the most intimate knowledge of how their urban land use policies work.
But even outside of North America, many places have some form of restrictive land use policy. In the UK, I know they have the council system, where there's a local council that has veto power over every single development. It may not be the same form as North American zoning, but the net effect on making it de facto illegal to build enough housing.
I'm also aware of many other European countries having strict land use policies that make it extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to build denser housing, hence why many European cities (cough cough Amsterdam) have ludicrous housing crises.
Japan is perhaps the most notable exception that I'm aware of. In the 1980s and 1990s, they had the mother of all real estate bubbles burst, which devastated their economy, and the lesson they learned was they needed to make it easier to build housing to avoid a similar thing ever again occurring. They made land use policies uniform and quite permissive at the national level, allowing people to build most housing by right in most locations. The result? Tokyo, despite being the most populous metro area in the world, is actually remarkably affordable, even to minimum wage earners.
Again, this is more of the "off-load to oppressed middle-class (ie. everyone non-corpo/5%) to 'solve' w/o lasting foundational change to build from"... See: recycling program, education system, etc.
This is a short video about how one law makes it more difficult to build denser housing in the US and Canada: https://youtu.be/iRdwXQb7CfM?si=fLJ6qcVIOzHEFOvU