Shortage of affordable housing in the US

[Ken]

More on stretcher requirements in apartment elevators that add to construction costs.

[Ernie]

Back to the opening post, it feels backwards to blame housing shortages on those who demand the least (accept the lowest quality and highest density) and provide much of the sweat labor for new construction.

That is a fair consideration.

[Josh]

And as I keep pointing out, zoning doesn’t make cost of labour and materials more expensive or cheaper.

No, but labor costs and materials costs are FAR from the only factors that determine the cost of new housing. There are a LONG list of other factors:

Sure we can. We can do a thought experiment and look at a place that doesn’t have all those extra costs below like where I live. Guess what - new construction is still unaffordable!

Land costs where I am are around $3500-$5000/ac depending upon how swampy. Basically trivial (1 acre equal to 18 sq Fr of house)

There aren’t any impact fees or infrastructure costs. Lots are available for sale on a main road. If you don’t want to install your own septic/well ($10k-$20k each), you can try to buy a lot that has utilities on it.

There isn’t any zoning or setbacks etc at all. I wish we had historic districts for our old buildings but we have very few.

Interest rates are 7.5%. When they were 3.5% the cost of construction was the same. (In theory higher rates make the cost of labour and construction and land cheaper.)

Building codes are minimal and for small residential construction they are routinely ignored and there is no enforcement.

There are no environmental standards for small residential builds other than flooding.

No permitting other than septic, no design reviews, no red tape whatsoever.

Still costs a lot to build.

And note. This is not a conservative/liberal thing. Many of the urban areas that do the worst job of producing new housing are blue cities in blue states and liberals are some of the very worst NIMBYs on the planet. Witness Berkeley and San Francisco.

Yes. This is why I don’t want blue state and blue city government and policies showing up where I live, or housing will get even more unaffordable.

[Josh]

New York and Toronto make a contrast study in how zoning impacts housing costs.

Back to the opening post, it feels backwards to blame housing shortages on those who demand the least (accept the lowest quality and highest density) and provide much of the sweat labor for new construction.

There isn’t any “blame” being assigned to individuals.

However, flooding a country with millions of people means they have to find places to live. This means rents and house prices will go up. It also isn’t good to have a large influx of people who accept low quality and unreasonable density, unless you think turning America into a bunch of slums and shanty towns is a good idea.

Likewise, there are plenty of people already here who need work and good jobs. I don’t think it’s a good idea to flood the country with millions of people who work for below minimum wage and avoid taxes and work for cash under the table, not file workman’s comp claims and so forth. Unless, again, you think America should be transformed into a third world country.

[ohio jones]

[*]Building codes that mandate unnecessarily expensive features. For example in the US most medium size apartment buildings are mandated to have [*]dual stairwells and excessively large elevators (that can hold a stretcher horizontally) which makes apartments significantly more expensive to build

None of the standard building codes require an apartment building of any size to have a hospital-sized elevator. It is a stretcher to suggest otherwise.

https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC20 ... ng-systems



You will find the same language repeated in most if not all state codes.

It makes for much more expensive elevators and more expensive elevator shafts. You will not see this requirement in Europe, Asia, or Latin America where there are millions of apartment buildings without big expensive elevators and strangely, there isn't a rash of people dying in them due to lack of stretcher access. They either take the stairs or just use a wheelchair.

Just one example out of many for how building codes in the US unnecessarily make housing more expensive.

I'm a little surprised you found that. But a 5-story apartment building is not medium size in my world. Maybe it is in yours. According to my estimating manual the difference in cost is about 6% compared to a standard size elevator, and distributed over 5 stories worth of apartments can hardly be considered a significant expense.

[Josh]

It's also important that larger buildings meet important emergency, safety, and fire codes, and that they are accessible to people with disabilities. Obviously, we could have really cheap housing if we just built shacks out of discarded materials on hillsides like this:



Yet such favelas already exist, and a common thing about them is that the people who live in them seem to be very interested in trying to migrate to the U.S. instead. It doesn't seem to me that it makes sense to recreate third-world poverty conditions in America.

[Ken]

I'm a little surprised you found that. But a 5-story apartment building is not medium size in my world. Maybe it is in yours. According to my estimating manual the difference in cost is about 6% compared to a standard size elevator, and distributed over 5 stories worth of apartments can hardly be considered a significant expense.

Don't think suburbia where land is relatively cheap and you can throw up big sprawling 2-story apartment complexes on vacant land. I have a cousin who does urban infill projects in Seattle where they have relaxed single family zoning requirements in a lot of central city locations but they still run into these restrictions that make housing unnecessarily expensive or makes it unviable. Say for example you want to put up a 4-apartment, 4-storey building like this on a small lot and it is otherwise legal and would be in-demand. Now calculate how much extra cost would be added and how much square footage will be lost if you need to put a freight size elevator in the building? No option of even putting a small wheelchair size elevator, it's the big one or nothing, even if you are building a smaller 3-storey infill project. These sorts of small flat buildings are common in Europe and South America. I see them all over the place in Santiago where my in-laws live. But our building codes make this sort of thing unviable.

So you either have to tear down half the block and put up a big building, or put a single family McMansion on this lot. You can't viably do something like this that would better fit into the neighborhood because of elevator codes that don't exist outside of the US and Canada. Is it the only thing that makes inner city housing expensive in the US? No, of course not. But just an example of the drip drip effect that cumulatively makes costs higher in most urban areas.



Even something like this 3-plex you can't build if you want to make the top two floors accessible. If you want to put in any elevator at all (which isn't required for 3 floors) the code demands the big one. These sorts of small infill projects are common in much of the rest of the world but difficult here for this and other reasons like zoning. And even when they are allowed, other requirements like parking and setbacks makes them impossible.



And no Josh, this is not Favela construction in Brazil. Many of our older cities are full older versions of buildings like these that are no longer legal to build or replace. Much of the brownstone construction in NYC would be illegal to build from scratch today. Planners call this sort of thing the "missing middle" and these are some of the reasons why it is missing. Stuff like this is illegal to build today in most of America due to codes

[barnhart]

Some of the extra code around multi unit dwellings is federal. The ADA is quite robust. Here in NYC the trigger mechanism is the number of units, three and under is much, much easier to build.

[Ken]

Some of the extra code around multi unit dwellings is federal. The ADA is quite robust. Here in NYC the trigger mechanism is the number of units, three and under is much, much easier to build.

Yes but it can produce irrational results. Like how here in WA and CA you can't put in a small wheelchair accessible elevator to improve accessibility in a smaller building without triggering code requirements that you put in a full size freight elevator big enough for paramedics to carry a stretcher in and turn around. Which can make a small remodel impossible.

Expensive housing isn't just about elevators. That was just one example of MANY that explain why housing in the US is so expensive. For example, rents in Tokyo are about 60% lower than in Seattle which is far from the most expensive city in the US: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/c ... ity2=Tokyo

That isn't the ONLY reason why Seattle has more homeless encampments than Tokyo. Addiction and mental health are also factors. But it is certainly part of it.

Some of it is the boiled frog syndrome. We are living with the cumulative effects of many small decisions made over long periods of time. And we can't see the cumulative irrationality of it all without stepping back and seeing how people who made different choices do it elsewhere.

[Ernie]

Many of our older cities are full older versions of buildings like these that are no longer legal to build or replace. Much of the brownstone construction in NYC would be illegal to build from scratch today. Planners call this sort of thing the "missing middle" and these are some of the reasons why it is missing. Stuff like this is illegal to build today in most of America due to codes

Interesting. I just got done reading about middle housing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing

Why is it not legal to build or replace these?