We can end the housing crisis, but not by maintaining the status quo
July 20, 2022 8:16 AM Subscribe
Where are we going to put all these people who want to live? Maybe build a (highly controversial) house in your back yard? Maybe build a few (highly controversial) houses on a vacant lot? Two videos explaining a few ways to disrupt the status quo and help more people achieve housing.
These are really amazing and I'm getting strong Big Orange Splot vibes from a lot of the designs. And I love the colorful painted intersections - I've never seen anything like it before. More of that please!
But oh man why couldn't these be built in gerrymandered-red districts to actually effect the kind of change that would make the need for them a little less severe? (yeah, I know why).
posted by Mchelly at 9:07 AM on July 20, 2022
But oh man why couldn't these be built in gerrymandered-red districts to actually effect the kind of change that would make the need for them a little less severe? (yeah, I know why).
posted by Mchelly at 9:07 AM on July 20, 2022
These are fine, but I guess I don’t understand why in the richest country on earth we are building 8x10 sheds (what a number of the examples were in the second video) for people to live in, even if they are surrounded by pretty gardens. Why can’t all people have the right to an apartment near to services? Why is that so much to ask?
posted by rockindata at 9:13 AM on July 20, 2022 [21 favorites]
posted by rockindata at 9:13 AM on July 20, 2022 [21 favorites]
We can inject this into the red suburbs through Adaptive Reuse. This link is an example of turning an old shopping mall into a live-work space. If it was a live-work-learn-shop space, all the better.
posted by rebent at 9:14 AM on July 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by rebent at 9:14 AM on July 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
My bet is that we're building 8x10 sheds (or tiny houses) because that means that there aren't hallways and stairwells where various things can happen - and therefore less oversight is needed.
My feeling* is that a big, big challenge is managing 1. People who just plain aren't well, who are so addicted, so sleep-deprived or so traumatized/mentally ill that they are not safe around others; 2. People who are unhoused because they are violent and abusive and can't maintain housing for that reason; 3. Predatory pimps, thieves and dealers who bring violence to unhoused communities 4. the types of petty theft, street level sex work and small dealing that people do to survive when they can't get money any other way. If you have a lot of stairwells and elevators, etc, people are going to get beaten up or robbed there, or do low level sex work there or else you're going to need a cop-like system to prevent this and that really sucks. Better to give everyone a little space with a door they can lock. (I'm not saying nothing bad ever happens behind a locked door, god knows, but there are locked doors in apartments, too.
I have really mixed feelings about "let's build everyone their own shed" projects but I can see why they exist. Like, I was talking to a guy last week who got beaten up and had all his stuff stolen at the encampment where he lives - either by other homeless people or by predatory outsiders. Safe entry/exit to your housing is really important.
It seems like this could all be a matter of attrition - build some little villages now, focus on getting people money and healthcare and then as communities stabilize you can make more apartment-style housing because the precarity problems will be disappearing. I don't think that individual sheds are a good long-term solution for most people.
The other thing is, of course, that if we don't stop predatory landlords from buying up all the houses (which is, IMO, what is really driving this), it doesn't matter - we're only going to have to build more sheds and every one of us will be living in one eventually because only the children of billionaires will be able to afford to rent or own.
Like, the sheds are more of a solution than the usual proposals but they still don't get at the root.
*Based on some volunteer work, some personal acquaintance and living in a neighborhood with a lot of unhoused people - I may be wrong but I'm not just making stuff up.
posted by Frowner at 9:30 AM on July 20, 2022 [42 favorites]
My feeling* is that a big, big challenge is managing 1. People who just plain aren't well, who are so addicted, so sleep-deprived or so traumatized/mentally ill that they are not safe around others; 2. People who are unhoused because they are violent and abusive and can't maintain housing for that reason; 3. Predatory pimps, thieves and dealers who bring violence to unhoused communities 4. the types of petty theft, street level sex work and small dealing that people do to survive when they can't get money any other way. If you have a lot of stairwells and elevators, etc, people are going to get beaten up or robbed there, or do low level sex work there or else you're going to need a cop-like system to prevent this and that really sucks. Better to give everyone a little space with a door they can lock. (I'm not saying nothing bad ever happens behind a locked door, god knows, but there are locked doors in apartments, too.
I have really mixed feelings about "let's build everyone their own shed" projects but I can see why they exist. Like, I was talking to a guy last week who got beaten up and had all his stuff stolen at the encampment where he lives - either by other homeless people or by predatory outsiders. Safe entry/exit to your housing is really important.
It seems like this could all be a matter of attrition - build some little villages now, focus on getting people money and healthcare and then as communities stabilize you can make more apartment-style housing because the precarity problems will be disappearing. I don't think that individual sheds are a good long-term solution for most people.
The other thing is, of course, that if we don't stop predatory landlords from buying up all the houses (which is, IMO, what is really driving this), it doesn't matter - we're only going to have to build more sheds and every one of us will be living in one eventually because only the children of billionaires will be able to afford to rent or own.
Like, the sheds are more of a solution than the usual proposals but they still don't get at the root.
*Based on some volunteer work, some personal acquaintance and living in a neighborhood with a lot of unhoused people - I may be wrong but I'm not just making stuff up.
posted by Frowner at 9:30 AM on July 20, 2022 [42 favorites]
I would love to see communities prioritize creative solutions for adding housing like these.
Why? If a community can agree it needs more and denser housing, there are more efficient solutions. The entire problem seems to be that at least half the community opposes all construction. Locally, that meant opposing tearing down a derelict mall with no tenants to build more housing, and continuing to oppose construction even as the lot sits as an empty field next to a highway.
posted by pwnguin at 9:33 AM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
Why? If a community can agree it needs more and denser housing, there are more efficient solutions. The entire problem seems to be that at least half the community opposes all construction. Locally, that meant opposing tearing down a derelict mall with no tenants to build more housing, and continuing to oppose construction even as the lot sits as an empty field next to a highway.
posted by pwnguin at 9:33 AM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
Easier idea:
Pressure AirBnB to be way more proactive about policing its hosts, and working with communities to cut down on the number of AirBnB units there can be in a given city.
And I say this as someone who USES AirBnB as a guest. Getting them to crack down on their hosts like this will almost certainly screw me over- but I don't care, this is more important.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:35 AM on July 20, 2022 [21 favorites]
Pressure AirBnB to be way more proactive about policing its hosts, and working with communities to cut down on the number of AirBnB units there can be in a given city.
And I say this as someone who USES AirBnB as a guest. Getting them to crack down on their hosts like this will almost certainly screw me over- but I don't care, this is more important.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:35 AM on July 20, 2022 [21 favorites]
Agreeing that you need more and denser housing won't solve anything overnight. In California, ADUs are legal and you can divide any single-family residence in an urban area into two properties AND you can put a duplex on anything zoned single-family residence (some restrictions apply) but there's still like a quarter of a million people experiencing homelessness in California right now.
I think Frowner just nailed it.
I think Frowner just nailed it.
The other thing is, of course, that if we don't stop predatory landlords from buying up all the houses (which is, IMO, what is really driving this), it doesn't matter - we're only going to have to build more sheds and every one of us will be living in one eventually because only the children of billionaires will be able to afford to rent or own.posted by aniola at 9:47 AM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
Like, the sheds are more of a solution than the usual proposals but they still don't get at the root.
it's not just the landlords who are predatory
the types of petty theft, street level sex work and small dealing that people do to survive when they can't get money any other way.
When you've got a system where wages are artificially suppressed to a level where the wall of marts hands new employees instructional leaflets on how to get food stamps, changing that and fixing the "can't get money" will magically fix a ton of other problems too. But hey, that would mean less profit for some individuals who, if I see another recent thread, are in desperate need of a bigger yacht
posted by DreamerFi at 9:49 AM on July 20, 2022 [14 favorites]
the types of petty theft, street level sex work and small dealing that people do to survive when they can't get money any other way.
When you've got a system where wages are artificially suppressed to a level where the wall of marts hands new employees instructional leaflets on how to get food stamps, changing that and fixing the "can't get money" will magically fix a ton of other problems too. But hey, that would mean less profit for some individuals who, if I see another recent thread, are in desperate need of a bigger yacht
posted by DreamerFi at 9:49 AM on July 20, 2022 [14 favorites]
I think the value of the shed villages isn't long term, it's short term. It's proof of concept: houses fix houselessness.
I'm 100% on board with restructuring our entire housing economy and attitude to the unhoused, but I also want to help people having trouble right now.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:54 AM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
I'm 100% on board with restructuring our entire housing economy and attitude to the unhoused, but I also want to help people having trouble right now.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:54 AM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
Why can’t all people have the right to an apartment near to services? Why is that so much to ask?
Because far too many people oppose them vs want them, so ADUs are the perfect way to farm out a tiny amount of development to wealthy-ish people with good hearts (no-one else can afford to build ADUs) to permit minor amounts of new housing. It's the absolute bare minimum, and people have fought really hard to get the bare minimum.
Also neither of these solutions is for the current homeless population. ADUs and the urban village are both market-rate solutions. I'd bet the number of people who would spent the money to construct an ADU and put a homeless person in it you could count on one hand.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:03 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Because far too many people oppose them vs want them, so ADUs are the perfect way to farm out a tiny amount of development to wealthy-ish people with good hearts (no-one else can afford to build ADUs) to permit minor amounts of new housing. It's the absolute bare minimum, and people have fought really hard to get the bare minimum.
Also neither of these solutions is for the current homeless population. ADUs and the urban village are both market-rate solutions. I'd bet the number of people who would spent the money to construct an ADU and put a homeless person in it you could count on one hand.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:03 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Air B&B.
In my Victorian era neighborhood, a house was renovated a few years ago, then immediately rented as a large Air B&B rental, sometimes to groups of college aged people. The city stopped it, since there were already city regulations for B&Bs: The owner has to live on the property, and there's a limit on the percentage of space that's rented out. (The handful of existing B&Bs are quiet, good neighbors.)
Nearby, a house is being fixed up for sale, after being a rental. The house is going back to a one family instead of one apartment per floor. In the tiny backyard, there's a studio sized concrete block rental house, from the 1940s or 50s. So it's grandfathered in. It's just like the Accessory Dwelling Units, and would make a nice, inexpensive apartment. But I'm guessing it'll qualify for the Air B&B rental regulations if the owners live in the main house, and that's way more lucrative than renting it by the month. (perhaps having a single permanent tenant is less trouble than being an Air B&B host? We'll see.)
posted by jjj606 at 10:16 AM on July 20, 2022
In my Victorian era neighborhood, a house was renovated a few years ago, then immediately rented as a large Air B&B rental, sometimes to groups of college aged people. The city stopped it, since there were already city regulations for B&Bs: The owner has to live on the property, and there's a limit on the percentage of space that's rented out. (The handful of existing B&Bs are quiet, good neighbors.)
Nearby, a house is being fixed up for sale, after being a rental. The house is going back to a one family instead of one apartment per floor. In the tiny backyard, there's a studio sized concrete block rental house, from the 1940s or 50s. So it's grandfathered in. It's just like the Accessory Dwelling Units, and would make a nice, inexpensive apartment. But I'm guessing it'll qualify for the Air B&B rental regulations if the owners live in the main house, and that's way more lucrative than renting it by the month. (perhaps having a single permanent tenant is less trouble than being an Air B&B host? We'll see.)
posted by jjj606 at 10:16 AM on July 20, 2022
I'd bet the number of people who would spent the money to construct an ADU and put a homeless person in it you could count on one hand.
I kind of wondered about that. That the ADU in the first video is in Ann Arbor, and is part of a home owned my architects, makes me think that it's going to be student housing, and probably more likely to be a post-graduate student residence. Not that those folks can easily afford housing, but they're more apt to than can a homeless person. Still, students need affordable housing as much as anyone else, so it's a good step in the right direction.
I really would like to know the costs of these. They kind of fall into a similar category as tiny houses do, which have also been touted as being part of the housing solution, but, in practice, have ended up being largely the domain of more well-off twenty/thirty somethings. Or AirB&B listings.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:20 AM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
I kind of wondered about that. That the ADU in the first video is in Ann Arbor, and is part of a home owned my architects, makes me think that it's going to be student housing, and probably more likely to be a post-graduate student residence. Not that those folks can easily afford housing, but they're more apt to than can a homeless person. Still, students need affordable housing as much as anyone else, so it's a good step in the right direction.
I really would like to know the costs of these. They kind of fall into a similar category as tiny houses do, which have also been touted as being part of the housing solution, but, in practice, have ended up being largely the domain of more well-off twenty/thirty somethings. Or AirB&B listings.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:20 AM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also: my suburban-ish neighborhood could have been very similar to that co-housing one, but the stupid front yards are gigantic, which destroys the cohesion between houses, decreases the private space in the backyard, and makes it almost impossible to retrofit without tearing down the existing house. Those guys who banned ADUs in the 1950s really knew what they were doing.
I really would like to know the costs of these.
Permitted normal ones are in the $40k-$150k range, depending on city requirements.
Also of course they increase rainwater runoff unless they are stacked on the main house or if they replace concrete parking (rare -most require some parking, at least for the main house). I can't believe that guy said that.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:36 AM on July 20, 2022
I really would like to know the costs of these.
Permitted normal ones are in the $40k-$150k range, depending on city requirements.
Also of course they increase rainwater runoff unless they are stacked on the main house or if they replace concrete parking (rare -most require some parking, at least for the main house). I can't believe that guy said that.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:36 AM on July 20, 2022
So...these are just teeny apartments, basically? I looked at the videos but mostly with sound off (work) and I guess because I see homeless people literally every single day I assumed that these were for homeless people because people are always talking about tiny houses/sheds for homeless people. (On a larger level, I wish that we could get posts that had an article even if they were mostly video.)
I mean, it's not that grad students don't deserve housing, and it's not that freeing up the very cheapest housing by putting grad students in the next-to-cheapest housing doesn't help, but for pete's sake, we are always going to have a homelessness problem until we start putting people in homes.
Very few people can bootstrap themselves out of true, street level homelessness, especially after they've been homeless for a while, because being homeless itself prevents you from accessing the resources and doing the things that you need to do to get housed, even in relatively accessible housing. If you are street-level homeless, you are sleeping badly, you are badly fed, you may well have untreated infections including tooth infections, god knows what's up with your blood pressure, you are very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer, you suffer minority stress because people treat you like crap every day, you suffer cop stress because society is constantly policing you. You can't keep anything much because the cops roust you and destroy your possessions every so often; you can't get the mail you need to access services because you don't have a mailbox - it's just garbage all around. You experience traumatic stuff all the time - cops beating people, crime and violence, addiction, deaths on the street, low-level sex work and pimps around you. You are prey for any asshole who wants to beat you or steal your stuff unless you're lucky, strong and maintain good social connections.
Like, I used to volunteer with someone who did in fact bootstrap his way out of street level homelessness and the most critical piece was when someone offered to let him stay in their attached garage for free. (Frankly, I wish I'd let him stay with me; I'd gotten burned on some housemate stuff and did not at first feel like I knew him well enough, and it is a lasting, lasting shame to me that I didn't take a leap of faith.) You have a place to stay and you can get mail, you can keep stuff, you can sleep deeply because you have a locked door, you are probably still cold in winter and hot in summer but not deadly cold or hot, and you are out of the wind and rain.
This society gets worse every day because we have to teach ourselves to treat our unhoused brothers and sisters like shit instead of helping them.
posted by Frowner at 10:37 AM on July 20, 2022 [19 favorites]
I mean, it's not that grad students don't deserve housing, and it's not that freeing up the very cheapest housing by putting grad students in the next-to-cheapest housing doesn't help, but for pete's sake, we are always going to have a homelessness problem until we start putting people in homes.
Very few people can bootstrap themselves out of true, street level homelessness, especially after they've been homeless for a while, because being homeless itself prevents you from accessing the resources and doing the things that you need to do to get housed, even in relatively accessible housing. If you are street-level homeless, you are sleeping badly, you are badly fed, you may well have untreated infections including tooth infections, god knows what's up with your blood pressure, you are very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer, you suffer minority stress because people treat you like crap every day, you suffer cop stress because society is constantly policing you. You can't keep anything much because the cops roust you and destroy your possessions every so often; you can't get the mail you need to access services because you don't have a mailbox - it's just garbage all around. You experience traumatic stuff all the time - cops beating people, crime and violence, addiction, deaths on the street, low-level sex work and pimps around you. You are prey for any asshole who wants to beat you or steal your stuff unless you're lucky, strong and maintain good social connections.
Like, I used to volunteer with someone who did in fact bootstrap his way out of street level homelessness and the most critical piece was when someone offered to let him stay in their attached garage for free. (Frankly, I wish I'd let him stay with me; I'd gotten burned on some housemate stuff and did not at first feel like I knew him well enough, and it is a lasting, lasting shame to me that I didn't take a leap of faith.) You have a place to stay and you can get mail, you can keep stuff, you can sleep deeply because you have a locked door, you are probably still cold in winter and hot in summer but not deadly cold or hot, and you are out of the wind and rain.
This society gets worse every day because we have to teach ourselves to treat our unhoused brothers and sisters like shit instead of helping them.
posted by Frowner at 10:37 AM on July 20, 2022 [19 favorites]
The housing crisis is a big enough problem that we should be building ADUs, urban villages, new apartment buildings, pressuring AirBnB, and trying to get vacancy laws/taxation changed in all places that people want to live in that are somewhat sustainable (so not most of Arizona).
Homeless people, students, new workers, and middle-income families all need better places to live right now and anything that opens up inventory in the lower half of the market (ie not condos) is probably a good idea.
posted by JZig at 10:39 AM on July 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
Homeless people, students, new workers, and middle-income families all need better places to live right now and anything that opens up inventory in the lower half of the market (ie not condos) is probably a good idea.
posted by JZig at 10:39 AM on July 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
I am all for these tiny homes, ADUs, etc., but I don't think they are going to be built fast enough for the 3.8 million houses we need (https://www.freddiemac.com/research/insight/20210507-housing-supply).
It's easy to throw the blame at AirBNB and predatory landlords, they are easy targets, but the main problem is simply not enough houses. NIMBYs in my community, and probably yours, block every apartment project and attempt to add housing density and supply. Until this fundamental problem changes, everything else is a band-aid.
posted by birdsongster at 10:58 AM on July 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
It's easy to throw the blame at AirBNB and predatory landlords, they are easy targets, but the main problem is simply not enough houses. NIMBYs in my community, and probably yours, block every apartment project and attempt to add housing density and supply. Until this fundamental problem changes, everything else is a band-aid.
posted by birdsongster at 10:58 AM on July 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
My community is massively increasing density near the commuter rail transit corridor and neighbors have to be pulled through the process kicking and screaming. Parking parking parking. Street and surface parking, ignore the existing parking lots that are FREE and often completely empty.
posted by muddgirl at 11:01 AM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by muddgirl at 11:01 AM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
Pressure AirBnB to be way more proactive about policing its hosts, and working with communities to cut down on the number of AirBnB units there can be in a given city.
Yes, this is huge. I have witnessed the rental market of one touristy city go totally bonkers because it is very liberal with Short Term Rentals. Like, we're talking houses in a still mostly very low-income neighborhood going for 500k, bought by big corps to be used as an AirBNB.
That said, the problem isn't going to be solved by pressuring AirBNB (they don't care) but pressuring local government. As long as local governments are STR-friendly, this will be a problem.
But yes, these videos both suggest other ideas that will be useful additional tools. I used to live in Ann Arbor, and the rental market there has gotten really out of hand.
posted by coffeecat at 11:03 AM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yes, this is huge. I have witnessed the rental market of one touristy city go totally bonkers because it is very liberal with Short Term Rentals. Like, we're talking houses in a still mostly very low-income neighborhood going for 500k, bought by big corps to be used as an AirBNB.
That said, the problem isn't going to be solved by pressuring AirBNB (they don't care) but pressuring local government. As long as local governments are STR-friendly, this will be a problem.
But yes, these videos both suggest other ideas that will be useful additional tools. I used to live in Ann Arbor, and the rental market there has gotten really out of hand.
posted by coffeecat at 11:03 AM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
DirtyOldTown -- the Missouri law actually makes sleeping on state-owned land a Class C misdemeanor. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch issued a correction on their previous statement that it was a felony.
Criminalizing homelessness, criminalizing the very existence of human beings is still mind-bogglingly horrific.
posted by cnidaria at 11:04 AM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
Criminalizing homelessness, criminalizing the very existence of human beings is still mind-bogglingly horrific.
posted by cnidaria at 11:04 AM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
The entire problem seems to be that at least half the community opposes all construction.
I don't think it's half. Many surveys show that simple majorities or even larger fractions want new housing (I'll try to dig up some links). The problem is that the people who do oppose any and all new housing have suction with the mayor's office and the process is designed to give certain interest groups (retiree homeowners who can attend a planning meeting at 2pm on a Wednesday, for example) veto power over everyone else. Certain segments of the community are empowered over others, so that it doesn't matter what the majority actually does or doesn't want.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 11:08 AM on July 20, 2022 [8 favorites]
I don't think it's half. Many surveys show that simple majorities or even larger fractions want new housing (I'll try to dig up some links). The problem is that the people who do oppose any and all new housing have suction with the mayor's office and the process is designed to give certain interest groups (retiree homeowners who can attend a planning meeting at 2pm on a Wednesday, for example) veto power over everyone else. Certain segments of the community are empowered over others, so that it doesn't matter what the majority actually does or doesn't want.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 11:08 AM on July 20, 2022 [8 favorites]
With regards to price, I recently downloaded, cleaned, categorized, and assessed 5 years of permit data from my city's permit team. These are all based on 2019-2022 data from Grand Rapids, Michigan. The "Average Cost per Unit" is based on the "estimated cost" listed on the permit, which does not include the cost of land.
I think that what this shows is that the cost of homeowners creating more housing themselves is MUCH MORE EFFICIENT than for-profit corporations doing so. However, the cost to an individual from adding a unit in their basement is super unachievable. We are exploring ways to use our city's affordable housing fund to finance individual conversions/ADUs as an alternative to for-profit development, but while everybody sees the numbers make sense, it's just not how things are done in the world of capitalism.
Single to multi-family conversion (think - adding a unit in the basement)
No. Permitted: 12
Avg. cost per unit: $74k
Commercial to residential conversion
No. Permitted: 81
Avg. cost per unit: $124k
ADU
No. Permitted: 3
Avg. cost per unit: $142k
New duplex
No. Permitted: 38
Avg. cost per unit: $108k
New apartments
No. Permitted: 1816
Avg. cost per unit: $166k
New single-family houses
No. Permitted: 238
Avg. cost per unit: $189k
posted by rebent at 11:16 AM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
I think that what this shows is that the cost of homeowners creating more housing themselves is MUCH MORE EFFICIENT than for-profit corporations doing so. However, the cost to an individual from adding a unit in their basement is super unachievable. We are exploring ways to use our city's affordable housing fund to finance individual conversions/ADUs as an alternative to for-profit development, but while everybody sees the numbers make sense, it's just not how things are done in the world of capitalism.
Single to multi-family conversion (think - adding a unit in the basement)
No. Permitted: 12
Avg. cost per unit: $74k
Commercial to residential conversion
No. Permitted: 81
Avg. cost per unit: $124k
ADU
No. Permitted: 3
Avg. cost per unit: $142k
New duplex
No. Permitted: 38
Avg. cost per unit: $108k
New apartments
No. Permitted: 1816
Avg. cost per unit: $166k
New single-family houses
No. Permitted: 238
Avg. cost per unit: $189k
posted by rebent at 11:16 AM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
We also have a lot of empty supply that’s not being used. Building more housing that will continue to be empty or under utilized won’t help much.
posted by Monday at 11:27 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Monday at 11:27 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
The problem is that the people who do oppose any and all new housing have suction with the mayor's office and the process is designed to give certain interest groups (retiree homeowners who can attend a planning meeting at 2pm on a Wednesday, for example) veto power over everyone else. Certain segments of the community are empowered over others, so that it doesn't matter what the majority actually does or doesn't want.
Bitter lol. This is Kingston right now. I utterly depressed myself last summer when I sat in on city committee Zoom meetings because so many people in my own neighbourhood opposed the proposed construction of a St Vincent de Paul on a lot that, AFAIK, has been vacant well before I moved here in 2014. It was sobering and depressing to see how many people around me absolutely fucking hate poor people.
There is a definite age range/income range for people who can oppose new builds all day because they don't want anything to interfere with the historic character of downtown. Kingston has taken its own steps to criminalize the unhoused around here. There was a moderately successful pilot project this past winter with the kind of shed housing mentioned here; so successful that instead of keeping it downtown where the services are, they are moving it all the way out to the fringe of suburbia, where there are no services.
Living in Ontario has given me a quick education into the detrimental effects felt for years after enacted by former premier Mike Harris.
posted by Kitteh at 11:31 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Bitter lol. This is Kingston right now. I utterly depressed myself last summer when I sat in on city committee Zoom meetings because so many people in my own neighbourhood opposed the proposed construction of a St Vincent de Paul on a lot that, AFAIK, has been vacant well before I moved here in 2014. It was sobering and depressing to see how many people around me absolutely fucking hate poor people.
There is a definite age range/income range for people who can oppose new builds all day because they don't want anything to interfere with the historic character of downtown. Kingston has taken its own steps to criminalize the unhoused around here. There was a moderately successful pilot project this past winter with the kind of shed housing mentioned here; so successful that instead of keeping it downtown where the services are, they are moving it all the way out to the fringe of suburbia, where there are no services.
Living in Ontario has given me a quick education into the detrimental effects felt for years after enacted by former premier Mike Harris.
posted by Kitteh at 11:31 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
The wild thing to me is people who retire in university towns and then scream like murder when the city wants to build more housing for students. You moved to a university town! Then of course the students, in search of cheap housing, pool together and outbid lower income families for what cheap housing stock does exist, or the students themselves start having to live out of vans (which the homeowners also want to ban).
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 11:35 AM on July 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 11:35 AM on July 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
I think that what this shows is that the cost of homeowners creating more housing themselves is MUCH MORE EFFICIENT than for-profit corporations doing so.
Or that the rules you apply to developers are far more difficult to meet, given that your median home price is $50k higher than Des Moines IA or Lubbock TX, other cities with 200k in population and similar income stats (but far lower than Richmond VA or Spokane WA, cities with slightly higher median incomes).
Or that your housing policies are catching up with a population that peaked in 1970, then fell for a long time, so developers focused on very small luxury markets. Or that of course homeowners are generally going to do the bare minimum (which translates to 'efficiency') when their money and credit is on the line.
I'd say far more research is needed.
We also have a lot of empty supply that’s not being used.
Where? In Portland? Portland doesn't have much excess supply. Portland's apartment vacancy rate is below 4%, and this includes apartments in various states of construction not able to be rented.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:38 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Or that the rules you apply to developers are far more difficult to meet, given that your median home price is $50k higher than Des Moines IA or Lubbock TX, other cities with 200k in population and similar income stats (but far lower than Richmond VA or Spokane WA, cities with slightly higher median incomes).
Or that your housing policies are catching up with a population that peaked in 1970, then fell for a long time, so developers focused on very small luxury markets. Or that of course homeowners are generally going to do the bare minimum (which translates to 'efficiency') when their money and credit is on the line.
I'd say far more research is needed.
We also have a lot of empty supply that’s not being used.
Where? In Portland? Portland doesn't have much excess supply. Portland's apartment vacancy rate is below 4%, and this includes apartments in various states of construction not able to be rented.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:38 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Missouri, for example, just passed a law making it a felony to sleep on publicly owned property
That'll make the airport a fun place.
But at least it might keep city council members from dozing off during meetings.
posted by Gelatin at 11:39 AM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
That'll make the airport a fun place.
But at least it might keep city council members from dozing off during meetings.
posted by Gelatin at 11:39 AM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
So...these are just teeny apartments, basically?
Yes.
As usual, housing is a supply and demand problem. The idea of predatory landlords is kind of bullshitty, as a landlord will increasingly have difficulty being a predator where nobody wants to live. "Solving" supply and demand is rife with problems of its own.
This is kind of a weird issue because generally well meaning people are often fine with other people building ADUs, as long a they get to have a say in it. Which is just an extension of this housing problem all over again.
We also have a lot of empty supply that’s not being used.
Nationally, sure. Locally, maybe not so much.
Interestingly, the local trend here is to make formerly commercially zoned lots into mixed use buildings, a few stories of dwellings above ground floor commercial space. The problem tends to be that the dwellings fill up, but the commercial spaces have trouble attracting tenants. Perhaps it's a problem with zoning/architectual trends that effectively dictates what kind of commercial activity it wants, rather than the kind of commercial activity that is actually viable? It kind of concerns me, as this seems to have more if a "suburbanizing" effect than was intended.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yes.
As usual, housing is a supply and demand problem. The idea of predatory landlords is kind of bullshitty, as a landlord will increasingly have difficulty being a predator where nobody wants to live. "Solving" supply and demand is rife with problems of its own.
This is kind of a weird issue because generally well meaning people are often fine with other people building ADUs, as long a they get to have a say in it. Which is just an extension of this housing problem all over again.
We also have a lot of empty supply that’s not being used.
Nationally, sure. Locally, maybe not so much.
Interestingly, the local trend here is to make formerly commercially zoned lots into mixed use buildings, a few stories of dwellings above ground floor commercial space. The problem tends to be that the dwellings fill up, but the commercial spaces have trouble attracting tenants. Perhaps it's a problem with zoning/architectual trends that effectively dictates what kind of commercial activity it wants, rather than the kind of commercial activity that is actually viable? It kind of concerns me, as this seems to have more if a "suburbanizing" effect than was intended.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Students are looking for cheap housing? I currently live right next to a Big 10 university. I'm separating from my partner, and have been apartment hunting for MONTHS. I'm limited by needing accessibility, and by having a teenager with two dogs, but also because the housing market near where we live (where my teen will continue to attend school, socialize, and practice his chosen sports) has been taken over by luxurious new student housing: spacious apartments, hot tubs on the roof, indoor pools, free Starbucks in the lobby, fancy workout rooms and party rooms and movie-screening rooms. These apartments rent for $900-1100/month PER PERSON, whereas in the nearby declining rust belt city, you can rent a 3BR house for about that. (Though I could also talk about how, when our 21-year-old was facing homelessness, and we were helping her find temporary places, I learned that an amazing amount of the affordable housing stock in Nearby Rust-Belt City is now AirBnBs run by companies, not individuals.)
Alas, the older complexes that are more affordable tend to be built on the split-level model, where no apartment is less than half a flight of stairs up or down. I can't live in those places.
Also, despite all the new housing, we are still experiencing a housing shortage, such that I have yet to apply to a place before someone else has already rented it.
Apartments are going up so fast everywhere around here that it reminds me of just before the real estate crash of 2008, when I was looking around thinking, "Surely we don't have that many people around here who can afford these big expensive houses..." At some point, surely the new construction must outpace even the enormous student body of the local U?
Here is a thing I wrote awhile ago about housing and other college amenities getting fancier when the rules of the market suggest that, with more and more students going to college in recent decades, colleges should be able to offer students less rather than more, in terms of comfort and amenities:
WHY, WHEN THERE ARE MORE STUDENTS THAN EVER COMPETING FOR SPOTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION, DO UNIVERSITIES PUT SO MUCH INTO NON-ACADEMIC AMENITIES TO ATTRACT STUDENTS? DATA SCIENTIST CATHY O'NEIL OFFERS AN EXPLANATION: ALGORITHMS.
I graduated from high school in 1983. My cohort of college students, and those who came before us, moved without much complaint into cramped cinderblock dormitories. No matter how roomy, luxurious, and private our home bedrooms were (mine was huge, and all my own), we accepted that we’d have roommates, and that we’d share bathrooms with either suitemates or an entire hallway. We didn't expect or demand much space, though we were relieved when it was other people, not us, who ended up in “converted triples,” or double rooms with an extra bed and desk stuffed in.
In the 90s, I started attending a Quaker conference most summers. The conference is held on assorted college campuses, and most people stay in the on-campus student housing. Spending a week each year living in dorms and eating in college cafeterias allowed me and other Quakers to observe trends in student housing: from cheerless traditional dorms and cafeteria lines that offered two main dishes and some sides, to spacious suites and on-campus apartments, private bathrooms, and elaborate food courts with grill, deli, pizza, salad, Asian, and other stations in addition to the meatloaf and casserole line.
I wonder if anyone can pinpoint the moment when a college cafeteria in the US served salisbury steak for the last time? RIP salisbury steak and tater-tot casserole.
This, as well as the development of elaborate, luxurious rec centers, are among the factors that have driven college costs up. A small college I attended for a year recently showed up in an article about this phenomenon in a major newspaper (the Times or the Post). This school, which catered to working-class students, had torn down all its traditional dorms and built these fancy student apartments. This raised the lowest fee a student could pay for housing from about $1100/semester to over $3000/semester.
None of this has made sense to me. I took a couple of undergrad econ classes, so I am an expert in the laws of supply and demand. Record numbers of students flooding to college in recent decades means students are in great supply. Colleges ought to be able to take their pick, to offer fewer amenities, not more. “Here’s the utility closet you’ll be living in. Your meal plan is a case of Top Ramen and some multivitamins. If you want to exercise, walk to class. You’re lucky to be here, and you’ll take what I give you.”
But the trend has been the exact opposite of that.
It has not made any sense to me.
Well, the book I just read is called Weapons of Math Destruction, by data scientist Cathy O’Neal. It was longlisted for the American Book Award in 2016, and it is about how algorithms distort markets, and reinforce inequality and racism, by creating perverse incentives and unexpected outcomes. Because algorithms can be, and will be, gamed.
In Chapter Three, O’Neil talks about higher education, and she blew my mind.
Because, you know what else happened in 1983, besides me graduating from high school?
US News & World Report published its first college rankings.
Ranking colleges is now the entire business of US News & World Report. There’s no magazine anymore, just an increasingly-influential algorithm originally created by a news magazine that was trying to improve on its perennial third-class status behind Time and Newsweek.
The algorithm includes certain characteristics, and excludes others. Graduation rates? Yes. Faculty salaries, percentage of tenured faculty? No. Fundraising and alumni engagement? Yes. Acceptance rate? Yes. Cost to attend, or a cost-benefit ratio? Nope.
And so on.
Every one of these items can be tweaked. If your little college admits a thousand students each year from an application pool of two thousand, doing more marketing to high schoolers and their parents to increase the applicant pool by a few hundred students a year improves your ranking and is probably easier than modifying curriculum and improving instruction, which are hard to quantify in any case.
If your graduates aren’t making a lot of money, shrinking your English and History departments while expanding your Engineering offerings will help.
If not enough of your grads find work in their field, you can expand your definition of “post-graduate employment,” and count graduates from your crappy law school who are making coffee at Starbucks as “employed.” One law school hired its own graduates to do part-time work, and counted them as “employed in the field of law.”
O’Neal’s theory isn’t totalizing—she gets that other factors, like reduction in government support, also play a role.
But I’ve spent decades watching this market change in ways that seemed antithetical to all the hard-earned knowledge I’d picked up in Econ 101. And even in Econ 102.
The US News & World Report, trying to create a viable role for itself in an industry it could not excel in as a newsmagazine, created an influential algorithm that continues to distort the normal market forces, and interfere with the way public money can be used to promote the public good. It’s bad for faculty, who compete desperately for fewer and fewer tenure-track jobs; it’s bad for students and their families, who are swamped by debt and receiving sub-par instruction. It’s bad for communities like mine, where catering to the inflated housing desires of tens of thousands of undergrads reduces affordable housing stock almost to the point of extinction.
I feel glad to have a grip on the answer to something that has genuinely puzzled me for ages. I mean, infuriated, and frustrated, sure. But it soothes my brain to have a big part of this puzzle solved. I do not like not understanding something. I'm much more comfortable with a little understanding to underpin my righteous anger. Or, depending on the day, my despair.
posted by Well I never at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2022 [16 favorites]
Alas, the older complexes that are more affordable tend to be built on the split-level model, where no apartment is less than half a flight of stairs up or down. I can't live in those places.
Also, despite all the new housing, we are still experiencing a housing shortage, such that I have yet to apply to a place before someone else has already rented it.
Apartments are going up so fast everywhere around here that it reminds me of just before the real estate crash of 2008, when I was looking around thinking, "Surely we don't have that many people around here who can afford these big expensive houses..." At some point, surely the new construction must outpace even the enormous student body of the local U?
Here is a thing I wrote awhile ago about housing and other college amenities getting fancier when the rules of the market suggest that, with more and more students going to college in recent decades, colleges should be able to offer students less rather than more, in terms of comfort and amenities:
WHY, WHEN THERE ARE MORE STUDENTS THAN EVER COMPETING FOR SPOTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION, DO UNIVERSITIES PUT SO MUCH INTO NON-ACADEMIC AMENITIES TO ATTRACT STUDENTS? DATA SCIENTIST CATHY O'NEIL OFFERS AN EXPLANATION: ALGORITHMS.
I graduated from high school in 1983. My cohort of college students, and those who came before us, moved without much complaint into cramped cinderblock dormitories. No matter how roomy, luxurious, and private our home bedrooms were (mine was huge, and all my own), we accepted that we’d have roommates, and that we’d share bathrooms with either suitemates or an entire hallway. We didn't expect or demand much space, though we were relieved when it was other people, not us, who ended up in “converted triples,” or double rooms with an extra bed and desk stuffed in.
In the 90s, I started attending a Quaker conference most summers. The conference is held on assorted college campuses, and most people stay in the on-campus student housing. Spending a week each year living in dorms and eating in college cafeterias allowed me and other Quakers to observe trends in student housing: from cheerless traditional dorms and cafeteria lines that offered two main dishes and some sides, to spacious suites and on-campus apartments, private bathrooms, and elaborate food courts with grill, deli, pizza, salad, Asian, and other stations in addition to the meatloaf and casserole line.
I wonder if anyone can pinpoint the moment when a college cafeteria in the US served salisbury steak for the last time? RIP salisbury steak and tater-tot casserole.
This, as well as the development of elaborate, luxurious rec centers, are among the factors that have driven college costs up. A small college I attended for a year recently showed up in an article about this phenomenon in a major newspaper (the Times or the Post). This school, which catered to working-class students, had torn down all its traditional dorms and built these fancy student apartments. This raised the lowest fee a student could pay for housing from about $1100/semester to over $3000/semester.
None of this has made sense to me. I took a couple of undergrad econ classes, so I am an expert in the laws of supply and demand. Record numbers of students flooding to college in recent decades means students are in great supply. Colleges ought to be able to take their pick, to offer fewer amenities, not more. “Here’s the utility closet you’ll be living in. Your meal plan is a case of Top Ramen and some multivitamins. If you want to exercise, walk to class. You’re lucky to be here, and you’ll take what I give you.”
But the trend has been the exact opposite of that.
It has not made any sense to me.
Well, the book I just read is called Weapons of Math Destruction, by data scientist Cathy O’Neal. It was longlisted for the American Book Award in 2016, and it is about how algorithms distort markets, and reinforce inequality and racism, by creating perverse incentives and unexpected outcomes. Because algorithms can be, and will be, gamed.
In Chapter Three, O’Neil talks about higher education, and she blew my mind.
Because, you know what else happened in 1983, besides me graduating from high school?
US News & World Report published its first college rankings.
Ranking colleges is now the entire business of US News & World Report. There’s no magazine anymore, just an increasingly-influential algorithm originally created by a news magazine that was trying to improve on its perennial third-class status behind Time and Newsweek.
The algorithm includes certain characteristics, and excludes others. Graduation rates? Yes. Faculty salaries, percentage of tenured faculty? No. Fundraising and alumni engagement? Yes. Acceptance rate? Yes. Cost to attend, or a cost-benefit ratio? Nope.
And so on.
Every one of these items can be tweaked. If your little college admits a thousand students each year from an application pool of two thousand, doing more marketing to high schoolers and their parents to increase the applicant pool by a few hundred students a year improves your ranking and is probably easier than modifying curriculum and improving instruction, which are hard to quantify in any case.
If your graduates aren’t making a lot of money, shrinking your English and History departments while expanding your Engineering offerings will help.
If not enough of your grads find work in their field, you can expand your definition of “post-graduate employment,” and count graduates from your crappy law school who are making coffee at Starbucks as “employed.” One law school hired its own graduates to do part-time work, and counted them as “employed in the field of law.”
O’Neal’s theory isn’t totalizing—she gets that other factors, like reduction in government support, also play a role.
But I’ve spent decades watching this market change in ways that seemed antithetical to all the hard-earned knowledge I’d picked up in Econ 101. And even in Econ 102.
The US News & World Report, trying to create a viable role for itself in an industry it could not excel in as a newsmagazine, created an influential algorithm that continues to distort the normal market forces, and interfere with the way public money can be used to promote the public good. It’s bad for faculty, who compete desperately for fewer and fewer tenure-track jobs; it’s bad for students and their families, who are swamped by debt and receiving sub-par instruction. It’s bad for communities like mine, where catering to the inflated housing desires of tens of thousands of undergrads reduces affordable housing stock almost to the point of extinction.
I feel glad to have a grip on the answer to something that has genuinely puzzled me for ages. I mean, infuriated, and frustrated, sure. But it soothes my brain to have a big part of this puzzle solved. I do not like not understanding something. I'm much more comfortable with a little understanding to underpin my righteous anger. Or, depending on the day, my despair.
posted by Well I never at 11:59 AM on July 20, 2022 [16 favorites]
The videos are sadly illustrative of the very miniscule steps proposed to address the housing issue.
Other places in the world: Let's put up a ten-story modern apartment complex that can house 50 families!
Here: A rich landowner has the option to build a small shed in their backyard. If they really want.
posted by meowzilla at 12:01 PM on July 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
Other places in the world: Let's put up a ten-story modern apartment complex that can house 50 families!
Here: A rich landowner has the option to build a small shed in their backyard. If they really want.
posted by meowzilla at 12:01 PM on July 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
I think that what this shows is that the cost of homeowners creating more housing themselves is MUCH MORE EFFICIENT than for-profit corporations doing so
Well, yeah, sure: it's much cheaper to build housing when you don't have to worry about pesky things like fire codes. Or any of the other things Frowner mentions upthread, which are an ironclad certainty once your ad-hoc housing project hits critical density.
posted by Mayor West at 12:03 PM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Well, yeah, sure: it's much cheaper to build housing when you don't have to worry about pesky things like fire codes. Or any of the other things Frowner mentions upthread, which are an ironclad certainty once your ad-hoc housing project hits critical density.
posted by Mayor West at 12:03 PM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
So literally even as I type, here in Minneapolis, a blue city, the "Homeless Response Team", which is a swat team with an arrest van, is busting up one of the homeless encampments not a mile from my house. That means they are going to take people's stuff and trash their tents and arrest some people. Which means that in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record the people in the encampment are without the stuff that they have laboriously accumulated since the LAST time they were rousted, and of course now they have to find somewhere else, mostly on foot, again in the middle of a heat wave.
Homeless assistance projects - talk about crying into the ocean! - raise money and buy and distribute tents and sleeping bags and camping pads and battery lights etc etc etc and of course must do it over and over and over again every time the cops take people's stuff. Which they always do.
The city can't do a goddamn thing to help these people and meanwhile individual citizens, many of whom do not in fact have tons of money lying around - unlike this rich city and its pampered cops - donate thousands of dollars only to have everything they purchase trashed again and again.
This trash city and its trash mayor - I hope they're homeless in hell.
posted by Frowner at 12:13 PM on July 20, 2022 [13 favorites]
Homeless assistance projects - talk about crying into the ocean! - raise money and buy and distribute tents and sleeping bags and camping pads and battery lights etc etc etc and of course must do it over and over and over again every time the cops take people's stuff. Which they always do.
The city can't do a goddamn thing to help these people and meanwhile individual citizens, many of whom do not in fact have tons of money lying around - unlike this rich city and its pampered cops - donate thousands of dollars only to have everything they purchase trashed again and again.
This trash city and its trash mayor - I hope they're homeless in hell.
posted by Frowner at 12:13 PM on July 20, 2022 [13 favorites]
Per someone who is there, the cops took people's water. Homeless and thirsty in hell.
posted by Frowner at 12:15 PM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 12:15 PM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this.
Pro: a local church put a bunch of these in their parking lot, tucked in behind their building and ringed by forest, and is providing some kind of counseling/social services to the residents and from all reports it's a success. My former city counsellor (she's still there, I just moved recently) has been very involved and I trust her. It was opposed by the usual suspects but the courts basically said look it's the church's land, they can do what they like since the homes are not a danger to anybody. The head of the opposition group died of covid after loudly proclaiming covid is a lie so that was, uh, something.
Con: there was a big push to do this in my hometown and the houses were not safe for residents, since they were uninsulated structures in an area that gets massive snowstorms (and reached about 38C a couple days ago). It was a big to-do of the city genuinely trying to work with local charities/NGOs advocating for unhoused people/churches and people being really mad at them for not just building a bunch of structures that wouldn't have solved the problem. Meanwhile housing is a provincial responsibility but since the province was doing bupkis and the city was trying, people yelled at the city. It was fascinating to watch. Apparently they have been able to build some housing that meets codes but afaik the problem is still ongoing.
Missouri, for example, just passed a law making it a felony to sleep on publicly owned property
Tennessee too. I called the DA in Nashville to ask them not to enforce the ban but haven't heard back. Our DA has declined to enforce some state laws before so we will see.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:19 PM on July 20, 2022
Pro: a local church put a bunch of these in their parking lot, tucked in behind their building and ringed by forest, and is providing some kind of counseling/social services to the residents and from all reports it's a success. My former city counsellor (she's still there, I just moved recently) has been very involved and I trust her. It was opposed by the usual suspects but the courts basically said look it's the church's land, they can do what they like since the homes are not a danger to anybody. The head of the opposition group died of covid after loudly proclaiming covid is a lie so that was, uh, something.
Con: there was a big push to do this in my hometown and the houses were not safe for residents, since they were uninsulated structures in an area that gets massive snowstorms (and reached about 38C a couple days ago). It was a big to-do of the city genuinely trying to work with local charities/NGOs advocating for unhoused people/churches and people being really mad at them for not just building a bunch of structures that wouldn't have solved the problem. Meanwhile housing is a provincial responsibility but since the province was doing bupkis and the city was trying, people yelled at the city. It was fascinating to watch. Apparently they have been able to build some housing that meets codes but afaik the problem is still ongoing.
Missouri, for example, just passed a law making it a felony to sleep on publicly owned property
Tennessee too. I called the DA in Nashville to ask them not to enforce the ban but haven't heard back. Our DA has declined to enforce some state laws before so we will see.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:19 PM on July 20, 2022
Students are looking for cheap housing? I currently live right next to a Big 10 university. I'm separating from my partner, and have been apartment hunting for MONTHS. I'm limited by needing accessibility, and by having a teenager with two dogs, but also because the housing market near where we live (where my teen will continue to attend school, socialize, and practice his chosen sports) has been taken over by luxurious new student housing: spacious apartments, hot tubs on the roof, indoor pools, free Starbucks in the lobby, fancy workout rooms and party rooms and movie-screening rooms. These apartments rent for $900-1100/month PER PERSON, whereas in the nearby declining rust belt city, you can rent a 3BR house for about that.
As you said, the student body of the university is enormous. Some of those students can afford the fancy new buildings (because their families are paying for them, or because they took out more student loans, or whatever). Those who can't, group up into groups of 5+ unrelated adults and try to rent a single family home with 3 bedrooms and one shower. This was exactly the pattern I experience in undergraduate and graduate studies not long ago. Unsurprisingly these groups of students, even if they're working part-time to afford school, can pay more as a group than someone on a fixed income or a single parent trying to raise a family. The universities should be aggressively incentivized to build enough on-campus housing for students, but then of course when they try, the usual suspects come to council meetings to scream about PARKING and how dare the university build a TALL BUILDING which will ruin their view and we don't want more students in this town anyway.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 12:20 PM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
As you said, the student body of the university is enormous. Some of those students can afford the fancy new buildings (because their families are paying for them, or because they took out more student loans, or whatever). Those who can't, group up into groups of 5+ unrelated adults and try to rent a single family home with 3 bedrooms and one shower. This was exactly the pattern I experience in undergraduate and graduate studies not long ago. Unsurprisingly these groups of students, even if they're working part-time to afford school, can pay more as a group than someone on a fixed income or a single parent trying to raise a family. The universities should be aggressively incentivized to build enough on-campus housing for students, but then of course when they try, the usual suspects come to council meetings to scream about PARKING and how dare the university build a TALL BUILDING which will ruin their view and we don't want more students in this town anyway.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 12:20 PM on July 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
Vacancy rates are the amount of available stock that is sitting empty divided by the total available stock. It doesn’t include properties that sit empty but aren’t available for rent. That drives the percentages down. My argument is that building more supply doesn’t always lead to more supply. Building a luxury condo complex that is a way for oligarchs to stash cash “increases supply” but doesn’t help homelessness.
I don’t think people hate the poor people as much as they hate disruptive people. I’ve written before I noticed people sleeping cars near the park I lived by in LA. I am not disrupted by them (other than hating the situation they are in). That is a poor person. But the drugged out woman sleeping in my garage that I almost ran over with my car? That’s disruptive. Building housing for disruptive is especially tricky as that is where you will get increased crime and all that.
That is super hard to address. Many people with mental health issues or drug problems that are on the street don’t want to go to shelters or the like for very valid reasons: they feel the shelter is dangerous; they don’t want to have to listen to a sermon; they will be separated from their partner, family, or pet; they want to do drugs; they don’t want to be forced to be treated. How do you handle that?
posted by Monday at 12:21 PM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don’t think people hate the poor people as much as they hate disruptive people. I’ve written before I noticed people sleeping cars near the park I lived by in LA. I am not disrupted by them (other than hating the situation they are in). That is a poor person. But the drugged out woman sleeping in my garage that I almost ran over with my car? That’s disruptive. Building housing for disruptive is especially tricky as that is where you will get increased crime and all that.
That is super hard to address. Many people with mental health issues or drug problems that are on the street don’t want to go to shelters or the like for very valid reasons: they feel the shelter is dangerous; they don’t want to have to listen to a sermon; they will be separated from their partner, family, or pet; they want to do drugs; they don’t want to be forced to be treated. How do you handle that?
posted by Monday at 12:21 PM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
i'm still puzzled as to why we're trying to solve this with "tiny homes" and expensive add on apartments when mobile homes and the parks people put them in are well established (but not liked) technology
most of this problem is caused by restrictive zoning
unfortunately we don't have the votes to really solve this problem
posted by pyramid termite at 1:00 PM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
most of this problem is caused by restrictive zoning
unfortunately we don't have the votes to really solve this problem
posted by pyramid termite at 1:00 PM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
My argument is that building more supply doesn’t always lead to more supply. Building a luxury condo complex that is a way for oligarchs to stash cash “increases supply” but doesn’t help homelessness.
The actual research disagrees with you:
"In a 2020 study, researchers at the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that “a $100 increase in median rent was associated with a 9% increase in the estimated homelessness rate..” so the vacancy rate is a pretty direct indicator of the price of rent, and price increases increase homelessness and price decreases decrease homelessness. I mean, if you build one building with 300 units in a city of 3million, then you are correct. But if you build enough units to impact the rental rates, then you also directly impact the number of homeless people in your city.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:36 PM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
The actual research disagrees with you:
"In a 2020 study, researchers at the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that “a $100 increase in median rent was associated with a 9% increase in the estimated homelessness rate..” so the vacancy rate is a pretty direct indicator of the price of rent, and price increases increase homelessness and price decreases decrease homelessness. I mean, if you build one building with 300 units in a city of 3million, then you are correct. But if you build enough units to impact the rental rates, then you also directly impact the number of homeless people in your city.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:36 PM on July 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
In terms of "how to handle sheltering homeless people who don't like the existing shelter system":
1. We could ask them what would meet their needs. When you look at homeless encampments, the vast majority of people living in them are perfectly capable of living in some kind of fairly typical housing - these are people who were mostly housed until they caught a really bad break. You don't in fact need to be super functional or drug-free to live in an apartment. What would be a bad idea would be clumping everyone together in a badly designed building with no money.
2. Some people need halfway houses. We can do halfway houses, especially if we throw money at the problem.
3. Triaging people out into different groups should be possible - families, couples, people with pets, youth/queer youth, people with various health conditions.
The vast, vast majority of unhoused people just need housing. I think we have it in our heads that somehow "being housed" requires you to be clean, sober and high-functioning and therefore if unhoused people are not clean, sober and high-functioning somehow they won't be able to hack it indoors. (When really, you require being housed to sober up and improve your health.)
I do think that there is a challenge if you're just going to stick lots of random people willy-nilly in some kind of house-the-homeless apartment complex with no way to get money and healthcare*, but I think that a consultative approach plus the ability to provide different kinds of housing would get us 90% of the way there.
Also, I think people expect that if something is bad but better than the current situation it's a failure and should be trashed. Like, let's say that we did stick people into some not that grate housing with no money, and there were still problems but let's say 50% fewer problems. That would be the opportunity to, as it were, iterate, not a sign of failure. People die totally unnecessarily under the current regime. "Not dying" should be fairly easy to achieve.
*I have a particular local reason for feeling this way that would take a long time to explain, but I have seen this experiment play out badly.
posted by Frowner at 1:37 PM on July 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
1. We could ask them what would meet their needs. When you look at homeless encampments, the vast majority of people living in them are perfectly capable of living in some kind of fairly typical housing - these are people who were mostly housed until they caught a really bad break. You don't in fact need to be super functional or drug-free to live in an apartment. What would be a bad idea would be clumping everyone together in a badly designed building with no money.
2. Some people need halfway houses. We can do halfway houses, especially if we throw money at the problem.
3. Triaging people out into different groups should be possible - families, couples, people with pets, youth/queer youth, people with various health conditions.
The vast, vast majority of unhoused people just need housing. I think we have it in our heads that somehow "being housed" requires you to be clean, sober and high-functioning and therefore if unhoused people are not clean, sober and high-functioning somehow they won't be able to hack it indoors. (When really, you require being housed to sober up and improve your health.)
I do think that there is a challenge if you're just going to stick lots of random people willy-nilly in some kind of house-the-homeless apartment complex with no way to get money and healthcare*, but I think that a consultative approach plus the ability to provide different kinds of housing would get us 90% of the way there.
Also, I think people expect that if something is bad but better than the current situation it's a failure and should be trashed. Like, let's say that we did stick people into some not that grate housing with no money, and there were still problems but let's say 50% fewer problems. That would be the opportunity to, as it were, iterate, not a sign of failure. People die totally unnecessarily under the current regime. "Not dying" should be fairly easy to achieve.
*I have a particular local reason for feeling this way that would take a long time to explain, but I have seen this experiment play out badly.
posted by Frowner at 1:37 PM on July 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
i'm still puzzled as to why we're trying to solve this with "tiny homes" and expensive add on apartments when mobile homes and the parks people put them in are well established (but not liked) technology
ADUs are only a solution to the very specific problem of, "How do we add housing to a place where most of the available land is already owned by NIMBY landowners, supported by local governments, who oppose anything that resembles 'low-class' apartments/condos or any building that is taller than their current home."
posted by meowzilla at 1:59 PM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
ADUs are only a solution to the very specific problem of, "How do we add housing to a place where most of the available land is already owned by NIMBY landowners, supported by local governments, who oppose anything that resembles 'low-class' apartments/condos or any building that is taller than their current home."
posted by meowzilla at 1:59 PM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
Interesting post, thanks. After watching the videos, this turned up on my YouTube feed, comparing US and German planning.
My own opinion is that ADUs are a really good thing for many reasons. And that tiny house villages can be a good thing for a very specific demographic: homeless people with mental health issues who can't live in apartments, but they may very well end up being family homes for the poor in general, and then they become a huge problem.
posted by mumimor at 2:24 PM on July 20, 2022
My own opinion is that ADUs are a really good thing for many reasons. And that tiny house villages can be a good thing for a very specific demographic: homeless people with mental health issues who can't live in apartments, but they may very well end up being family homes for the poor in general, and then they become a huge problem.
posted by mumimor at 2:24 PM on July 20, 2022
Bit of a tangent.
You know, I was thinking about the comment that said "I wasn't sure about inviting this homeless person to come live with me and I regret it" or something like that. And I was thinking about the time I connected a homeless person with a friend and the homeless person ended up staying in the basement the whole winter and it set that person up to get their life together and on the path to homefulness.
Part of the reason I was able to connect them was because I'd seen that person around because they volunteered or were a regular or something at my local community bike shop. So when they asked if I knew a place they could stay for a couple nights, I felt ok making a connection. I'd seen them around.
We need more trust in this world, sure. But we also need more diverse third spaces where people have cause to interact with one another and there's more ways to participate than just being a consumer. Welcoming places where people can just drop in, and participate as much or as little as they want. It can be hard to manage those sorts of spaces, but they're worth it.
I haven't found a third space since the pandemic era that would be acceptable by microcovid.org standards and I'm not sure what to do about that. What other places (besides bike collectives, tool libraries, religious communities, and community gardens) have this sort of third space? Bonus points for outdoorsness.
"Distance and complexity are the enemies of action." Third spaces are an antidote to that. They give you a chance to get to know new people in a lower-consequence environment. There's more to life than consume-and-produce. We need more third spaces.
posted by aniola at 2:38 PM on July 20, 2022 [12 favorites]
You know, I was thinking about the comment that said "I wasn't sure about inviting this homeless person to come live with me and I regret it" or something like that. And I was thinking about the time I connected a homeless person with a friend and the homeless person ended up staying in the basement the whole winter and it set that person up to get their life together and on the path to homefulness.
Part of the reason I was able to connect them was because I'd seen that person around because they volunteered or were a regular or something at my local community bike shop. So when they asked if I knew a place they could stay for a couple nights, I felt ok making a connection. I'd seen them around.
We need more trust in this world, sure. But we also need more diverse third spaces where people have cause to interact with one another and there's more ways to participate than just being a consumer. Welcoming places where people can just drop in, and participate as much or as little as they want. It can be hard to manage those sorts of spaces, but they're worth it.
I haven't found a third space since the pandemic era that would be acceptable by microcovid.org standards and I'm not sure what to do about that. What other places (besides bike collectives, tool libraries, religious communities, and community gardens) have this sort of third space? Bonus points for outdoorsness.
"Distance and complexity are the enemies of action." Third spaces are an antidote to that. They give you a chance to get to know new people in a lower-consequence environment. There's more to life than consume-and-produce. We need more third spaces.
posted by aniola at 2:38 PM on July 20, 2022 [12 favorites]
Agreeing that you need more and denser housing won't solve anything overnight. In California, ADUs are legal and you can divide any single-family residence in an urban area into two properties AND you can put a duplex on anything zoned single-family residence (some restrictions apply) but there's still like a quarter of a million people experiencing homelessness in California right now.
This is true, but the duplex law just passed in April, the ADU law in 2020. I wouldn't expect to see much of an increase in housing after such a short time. It's still not sensible to think these laws will drastically increase supply: in the case of ADU's it pretty much assumes everyone wants to be a landlord and have tenants.
We're literally working with an architect right now on ADU plans. While our city offers pre-approved, full sets of architectural drawings that are "ready to go", they are all larger than the ADU we would build. The process takes months just to get to the shovel ready point, and then depending on supply chain issues, permitting, &c months more to build (we're required to have an electric meter and sewer hookup for the tiny house). While our wee studio will be fully legal to rent we need it first and foremost for work from home purposes, next for possible aging parent reasons. Unfortunately even after spending enormous amounts of money on a rentable property it's not going to do much for housing in our town.
Vacancy rates are the amount of available stock that is sitting empty divided by the total available stock. It doesn’t include properties that sit empty but aren’t available for rent.
The US Census defines vacant units thusly: "Vacant Housing Units. A housing unit is vacant if no one is living in it at the time of the interview, unless its occupants are only temporarily absent. In addition, a vacant unit may be one which is entirely occupied by persons who have a usual residence elsewhere. New units not yet occupied are classified as vacant housing units if construction has reached a point where all exterior windows and doors are installed and final usable floors are in place."
So, yes, units that are empty but not available to rent are considered "vacant". This includes gaps in tenancy between renters or owners, foreclosed properties, homes being renovated, and unfinished housing- none of which are available for anyone to live in at the time they are vacant.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:31 PM on July 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is true, but the duplex law just passed in April, the ADU law in 2020. I wouldn't expect to see much of an increase in housing after such a short time. It's still not sensible to think these laws will drastically increase supply: in the case of ADU's it pretty much assumes everyone wants to be a landlord and have tenants.
We're literally working with an architect right now on ADU plans. While our city offers pre-approved, full sets of architectural drawings that are "ready to go", they are all larger than the ADU we would build. The process takes months just to get to the shovel ready point, and then depending on supply chain issues, permitting, &c months more to build (we're required to have an electric meter and sewer hookup for the tiny house). While our wee studio will be fully legal to rent we need it first and foremost for work from home purposes, next for possible aging parent reasons. Unfortunately even after spending enormous amounts of money on a rentable property it's not going to do much for housing in our town.
Vacancy rates are the amount of available stock that is sitting empty divided by the total available stock. It doesn’t include properties that sit empty but aren’t available for rent.
The US Census defines vacant units thusly: "Vacant Housing Units. A housing unit is vacant if no one is living in it at the time of the interview, unless its occupants are only temporarily absent. In addition, a vacant unit may be one which is entirely occupied by persons who have a usual residence elsewhere. New units not yet occupied are classified as vacant housing units if construction has reached a point where all exterior windows and doors are installed and final usable floors are in place."
So, yes, units that are empty but not available to rent are considered "vacant". This includes gaps in tenancy between renters or owners, foreclosed properties, homes being renovated, and unfinished housing- none of which are available for anyone to live in at the time they are vacant.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:31 PM on July 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
Cities that are trying to force affordable housing construction are having a really rough go of it, some examples in LA and the bay area (costs of $1M+ per unit). Blamed on covid labor and material shortages, but its been a problem going back years with this pre pandemic study finding California-wide $480k per unit. It is mostly driven by increasing actual construction cost, but for publicly subsidized housing apparently a substantial cost is regulatory compliance just for the funding.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 3:36 PM on July 20, 2022
posted by a robot made out of meat at 3:36 PM on July 20, 2022
I don’t think people hate the poor people as much as they hate disruptive people.
Perhaps, but I don't think that people know the nuance there.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:43 PM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Perhaps, but I don't think that people know the nuance there.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:43 PM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
I find the property in Portland really intriguing. It's a beautiful place that is trying to work with (instead of against) the natural environment. A thick building envelope, is good not only for energy efficiency reasons, but would presumably be pretty good at reducing sound transmission as well. I think many folks would be interested in being near neighbors without hearing every intimate detail about their live.
I concede it's possible that there are some Portland specific features that may make it challenging although not impossible to bring this idea to other American cities. The first is that the video never really addressed the parking situation. Unlike most American cities, Portland already has a fairly robust infrastructure for its residents to be car free or car lite. I also have some reservations that generally speaking Americans don't tend to do shared/communal property elements (e.g. HOAs/ condos/ dorm kitchens) well. However, I fully support the existence of such a housing option for those who want it. And I will hope that these housing options continue to be able to function without resorting to petty arguments between neighbors.
posted by oceano at 5:28 PM on July 20, 2022
I concede it's possible that there are some Portland specific features that may make it challenging although not impossible to bring this idea to other American cities. The first is that the video never really addressed the parking situation. Unlike most American cities, Portland already has a fairly robust infrastructure for its residents to be car free or car lite. I also have some reservations that generally speaking Americans don't tend to do shared/communal property elements (e.g. HOAs/ condos/ dorm kitchens) well. However, I fully support the existence of such a housing option for those who want it. And I will hope that these housing options continue to be able to function without resorting to petty arguments between neighbors.
posted by oceano at 5:28 PM on July 20, 2022
I've been concerned that rising-faster-than-wages-housing-per-surface-area housing crisis is pushing us to the Hong Kong style coffin homes for poor people, where the poor aren't allowed any sanity in their own home. There appears to be a downward trend recently in Hong Kong homes[1]. South Korean home prices appear to be leveling off[2] and Japan already had a crash, but I don't know why their home prices appear to be rising. My unifying theory is that they had a demographic collapse and they allowed their collapse to happen rather than trying to persist population growth through immigration quotas, that rise as the domestic birth rate falls. The housing demand side can be addressed a lot easier at the federal level rather than tackling all the supply issues of each individual city.
The City of Edmonton recently banned exclusionary zoning, so any homeowner can expect to see low rise and high rise apartments constructed next to them without any zoning challenges. It would allow for more organic growth of residential neighbourhoods rather than the planned suburban sprawl, which I also believe creates a tax for nondrivers as it becomes a burden for citizens to travel farther between work and their dwelling.
Even if all zoning politics was addressed at the municipal level, there would still be a labour shortage to build all the needed housing. Construction workers' wages needs to rise significantly to generate more workers. There seems to be an expectation that the executive leadership and management teams need to be paid more than their subordinates, when market wages are based off supply and demand. We have a shortage of truckers and construction workers and a resistance by employers to actually admit that higher wages would actually attract more people into these industries[3].
posted by DetriusXii at 6:04 PM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
The City of Edmonton recently banned exclusionary zoning, so any homeowner can expect to see low rise and high rise apartments constructed next to them without any zoning challenges. It would allow for more organic growth of residential neighbourhoods rather than the planned suburban sprawl, which I also believe creates a tax for nondrivers as it becomes a burden for citizens to travel farther between work and their dwelling.
Even if all zoning politics was addressed at the municipal level, there would still be a labour shortage to build all the needed housing. Construction workers' wages needs to rise significantly to generate more workers. There seems to be an expectation that the executive leadership and management teams need to be paid more than their subordinates, when market wages are based off supply and demand. We have a shortage of truckers and construction workers and a resistance by employers to actually admit that higher wages would actually attract more people into these industries[3].
posted by DetriusXii at 6:04 PM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Has anyone here actually lived in an ADU type situation? Am I incorrectly concerned about the prospect that discrimination against more marginalized groups might be increased if they literally live in a high income person’s backyard?
posted by Selena777 at 9:17 PM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Selena777 at 9:17 PM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Has anyone here actually lived in an ADU type situation? Am I incorrectly concerned about the prospect that discrimination against more marginalized groups might be increased if they literally live in a high income person’s backyard?I've never lived in an ADU, but I did look at several a few years back when apartment-hunting in LA. At least the ones I looked at were actually pretty pricey - they seemingly commanded a premium for being freestanding units without shared walls (and often for having shared access to a nice yard). I think ADUs are great, but they're better thought of a source of added housing density generally, than specifically as a source of low-income housing.
posted by kickingtheground at 9:35 PM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
> The US News & World Report
Oh god, those clowns. Every time I deal with a study from them, I just want to fail them out of intro statistics. For college rankings, they're of course screwing up because they have to keep the Ivy League on top or the Ivy League will use their prestige to crush them, but all their other, small fry reports are equally poorly done.
On the question of homeless response, there's another ugly dynamic that we're dealing with around Seattle. Surrounding areas respond to homelessness with "here's a bus ticket to Seattle" then turn around and wring their hands about Seattle having so many homeless and trying to spend so much money on them. If we had a regional (say, west of the Cascades) tax authority for the issue where you could put them on a bus to Seattle, but your dollars are going with them, I think we might see some better results, too. Combine that with the fact that housing prices in Bellevue, just across the lake from Seattle proper, exceeded Manhattan recently and if you didn't already lock in housing you're in trouble. A friend of mine (a CTO of a small tech company) and his girlfriend (a vascular surgeon) just moved to a town near Boston because they couldn't find a house they could afford to buy here.
posted by madhadron at 10:16 PM on July 20, 2022
Oh god, those clowns. Every time I deal with a study from them, I just want to fail them out of intro statistics. For college rankings, they're of course screwing up because they have to keep the Ivy League on top or the Ivy League will use their prestige to crush them, but all their other, small fry reports are equally poorly done.
On the question of homeless response, there's another ugly dynamic that we're dealing with around Seattle. Surrounding areas respond to homelessness with "here's a bus ticket to Seattle" then turn around and wring their hands about Seattle having so many homeless and trying to spend so much money on them. If we had a regional (say, west of the Cascades) tax authority for the issue where you could put them on a bus to Seattle, but your dollars are going with them, I think we might see some better results, too. Combine that with the fact that housing prices in Bellevue, just across the lake from Seattle proper, exceeded Manhattan recently and if you didn't already lock in housing you're in trouble. A friend of mine (a CTO of a small tech company) and his girlfriend (a vascular surgeon) just moved to a town near Boston because they couldn't find a house they could afford to buy here.
posted by madhadron at 10:16 PM on July 20, 2022
I don't have much I could conceivably add to the conversation except to say that I lived in China for ages, and boy I love me a good concrete tower for housing. For 15-ish years I didn't live in anything else. It was warm in winter (and it was district heating!), OK to cool in summer with a mini-split or two, there were never mold issues that couldn't be fixed by ripping out the offending pipe & cabinets, there were enclosed balconies for laundry, space was always between 700-1300sqft... Just one of those 6-storey Soviet slab-constructed 6 floor x 4 entry soviet walkup buildings can house hundreds. Toss in elevators and you can go up to 20 and 30 floors and dozens of units per floor. A complex of them can house tens of thousands.
It's crazy that we don't do this. We DID this in the 60's and 70's, and then deliberately stopped fixing them because we're racist, which is how we got "the projects". It works fine in most of the world. Singapore is like the richest country ever and these kinds of buildings are the only things they live in. Good lord I wish we could do it in the US.
posted by saysthis at 10:20 PM on July 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
It's crazy that we don't do this. We DID this in the 60's and 70's, and then deliberately stopped fixing them because we're racist, which is how we got "the projects". It works fine in most of the world. Singapore is like the richest country ever and these kinds of buildings are the only things they live in. Good lord I wish we could do it in the US.
posted by saysthis at 10:20 PM on July 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
My community has an ongoing shelter system going that seems like a pretty workable model to gap the void between outright homelessness and the services available from city and state bureaucracies. Community Shelters builds these small Conestaga wagon style huts that are very low-tech, inexpensive to build and the community can throw one up in a day. These units are sometimes erected on a business lot where the resident becomes a kind of watchdog for the property. In other cases, the city will cooperate by providing a piece of unused land, fencing it off, providing other services, then allowing the community to grow there with a series of huts and a functioning system that gives houseless people a door, a shelter, a safe place to sleep and a way to rebuild their lives.
It's a robust model that actually gets people sheltered where the city has been discussing building a 30 million dollar shelter that never gets built because....homeless...and...money....and...government. The city did end up funding a services building for the houseless that kind of back ends the lack of a city shelter.
As far as ADU's and local housing, our state, Oregon, has reclassified all R-1 housing as R-2, so available for redevelopment at higher density, for example a four-plex on a formerly single family lot. Conveniently, this does not apply to any development with CC&R's so the upscale developments throughout my city with CC&R's are exempt from this type of destructive build.
(deleted rant). Long story short: there's a conversation going on my city about whether the city planners have as a result of HB2001, found the opportunity to radically lower the development building code standard to make it easy and lucrative to build in four-plexes in non-CC&R neighborhoods to satisfy development pressures in the most developer friendly manner while marketing this as 'middle housing.'
posted by diode at 8:20 AM on July 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's a robust model that actually gets people sheltered where the city has been discussing building a 30 million dollar shelter that never gets built because....homeless...and...money....and...government. The city did end up funding a services building for the houseless that kind of back ends the lack of a city shelter.
As far as ADU's and local housing, our state, Oregon, has reclassified all R-1 housing as R-2, so available for redevelopment at higher density, for example a four-plex on a formerly single family lot. Conveniently, this does not apply to any development with CC&R's so the upscale developments throughout my city with CC&R's are exempt from this type of destructive build.
(deleted rant). Long story short: there's a conversation going on my city about whether the city planners have as a result of HB2001, found the opportunity to radically lower the development building code standard to make it easy and lucrative to build in four-plexes in non-CC&R neighborhoods to satisfy development pressures in the most developer friendly manner while marketing this as 'middle housing.'
posted by diode at 8:20 AM on July 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
ADUs are an interesting solution to the NIMBY problem, because they add housing stock without decreasing the value of existing housing. And at least in most of the US, that's the real rub: even people who aren't, like, archconservative Limbaugh-listening fascists will absolutely lose their shit at the idea of new housing construction or up-zoning, because they're afraid it will negatively impact their home's value.
And to some extent, they're right: if you build enough new housing to have an actual impact on homelessness, you're probably going to drive down the cost of housing. That's sort of the whole idea. More supply, constant demand, prices go down: Econ 101.
But in the US we have a system where many people's net worth is substantially tied up in their home. Your home should be a plywood box in which you live, not a goddamn investment vehicle... but that's not the way we've arranged things. Lots of people have staked their life savings (and then some) in real estate, and are depending on it holding or increasing its value over time to fund their retirement, elder care expenses, kids' college fund, etc.
I don't think that Americans are quite as hateful towards the poor as it sometimes seems. But they're not nice enough to be willing to take a financial hit for the benefit of the poor or unhoused, either. If you've got the end product of 30 years of nose-to-the-grindstone suffering in some shitty job encapsulated in the form of a house, you're going to be justifiably protective of it. And so, if someone proposes building a four-story multifamily apartment building next door, which might make your house less attractive to a potential buyer when it's time to sell and cash out your hard-earned mortgage payments, it's probably worth going to the Zoning Board meeting and telling them to shove it.
TBH, I'm not sure why we don't just bribe the shit out of homeowners in situations like that. Like, just literally cut them checks. It would probably be cheaper than all the bullshit "reviews" that people petition for and require in order to kill projects by making them financially unsustainable.
ADUs get close to that bribery scenario, by having a big chunk of the benefit of the new housing accrue to the existing homeowner. If you have a street of 20 single-family houses, it's probably politically non-feasible to build a single 20-unit apartment building. But allowing each homeowner to build and rent out an ADU in their backyard creates the same amount of housing (at least, potentially) and is probably a lot more palatable: "hey, Mr Homeowner: we're gonna let you make an extra $800 per month, how's that sound?" Of course they like that. It's cash fucking money. It probably raises the value of their house when they go to sell it. It's a win-win, at least in theory.
We need more win-win scenarios like that, because—except in cities with a lot of renters who aren't exposed to housing values—otherwise the homeowners, who have a vested interest in opposing new construction, are always going to dominate the political process, because they live there already.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:55 AM on July 21, 2022 [4 favorites]
And to some extent, they're right: if you build enough new housing to have an actual impact on homelessness, you're probably going to drive down the cost of housing. That's sort of the whole idea. More supply, constant demand, prices go down: Econ 101.
But in the US we have a system where many people's net worth is substantially tied up in their home. Your home should be a plywood box in which you live, not a goddamn investment vehicle... but that's not the way we've arranged things. Lots of people have staked their life savings (and then some) in real estate, and are depending on it holding or increasing its value over time to fund their retirement, elder care expenses, kids' college fund, etc.
I don't think that Americans are quite as hateful towards the poor as it sometimes seems. But they're not nice enough to be willing to take a financial hit for the benefit of the poor or unhoused, either. If you've got the end product of 30 years of nose-to-the-grindstone suffering in some shitty job encapsulated in the form of a house, you're going to be justifiably protective of it. And so, if someone proposes building a four-story multifamily apartment building next door, which might make your house less attractive to a potential buyer when it's time to sell and cash out your hard-earned mortgage payments, it's probably worth going to the Zoning Board meeting and telling them to shove it.
TBH, I'm not sure why we don't just bribe the shit out of homeowners in situations like that. Like, just literally cut them checks. It would probably be cheaper than all the bullshit "reviews" that people petition for and require in order to kill projects by making them financially unsustainable.
ADUs get close to that bribery scenario, by having a big chunk of the benefit of the new housing accrue to the existing homeowner. If you have a street of 20 single-family houses, it's probably politically non-feasible to build a single 20-unit apartment building. But allowing each homeowner to build and rent out an ADU in their backyard creates the same amount of housing (at least, potentially) and is probably a lot more palatable: "hey, Mr Homeowner: we're gonna let you make an extra $800 per month, how's that sound?" Of course they like that. It's cash fucking money. It probably raises the value of their house when they go to sell it. It's a win-win, at least in theory.
We need more win-win scenarios like that, because—except in cities with a lot of renters who aren't exposed to housing values—otherwise the homeowners, who have a vested interest in opposing new construction, are always going to dominate the political process, because they live there already.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:55 AM on July 21, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm halfway into the first video and may come back to comment again, but I live in Ann Arbor (where the first video begins) and over my entire life my housing here has been the worst (with one exception). My rent eats 90% of my disability check for a place that is a step above a rathole. The landlords have less than 2.5 stars on google and I was so lucky and grateful that someone cosigned for me so I would no longer have to live in crowded houses where stress is incredibly high, and you're never safe during pandemic conditions, and there's often no place to keep food and therefore no way to eat healthy.
I'm for anything that increases housing and takes money away from realty companies and management companies. However, this isn't solving much of anything for the roiling underclass like me. It's a way for the middle class to raise their income even higher. Would I prefer it to be individuals rather than management companies? Without a doubt! But what ends up happening is an even greater disparity between the very poorest and the middle classes who are comfortable enough to own, well, anything. I don't hate the middle class--one of the rooms I rented recently was in a house owned by a kind, aging hippie landlord, but it was still a shitty situation for me, and I'm always acutely aware that they own things and are getting wealthier by the second, all off my back.
I'm not hating on this. This looks like a much better tool to expand housing than doing nothing, and it does give those who have the capital a way to expand housing directly, rather than voting and hoping elected officials decide not to be fuckheads.
This is why if I had to label myself anything politically, it would be communist.
posted by liminal_shadows at 11:22 AM on July 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm for anything that increases housing and takes money away from realty companies and management companies. However, this isn't solving much of anything for the roiling underclass like me. It's a way for the middle class to raise their income even higher. Would I prefer it to be individuals rather than management companies? Without a doubt! But what ends up happening is an even greater disparity between the very poorest and the middle classes who are comfortable enough to own, well, anything. I don't hate the middle class--one of the rooms I rented recently was in a house owned by a kind, aging hippie landlord, but it was still a shitty situation for me, and I'm always acutely aware that they own things and are getting wealthier by the second, all off my back.
I'm not hating on this. This looks like a much better tool to expand housing than doing nothing, and it does give those who have the capital a way to expand housing directly, rather than voting and hoping elected officials decide not to be fuckheads.
This is why if I had to label myself anything politically, it would be communist.
posted by liminal_shadows at 11:22 AM on July 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
From the 1st video: "It can be used to generate income for the homeowner or for something else entirely. It’s really up to the homeowner. That’s really what this is all about. It’s an opportunity that gives homeowner more choice…” That, my friends, is actually a problem, a very big one. And the weird comment about offering “dignity” to those who live in it. Uh no. Not if we’re paying market prices and will never be able to afford a truly stable housing situation.
I think something that’s difficult to grasp for a lot of people is that there are huge swathes of people who go unseen. I am literally too poor for Habitat for Humanity, and most people they have difficulty understanding what that means, because they never socialize with poor people. I can count my friends on less than one hand, and for all but one, I’m the only actual poor person they’ve ever known. One of my friends rented out a house that should have been condemned, and when I questioned why he wasn’t fixing it up first, he said he was giving the renter a “break” to do the work while living in it. The break was a very small discount, and my friend defended it because it’s a hot housing market. He was absolutely taking advantage of someone else’s desperation and labor. Giving middle-class people tools to widen the income gap is something I’m morally uncomfortable with, and yet it is STILL a better option than nothing. Right now at least some middle-class people are at least vocally with me in politics some of the time, and if the gap widens too much that will hurt whatever frail pretense of a movement exists.
If I can thank my mother for not a a lot, at least I can thank her for exposing me to real poverty when I was a kid, so when I fell into it as an adult I didn’t find it surprising and alien. I already knew plenty of people who lived that way.
I would bet money this architect ends up renting his ADU to grad students. Which is worthy and still a plus, but it would keep the neighborhood and the class structure homogenous, because most grad students will end up living lives that are richer in all kinds of capital, including social, than most of the rest of poor people have access to. (and because mefi runs strongly to outrage these days, I’m inserting a disclaimer that all grad students aren’t privileged, may not get jobs, have debt, and many come from poor backgrounds).
I’m allowing myself a tiny piece of irrelevant snark: It was a strange feeling to watch a man who owns two homes talk about it while wearing a plain white t-shirt that costs more than my weekly food budget and probably more than my monthly one, with the framing that he’s a bit of a rebel for doing this.
I did find the SIPS a new and interesting bit of data to file away.
As for the second video, I loved the idea of communities of tiny houses, but again, I’d do that differently. I think one of the important things is to get people from all income levels mixing, something that cohousing communities pay lip service to, but I’ve looking into cohousing communities pretty extensively and never found one that I could afford that wasn’t just exactly like renting a room with all the mental health problems that brings, like shoving rats into a cage. I did find one cohousing community in Seattle that I would have applied to, but they didn’t allow pets, and at the time I had two cats.
I loved the idea of a public space, but getting americans to use a public space would be a monumental effort. Case in point: I used to go to a food pantry in another city and I used to show up a couple of hours early to get in line (it was the best, least offensive pantry around). The other folks who showed up were diverse and interesting, and because it was a LINE (very important), we didn’t self-select into “groups.” The black folks always had the most interesting things to say, and I learned a lot about local politics and were generous with sharing any information they had about other resources (or gently reminding you to share yours). There were people there who were unemployed because of accident or illness, there were women homeowners who couldn’t afford food, there were immigrants and undocumented, and people with mental issues. At some point some sour grapes person complained about the lines. Now you have to understand, this place got tons of donations of food about to spoil from upscale groceries and at the end of day there was always food left over. I didn’t get in line to be assured of food, I got in line because I have an interest in cooking and you got a wider (not better calorically) choice at the “bonus” table if you were near the front. But the kind white Christians decided we were “cheating” others by showing up and standing in line for hours and banned the lines. If you came early you were herded into an area with a pulpit and tables so they could pray at you and give you a “lottery number”. They cut up donated food and that was nice, but suddenly people sorted immediately into groups. There was no mixing and it was the horror of high school all over again, trying to find a table where you felt the least unwelcome. Notably the really great black folks stopped showing up cold. I never got a chance to ask if it was because they too were offended, but it had to have been because some of them were retired and had been going for years longer than I had. Then too, I worried all the time (even though it was pre-pandemic) about the germs indoors, as someone with a suppressed immune system. We were crowded in, and the attendees there were horrible about touching you, coughing on you, and breathing in your face. The lottery number meant that I never again got to be one of the first groups through because I never “won” an early spot. It also meant you couldn’t count on how long you’d be there (important for people with jobs). You might show up first and be one of the last to leave, four hours later. Before, when lines existed, if you were in a hurry you could just show up towards the time when you knew the line would begin to wane and still get plenty of almost-rotten food, just not a wide selection.
Anyway, the point to that verbosity is that while the idea of a community square/meeting space is nice, the only place I’ve ever seen Americans truly mix across lines is *in a line*. Without that we’re just creating yet more separate and unequal spaces. It doesn’t have to be this way—I’ve seen another country where pensioners and non-functional alcoholics live in the same buildings as jobless playboys, secretaries, and students. In Copenhagen apartment buildings are built in squares and the center of those squares is park space that’s used by more than just children, where people have neighborhood tag/boot/garage sales in the spring. In the spring all the public spaces: parks, gardens, steps, streets, waterfront, graveyards, are all full of people sunning and drinking and talking, and you leave your empties out where they’re immediately collected by anyone who needs the deposit. It feels truly, wonderfully communal in a way that’s hard to describe.
Anyway, cool post, and it was fun to see several places I’ve lived shown in the videos.
One last note—when I lived in Seattle my last apartment cost over $700, and you had to be of reduced-income to qualify, and yet couldn’t qualify unless you made at least 3xs the rent. I had to fake pay stubs to get it. Now even the non-reduced units in the building have more than doubled in cost in less than ten years. An old friend was telling me I should just look at her old complex where she lived as a student, and she was surprised to find it had doubled in rent as well. My social security check went up less than $30 in this time. Now I live in a much smaller town and my rent is $950 a month, still much more than the $700 even though I moved, at great expense, partially to find cheaper housing. Medical/food/gas/car insurance/public transit/tuition—all of these things are must more costly now as well.
There is a whole class of people living under the feet of the majority, and that includes the middle class. I have no illusions about my ability to escape or fight back anymore. Like David Sedaris’ sister, the only future I can see for me is dying alone in a rented room and that is a *good* future for me. Bad would be ending up on the street, and I can see it coming and i still keep trying to swerve. Some property owner renting out a mother-in-law cottage in their back yard and widening the income gap ain’t a fix. The problem here is that desperate people are angry people. We react too often out of deep, inescapable trauma. And we’re much more likely to lash out at people nearby, and those people aren’t Trump, because we never even see those people. The middle class is trembling on the edge of a precipice they don’t even see.
I have a lot more hope for these tiny villages. It creates ghettos, and will lead to inequalities as well, but it’s still a fuck-ton closer than anything else.
posted by liminal_shadows at 12:40 PM on July 21, 2022 [6 favorites]
I think something that’s difficult to grasp for a lot of people is that there are huge swathes of people who go unseen. I am literally too poor for Habitat for Humanity, and most people they have difficulty understanding what that means, because they never socialize with poor people. I can count my friends on less than one hand, and for all but one, I’m the only actual poor person they’ve ever known. One of my friends rented out a house that should have been condemned, and when I questioned why he wasn’t fixing it up first, he said he was giving the renter a “break” to do the work while living in it. The break was a very small discount, and my friend defended it because it’s a hot housing market. He was absolutely taking advantage of someone else’s desperation and labor. Giving middle-class people tools to widen the income gap is something I’m morally uncomfortable with, and yet it is STILL a better option than nothing. Right now at least some middle-class people are at least vocally with me in politics some of the time, and if the gap widens too much that will hurt whatever frail pretense of a movement exists.
If I can thank my mother for not a a lot, at least I can thank her for exposing me to real poverty when I was a kid, so when I fell into it as an adult I didn’t find it surprising and alien. I already knew plenty of people who lived that way.
I would bet money this architect ends up renting his ADU to grad students. Which is worthy and still a plus, but it would keep the neighborhood and the class structure homogenous, because most grad students will end up living lives that are richer in all kinds of capital, including social, than most of the rest of poor people have access to. (and because mefi runs strongly to outrage these days, I’m inserting a disclaimer that all grad students aren’t privileged, may not get jobs, have debt, and many come from poor backgrounds).
I’m allowing myself a tiny piece of irrelevant snark: It was a strange feeling to watch a man who owns two homes talk about it while wearing a plain white t-shirt that costs more than my weekly food budget and probably more than my monthly one, with the framing that he’s a bit of a rebel for doing this.
I did find the SIPS a new and interesting bit of data to file away.
As for the second video, I loved the idea of communities of tiny houses, but again, I’d do that differently. I think one of the important things is to get people from all income levels mixing, something that cohousing communities pay lip service to, but I’ve looking into cohousing communities pretty extensively and never found one that I could afford that wasn’t just exactly like renting a room with all the mental health problems that brings, like shoving rats into a cage. I did find one cohousing community in Seattle that I would have applied to, but they didn’t allow pets, and at the time I had two cats.
I loved the idea of a public space, but getting americans to use a public space would be a monumental effort. Case in point: I used to go to a food pantry in another city and I used to show up a couple of hours early to get in line (it was the best, least offensive pantry around). The other folks who showed up were diverse and interesting, and because it was a LINE (very important), we didn’t self-select into “groups.” The black folks always had the most interesting things to say, and I learned a lot about local politics and were generous with sharing any information they had about other resources (or gently reminding you to share yours). There were people there who were unemployed because of accident or illness, there were women homeowners who couldn’t afford food, there were immigrants and undocumented, and people with mental issues. At some point some sour grapes person complained about the lines. Now you have to understand, this place got tons of donations of food about to spoil from upscale groceries and at the end of day there was always food left over. I didn’t get in line to be assured of food, I got in line because I have an interest in cooking and you got a wider (not better calorically) choice at the “bonus” table if you were near the front. But the kind white Christians decided we were “cheating” others by showing up and standing in line for hours and banned the lines. If you came early you were herded into an area with a pulpit and tables so they could pray at you and give you a “lottery number”. They cut up donated food and that was nice, but suddenly people sorted immediately into groups. There was no mixing and it was the horror of high school all over again, trying to find a table where you felt the least unwelcome. Notably the really great black folks stopped showing up cold. I never got a chance to ask if it was because they too were offended, but it had to have been because some of them were retired and had been going for years longer than I had. Then too, I worried all the time (even though it was pre-pandemic) about the germs indoors, as someone with a suppressed immune system. We were crowded in, and the attendees there were horrible about touching you, coughing on you, and breathing in your face. The lottery number meant that I never again got to be one of the first groups through because I never “won” an early spot. It also meant you couldn’t count on how long you’d be there (important for people with jobs). You might show up first and be one of the last to leave, four hours later. Before, when lines existed, if you were in a hurry you could just show up towards the time when you knew the line would begin to wane and still get plenty of almost-rotten food, just not a wide selection.
Anyway, the point to that verbosity is that while the idea of a community square/meeting space is nice, the only place I’ve ever seen Americans truly mix across lines is *in a line*. Without that we’re just creating yet more separate and unequal spaces. It doesn’t have to be this way—I’ve seen another country where pensioners and non-functional alcoholics live in the same buildings as jobless playboys, secretaries, and students. In Copenhagen apartment buildings are built in squares and the center of those squares is park space that’s used by more than just children, where people have neighborhood tag/boot/garage sales in the spring. In the spring all the public spaces: parks, gardens, steps, streets, waterfront, graveyards, are all full of people sunning and drinking and talking, and you leave your empties out where they’re immediately collected by anyone who needs the deposit. It feels truly, wonderfully communal in a way that’s hard to describe.
Anyway, cool post, and it was fun to see several places I’ve lived shown in the videos.
One last note—when I lived in Seattle my last apartment cost over $700, and you had to be of reduced-income to qualify, and yet couldn’t qualify unless you made at least 3xs the rent. I had to fake pay stubs to get it. Now even the non-reduced units in the building have more than doubled in cost in less than ten years. An old friend was telling me I should just look at her old complex where she lived as a student, and she was surprised to find it had doubled in rent as well. My social security check went up less than $30 in this time. Now I live in a much smaller town and my rent is $950 a month, still much more than the $700 even though I moved, at great expense, partially to find cheaper housing. Medical/food/gas/car insurance/public transit/tuition—all of these things are must more costly now as well.
There is a whole class of people living under the feet of the majority, and that includes the middle class. I have no illusions about my ability to escape or fight back anymore. Like David Sedaris’ sister, the only future I can see for me is dying alone in a rented room and that is a *good* future for me. Bad would be ending up on the street, and I can see it coming and i still keep trying to swerve. Some property owner renting out a mother-in-law cottage in their back yard and widening the income gap ain’t a fix. The problem here is that desperate people are angry people. We react too often out of deep, inescapable trauma. And we’re much more likely to lash out at people nearby, and those people aren’t Trump, because we never even see those people. The middle class is trembling on the edge of a precipice they don’t even see.
I have a lot more hope for these tiny villages. It creates ghettos, and will lead to inequalities as well, but it’s still a fuck-ton closer than anything else.
posted by liminal_shadows at 12:40 PM on July 21, 2022 [6 favorites]
A few disjointed thoughts from me. If you want to understand how landlords think about rent, a rough guideline is that the annual gross rent should be about 1/10th the value of the property. So getting construction costs down as far as possible has a direct effect on rents, at least in competitive markets. If your a homeowner, and can put a tiny house in your backyard for $50,000, then $420 a month is a good return.
Here in Denver, multi-family construction has average costs per unit around $400,000. And the rents charged correlate pretty well to that very high price of construction.
As far as the structural problem of peoples wealth being tied up in their house, we could change that over time. Make corporate ownership of single family homes illegal (e.g, farms in Nebraska can't be held by corporations). Limit the number of SF homes owned by individuals to...2? 5?
In my mind, this deep bond between one's shelter and one's wealth is the core problem.
If you really want to see an alternative, check out Singapore.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 3:11 PM on July 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
Here in Denver, multi-family construction has average costs per unit around $400,000. And the rents charged correlate pretty well to that very high price of construction.
As far as the structural problem of peoples wealth being tied up in their house, we could change that over time. Make corporate ownership of single family homes illegal (e.g, farms in Nebraska can't be held by corporations). Limit the number of SF homes owned by individuals to...2? 5?
In my mind, this deep bond between one's shelter and one's wealth is the core problem.
If you really want to see an alternative, check out Singapore.
posted by Carmody'sPrize at 3:11 PM on July 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
Has anyone here actually lived in an ADU type situation? Am I incorrectly concerned about the prospect that discrimination against more marginalized groups might be increased if they literally live in a high income person’s backyard?
It's an interesting question and certainly might be an issue in extremely homogeneous neighborhoods- or neighborhoods that think they are homogeneous*. Where I live no one would bat an eye because all sorts of people live on my street, in several different types of housing.
* Years ago I was trying to find a rental house on a street in Rockridge, Oakland when I was turned around, and an older woman in her front yard asked me if I needed help. "I'm looking for a house where I'm meeting an agent." There's no house for sale here, she told me. "Oh no, I'll be renting." "Oh there are definitely no rentals on this street!" she assured me. Lady you have no idea. (I didn't move there.)
posted by oneirodynia at 6:16 PM on July 21, 2022
It's an interesting question and certainly might be an issue in extremely homogeneous neighborhoods- or neighborhoods that think they are homogeneous*. Where I live no one would bat an eye because all sorts of people live on my street, in several different types of housing.
* Years ago I was trying to find a rental house on a street in Rockridge, Oakland when I was turned around, and an older woman in her front yard asked me if I needed help. "I'm looking for a house where I'm meeting an agent." There's no house for sale here, she told me. "Oh no, I'll be renting." "Oh there are definitely no rentals on this street!" she assured me. Lady you have no idea. (I didn't move there.)
posted by oneirodynia at 6:16 PM on July 21, 2022
Selena777 I have not lived in an ADU, but I have lived house turned into an internal 4-plex that was the sole rental property of a guy who had hopes of buying more. I was visibly queer. I came home one day and smelled the landlord inside the unit. Not there, but a fresh smell that marked someone who smelled like him had been there. There had been no maintenance and no contact from him. My friends that lived in one of the other units came over that night and asked why he'd been in my place, confirming my suspicions. I never confronted him about it because what was the point? I'd had worse situations with roommates anyway. A few weeks later the landlord showed up again (this time not entering my unit) and tried to gossip with my friends about my sexuality.
The woman across the hall was black and also confirmed that she didn't feel wholly safe, although she couldn't point to anything specific. An ADU would worry me even more from the perspective of the landlord being close enough to end up being nosy and disapproving of my lifestyle.
It does leave the door open for abuse, but in my experience anything except owning a house or a condo leaves you vulnerable--I'd still rather have some ADUs out there than not having extra units on the market at all. :(
posted by liminal_shadows at 8:30 PM on July 21, 2022
The woman across the hall was black and also confirmed that she didn't feel wholly safe, although she couldn't point to anything specific. An ADU would worry me even more from the perspective of the landlord being close enough to end up being nosy and disapproving of my lifestyle.
It does leave the door open for abuse, but in my experience anything except owning a house or a condo leaves you vulnerable--I'd still rather have some ADUs out there than not having extra units on the market at all. :(
posted by liminal_shadows at 8:30 PM on July 21, 2022
I'm sure ALUs/ADUs can have sketchy landlords, but that seems like a problem with pretty much any low-end rental unit. And at least an ADU normally gives you outdoor, physical separation, a locking exterior door, and your own bathroom facilities.
An interesting approach might be to make favorable tax treatment of accessory units, or some other incentive, conditional on rent stabilization: fix the maximum rent as a fraction of the unit's construction cost. If they can really be built for $50k, then the 1/10 ratio Carmody'sPrize suggests (which seems reasonable) is $500/month. That puts them into the "room in a shared house, shared bathroom, unwalkable neighborhood" price range in my area, against which they seem to be definitely preferable (at least I'd have preferred one, when I was in the room-in-a-shared-house market).
With uncontrolled, market rents, I'd expect to see them renting for closer to the price of a comparably-located highrise studio. Which, again in my area, are closer to $1200-1500: three times as much. That's... a very nice deal indeed for the homeowner.
The problem I have locally is that my County has only blanket-approved "interior accessory units", which is basically a fancy permit saying you can rent out your basement—you know, the thing people do all the time anyway, and nobody enforces any rules over, because to do so would put thousands of people out of housing rather immediately. Nice work, guys, really moving the ball forward there. Exterior accessory units—the "tiny house" type that people usually think of—require a zoning board hearing, a two acre minimum lot size, can only be 1200 square feet (and you can only have one), an extra off-street parking space, and can only house a maximum of two people. This is in a solid-blue area politically.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:00 AM on July 22, 2022
An interesting approach might be to make favorable tax treatment of accessory units, or some other incentive, conditional on rent stabilization: fix the maximum rent as a fraction of the unit's construction cost. If they can really be built for $50k, then the 1/10 ratio Carmody'sPrize suggests (which seems reasonable) is $500/month. That puts them into the "room in a shared house, shared bathroom, unwalkable neighborhood" price range in my area, against which they seem to be definitely preferable (at least I'd have preferred one, when I was in the room-in-a-shared-house market).
With uncontrolled, market rents, I'd expect to see them renting for closer to the price of a comparably-located highrise studio. Which, again in my area, are closer to $1200-1500: three times as much. That's... a very nice deal indeed for the homeowner.
The problem I have locally is that my County has only blanket-approved "interior accessory units", which is basically a fancy permit saying you can rent out your basement—you know, the thing people do all the time anyway, and nobody enforces any rules over, because to do so would put thousands of people out of housing rather immediately. Nice work, guys, really moving the ball forward there. Exterior accessory units—the "tiny house" type that people usually think of—require a zoning board hearing, a two acre minimum lot size, can only be 1200 square feet (and you can only have one), an extra off-street parking space, and can only house a maximum of two people. This is in a solid-blue area politically.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:00 AM on July 22, 2022
I'm curious where the 50k number is coming from. My analysis of the data from my city has external Adu construction costs closer to 200k than 50k. Even converting a basement is close to 75k.
posted by rebent at 10:22 AM on July 27, 2022
posted by rebent at 10:22 AM on July 27, 2022
An interesting approach might be to make favorable tax treatment of accessory units, or some other incentive, conditional on rent stabilization: fix the maximum rent as a fraction of the unit's construction cost.
Kadin2408, as mentioned in my example above, this is already being done for large apartment complexes. I rented one that was "reduced" at $700 a month. Something like ten percent of the units in that building were required to be "reduced income" where the tenant still had to make 3x the rent. I moved into the building when it was so new it was wholly unoccupied, and three years later the "deal" expired and I was to be charged market rate. In exchange for this the corp that built the building got a massive tax break.
I mention this because it's a giant gotcha. These "deals" are all time-limited. After a time they expire. IF the deals were written in perpetuity and IF the tenant did not have to make 3x the rent, as long as they had a solid rental history, then yes, that could be a viable incentive.
It's still widening the gap between the poor and the middle class, so I still hate it, but I'd hold my nose and vote for it anyway. I would not vote for the existing structure of time-limited deals, particularly for anyone who owned more than one property.
posted by liminal_shadows at 11:12 AM on July 29, 2022
Kadin2408, as mentioned in my example above, this is already being done for large apartment complexes. I rented one that was "reduced" at $700 a month. Something like ten percent of the units in that building were required to be "reduced income" where the tenant still had to make 3x the rent. I moved into the building when it was so new it was wholly unoccupied, and three years later the "deal" expired and I was to be charged market rate. In exchange for this the corp that built the building got a massive tax break.
I mention this because it's a giant gotcha. These "deals" are all time-limited. After a time they expire. IF the deals were written in perpetuity and IF the tenant did not have to make 3x the rent, as long as they had a solid rental history, then yes, that could be a viable incentive.
It's still widening the gap between the poor and the middle class, so I still hate it, but I'd hold my nose and vote for it anyway. I would not vote for the existing structure of time-limited deals, particularly for anyone who owned more than one property.
posted by liminal_shadows at 11:12 AM on July 29, 2022
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The second video in particular, was great. We should absolutely be prioritizing houses as a solution to people being unhoused. My concern though, is that public momentum right now seems behind efforts to criminalize homelessness. Missouri, for example, just passed a law making it a felony to sleep on publicly owned property. Combined with trespassing laws against sleeping on private property, the path for the unhoused to avoid being jailed for their misfortune is shrinking.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:03 AM on July 20, 2022 [5 favorites]