My Son and 3 of his close friends cut up a McMansion in Phoenix into 4 separate units, it’s a Tenant in Common [TIC] purchase. A few years into the venture and all looks well, each unit is a complete autonomous 1100 square feet, a huge common area for large get togethers, and 4 car garage.
They did have to come up with half down $100k, but it was an auction purchase at bargain price, so it likely won’t ever really appreciate, but it’s a nice place to call home for bachelors…
They’re already building like mad in the bay area. It’s not simply a question of “build more and rent becomes cheaper,” because the multi-unit housing they’re building simply isn’t affordable. Why? Because it costs a fucking fortune to build new buildings, so the developers will build whatever will make the most money quickly (market-rate condos with gyms and roof decks). Thus far, this has not lowered the rents, as it just makes more room for people who can afford it to move to the area or make a “smart investment.”
So in addition to encouraging development, we need affordable housing development at a far higher rate than currently exists in the area. Some of that could be done with incentives for private developers, but really we should start creating publicly-owned housing again, IMO.
We should probably work on improving the permitting process in the area too, since it can take years right now (this requires a ton of more employees at public building departments). And while we’re at it, we should probably look in to fraud and abuse on behalf of major contractors who are making an absolute killing right now and driving costs of new construction to absurd levels.
The starship RV in space balls has always made me jealous. Always thought an RV that could fly would amazing. If wont the lotto I would seriously look into a personal zeppelin that could be used as an RV.
I actually love the idea of tech bro company housing, since it seems that many of them don’t actually care much about the Bay Area and just want to make their money and then move on. If the goal of tech company amenities (meals, laundry, gym, etc.) is to make you never want to leave work then dormitories or tiny house farms are the next logical step, right?
I think an issue is lots of these tiny homes are built on top of a trailer or something similar which forces the dimensions to be long and skinny. Where as something more square will allow for more square footage with the similar building costs. At least if my geometry skills are worth anything anymore.
In my town you’d never get the permits to do that, and it’d likely take a zoning variance or change to allow it. Which you’re also not getting. Its a cool idea, but like I said the regulatory frame work in most places (especially places with housing crises) is designed to prevent it.
But also you said it was an auction purchase, which tends only to be an option when the market tanks and the people sitting on such properties can no longer keep it together to do so. So it’s a timing thing. And I’ve known a few people who’ve managed to pull that off. But market wide what ended up happening with all those foreclosures and abandoned suburban houses after 2008 is that large banks and the same developers involved in running up luxury home values in our cities snapped the bulk of them up. And are renting them out in predatory fashion or sitting on them till values come up.
So yeah, real cool idea. And good for them, that was a pretty smart move overall. But it’s not a solution in itself. Neither are the tiny houses, really. Not without changes in the framework to allow it, at which point it might not be necessary. Cause then people will actually build apartment buildings and mixed use developments. And fill them rather than sitting on vacant spots.
Gee whiz! There are only so many square feet/miles of land in the San Francisco Bay Area (fer example)… People from all over the country insist on flooding in. At the same time demands to limit urban expansion… Sideways is out of the question, so up we go! Nope! That shades things and alters the existing neighborhood vibe (gentrifies). Wait! Move to Detroit… They’re tearing down vacated neighborhoods. Housing there is cheap! Nope! Killing cold all winter and the cost to survive THAT is no joke… Well, it could be cheaper, but those methods pump Co2 into the atmosphere.
It’s NOT that “the economy isn’t for everyone”… It’s a factor, but not the over riding one.
Summer time… And the living has NEVER been easy, except for a certain type of Trumpian like outlook. People worked hard for what they got. And when the going got bad one place, they moved someplace else… That was less hard but never easy.
Yeah. At this point it seems pretty obvious that the neoliberal market solution to housing is: only rich people get to live comfortably. Everyone else should spend the vast majority of their paycheck on insecure housing.
Leading me to believe that we ought to have a gasp socialist solution fix things. Sure you can own your own house, the one you live in, if you’re filthy stinking rich. Otherwise we’ll let you live somewhere at price that’s not obscene.
How about actually occupying the homes that are already there? This is just a repetition of the same story in all of the high-demand metro areas globally: Vancouver, NYC, Seattle, San Diego, London, Austin, etc. Instead of renting housing for a reasonable rate, property owners are leaving them vacant (often for money laundering) or for AirBNB. It’s a solvable problem, with the inventory on hand. We just need to give a shit and do something about it.
I will never forget visiting an Eastern European refugee who lived in a tiny room in Manhattan. She couldn’t afford proper furniture so her storage was a stack of boxes next to the bed. Her morning routine involved restacking those boxes many times just to get everything needed for the day. Worse than playing tetris where you only drop things once.
The opposite of that horror is the epiphany I had when I saw a video with Adam Savage talking about first order accessibility: everything should be accessible without moving something else aside to get to it. This in my mind is the highest and best use of space, and why tiny homes seem problematic. It’s also why high-ceiling loft style single room apartments are problematic: no wall space to store things on.
Uhhh… That figure was shown to be somewhat… Wrong and self serving, It’s not 100,000 vacant in SF, but in the area that stretches from well below San Jose to Sacramento. An EXCELLENT example of “yellow journalism”
It says that in the first line. What else ya got? It still proves the point that there is a ton of vacant inventory in the area, added to the point made above that developers aren’t developing affordable housing; they are developing luxury housing well outside the threshold for the average people who actually keep the city running.
ETA: And you are the one setting the subject as the “San Francisco Bay Area” per the post I directly replied to. I personally know people who commute from Livermore into SF and points south for work. That’s part of what makes the situation so incredibly stupid; there is open stock in SF proper for people who work there, and likewise for East Bay, for Silicon Valley, for San Jose, but it is held vacant instead.
I’m not sure who profits from it, but in my area this seems unlikely to happen. I was interested in buying one, but there were too many points of failure in the process. A community can restrict which manufacturers and models are allowed on the lots. Loan options are limited, which affects the interest rates and terms. Worst of all, you have to buy from dealers, because they are classified like automobiles.
After the manufacturing is done, buyers need a transport company and an installer. The number of consumers reporting problems is high, because when damage occurs each group points the finger at the others. Some owners go the DIY route, and use published advice on dealing with insulation, plumbing, electrical, and moisture issues. When buying used, getting a warranty or insurance might not be possible.
It should be a dream come true for people with modest incomes who want to own a home, but the regulations here (or lack thereof) have turned it into a nightmare. Some of the worst dealers use non-refundable deposits to take advantage of the elderly and people with bad credit, like in this case:
Imma ask if this image can be included in the slide deck at my next PTA meeting down here in lower Alabama. Of course the ladies who run the PTA like a Russian cabal will refuse, but I must entertain myself somehow at these committee meetings or I’m afeared I will grab a pencil and get very stabby.
