Okay Renters...

[ThinkerX]

Rent is not cheap these days.  Some parts of the country, even an upper five digit income isn't enough.  Getting to the point where statewide rent controls are starting to be imposed.  So...

 

the idea is to take one of these or its close cousins:

 

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lakewood-12-ft-x-24-ft-Wood-Storage-Shed-Kit-with-Floor-lwood1224df/304217018?mtc=Shopping-B-F_D28I-G-D28I-28_21_STORAGE_BUILDINGS-MULTI-NA-Feed-PLA-NA-NA-BASE_SHP&cm_mmc=Shopping-B-F_D28I-G-D28I-28_21_STORAGE_BUILDINGS-MULTI-NA-Feed-PLA-NA-NA-BASE_SHP-71700000041090936-58700005114198330-92700044818653034&gclid=CjwKCAiA_MPuBRB5EiwAHTTvMbXrAwD5wkxt5DOFJvuiP7R3ILrYdndT6PIc6yJ_QmUH0ku0vH5QSxoCAeQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

plop it on a cement slab foundation, spend a couple hundred more to raise the upper level wall height to 7'6", tack in more struts and studs, and finish it out into an approximately 580 square foot house.

 two bedrooms of about 100 square feet each and a regular sized bathroom up top, (probably toss in a balcony off the one end for another few hundred bucks),

kitchen with full sized sink, stove, and fridge downstairs, along with a (cramped) utility room and smallish (120 square foot) living room down.

Material cost (not including the land or utility hookups) would be around $23,000-$26,000, depending (that should include the slab.  Cost for a three man crew to take this from a finished slab to ready for occupancy would tack another $10,000-$15,000 onto the price.

Solar panels and solar heat pumps - not hellishly expensive, cuts down or maybe even eliminates some utility bills, battery, usage, and climate depending.

Figure a lot of about 1/10th of an acre.  

Now....how many of you would try to build something like this?

How many of you would ditch renting for the opportunity to buy one, especially with an asking price of well under $100,000?  (At ten to an acre, these things might sell pretty well in the Seattle or SF areas)

Existing homeowners - reaction when entire subdivisions with dwellings like this materialize near you?

 

 

 

[dornishpen]

Several thoughts, ok I didn't read the details, but how much insulation does something like that have? I would guess something labeled a shed wouldn't have much. Would this fit building codes as a home? I doubt it, there's a reason most tiny houses and trailers are required to be technically mobile. I do think the size of this sounds better than most "tiny houses", but I'm not sure how it's in any way superior to a trailer type mobile home.

For me personally, my favorite thing about renting is that I don't ever do maintenance, snow shoveling, lawn mowing etc. I don't have to worry about finding a good plumber or appliance repair person or even which refrigerator to buy. I'm sure there are upsides to owning in terms of stability etc., but for me they don't outweigh the downsides. I guess if I could afford it I'd consider buying an apartment, but I can't so it doesn't matter.

And while things like this can be part, a small part, of the solution to the housing crisis, the issue really requires a great deal more than this, it also requires massive reinvestment in subsidized housing, rezoning, disincentivizing building only luxury condos and so on. 

[ThinkerX]

3 minutes ago, dornishpen said:

Several thoughts, ok I didn't read the details, but how much insulation does something like that have? I would guess something labeled a shed wouldn't have much. Would this fit building codes as a home? I doubt it, there's a reason most tiny houses and trailers are required to be technically mobile. I do think the size of this sounds better than most "tiny houses", but I'm not sure how it's in any way superior to a trailer type mobile home.

walls is 2x4 construction - which up until about 30-40 years ago was the norm for full sized houses.  These days it's still common for cabins.  That allows for 4 inches of fiberglass, which is acceptable, especially for a place that small.  As part of the construction, I'd slip in extra wall studs and ceiling struts (those look to be about 2x8's from the photo's.  Short answer: good insulation, could be better if you went with 2x6 studs as is the norm for regular houses.  

 

Site claims it could be made into a home, which is one reason I selected it.  Building codes vary a great deal from state to state and even between neighboring towns.  Square footage requirements can vary by subdivision - which is why you'd want entire subdivisions dedicated to this type of dwelling.  And no, it wouldn't be mobile, it'd be anchored to a 6" thick cement slab.  

 

The idea is paying less to own than what you do in rent.  Affordable home ownership.

[dornishpen]

21 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

The idea is paying less to own than what you do in rent.  Affordable home ownership.

But owning also includes added costs in repairs and maintenance that need to be included, and not just base costs of those things, but time spent.

i don't think building out more subdivisions full of single family houses, even small ones on smaller lots is the greatest answer to the affordability crisis, but without getting into apartment construction, row houses are a good way to have density and could probably be built fairly cheaply as well, probably even pre-fab.

[mcbigski]

True rent control has never been tried but next time it will work.  Credit where due, the death toll from rent control is well under 9 figures.

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, dornishpen said:

But owning also includes added costs in repairs and maintenance that need to be included, and not just base costs of those things, but time spent.

i don't think building out more subdivisions full of single family houses, even small ones on smaller lots is the greatest answer to the affordability crisis, but without getting into apartment construction, row houses are a good way to have density and could probably be built fairly cheaply as well, probably even pre-fab.

I've had some thoughts there as well.  CONEX units - aka stackable metal shipping containers, 8x40 feet. Relatively cheap. Two of those joined side by side gets you two bedrooms and a bathroom (1 unit) and a living/kitchen/dining area (2nd unit).  Seen pics where the interiors have been finished up quite nicely.  Now, with proper insulation and sheetrock and whatnot, the rooms are going to be about 6.5 feet wide on the inside, but I suppose thats acceptable.  Stack them 6 or 8 units high, add utility trunks and stairs (maybe an elevator if your ambitious) and instant apartment building.  

My main focus, though, is on affordable 'green' home ownership.

[Altherion]

7 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

How many of you would ditch renting for the opportunity to buy one, especially with an asking price of well under $100,000?  (At ten to an acre, these things might sell pretty well in the Seattle or SF areas) 

Existing homeowners - reaction when entire subdivisions with dwellings like this materialize near you?

The second question is the main reason this is unlikely to happen. It's an interesting idea, but keep in mind that construction costs are far from the main factor behind exorbitant rents and seemingly absurd house prices. There are two much bigger problems and they would affect your style of house in the same way as all others. First, the land itself is expensive. Second, most neighborhoods where people want to live (and therefore pay those high rents) are "zoned" to prevent developers from constructing various kinds of high-density housing (or, really, any other housing which is not consistent with the character of the neighborhood) which would surely include your small homes.

In addition to the zoning regulations, any new construction will also need to comply with a bunch of other rules almost certainly including environmental review(s), independent architectural and engineering reviews plus others that vary from city to city. Basically, you outright can't do what you propose to do in most places where it makes sense to do so and in the remainder, it will be a whole lot more expensive than you think because you have to pay for complying with all of these rules.

[dornishpen]

4 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

I've had some thoughts there as well.  CONEX units - aka stackable metal shipping containers, 8x40 feet. Relatively cheap. Two of those joined side by side gets you two bedrooms and a bathroom (1 unit) and a living/kitchen/dining area (2nd unit).  Seen pics where the interiors have been finished up quite nicely.  Now, with proper insulation and sheetrock and whatnot, the rooms are going to be about 6.5 feet wide on the inside, but I suppose thats acceptable.  Stack them 6 or 8 units high, add utility trunks and stairs (maybe an elevator if your ambitious) and instant apartment building.  

My main focus, though, is on affordable 'green' home ownership.

I mentioned row houses because they're usually owned by individuals, but are dense and can be easy and cheap to build and are good for someone who wants their own house. Maybe they could be built with shipping containers. I personally prefer apartment buildings (where units can also be purchasable, probably the co-op model is best) because I don't want to shovel or mow or anything like that.

4 hours ago, Triskele said:

Some local news show had a Twitter poll asking something like "should the homeless be forced into treatment?" with the obvious implication that a drug or alcohol problem was the only reason a person would be homeless and not the utterly insane cost of living.  60+ percent of respondents said "yes, they should."  

Yes, and it also assumes directionality and is likely assuming wrong in many cases, homelessness has a tremendous negative impact on health, both mental and physical and many homeless people may drink or use drugs to deal with being homeless, rather than being homeless because they're an addict or mentally ill. But most Americans would rather blame poor people for their poverty than stop to consider that our country as the richest one in the world can certainly provide adequate housing for all its citizens and that failure to do so is a choice the society made.

[DMC]

First and foremost, any thread concerning this topic needs to start with some variation of this:

Second, to answer your questions, fuck no I'm not building that on my own.  But if there were things like that available for a comparable price in what I'm looking for?  Sure.

[Datepalm]

Altherion is right - construction and development costs, zoning and demand-driven high housing prices mean that whatever (smaller-than-you-think) cost saving you can generate by building a small-and-crap building rather than a nice one are going to be very marginal. Then there are also lots of big, complicated reasons why cheap housing in general - small, low-amenity, high-rise apartments, compact row houses, etc, you don't need to go to sheds - isn't getting built. Primarily expensive housing being more viable for private developers and restrictive zoning. If you want a slightly similar situation, look up the politics and policy around ADUs (accessory dwelling units) and how much cities have to go through to get them approved, and then how little of them proceed to get built in absolute numbers and how they do nothing to really dent housing needs.

[mcbigski]

4 hours ago, Triskele said:

Some local news show had a Twitter poll asking something like "should the homeless be forced into treatment?" with the obvious implication that a drug or alcohol problem was the only reason a person would be homeless and not the utterly insane cost of living.  60+ percent of respondents said "yes, they should."  

If you are a half way decent room mate homelessness wont be an issue for you.  And based on carbon footprints people aren't entitled to at 1000 sq ft living space each right?  At least in the so called first World , with the various social benefit nets, if you re so anti social that no one is willing to halve their expenses, I m going apportion a fair amount of the reason for that where it falls  (Some portion likely a majority on deinstitutionalising, but that's a different thread I think.)

[Datepalm]

2 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

If you are a half way decent room mate homelessness wont be an issue for you.  And based on carbon footprints people aren't entitled to at 1000 sq ft living space each right?  At least in the so called first World , with the various social benefit nets, if you re so anti social that no one is willing to halve their expenses, I m going apportion a fair amount of the reason for that where it falls  (Some portion likely a majority on deinstitutionalising, but that's a different thread I think.)

What are you talking about? Like splitting the cost of a two-room (or one room, or studio) apartment two (or three, or four) ways goes all that far in a lot of places. Besides, street homelessness - particularly the most visible, harshest variants, tent encampments, people sleeping in the street, drug use, medieval diseases - is often the tip of the iceberg. Its hard to get good numbers, for obvious reasons, but the estimates are that for every person in the street or in a homeless shelter, there is an order of magnitude more people moving between their friends and family's couches, living in a garage, squeezing in 4 or 5 to a room (which is illegal in some places which have maximum room occupancy), and sometimes moving in and out of sleeping outdoors.

[ThinkerX]

I am only too well aware of zoning and associated bureaucratic costs.

I am also aware of a growing 'national grass roots' movement to force developers to build affordable housing - that is part of what California's statewide rent control edict was about.   Likewise, we are already in an ugly housing bubble that will burst soon - possibly comparable to the 2007-2008 fiasco.  With all that, I see the possibility of now closed options for affordable housing being forced open - regardless of developers and zoning laws.

 

 

[mcbigski]

17 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

What are you talking about? Like splitting the cost of a two-room (or one room, or studio) apartment two (or three, or four) ways goes all that far in a lot of places. Besides, street homelessness - particularly the most visible, harshest variants, tent encampments, people sleeping in the street, drug use, medieval diseases - is often the tip of the iceberg. Its hard to get good numbers, for obvious reasons, but the estimates are that for every person in the street or in a homeless shelter, there is an order of magnitude more people moving between their friends and family's couches, living in a garage, squeezing in 4 or 5 to a room (which is illegal in some places which have maximum room occupancy), and sometimes moving in and out of sleeping outdoors.

By that math it sounds like we agree.  There are the 10% of those near the margin truly not able to take care of themselves which implies some form of publicly funded institutionalization versus the 90% that are figuring something out.  

People don't have an inalienable right to housing square footage.  Society ought to, because it aligns with compassion, make accommodations for those who cant provide for themselves.  But there isnt unlimited free candy.  The most compassionate policy in the long run covers those who are truly incapable of providing for themselves while incentivizing the much larger segment to be responsible for themselves.  Socializing rents across the board neither prioritizes the incapable or provides enough quality housing in the long run for the every one.

[Datepalm]

19 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

I am only too well aware of zoning and associated bureaucratic costs.

I am also aware of a growing 'national grass roots' movement to force developers to build affordable housing - that is part of what California's statewide rent control edict was about.   Likewise, we are already in an ugly housing bubble that will burst soon - possibly comparable to the 2007-2008 fiasco.  With all that, I see the possibility of now closed options for affordable housing being forced open - regardless of developers and zoning laws.

 

 

Well which is it that's going to be forced open? Zoning restricts what developers can do, but even where it is relatively inclusive, there's no glut of affordable housing. Who is going to force the developers to build this, and using what mechanism? And why would sheds be a better idea than a bunch of four- and six- and eight-plexes?

[Datepalm]

Just now, mcbigski said:

By that math it sounds like we agree.  There are the 10% of those near the margin truly not able to take care of themselves which implies some form of publicly funded institutionalization versus the 90% that are figuring something out.  

People don't have an inalienable right to housing square footage.  Society ought to, because it aligns with compassion, make accommodations for those who cant provide for themselves.  But there isnt unlimited free candy.  The most compassionate policy in the long run covers those who are truly incapable of providing for themselves while incentivizing the much larger segment to be responsible for themselves.  Socializing rents across the board neither prioritizes the incapable or provides enough quality housing in the long run for the every one.

There is a wide body of global evidence - and in the US, for that matter - that it does and that is seems to be one of the few things that does. Even the US housing development boom post-war was highly, highly publicly subsidized. 

[ThinkerX]

8 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

Well which is it that's going to be forced open? Zoning restricts what developers can do, but even where it is relatively inclusive, there's no glut of affordable housing. Who is going to force the developers to build this, and using what mechanism? And why would sheds be a better idea than a bunch of four- and six- and eight-plexes?

 

'Cabins,' not 'sheds,' once properly rebuilt.  I have spent much of my life building and rebuilding houses, garages, mobile homes and other structures on and off.  I picked this, because from a construction and cost standpoint, its quick, durable, and inexpensive.  Apartments?  Go for them as well.  As to the rest, change is in motion:

 

https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/how-communities-are-rethinking-zoning-improve-housing-affordability-and-access-opportunity

 

and

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusionary_zoning

 

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

The most compassionate policy in the long run covers those who are truly incapable of providing for themselves while incentivizing the much larger segment to be responsible for themselves.

The word of the day is:  incentivizing.  I like the "compassionate" language too.  Is this Dubya on Oprah again?  Did I sleep for 20 years?  Please.  The most compassionate policy is the one where you can fuck over as much poor people as possible without pissing too many people that matter off.

 

[Datepalm]

The crux of my argument (I guess I'm in the PIMBY, Public Housing in My Backyard, rather than merely YIMBY, category) is that raising zoning minimums creates very limited incentives for the construction of affordable housing in itself, nor make its development especially profitable and likely to be provided by the market, what's called 'naturally occurring' affordable housing. As the UI article points out, there's definitely a recognition that theres a crisis and both a grassroots and top-down effort to do something about it. As it also points out, this has had little actual success, given that the crisis is still with us and generally getting worse. These re-zoning efforts, while - probably - well intentioned and spreading, still remain restricted to a few areas in a few cities - a drop in the bucket that, by some measures, is making things worse as due the current upwards push on prices by huge undersupply its driving gentrification. Nor is the market stepping in to the gaps thus provided to develop actual affordable housing. That's being done - where its being done - by state-mandated affordable housing allocations, non-profits, and here and there various channeling of state and federal money (including increasingly - though still pennies generally - from transport and environmental funding for infill and high density housing as those can do more to reduce emissions and congestion more than most transport-only programs. The point of this aside is just to point out how little housing public money is out there, and how needed it is given the vast scale of the ourobourian market failure here.)

[dornishpen]

In the US HUD has been massively cut for the past several decades, returning to pre-Reagan funding levels (adjusted for inflation) would do a lot for the severe shortage of subsidized housing for the poorest people (extremely low income in HUD speak meaning less than 30% of area median income), but it wouldn't solve the shortage created by the loss of so many units of public housing in that time due to tearing down, privatization and neglect (frequently because the HUD repair fund is almost non-existent), so it would probably also require a large short term reinvestment. But this would create jobs. Both in the housing itself and temporarily in construction.

Section 8 vouchers are also a good program, but they can be difficult to use because it can be hard to find landlords that take them and the amounts can be too limited, they're almost impossible to obtain and generally the poverty remains concentrated. Many people with them move every year so they can be quite unravel. 
 

Now the thing mostly seems to be project based section 8 where the voucher stays with the unit and building which is basically private projects. These can be quite well managed or they can be infamously terrible like the Kushner properties. But they also have 20 year contracts with HUD so they're not as stable as actual public housing theoretically should be, but more stable than using vouchers with private landlords.