I don’t think the US needs more single family homes, I think we need more, or at least more affordable, multifamily housing. Suburbs are expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment. What we need to be doing is bringing down the cost of housing in cities, as well as making cities as pedestrian friendly as possible, with walking and biking infrastructure, and public transportation.
Suburbs are expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment
This is what I’m always saying! Car-centric spaces are also bad socially. They’re dehumanizing. You want people walking around if you want a community, and having a strong community is good in many ways.
For us, the suburbs are cheaper than the cities. We basically have no choice. I have to work in the city but can’t afford to live there with a family. Mainly the rent/mortgage prices, and groceries. It’s all cheaper when I’m willing to drive 30-60 minutes outside of the city.
It’s cheaper for you because suburbia effectively gets subsidized, and because housing in cities gets artificially limited through ridiculous zoning rules. Ideally, suburbs should have to actually bear the costs of the infrastructure necessary to their existence, and we should do away with things like detached single family housing and absurd parking minimums in urban areas.
That’s rapidly changing all over the place. The question is now whether you want the suburb life and a commute or to live in the city with amenities. The prices are very similar now.
Something off topic about not wanting to live in a city. One of the reasons I’m big on urban renewal is maybe it will get more people to move into cities so there’s fewer of them in rural areas where I want to live.
I completely agree, but we need much stronger rent and ownership laws, as well as public housing. Companies are bulldozing low income housing, building shiny new apartment buildings, and using algorithmic rent to empty out most of the apartment complex and keep prices artificially high across a city.
It’s so terrible, because the end result is a lot of half empty apartments downtown, and normal people effectively getting pushed to suburbs because there’s no way most people could afford an apartment that costs $4k a month. For low income people, it’s even worse.
Even just having some (30%) mandatory $500/mo rent apartments in all new construction over 30 units could help.
I don’t think the US needs more single family homes, I think we need more, or at least more affordable, multifamily housing. Suburbs are expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment. What we need to be doing is bringing down the cost of housing in cities, as well as making cities as pedestrian friendly as possible, with walking and biking infrastructure, and public transportation.
This is what I’m always saying! Car-centric spaces are also bad socially. They’re dehumanizing. You want people walking around if you want a community, and having a strong community is good in many ways.
For us, the suburbs are cheaper than the cities. We basically have no choice. I have to work in the city but can’t afford to live there with a family. Mainly the rent/mortgage prices, and groceries. It’s all cheaper when I’m willing to drive 30-60 minutes outside of the city.
It’s cheaper for you because suburbia effectively gets subsidized, and because housing in cities gets artificially limited through ridiculous zoning rules. Ideally, suburbs should have to actually bear the costs of the infrastructure necessary to their existence, and we should do away with things like detached single family housing and absurd parking minimums in urban areas.
That’s rapidly changing all over the place. The question is now whether you want the suburb life and a commute or to live in the city with amenities. The prices are very similar now.
deleted by creator
I’ll always wonder what you posted…
Something off topic about not wanting to live in a city. One of the reasons I’m big on urban renewal is maybe it will get more people to move into cities so there’s fewer of them in rural areas where I want to live.
I completely agree, but we need much stronger rent and ownership laws, as well as public housing. Companies are bulldozing low income housing, building shiny new apartment buildings, and using algorithmic rent to empty out most of the apartment complex and keep prices artificially high across a city.
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
It’s so terrible, because the end result is a lot of half empty apartments downtown, and normal people effectively getting pushed to suburbs because there’s no way most people could afford an apartment that costs $4k a month. For low income people, it’s even worse.
Even just having some (30%) mandatory $500/mo rent apartments in all new construction over 30 units could help.
I think we need a LOT more of this kind of housing, to make housing as affordable as possible for everyone.
I was gonna say or 200k small apartment/condo buildings or 20k large apartment/condo building or like 2k large highrise buildings.