Your city's grassroots efforts on housing affordability?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Gordo

I'm quite confident that the market can figure out if too many small units are being built and adjust to building larger units if that's what makes more money because no one is willing to buy/rent the small units.

In San Francisco, there's some indication we may have reached saturation. At least one recently constructed, prominent micro unit building is being sold to an educational institution for student housing. I'm not sure if that's an indication the market wouldn't absorb the units or not.

I do not care for beets. Never liked them, not sure why. I personally do not understand why anyone would want to eat them. However, I'm perfectly fine with allowing beet farmers to continue growing beets and for people to continue consuming them. If people start switching from beef to beets and the volume grown increases by 10x, great! If people wise up to how disgusting beets are and demand drops by 90%, great! Who cares!?

I love beets. One of my favorite veggies, especially pickled. Don't bash beets!

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

In San Francisco, there's some indication we may have reached saturation. At least one recently constructed, prominent micro unit building is being sold to an educational institution for student housing. I'm not sure if that's an indication the market wouldn't absorb the units or not.

This seems like the definition of the market absorbing it, unless you feel that the units being sold in bulk are somehow not a part of the market If the units were being converted to something other than housing, maybe...

I love beets. One of my favorite veggies, especially pickled. Don't bash beets!

To each their own.

[C.]

Originally Posted by Gordo

How about just allow them to be built? Markets are actually pretty good at determining what people want for various prices. If no one wants to pay a price that is profitable for builders to build...they won't get built.

I have no interest in a micro unit, but I've got several friends that are a few years older than me with kids finishing college. They'd happily pay a bit more for a micro unit than share a 3-4 bed place with 3-4 other people (the most likely other option in prime SF/NYC/etc).

It's kind of selfishness when you think of it... "I live in my larger house/apartment, and I can't see why anyone would want to live in those micro units therefore they should not be built. Plus it's probably going to be all drug addicts and alcoholics anyway."

I can live in a studio apartment, but a micro apartment is where I draw the line as a personal preference. However, it's going to be the only affordable housing option for many others. Why would I against them being built unless my ulterior goal would be to exclude lower income persons from my neighborhood.

Also, the market has a way of meeting the demand informally. I visited a brand new house that sold for around $700,000 in Jersey City. It was one of those Bayonne Boxes in the Heights on a quiet residential street. From the outside and per city records, this is officially a two dwelling unit with garage.

Unofficially, it was a 10 unit apartment building with two baths and two kitchens. This is because each of the four bedrooms plus den had their own own lock along with individual leases with the landlord. Each bedroom was occupied by a single person or by two people if a boyfriend/girlfriend living together.

Would you believe that that the starting rent was $1,000 a month per room?!? Absolutely insane. An investor purchased this new construction for around $700,0000 and maybe has a mortgage of 3 or $4,000 a month. The investor than subdivides all the rooms and hires a management company, which is collecting around $10,000 a month from rents. That's a pretty good hustle. And I bet this is happening in cities throughout America where the rent for a normal 1 bedroom is too damn high.

But if you're working minimum wage trying to survive, $500 a month split with a boyfriend/girlfriend for economic reasons becomes one affordable housing. Whether communities with hot real estate markets want to allow micro housing or not, the reality is it's already there hidden in plain sight.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by C.

And I bet this is happening in cities throughout America where the rent for a normal 1 bedroom is too damn high.

It happens in cheap cities too because there are always a ton of people who do the bare minimum to survive. They don't have bank accounts and don't want one. Then there are FIRE-type people like myself who tolerate low-class living situations in order to save and invest large percentages of our income.

I lived in such a place for 5 years in my late 20s and early 30s. The rent was $250/mo including utilities to live in an enclosed porch with no heat or electrical outlets (that's where I lived - I ran an extension chord in from the kitchen to power my computer). There was someone (actually 3 people over the 5 years, most notably a woman who sewed custom stripper costumes) paying $200/mo to live in the basement. The real bedrooms cost $300/mo.

You had no say as to who lived there. You'd wake up and there would be a person you'd never met before eating breakfast, unannounced by the landlord. Some of the people were good but a few of them were truly insane, like the guy who sat around with his shirt off and sweated a lot while staring off into space. Another guy claimed to have been a dishonorably discharged attorney for the U.S. Army and went on long tangents regarding Austrian Economics. A Chinese exchange student only lasted about 8 days because he was mugged right outside. We had gunfire on the block fairly often and I was held up once a block away. A tree out back was struck by lighting and it took the landlord 2-3 months to get it removed. In the meantime, people started hiding drugs in the giant heap of branches.

But if you're working minimum wage trying to survive, $500 a month split with a boyfriend/girlfriend for economic reasons becomes one affordable housing. Whether communities with hot real estate markets want to allow micro housing or not, the reality is it's already there hidden in plain sight.

Yeah. Of course. And this was my point in my earlier posts. And I'll expand with yet another unpopular opinion - the single-family house is the most versatile housing type out there. People can come and go informally without a lease. These can be family members, friends, or boarders.

All of the Twitter know-it-alls who get randy at the thought of government ownership of homes and apartments don't realize that they would all be professionally managed and so there wouldn't be any space for informal living situations. Plus, population density would go down in areas where illegals and others currently live 2 or 3 to a bedroom, plus people living in the basement.

[C.]

That is really odd. On one hand you’re advocating against micro units because you believe it will lead to all sort of societal ills and on the other hand you cite your own example living in one in order to save for your future.

Also, it’s a little comical on the drug front. Some of the most hardcore drug users I know are the wealthy living in single-family homes, especially in rural areas where there is much more to do. Look no further to see where the opioid crisis is hitting the most, but there are plenty of examples of this. The poor can’t afford the good drugs, just marijuana to self medicate or selling because sometimes that’s the only options available to people.

At some point I really feel there will be a revolt due to housing, the population continues to increase but the number of new beds being built is greatly lagging.