this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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This is good, but if we address this at a systemic level, we don't need to put people in tiny low-density homes unconnected to anything for it to be affordable.
China addresses it by looking at how much labor and materials is required and ensuring the price of concrete, steel, glass, etc is sufficiently low for the number of homes they need constructed, and that there is enough of each type of skilled labor that goes into building a home.
Presumably local governments have some mechanism for when they know a house costs X materials and Y labor, and they see new construction costing significantly more than that.
The result is detached homes@avg 75USD/sqft and apartments@55/sqft. With current interest rates of 6.768%, you'd get ~400 sqft homes with a $200/mo 30 year mortgage at those prices, 600sqft if interest rates were 3%.
I was like, holy shit that 55/sqft must be some 10 times as much as my rent (I'm not sure how much a foot is; I think I'm paying about 20-25€/m^2 per month). And then I realized those are BUYING prices. Holy shit.
Yup. A group local to me put up around 20 tiny homes with a grant from the city. With the cost of upkeep, it would have been cheaper for the city to pay for 20 hotel rooms. Which wouldn't have had any fewer amenities than the tiny homes they made.
There's some benefit to them as backyard "mother in law houses" or for a cabin in the woods. For solving homelessness, no, there are better options.