
America Needs Small Apartment Buildings - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-30/america-needs-small-apartment-buildings-nobody-builds-them
======
awjr
I'm beginning to look at the housing market in the UK, a bit like the diamond
market. Where the market is effectively controlled by 1-2 companies that
ensure the release of a controlled quantity into the market at any one time.

Developers have a huge land bank upon which they could develop high density
cheap accommodation using modern commercial property techniques however this
would destroy their market. It's better to release 200k of 'stock' per year in
the market to maintain high house prices.

It helps that the government has pretty much stripped the ability of councils
to build houses, and more importantly, the sale of council houses (right to
buy). Bring in the fact none of these houses have a 'no second home' clause
means they are bought up as buy to let facilitated by a change in banking
regulation in 1996 that allowed buy to let mortgages.

So yeah, we have a housing stock problem. Start thinking about it like the
diamond business and the similarities are quite scary.

~~~
rwmj
If you're looking for a new house in the UK, then you're going to get ripped
off. Poor quality construction, too many tiny rooms, no outside space, design
deficiencies which mean the house is unlikely to last 30 years without major
reconstruction, an insurance policy that's not worth the paper its written on,
an emerging scandal in leasehold contracts.

Buy an old house, preferably a Victorian terraced house or a solidly
constructed 1930s-1960s council house.

~~~
chrisseaton
New build houses in the UK all seem to have those crazy American-style hollow
walls - that's the worst thing about them.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
As an American, how else do you build houses? Solid concrete? That seems a
little ridiculous, especially for interior walls...

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Bricks, in the majority of the world for the last thousand years. Making
interior wall with plaster or wood is illegal in some european countries.

~~~
bluGill
Bricks have very low r-value meaning that you pay a lot of money to heat/cool
them. Bricks is a bad choice for construction anywhere where indoor climate
control is an issue.

American construction is strong enough to last for a few hundred years if you
maintain it. While it isn't passive house efficient it is efficient (and it
isn't clear that a passive house is even possible in our climate - many of
them make other compromises which means they rot out in a few years).

~~~
jorvi
Wait, what?

How can you know about r-values but not that every modern house built has
cavity walls that can be/are insulated?[1]

Even hundred-year old houses can be insulated by DIY drylining. You'll lose
about 10cm of floor space though. Sometimes there's even some government
grants available for this[2]

[1][http://www.residentialenergydynamics.com/portals/0/Resources...](http://www.residentialenergydynamics.com/portals/0/Resources/Parallel_path/Wall%20section%20with%20brick%20ORNL%20source.jpg)

[2][http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02041/jeff-
howel...](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02041/jeff-
howell_2041752b.jpg)

~~~
bluGill
I'm biased to US construction methods of course. Note that while bricks are
themselves of a worse r-value than wood, but wood isn't actually a great
r-value either.

Note that bricks are not a strong as wood under tension. They do well under
compression, but that is not all the loads to account for. Bricks are used in
cities and commercial construction primarily because they do not burn and so
you can use them as a safety barrier.

------
mc32
I sometimes wonder why smalltown America prefers "trailer parks" over small-
to-midsized apartments. Instead of spreading out over dozens of acres, you
could have a couple of complexes with nice communal gardens/parks/playgrounds
and have people live vertically densely enough to encourage shops.

Instead they either have single family homes (that's okay) or they have
trailer parks --if it's a college town then they have squat apartment
buildings with little in the way of design other than cheap and utilitarian
with very little noise dampening, for the most part.

If you travel thru rural California (HWYs 49, 120, 99, etc) there is so much
sprawl consisting of cheap housing --instead of gobbling up farmland with
crappy buildings they could build alright apartment buildings resulting in
better quality of life for the residents (better concentrated service, more
walkable for the poor folks, etc.) on the other hand, fewer taxes for the
municipality, given the property tax system.

~~~
Raphael
Noise dampening should be part of the health code or something.

~~~
shiftpgdn
Noise dampening isn't cheap though. How do you meet all the required
regulations without massively cutting corners AND still have affordable
apartments? If you're going to go through all the trouble of putting up a new
building you might as well shoot for the golden goose.

~~~
bluthru
Doubling drywall, making walls 2x6 instead of 2x4, and using insulation isn't
prohibitively expensive.

Of course the cheapest thing of all is making a building out of concrete or
masonry that can last for over a century and has inherently great noise
dampening.

~~~
cauterized
As someone who grew up in an apartment building with concrete floors, I assure
you that concrete is useless for internal noise dampening.

~~~
Johnny555
As someone that's lived both in a concrete 10 story "high rise" apartment
building as well as a 3 story wood-framed apartment building, concrete is
_far_ superior for noise dampening as wood.

In the concrete building, we could never hear neighbors above of below us, in
the wood framed building, we could hear foot steps and even voices. Our
upstairs neighbor had a squeaky bed and we could clearly hear the bed every
time they were intimate.

~~~
cauterized
I think the difference is that in wood frame you can sometimes hear things
_through_ the walls. Whereas with concrete, any sort of impact (chairs moving,
doors slamming, people walking in heels, the guy putting a nail in the wall to
hang a picture on) gets transmitted to the entire building.

------
patrickg_zill
Simply allowing store fronts at the ground level with 1 to 5 apartments above
would help.

~~~
onion2k
Here in the UK in most cities the amount of empty commercial property is
astonishing. You can get space on really good terms eg first 6 months free,
next 18 months heavily discounted, and a 5 year lease. A decade ago that would
have been nothing free or discounted and a 10 year lease. The reason being
that high street shopping is dying. Shopping centres have occupancy rates as
low as 80% and are gradually being converted in to complexes of restaurants
and bars instead.

Store fronts are an anachronism. Building new commercial property in places
where you can't put a service business like a bar is pointless. And very few
people want to live above a bar.

~~~
usrusr
Ground level storefront shopping has died a quick death, but I have often seen
them converted to offices for small business/freelance/remoting and the
outcome is nearly as good. They do not increase walkability much (that should
be taken care of by a corner supermarket, a parcel receiving machine and
public transport), but it works surprisingly well to keep the "abandoned city"
vibe away that haunts purely residential areas during working hours.

~~~
barrkel
Local offices keep local eateries in business, and local eateries make local
living more pleasant.

~~~
princeb
i adore this model.

the other significant benefit of mixed zoning is that the city doesn't
concentrate office space into pockets and breaks up peak hour travel across
multiple directions and locations.

------
matt_wulfeck
There's a lot we can do even in cities. I own a house now and it's pretty
ridiculous how restricted the city makes your home. For example, I must set
the house back 25 feet from the front curb, and 15 feet from the back.
Basically you can't legally extend just about any house and make room for a
growing family. You must always move.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
You can often build upwards.

~~~
c22
Except you often can't since most single story homes weren't designed to
support the weight of extra floors. You'll end up needing to replace the
foundation and load bearing walls which means either demoing the whole house
and starting over or raising the existing structure on hydraulic jacks then
building a new foundation and first floor underneath it. Neither of these
options are in the same ballpark of convenience or expense as adding a wing.

------
elihu
I kind of wish apartment buildings in the country, just outside of town were a
thing. I don't love living in an apartment, but to live in one surrounded by a
couple acres of lawn/trees/whatever and maybe some actual fields seems like it
would be a lot nicer.

(My current apartment happens to overlook a field in the middle of a city.
It's great when they plant clover in the spring and the whole thing is bright
red for a couple of weeks.)

~~~
matt4077
That's an idea that dominated construction in Europe after the war, and it
just didn't work very well. See [1] for one of the better examples. There are
others, like the french banlieus, with 20-story apartment towers that
basically turned to slums.

What works much better, as far as I can tell, is a high-density neighbourhood
with park nearby. See [2] for an example from the same city.

[1]:
[https://www.google.de/maps/@52.4408185,13.43766,3a,75y,87.23...](https://www.google.de/maps/@52.4408185,13.43766,3a,75y,87.23h,87.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sV7EZg6vbkUhjPl9iIFC4Ng!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

[2]:
[https://www.google.de/maps/@52.4957626,13.4272094,3a,75y,63....](https://www.google.de/maps/@52.4957626,13.4272094,3a,75y,63.38h,87.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sseoaOfRWBkWR26pP-
sKECg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

~~~
ikurei
Could you elaborate on why it doesn't work? That first example looks like a
lovely place to live, at least compared to most urban landscapes... As long as
it isn't far away from more lively areas.

~~~
TorKlingberg
These are common in north Europe, and many places in northern Europe are nice,
but it's in spite of this building style rather than because of it. The
problems are:

* As a resident the grass is useless. You cannot use it like a garden because it's not yours. You cannot put garden furniture there or plant things. Sitting there feels weird because all the neighbors can watch you from above.

* It doesn't work as a park either. People will not feel comfortable walking around or picnicking on these bits of grass, because they are too small and clearly belong to an apartment building.

* They turn into parking lots, because people want parking more than useless bits of grass.

The traditional closed city block structure is better and very popular.
Building around the perimeter right against the street and a shared space in
the middle.

~~~
Pica_soO
* They turn into parking lots, because people want parking more than useless bits of grass.

Green Parking Lots that would be something nice..

~~~
usrusr
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasengitter](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasengitter)

These are abundant in Germany, but the green that grows between them isn't
exactly a pleasant sight. They are not so much used for the greenery but as a
compromise between natural seepage and vehicle compatibility.

That seepage is important because any sealed off surface area increases
flooding risk downstream. Of course nobody really cares for that, but the
sealed surface also determines your utility bill for wastewater treatment, and
people quite certainly do care for that.

------
dredmorbius
A thought that's occurred to me regards housing is a dynamic which seems to
affect asset classes generally, and real estate has very much become an
investment asset class:

 _Owners of assets prefer to have those assets appreciate over time._

This applies whether you're holding cash, gold, stock, bonds, loans ... or
real estate. Or capital goods, educational degrees, guild memberships,
computer language skills, etc.

The basic principle is simple: if the value of whatever it is you're holding
goes up, _you have more financial wealth._

One consequence is that whoever it is that holds some asset will tend to talk
it up or otherwise see that what you own, or have, or control, appreciates in
value.

Among the key ways to do this is to control the supply of a thing -- this is
what cartels (De Beers, OPEC, Standard Oil), guilds and professional societies
(medical and lawyers credentialing organisation), taxi medallion holders, and
homeowners do.

If the good is _simply_ an investment asset, and has no productive or
consumptive value _of itself_ , say, stocks or bonds, this isn't much of a
concern. You may still have problems of asset inflation _bubbles_ , but nobody
will be deprived of life nececessities because stock prices are doubling every
10 years.

For housing, _both_ the price _and_ the supply impacts have tremendous
effects. Households are forced either to spend an inordinate amount of income
on housing, to live far from work, or to crowd (often illegally) into small
spaces shared with others.

Among the differences is that the investment asset is what I'd consider a
Maslovian good: one that is essential to livelihood. Food, water, shelter,
clothing, security.

There are some goods which have borderline properties -- they're both
necessary _and_ carry a strong Vebelen status-signalling component, such as
college education (depending on the institution).

But generally, this case of treating _things people need in order to live_ as
investment vehicles ... seems problematic.

How to _not_ do that becomes an interesting question. A Georgian land tax
seems as if it might actually be one of the better options.

------
TheApexTheater
I've recently begun to think about the availability of housing and how that
impacts the middle/lower stratum of the US, and it seems to me that there have
been several short-sighted policies put in place that have put us in a much
worse position for the future for short term gain (the article explains how
subsidies for single-family homes are a reason for the shift away from small
apartment buildings). Has this always been happening, or has it appeared to
become more pronounced with the recent focus on gentrification? What can be
done to improve affordable housing? I'm not all too familiar with this field,
so anything helps!

~~~
Endama
A lot of it seems to exacerbated by limited access to quality public
transport. As jobs become more consolidated in city centers, the middle and
lower class are more likely to get priced out of living near their work
places. High insurance and other private vehicle costs (tickets, maintenance,
traffic) make car ownership impossible for mid/lower class citizens.

So you end up with a bunch of people, living in poor housing conditions, with
poor access to quality transportation, which means the amount of time they are
spending in transit, or the jobs that they can reasonably have access to, is
constrained.

America should have spent more time trying to shift demand away from private
car ownership and more towards effective public transportation. Doing so would
make areas outside of major metropolitan areas available for middle/lower
class people and allow smaller/mid sized cities benefit from the tax revenue.

------
cmarschner
It seems to me city planning can be quite easily supported through
simulations. Like a Sim City on steroids. You want to optimize "quality of
life" -"as manifested by a bunch of factors - walkability, low pollution,
short commute times etc. Partially these targets can be formulated in some
differentiable manner. Partly one might need to do some more black box
optimization. Then overhaul zoning rules...

~~~
masklinn
The biggest problem in the US is the wide-spread application of "Euclidian"
zoning which strictly segregates use (often down to single versus multi-family
dwellings), which leads to dead suburbias with houses everywhere but not a
grocer or convenience store in place, which makes for absolutely dreary and
dreadful environment.

You don't even need to run sims to get something better, you can just look at
"organic" countries and cities and how they implemented their zoning.

Here's a comparison of Japanese and American/Euclidian zoning for instance:
[http://urbankchoze.blogspot.be/2014/04/japanese-
zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.be/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html) (the
first link leads to an article on Euclidian zoning)

~~~
cmarschner
When I was a kid and played Sim City for the first time it was also the first
time I was confronted with zoning. The whole concept of having a square grid
and strictly separate residential/commercial/industrial zones seemed foreign
to me. I understood slowly that there was plenty of cultural bias in the game.
For me the most natural form of a city was that of a circle surrounding some
central area. That would be the european bias I guess... We do have zoning as
well of course, but in fact new laws are coming in place that aim for more of
a mixture of spaces within a city. I think this is a great development.

------
ianai
I feel like the US needs a new way to structure corporate America. Office
space needs to be about as sparse as residential. i.e. Instead of having
massive business centers have large numbers of small offices interlinked via
tech. I'm aware this is pie in the sky. You can't have it both ways, though.

~~~
flukus
That just increases reliance on cars and cuts the employee pool for the
business. There is an area on the outskirts of my city that they decided make
into a large office park. It's great for the people that live around there,
but they are always desperate for employees because most don't want to travel
that far for work, and the area isn't exactly where people live if they have a
choice.

~~~
closeparen
It could actually decrease reliance on cars. If employers are widely
dispersed, then housing within walking distance of any given employer is not
in egregiously high demand, and could be affordable to its employees.

There are always going to be more desks than beds in central business
districts.

~~~
phamilton
That assumes employment is as sticky as housing, which is actually the the
opposite of the current trend.

The advantage of living close to a large urban center is that I can change
jobs without a significant impact to my housing and lifestyle.

------
geff82
Looking at this discussion, I have to say that everyone seems to want what he
can't get easily. Looking at the extensive single house areas in the suburbs
of the big US cities, I have a voice in my head saying "I want exactly that".
Living like this costs only a fraction of housing in a similar size like here
in the Frankfurt area of Germany where most ground now is small and freaking
expensive. Even better earning people here essentially can now only affort
living in apartments.

~~~
mtberatwork
Land is expensive in the US as well depending on where you live. However,
building construction techniques are different in the US, which brings down
costs tremendously. In the US, newer residential homes are mostly wooden,
"stick built" (even apartments!) buildings which go up in the matter of a few
months. Bricks are even used as siding facades instead of structural support.
In Germany, buildings are constructed with a limestone/sand/brick masonry
mixture, take much longer to construct and of course are higher in costs. But
homes in the US aren't as resilient and are often torn down and rebuilt,
whereas in Germany, homes are built for the long-term and passed down between
generations.

~~~
geff82
Yes, sure, construction is in general a bit more solid over here. But with
pre-constructed houses, you can also get wood-based buildings starting around
150k (price to build). So here you get the quality, but the financial burden
to buy one of these highly engineered houses makes it more difficult to own
one when you are young. Sure in the US, there are areas where housing is
extremely expensive. But when I look at metropolitan Dallas for example, where
the economy is quite good, I can get deals for great looking homes for about
250k including large enough ground. A similar home in a similar economic area
here, just comparing ground and building size (not quality) would cost me
500-800k in Germany. So maybe many US homes are not for life, but you can
start one in them.

------
andy_ppp
Remember when we were promised better things every year? In 1950 we were told
by now we'd hardly have to work, have lots of leisure time etc., but at least
we all got a 3 bed house near a nuclear power plant. Now we get fewer crumbs
off the top table than ever.

We could just build more, better buildings; enough to make the price go down.
There is no incentive for property developers to do this of course.

~~~
bluGill
Look at how people in the 1950s lived: do you really want that. They had ONE
black and white 13 inch TV - 19 inch color TVs existed but only the rich could
afford them. They lived in smaller houses than we live in today, and the
furnishing where more utilitarian. They had one car (odds are the women wasn't
allowed to drive though this part of culture was changing), it didn't have AC,
you might or might not be able to afford the optional heater and radio (it
broke down often despite doing tuneups all the time). They had one phone - it
was a party line so they could share some of the costs with their neighbors...

Today we have a much higher standard of living. We have decided that the toys,
space, and luxury is worth more than the time we have to work to pay for it.
Is this the right choice? That is an interesting discussion: I can take either
side of it.

I know of a few people who have chosen to work less. They live a sparser life
- generally working at WalMart or some such because the better paying jobs
won't even give you the option of working less hours - this is a choice they
made and they are happy with their life.

It is well known that there is a spike in deaths just after people retire:
most people don't actually know what to do with more leisure time, and their
work hours also double as part of their social hours. As such for many people
working for luxuries is the correct choice.

~~~
andy_ppp
Technology has provided benefits but the rich take an ever increasing slice of
those improvements and that's deliberate to keep the proles working. Housing
was arguably better built in the 50s (and earlier) than it is today and it was
certainly bigger.

Maybe we need to figure out a way to use technology to help the problem of
high quality affordable homes.

~~~
bluGill
Wealth is NOT a zero sum game. Yes the rich are getting richer, but so is
everybody else. The Middle class is richer too.

Most people have multiple TVs with none smaller than 25 inches. Poor people
today have 40+inch 1080 color TVs. Poor people often with a video game system.
The Poor have cell phones and computers with internet service. No amount of
money could get any of that in the 1950s, now it is considered normal for the
poor to have them - legally.

If you think houses were better quality then you know nothing about
construction. They might LOOK better, but in today's houses engineers have
actually calculated wind load to ensure it will stand, r-values to ensure you
can afford to heat it, and other safety standards so it doesn't kill the
occupants. Of course most of that is invisible, you see something that seems
like is is not flimsy and don't realize it is strong enough, while may things
that seem strong are brittle.

~~~
andy_ppp
I'm saying that we should all be a _lot_ richer than we are:

[http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-
stagnation/](http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/)

[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-
wor...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-
wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/)

I'm not saying it's a zero sum game I'm saying that workers are getting
screwed relative to capital.

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I2WNYJW/ref=dp-kindle-
redirec...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00I2WNYJW/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

You can say "cheap Chinese labour has lead to cheaper goods". We aren't any
richer adjusting for inflation, and are considerably poorer if you include
land values in the inflation calculation.

------
LinaLauneBaer
In mid April I will move to a 200sq ft apartment. Very small. I am a bit
anxious if my plans work out. Up until now I had about 3.5x that space for me
alone. The apartment ist directly at the central station of the city which
allows me to get to work super fast and the central station is not too far
away from the inner city... walking distance. Let's see how this goes.

~~~
adjkant
Heads up, the difference between 200ft and 300ft is huge. I'm all for small
living in the middle of cities, but I think 200 would be too small for me.
Wish you the best of luck of course, but I think going for 300ft would be good
for next time :)

~~~
masklinn
For the imperially challenged that's 20 and 28 square meters respectively.

And yeah 20-ish is really small.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Thank you!

I moved to Norway a few years ago. Getting a grasp on housing sizes has been a
challenge so far.

~~~
Sharlin
Square feet vs square meters is pretty easy because (1 meter / 1 feet)^2 is
conveniently close to 10.

------
lr4444lr
The author may be assuming a conclusion: does America need small apartments
because they are cheaper, or are they not built because people don't want
them, and low demand keeps down the price?

His economy of scale argument cuts both ways. Putting a few more units in a
city does not appreciably increase the strain on infrastructure and density,
but it does much more so in the suburbs where he seems to want them.

"Failures" in urban planning are not necessarily shortsighted blunders that
arose out of nothing waiting to be found by journalists.

~~~
jhbadger
One issue is that smaller apartment buildings just aren't going to have the
amenities that make living in an apartment attractive. I live in a large
apartment building which has a reception that receives packages while I'm at
work, a well furnished gym, and a swimming pool. A tiny building with only a
dozen apartments wouldn't have the economies of scale required for that.

~~~
TillE
Luxury apartments will always exist, no need to worry about that. But plenty
of people don't really need those things, and certainly don't want to pay for
them.

99.9% of apartment buildings in Germany do not remotely resemble anything in
Manhattan, and it works extremely well.

~~~
Arizhel
>But plenty of people don't really need those things, and certainly don't want
to pay for them.

Those things don't cost very much when they're shared by a couple hundred
units. That's why non-luxury hotels can afford to have such amenities for
rather cheap nightly prices. A gym, in particular, is dirt cheap: ~5 exercise
machines at even $1k apiece (a high estimate) is still only $5k, which is
roughly a month's pay for many people. Spread that one-time cost over 200
units and that's $25 per unit. You can probably expect those machines to last
at least 5 years, so that's $5 per year per unit. Whoopee. Definitely not
"luxury", unless you're used to 3rd-world living conditions.

------
wapz
I've lived in all sorts of tiny apartments in Japan and think they are very
useful but only for very specific groups of people (students and single
people). The great thing about them is you can rent extremely cheap (I paid
$450/month in a guest house where it was only the room and shared
bathroom/kitchen/laundry etc). For a tiny 2 bedroom apartment I rented for
$600/month but far away from the station. These are great for students and
single people because you can meet others, it's very safe (generally), and
very affordable. I don't know the new apartments going up in SF but if they
made them extremely small units I'm sure they could fit a lot of people and be
very reasonably priced (relatively).

~~~
foota
The article is not talking about the size per unit, but rather the number of
units per apartment complex.

~~~
wapz
If you decrease the size per unit, you will have more units per apartment
complex of the same size.

~~~
foota
This is true, but the reverse does not hold.

------
Svexark
I thought it was obvious. We're still living in a housing bubble and the
people who would otherwise live in buildings such as these are in homes
they're struggling to pay for. There's no market for them until the inevitable
correction.

------
jakozaur
Single family households are all time high:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/242022/number-of-
single-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/242022/number-of-single-
person-households-in-the-us/)

Probably if more decent small apartment buildings was available there would be
even more of them. Especially in hot tech hubs such asn San Francisco it's
ridiculous how many well-paid employees (FB,GOOG) still lie with roommates,
because renting alone will eat too much of their paycheck.

------
jimlawruk
For those of you in the US interested in this topic, I suggest listening to
podcast called The Kunstlercast. It really opened my eyes and altered my views
on housing, land use, transportation, etc.

------
greggman
My first (and I suppose selfish thought) is "where will I ever get to use VR
if I keep living in small apartments". My current apartment is about 50sq
meters. Unless I removed my sofa and TV or slept in the living room and got
rid of my bed there's no place to have room scale VR here.

Similarly I've gotten to play Rockband at people's houses but there's no way I
could play Rockband in an apartment. Certainly not above the 1st floor with
the drums nor on any floor with the singing.

Of course those are 1st world problems I suppose.

~~~
leoedin
Did you read the article? It's not about building small (as in low floor area)
apartments, but small apartment buildings. Apartment buildings which are 3-4
stories high, and provide the "missing middle" between high density apartments
you find in the middle of cities and the single family homes that make up
urban sprawl.

------
sundvor
Come to Melbourne, Australia. Tiny apartments is all you'll ever find, and
we're building them in _great_ supply. I'm sure it'll work out splendid.

------
dbg31415
> America Needs Small Apartment Buildings. Nobody Builds Them

Nobody builds them, because people don't want to live in them. I lived in a
"small" apartment building with like 8 units in New Orleans, and also in
Seattle. They tend to be older, quaint, and rife with issues... heaters that
don't distribute heat evenly, no amenities like a "full-size" apartment
complex would offer (gym, pool, covered parking, in-unit washer / dryer
hookups, proper cooking ventilation, someone to sign for package delivery,
etc.), and not nearly enough sound insulation. Granted these things could
probably be slightly improved with new buildings... but for a housing
developer... why go through all the hassle of getting a lot zoned for multi-
family if it's "cheaper for renters" (meaning probably less profit margin).

Having lived in small apartments and big apartments, and having my own house
now... man, I love having a yard and space and not worrying about a line when
I go to do laundry. But if I had to go back to apartment life, I'd want one of
the big, resort-style complexes that felt like a college campus.

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jimlawruk
People do want to live in them. It is the people who control what gets built
that don't. Consider a neighborhood with a great school. You don't think
families would jump at the chance to live in a new apartment in that town? The
town planners, however, will fear apartments will bring in people that might
lower the quality of the school, bring town test scores, etc. The only
apartments allowed will be retirement communities.

~~~
nonford150
This exactly. Where I live (suburbs large city SE US) the school district
created redlined school clusters to group the dispersed apartments towards one
HS/MS/ES cluster and high priced single family housing to another. The result?
What you expect - the disparity between the 2 HS is shocking. The apartment
schools are older, in disrepair, have higher crime/drug rates, etc. The SF HS
has a big new stadium, fancy street front LED signage, and lots of tech.
Single moms and low income families are just where you expect - many cannot
participate in the discussion due to work, inability to understand what is
being discussed, and the other foibles of lower class life in America.

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a2tech
As a homeowner in a similar neighborhood as the one described in the article,
I wish passionately LESS people would turn their houses into apartment
buildings. I hate to use the 'there goes the neighborhood' argument, but
renters are ruining my neighborhood. They're loud and disrespectful of others
property. The fierce competition in the renting market means steadily
declining property maintenance (basically you can charge a small rent uptick
for a very nicely maintained property and spend a bunch on maintenance, or
spend the bare minimum on maintenance and only lose 5-10% of rental income-
which is way more profitable than maintaining the property nicely). I'm
currently warily watching some renovations going on at the property next to
me-the minute it looks like they're splitting it up into apartments I'm going
to have to put my property on the market. I can't live 20ft away from a
carousel of characters.

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pasbesoin
America needs apartments and condos that have decent sound-proofing.

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mauvehaus
I think part of the problem is that they they're neither fish nor fowl. They
don't fit into what people conventionally think of as a "neighborhood" with
single family homes (or at least buildings that were originally built as
single family homes and later subdivided into one or two units), and they also
don't necessarily fit into an area full of large apartment buildings for
economic reasons (if it's economical to build a 20 story apartment building
with 120 units, why would you put a 20 _unit_ building on the same plot).

We're watching the first part play out. At the end of our street, there's a
garage that was built for a heating oil distribution company. Real estate
prices are nuts (Boston area), and the heating oil company has either moved or
gone under. The building owner is trying to redevelop it into a 4 story
apartment (or condos, TBD) with 7 units. I went the the community meeting with
my wife because she has domain expertise with the environmental side of such a
redevelopment project.

People are having a fit about the building. It's too tall, it'll change the
character of the neighborhood. What if the neighbors throw _RAGING PARTIES_ on
the terraces? What if they leave their lights on and they shine in the windows
of the immediate neighbors? Can you put plants on the edge of the terraces to
mitigate that? What if the new neighbors don't trim the plants?! The color the
developers are proposing is too ... I don't know, but people don't like it.

The neighbors have been holding the developers feet to the fire over what
amounts to 1) bikeshedding, and 2) what if we get bad neighbors? How much is
it costing the developer to hold people's hands over these things? The only
possible reason for doing this I can imagine is that there simply isn't a lot
of unencumbered land waiting to be built upon, so infilling smaller buildings
is the only way to go about developing unless you have the resources to
develop something truly huge on a large ex-industrial parcel.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic to the fact that bad neighbors exist, and
we like the neighborhood in part because it is quiet. Still, real estate
prices are insane, and building more housing is the only way it's going to get
better.

In the interests of full disclosure, we rent. Largely because we don't see
staying here for more than another couple years (largely because we don't see
a realistic way to become home-owners, so we're doing our part to perpetuate
the property price problem).

We're largely insulated from any property value concerns that people may have
about the new building. Still we like the neighborhood, and we do our part to
be neighborly to the many owner-occupants we live near. We're as invested in
the neighborhood as anybody who doesn't own is likely to be, but we do think
the development is wholly reasonable and a great reuse of what is a hulking,
windowless brick building.

