
The New ‘Dream Home’ Should Be a Condo - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/01/opinion/dream-home-condo-cloverdale.html
======
LyndsySimon
Granted I only skimmed the article, but it seemed rather myopic to me. Why is
the "dream home" assumed to be in an urban/suburban area? Why not in a small
town or rural area?

In January 2018, we moved back from Charlottesville, VA (which itself isn't
even "urban") to Harrison, AR. I was able to buy a five bedroom, two bath home
on a half acre in a quiet neighborhood for under $125k.

My wife and I are beginning to put together our requirements for our next
home, which will likely be a bit further from other people, outside city
limits, and likely be on 5-10 acres. The cost will till be far less than even
a three bedroom townhome would have been in Charlottesville.

~~~
esoterica
The article was focusing on the environmental impact of different living
situations, and rural living is horrifically environmentally unfriendly. It
would also be financially untenable if rural areas weren’t massively
subsidized by urban economic centers. If you had to pay for the true cost of
building and maintaining the infrastructure you use (which would be amortized
over very few people due to the low population density) you wouldn’t be
bragging about how cheap rural living is.

~~~
briHass
Don't forget, that rural infrastructure that is being 'subsidized' by urban
centers serves a pretty important role in, you know, growing and delivering
food consumed by those urban dwellers. Also: electricity production, natural
gas extraction, and landfills. All that also requires local workers.

How much more do you think the urban populations would be paying for these
essential products and services if you wanted to go tit-for-tat?

~~~
notJim
Kinda depends on definitions of rural, but I'd guess the vast majority of
people living in rural areas (having grown up in one) are not involved in any
kind of food or energy production. Most of them are doing hour-long commutes
by car into the city for work.

~~~
briHass
In those cases, it probably mostly washes out. The commuters are paying taxes
for the road use (gasoline taxes) and are also contributing to the tax base of
the 'subsidizing' urban areas with local/city taxes on their income earned in
the city.

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imgabe
>Every year, the National Association of Home Builders presents its vision for
the New American Home,

> This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more
> than 10,690 feet

Wait a minute, you mean the trade association for residential homebuilders
thinks we should build absurdly large, expensive houses? Well, I'm shocked.
Shocked, I tell you.

------
helen___keller
Personally I'm a fan of tightly packed townhomes (or, SFH packed with just a
few inches between them, as seen in some places), but I think an important
step towards the walkable urbanism the authors want is simply to remove
unnecessary restrictions on housing.

Like, I get that some people want big lawns and backyards but I don't get why
this needs to be the only housing that's legal in the majority of all suburbs
in the country (even many inner suburbs just a few miles from major urban
centers). Why can't I do what I want with my property? Is there really that
much of a public interest in forcing an entire neighborhood to be grass
farmers?

~~~
gowld
The big problem with townhomes and apartments is shoddy construction making
neighbors a noise nuisance.

Also, economics is weird. Townhomes cost almost the same as nearby houses,
perhaps because they are relatively limited supply and more cost-efficient to
maintain, so people look at the sticker price and think "oh, I can get a lot
more footage for a little more price".

Also, townhomes tend to get built as sound buffers alongside highways, making
them unpleasant to live in.

~~~
alistairSH
Those problems are solvable. My perception... the real problem is Americans
expect a lot of space. They would rather trade quality for sqft. A 2200sqft TH
with thin walls is more sellable than a 1600sqft TH with thick walls.

Additionally, THs are considered "starter" homes. Certainly here in DC, a
couple is expected to "move up" to a single-family in the outer 'burbs when
their family grows.

It's all quite silly. And I say that having bought the single family in my
20s, hated it, sold it in my early 40s to go back to a TH. Now I walk to work,
shorter drive to pretty much everything when needed, less maintenance. I'm
much happier.

~~~
magduf
>Certainly here in DC, a couple is expected to "move up" to a single-family in
the outer 'burbs when their family grows.

Yep, I'm in DC too, and happen to live in a condo. There's lots of townhomes
near me, but it amazes me how many people willingly move out to Haymarket or
Warrenton to buy an McMansion and then drive 2+ hours/day, mostly sitting in
bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-66. Now the government has cut down all the
trees and dug everything up around that highway so they can widen it, which of
course isn't going to help one iota.

>It's all quite silly. And I say that having bought the single family in my
20s, hated it, sold it in my early 40s to go back to a TH. Now I walk to work,
shorter drive to pretty much everything when needed, less maintenance. I'm
much happier.

Interesting: you sound a lot like me.

~~~
alistairSH
I get really annoyed at a few co-workers who live out in Haymarket and commute
to Reston. No shit your commute is awful. There's a reason I live in a
1500sqft TH across the street and not a 2800sqft McMansion 20+ miles away!
Yes, they cost the same. But, is the extra space really worth the commuting
headaches???

------
abawany
I have dealt with more than my fair share of HOAs in such housing (townhomes
organized as condos, high-rise, etc.) Some of the stories of dysfunctional
HOAs are right on the money unfortunately. Also, state laws give HOAs more
power than they typically deserve: until about 2012, Texas allowed HOAs the
following: place liens on shareholders' properties without explicitly
informing them, deny them xeriscapy options, and define where they may or may
not place flags. It is horrifying what trouble a bunch of tinpot bullies can
cause when they manage to infest an HOA board.

Transparency is another problem area: it is often difficult, without going
though the expense of making a purchase offer, to get HOA terms, details of
board meetings, and budgets; this makes it tough to go in with informed
consent when making one of the biggest purchases that you will make. I had to
withdraw a purchase offer (and lose my option fee; I since learned that a good
realtor would get the information before going through the process of making
an offer) once after reading the 60+ page HOA terms, which appeared to mandate
that the buyer must leave a key with the central office and that the latter
may visit properties as they needed with unacknowledged prior notice.

I wish HOAs had to be treated as public concerns so that the light would shine
brightly on pathological boards and buyers would have the best available
information possible.

------
tibbon
I'm remembering how weird of a place (Boston) I'm living in.

> This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more
> than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet).

Even properties that Red Sox players are living in west of the city are rarely
over 6,000sq/ft. When I see a listing for a home over 3,000sq/ft here it's a
rarity.

~1200-2400 sq/ft homes are pretty average in the Boston/Cambridge area. Many
condos are more in the 800-1600 sq/ft range, and it's also not uncommon to
find 1200sq/ft houses.

I guess that being said, almost everything here is 100 years old. I'm
personally against a condo for myself because I'm just too damn loud (drums
and guitar), and I'm sure to piss off most neighbors with that. If it wasn't
for that hobby, I'd be totally happy with a condo.

I just checked, and there is _one_ property for sale in Boston-proper (which
includes JP and Dorchester) over 9,000 sq/ft for sale right now, and it's a
15k sq/ft estate for nearly 4mm.

~~~
sopooneo
$4,000,000 / 15,000ft^2 = $267 / 1ft^2

That's actually a steal (unit price wise) in the Boston/Cambridge market right
now.

~~~
danans
Very large houses never have high price per square foot because the utility of
housing space scales logarithmically not linearly.

The price curve starts flattening just above the median sized house for a
given area.

~~~
magduf
Not only that, but the construction costs are cheaper per square foot for
larger houses. Much of the cost of a house is in the kitchen and bathrooms.
But bigger houses almost always still only have one kitchen, even if it is a
lot fancier, and the number of bathrooms doesn't go up linearly. Bigger houses
just have bigger rooms mainly, and also extra rooms that are empty and don't
cost much to build ("bonus rooms", dens, etc.).

~~~
danans
However, the operational (heating, AC) and maintenance costs of a large house
do scale more directly with it's size, especially for jobs that involve the
whole structure, like re-roofing, re-siding, etc. So in the end they end up
being far more expensive to live in.

~~~
magduf
Siding costs do not go up linearly with interior volume. This is basic
geometry which I shouldn't have to explain on this forum.

Operational and maintenance costs are a different factor; we were talking
about house price, and I went into construction cost. Operations costs are
different, and consumers are pretty infamous for only looking at initial costs
and not thinking about operational/maintenance costs. This is especially true
with cars: people look only at the purchase price and don't think about how
much gas costs, so they buy a giant SUV even though it gets 50% worse fuel
economy, and then they complain about how much it costs to refuel.

~~~
danans
> Siding costs do not go up linearly with interior volume. This is basic
> geometry which I shouldn't have to explain on this forum.

Of course it doesn't scale linearly with volume, it scales linearly with
exterior surface area, which itself scales with square footage, which was the
base metric I used, not volume. The shape that minimizes the surface area to
volume ratio is a sphere, which most houses are not.

~~~
magduf
No, but the circumference of a rectangle does not scale linearly with the area
of that rectangle. The area increases quadratically with the circumference.

~~~
danans
The point is that bigger houses are more expensive to operate and maintain,
all else equal.

~~~
magduf
Yes, they are, and that's why I responded by pointing out that consumers
generally don't think about that factor, they only think about initial costs.

~~~
danans
It's hard to blame consumers if they are buying the average sized homes for
their area that are still huge in operational and maintenance costs.

In most newer SFH developments, house size is usually dictated by exclusionary
zoning (i.e minimum lot and house sizes) and developer business priorities,
not by what is financially prudent for buyers. And as your SUV example
illustrates, bigger sells better.

Choosing not to buy in to that usually requires relocating to an area that
values efficiency over size, and those are often very expensive areas, since
they are few and far between.

~~~
magduf
The consumers are always at fault, as they're the ones with the purchasing
power, and the voting power.

>And as your SUV example illustrates, bigger sells better.

There's no such thing as "vehicle zoning"; if consumers wanted to buy smaller
vehicles, they're out there on the market. No one's forcing them to buy and
drive huge SUVs.

>In most newer SFH developments, house size is usually dictated by
exclusionary zoning (i.e minimum lot and house sizes) and developer business
priorities, not by what is financially prudent for buyers.

This is controlled by the local government, which is controlled by the voters,
who are the consumers.

They don't have these problems in Japan, because they don't have exclusionary
zoning. If you own the lot, you can build whatever the heck you want on it,
and the neighbors have no power to stop you.

------
howard941
No. Common walls and shared floor/ceiling sucks, thank you very much. Better
to be in a trailer (which I quite like)

~~~
HeadsUpHigh
Exactly. People living in urban areas are used to the noise or the requirement
for silence but when I moved to an apartment from my parents' house I hated
every second of it.

------
nimbius
a major point people dont consider is the HOA. Speaking from experience of a
friend who was a plumber for one of these condo complexes:

In a condo, if an HOA is required to fix plumbing or landscaping, paint, or
roofing, then it comes out of the CAM fees paid by the residents. However, if
the HOA does NOT pay for that work, or tries to stiff the construction firm
they hire, the construction company can take out a lien on the property until
their bill is paid.

That lien means you cannot sell your condo until the HOA pays their debt. In
my friends case, the HOA had blown all their CAM money on lavish vacations and
dinners for key members of the HOA board. They had no money to pay for a
sewage repair job, and left 54 members of the housing compex stuck with a
$20,000USD repair bill. After a grisly court battle the HOA was disbanded, CAM
fees were agreed to be paid directly to the plumbing company for the year, and
the complex went into foreclosure after the debt had been paid as most tenants
had sold.

~~~
webdood90
54 people couldn't cough up $20k?

~~~
WorldMaker
54 people couldn't pay the bare modicum of attention to their HOA's budget to
stop them from spending on meals and vacations that have nothing to do with
the HOA's role?

~~~
magduf
I've lived in HOA neighborhoods before; the power any individual resident has
over the HOA is nearly nil. You'd basically have to run around to all the
neighbors and convince them to vote for someone else at the next board
election; it's just like regular government politics that way.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Yes, that's a pretty bare modicum of effort.

~~~
magduf
Convincing your neighbors to vote a certain way is "a pretty bare modicum of
effort"? If that were true, we wouldn't have our current democracy in such a
terrible state. Billions of dollars are spent on every election to try to
convince voters of how to vote, and look where it gets us. How do you think
one person running around to his neighbors is going to convince them to vote
for genuinely good HOA board members? Remember that the bad members are also
going to be running around trying to get votes.

And who would you have them vote for anyway? Yourself? I don't know about you,
but I have no time or inclination for such a job. Frequently, HOAs turn out
this way because the people who _do_ have time for that crap are the people
who really are a problem. This is a strong argument in favor of professional
property management in fact (which is what my condo has, and doesn't seem to
have any of these problems).

~~~
WorldMaker
The "bare modicum of effort" in that case as the average person would be at
least paying attention to the folks running around trying to get votes, and
paying attention to what they are telling you. Billions of dollars are spent
trying to convince voters _to_ vote, because the only real winner in most
general elections, whether HOA or national, is "apathy" as most votes are
undecided or not even cast.

Also, things like meeting minutes and annual budgets are generally required to
be transparent in most HOA founding documents (constitutions, articles of
incorporation, bylaws). You don't have to want to be a board member to review
meeting notes (or directly attend meetings in most cases), and especially to
review an annual budget of how your money is spent. 54 different people in the
example above had an opportunity to review the budget? Did they just not care?
Was it "creative accounting" fraud? (If so, why weren't the people responsible
personally liable for fraud? White collar crimes are still crimes.)

My HOA maintenance fees include major utilities so we all assume year-to-year
increases, but just about everyone in my building still seems to take a fine
tooth comb to the annual budget every year in the hopes of avoiding an
increase or finding a possible decrease.

(Also, property managers are generally orthogonal concerns to HOAs given they
have different goals and most property managers still report to an HOA. You
can still have good property company reporting to a bad HOA. There are also
plenty of horror stories of bad property management companies out there. My
HOA has already been through a small handful of property management companies
trying to find a good one. We seem to have lucked out with the current one, at
least, given all that we are going through.)

~~~
magduf
>because the only real winner in most general elections, whether HOA or
national, is "apathy" as most votes are undecided or not even cast.

That simply isn't true. As bad as voter turnout is in the US, it's still over
50%. The winner is ignorance, as so many voters actively vote against their
own best interests (e.g., poor people voting for the party that passes tax
breaks for millionaires).

>why weren't the people responsible personally liable for fraud? White collar
crimes are still crimes.

Now this is an excellent question here. I have no idea what the answer is, but
it seems like the US is really bad about this kind of thing, and not just with
HOA management. It seems like prosecutors here just don't want to bother with
cases like this, maybe because not enough money is involved?

>There are also plenty of horror stories of bad property management companies
out there.

Yes, but at least here, as you found out with your case, you can just hire a
different company when you need to. It seems like the best case is what your
HOA has going on: an HOA composed of owners, acting mainly as overseers for
the professional management company that does that bulk of the work of
managing the place. The HOA horror stories I've seen (and experienced) seem to
involve HOAs which do their own management, so basically some busybody in the
neighborhood who has time and interest gets voted in along with a few of his
cronies, and then mismanages the funds badly.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Voter turnout only goes over 50% for presidential elections. It isn't even
that high for midterm federal elections, let alone local ones. A school bond
failed in the next county last week because an overwhelming number of votes
supported it - but they didn't have enough people vote to make it a legal
quorum (or whatever it's called).

[https://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101](https://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101)

------
Simulacra
NO. Condos are actually really crappy places to live, like being in an
apartment complex but you have to pay a (generally) overly burdensome HOA,
deal with politics and power play issues, not to mention the noise and
nuisance of being in an apartment. Townhomes are better, but truly the "dream
home" is still your own house, no HOA, with space between you and your
neighbors, a dedicated place to park your car, and the freedom to say "get off
my lawn."

~~~
anth_anm
Lawns are ridiculous wastes of water.

------
acheron
Ideally I never want to encounter any other person that I don't actually live
with at my residence. Condos are terrible, as are townhouses, and indeed
normal houses built on tiny lots squished up next to each other ruled over by
an HOA. L'enfer, c'est les autres.

Yes, condos have a place, and are necessary sometimes, but they're an
unfortunate compromise, not even remotely a "dream home".

------
seanalltogether
As long as the new dream home has thick walls and soundproof ceilings...

But I'm not gonna bet too heavily on builders caring about those features.

~~~
Simulacra
A friend of ours has a condo that was built in the 60s, and there’s a foot of
concrete between every floor and unit. I envy that.

------
pxeboot
In my area (Texas), condos in desirable areas cost more than McMansions, so I
don't see things changing here anytime soon.

~~~
criddell
Are the McMansions you are talking about in the same desirable area?

------
wjossey
There's something super amusing about some of the stuff they describe in the
article, along with the diagram of the public transportation options. What
they don't mention is that everyone who lives in that building almost
certainly would drive to work- Because, Los Angeles. Those units will be near
a new subway line that will be completed in the next five years (but they'd
still have to bank on their office being on that line).

I also don't tend to find a lot of new condo developments in this area that
are for sale. They all seem to be rented by the builder. My presumption being
that credit continues to be so cheap, they can afford the slow burn down from
rents, since thye're not getting crushed by the interest payment. But, I'm not
a landlord, so I don't know for sure.

------
madengr
Screw condos. I’ll take a home where I can put up ham radio antennas and shoot
guns, without pesky neighbors.

~~~
superkuh
You're not wrong and this isn't just a throwaway sentiment. Yours is an actual
realistic criticism of the ideas of the article despite what the urbanites
think.

~~~
tom_
I'm not really sure it's a criticism, more just an minor splash of inchoate
rage, and we're supposed to sort of figure out the implied criticism. Which
is, I assume, that perhaps more people want a massive house in the middle of
nowhere than don't, and that most people don't actually want to live in a
city, but put up with it for one reason for another. And then perhaps this
massive house _should_ be the ideal home, because what is the point of an
ideal if it's something that most people don't want?

~~~
superkuh
Okay, I'll spell it out for you. I understand that most people in the world
and the USA are packed in to high density cities on the coast. But your
numerical superiority does not mean that your ideals define what is or what
should be. Nor does commenting on alternative views of what is good mean we
are full of 'rage' despite what your stereotypes may suggest.

Living in high density areas is a trade of individual rights for job
opportunities. And it makes sense. You can't have people in high density areas
playing around with things that make loud noises because everything you do in
such areas effects others. It's just common curtesy if not against the local
laws.

It's not about house size. It's about all the comprimises you have to
constantly make when you don't really own the land or building you live in and
can't chose what behaviors you want to do even if they don't hurt others (ie,
San Fran saying they can tell you what you can do with your apartment or house
re: airbnb). This diminishment of the individual is _bad_ for US society as it
has existed for most of the past. Unfortunately the urbanization of America by
relative population is unlikely to stop and those born into it will likely
never know freedom is available elsewhere.

ps, high density areas have terrible, terrible radio frequency interference.
If you want to set up an amateur radio astronomy kit or do a bit of ham radio
you're pretty much out of luck except for the line of sight VHF and up bands
that are, mostly, boring. And don't even try to to put up a decent size tower;
it won't be approved because all the people nearbye will be "effected" by
being able to see it and complain (if it's not explicitly against local law).

~~~
helen___keller
I agree with most of your post, choosing to live in low density if you prefer
should be considered wholly valid. However...

> This diminishment of the individual is bad for US society as it has existed
> for most of the past.

This statement is vague, presumptive, and poorly justified. For those who
prefer to live in the cities can you justify there is a diminishment of the
individual? In what ways is it "bad for US society"? And finally, I'm not even
convinced on "has existed for most of the past"

~~~
superkuh
I mean the dimishment of the individual for the potential* betterment of
society as a whole or advancement of some ideology. In this post I will try to
clarify the differences between the US's incumbent system of individuality
versus the rest of the world's collectivism.

But first, back to specifics. It is not controversial to say you have to give
up many individual rights by living within city limits. My example above was
the lack of property rights when living in a large city like San Francisco.
You can't do with your property what you like because the city values social
harmony over individual volition and rights. They effectively own your
property and allow you to do some subset of things on their whim. Another
example of this is city wide smoking bans in privately owned businesses and
property. Depending on your point of view this may be an entirely worthwhile
thing if it betters society as a whole. But it is definitely the diminishment
of the individual. It is a restriction of their behavior despite no use of
force or fraud.

More generally, there are two takes on freedom as implemented by governments.
The first is that of negative liberty as originated by Kant and fleshed out
and implemented in foreign and domestic policy by Isaiah Berlin and his
contemporaries in the US federal government in the 1950s-1980s. It is the idea
that freedom is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints imposed by
external agents. In it individuals are free to the extent that they are not
interfered with in their personal choices or behaviors. This fits snugly with
the US founding documents like the declaration of independence and the bill of
rights. US citizens have generally been free to do whatever they want as long
as they are not hurting our defrauding others. I will not try to convince you
this has existed for most of the past because it is incredibly obvious and the
very heart of the country's founding ideology.

Almost all other countries take a different approach. They believe that
individuals do not really have full volition and that often internal things
restrict their freedom just as much as external things. Like the smoking
example above, no one is forced to go to a resteraunt that allows smoking. But
in a collectivist point of view people that do go aren't really in control of
themselves and need to have their behavior restricted for the greater
statistical good. The individual's volition is not valued nearly as high as
that of social harmony and so force is used to constrain their behavior. This
is positive liberty. It is not inherently bad but it often leads to troubles
with authoritarianism due to the concentration of power and acceptance of the
use of force to interference with individual choices. This is bad and often
has lead to very bad things happening.

Even if you value social harmony over individual choice the slow shift of the
balance towards positive liberty in urban areas of the USA is bad if only
because the USA is the last nation left that prioritizes the individual choice
over social harmony. If wiped out here it the world becomes a much less
diverse and free place.

*, potential: And this is another key point. In political systems that value social harmony first decisions are made based on potential future outcomes. This leads to things like future crime wherein certain behaviors that don't hurt or defraud others are met with violence by the police because there's a statistical chance the person involved may do something bad later. The epitome of this is drug laws but it also applies more generally.

~~~
helen___keller
Thanks for the detailed post. A few thoughts before the weekend:

> the US's incumbent system of individuality versus the rest of the world's
> collectivism.

>Even if you value social harmony over individual choice the slow shift of the
balance towards positive liberty in urban areas of the USA is bad if only
because the USA is the last nation left that prioritizes the individual choice
over social harmony.

I do think it is a bit of a broad brush to paint the world in this manner,
polarized between the individualist united states and the collectivist
_everybody else_. Certainly the difference between China and the United States
is day and night, but I find it unlikely there is such a wide difference
between say Australia and the United States.

> This is positive liberty. It is not inherently bad but it often leads to
> troubles with authoritarianism due to the concentration of power and
> acceptance of the use of force to interference with individual choices. This
> is bad and often has lead to very bad things happening.

While I can't disagree that this "positive liberty" can certainly be bad, or
even terrible, when misused, I don't agree this meets the standard I was
looking for, that the usage of positive liberty as seen in US cities is bad
for US society.

>This fits snugly with the US founding documents like the declaration of
independence and the bill of rights.

I can't say I disagree, however I question how much of a role I would place
the countries historical individualism in our modern public policy. Do I want
a repeat of the Boston Molasses Flood because it's that important to me that
we embrace our historical individualism, therefor we must not place
restrictions on the activity of those doing private business in a city?

------
mnm1
Yeah, but how are rich Americans supposed to feel superior to poor Americans
in an 1800 sq ft condo? Ridiculous. That's just for plebs. /s

------
fred3300
Reading the article and these comments is somewhat entertaining. 1\. The size
of the show home is dictated in part by the desire of the associations to
incorporate and show off the different products of the sponsors. More sponsors
means more revenue for the show.

2\. Roads are needed to transport goods from urban center to urban center in
addition for rural to urban. Years ago the livestock industry changed their
slaughtering and processing from urban center to rural (or small town).

3\. This author is based in San Francisco. By the standards of my part of the
world, SF is now a third world country, people shooting up in the street,
taking a d __p where hey like (in the road, etc. If she can 't fix where she
lives what right does she have telling me how to live?

------
refurb
After owning a few different place, single family home and two condos, I've
decided that I will never own a condo again, only a SFH. Too much crap to put
up with.

------
castlecrasher2
>This is the New American Home for 2018. It’s a sprawling monstrosity of more
than 10,690 feet (the lot encompasses 65,340 square feet).

No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece.
The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember
correctly.

>Does anyone need 10,000 square feet to live in?

Does anyone want to put up with petulant condo associations/HOA squabbles?
Besides, if someone wants to pay housekeeping to clean it or spend half their
week cleaning that's their business.

>Enter the Green New Deal

oh so this is just a thinly disguised anti-rich opinion piece

~~~
alistairSH
_No, this is an exaggeration for the sake of a highly slanted opinion piece.
The average size of a new house in the US is about 2500 sq ft if I remember
correctly._

No, the NAHB titles their test home "The New American Home".

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supermw
What is the point of these opinion pieces? Why should we care about what
someone at New York Times says over any other person? These kind of articles
must be made simply to drive traffic and stimulate rage. It will be
interpreted as just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire
to live and die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared
building with neighbors on all sides pestering them and a condo HOA breathing
down their backs. I guess it worked.

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matt4077
Well, as you say, it's an opinion piece. It's raison d'être is to allow people
to make informed decisions. To that purpose, it is helpful for a society to
have reasoned analyses that go beyond the low-value collection of stereotypes
and bad-faith of sentences like:

> just another coastal elite telling Americans they should aspire to live and
> die in a cold steel and concrete box partitioned out in a shared building
> with neighbors on all sides pestering them

