Talks of $80 to $300 per square foot construction costs.
20 years ago, with extreme measures to save costs, salvaged materiels, and so on; I built a house for $25 per sq ft. Online calculator says that the equivalent of $42 / today. That's half buried 1.5 floors and 3k sq ft.
Perhaps we can cut the cost of housing by making houses cheaper? Do we really need layers of flooring when a cement slab and epoxy coat on top of that make a resilient, useful floor for decades?
How much of that expense is classed as "trim" that could be left out entirely without degrading any of the home's functionality?
I won't even start on the things like GFCI / "Arc fault" breakers, which would be great if they worked as advertised but are required even though they really don't.
We have a gap in home construction where the "tar paper shack" used to be; we've decided as a society that housing must be high standard or not there. This error causes many of the problems we're concerned with.
20 years ago, with extreme measures to save costs, salvaged materiels, and so on; I built a house for $25 per sq ft. Online calculator says that the equivalent of $42 / today. That's half buried 1.5 floors and 3k sq ft.
Perhaps we can cut the cost of housing by making houses cheaper? Do we really need layers of flooring when a cement slab and epoxy coat on top of that make a resilient, useful floor for decades?
How much of that expense is classed as "trim" that could be left out entirely without degrading any of the home's functionality?
I won't even start on the things like GFCI / "Arc fault" breakers, which would be great if they worked as advertised but are required even though they really don't.
We have a gap in home construction where the "tar paper shack" used to be; we've decided as a society that housing must be high standard or not there. This error causes many of the problems we're concerned with.