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Comment by losvedir | Hacker News Reader

Low cost, high density housing that's safe, clean, and comfortable. I think this goes hand in hand with the basic income research: what good is a basic income if any decent housing is more expensive than the income? (Alternatively: how do we fund basic income when the basic cost of living is so high?)

I think there's a lot of ways housing could be made cheaper via building materials and techniques, architecture, technology, policies, and processes. One of the issues with extremely cheap housing is keeping it safe and desirable for tenants, e.g., dealing with drug abusers and dealers (which frequently make our current low-cost housing dangerous).

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I believe that Ikea had a model home that they were building that was a practical minimal shelter. Perhaps there are ways to extend that?

Also, I remember that there were a few companies in China and Australia that were experimenting with 3d printing of concrete homes. Perhaps that could use a little help as well?

Housing is expensive because it's a positional good, not because it's expensive to produce.

It's only positional because density is limited. If the market were allowed to build up wherever they wanted each "position" would basically be an infinite resource...

What are the good arguments for keeping it so?

Of course if one could build anything anywhere, it would be unreasonable to demand the water/el/internet/sewage grid to be extended there at no costs, so some alternative mechanism to ensure such services would be necessary. Same goes for other communal services like healthcare and education, I guess.

All the arguments basically boil down to "it would change the character of the neighborhood/city".

I think this is important for 'average' dwellers and not just low-income folks.

My wife won't live in an apartment ("high-density") area because groceries are hard to get inside. Car-->fridge distance matters a hell of a lot to her.

But we can solve that problem.

> Car-->fridge distance matters a hell of a lot to her.

That's interesting, is there a particular reason for this or is this a nice illustration of 'first world problems'?

To have both a car and a fridge, the money to stock the fridge and then to trip over the distance from the car to the fridge (which can easily be made light enough by using a luggage trolley or by asking the s.o. to assist) as a major stumbling block in the selection of housing is something I never considered possible. I see a lot of good reasons for wanting to live in an actual house rather than in an apartment building (I'm living in an apartment building at the moment for the first time in 40 years) but that one never occurred to me.

I'd agree -- as someone living in Europe, the idea of grocery shopping by car itself is already pretty luxurious.

Worrying about the distance between car and fridge sounds silly when most of us are used to walking half to one kilometer (.7 miles) to the nearest supermarket and taking everything back by foot. Several times per week.

Not to mention that many apartment buildings don't have elevators...

> as someone living in Europe, the idea of grocery shopping by car itself is already pretty luxurious

Wait what? As European students, my girlfriend and I already do groceries by car. My parents and her parents as well. My grandparents as well. Unless you happen to live next to the supermarket, everyone does as far as I know. What country are you from?

To me it doesn't sound luxurious to do groceries by car, it sounds like poverty to have to go by foot for a kilometer while carrying heavy grocery bags.

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