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Comment by pascalxus | Hacker News Reader

Its fun to dream about the future. But, a dream is all it'll ever be. how does anyone expect to build this stuff, when we can't even build regular housing, anywhere near the amount that is required to match demand.

The only way, I can see this being built, is if new cities are created. These cities need to be populated by employers first: once that's there, most people that works there will find housing there too.

I wish these articles would stop pretending like everyone has a plethora of housing choices available - talking about what millenials "want" ~ our so called housing preferences. Our housing preference, first and foremost is to have a roof over our head without it costing more than 60% of our paycheck.

People go where the jobs go, there's no choice - this will always be the case as long as people need money, at least until remote work becomes possible

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Speak for yourself and your own city. My city doesn't really have a housing problem and I'd bet a vast majority in the US don't either. I'm easily a 15 min train ride from downtown and I have a huge back yard, garden, and space for my kayaking stuff.

Sure it's pricey in the city centers but not outrageous. It's only my California friends who are complaing, and to some extent Seattle.

If you're spending 60% of your income on housing you can easily find work elsewhere, take a pay cut, and still make out ahead. I spend 20% of my net pay on rent after taxes, insurance and 401k.

Enjoy your city while it lasts. Most blue/"Progressive" states and many blue cities especially coastal ones are all heading in this direction: Seattle, Portland, etc because they're not building enough. Their future is what CA looks like right now.

There were studies done on this and they found a pattern of housing problems in the more progressive cities - because they often clamp down on housing, reducing the supply, in the name of progess.

where do you live with mass transit and cheap housing? Also Chicago?

Salt Lake. Free bus + train in city center; yearly ticket outside of that.

Every big city has mass transit to at some degree. IDK what your specific requirements are though.

Interesting. I've never been to Salt Lake City. Where are some good places to live?

I did a look in Zillow, and there are a few houses within 30 minute commute for under 300k. Most seem above 350k and further than 30 min, though. Which still isn't bad. But, assuming around $2,000 / month for mortgage and taxes, I'd have to make $120k+, gross, to have it be 20% of my income. Are there a lot of jobs there that pay that much? Sounds nice.

Not on average. But since this is HN, there's a good chance you are a software engineer. Assuming solid ability and a few years experience, yes.

Also, I bought my first house in 2015. 2k sq ft, 0.2 acre, 2 was car garage, built 1976, 25min from SLC city center, for under $200k. Prices have gone up 10% since.

My wife and there kids and I live quite

* Should be: My wife and three kids and I live quite comfortably on my software engineering salary.

The rule of thumb is for housing to be up to 1/3 of your net pay, not 20%.

Whos rule of thumb is that, the banks? I am below 10% and this is after a pay cut (i.e. its not because I make 500k).

google for any budgeting guidelines and you will repeatedly see 1/3 net pay for housing mentioned. Here (Germany) landlords will decide letting you rent their property based on that ratio.

Consider that since even in the US houshold medien income is $59k (gross) per year, spending 10% for housing (unless you already outright own) is not tenable for most families.

1/3 is the MAX allowed by any sane landlord / bank (though I think some go as high as 50% for renting at least).

If your household income is 60k gross, your net should be north of 50k (figure at least 2 adults, maybe some kids, your tax burden will be lowish). 10% of 50k gives you $416 a month. Where I live (Indiana), that can get you a mortgage payment on a house that cost about 110k (say 15-20k down). That is totally reasonable. In my town you can get a solid 3 bedroom house with a yard

(First random result I pulled up from my city: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2612-Southridge-Dr-South-... )

I think most people spend far too high a % of their money on housing. Sometimes you can't help it (say, fresh out of college, moved to NYC for a big job). But a lot of people can, and still make bad choices.

3br with a yard will probably cost >€500k even in the remote suburbs around here. I think your case is particularly low priced for a city with a reasonable amount of jobs.

Well this is the US :) You posted median US income. The median family in the US lives in a small town, perhaps 50k-250k people. Most of them have similarly affordable towns. We are not suburbs of anything.. 90 minute drive from Chicago, but far enough to not really count as a burb.

I quoted US figures cause in other countries people generally earn less money (in Germany I think it converts to something like $50k/year).

But you're right that even here once you get far enough to not be reasonably commutable to one of the big cities prices plummet, just not sure which situation better represent the median family.

You can find rural/urban divides online but it's not quite the same if you consider people living in smaller towns are still being counted as urban...The biggest divide is probably between the super in-demand major cities (and their peripheries) vs everyone else.

This is further exaggerated here as Germany has the lowest birth rates in the world and one of the highest inbound immigration rates - which means the big cities are growing (as that's where immigrants are going) and the rest are deflating.

SLC is on my and my partner's list of places to live once we leave Los Angeles.

Are the inversions in SLC as bad as I've heard? How would life be for an asthmatic there?

> how does anyone expect to build this stuff, when we can't even build regular housing, anywhere near the amount that is required to match demand.

You can't in SF, NY, LA... other areas don't have this problem.

If your biggest desire is to have your housing not cost more than 60% of your paycheck, move to the suburbs of somewhere like Dallas. You'll be shocked at how many millennials can afford to have nice apartments or even buy homes without spending close to that, percentage-wise. Sure, they're doing it on a later schedule than the baby boomers, but in a lot of places that's a separate discussion of higher education requirements, student loan situations, etc, not terribly inflated housing costs.

But long-term-wealth-wise it might be better to land a top-tier job in an expensive city making $100K more a year in some combo of cash and equity and plowing that back into some of that expensive housing. Bit of a gamble, though. But if you aren't making more than (rough first guess, I feel on the too-low side with what I'm seeing rent-wise these days) $120K early in your career in one of the super-expensive cities, or have a clear path to well eclipsing that, you'd probably be much more comfortable making $70-100K in one of the cheaper, more southern, booming-yet-still-building-housing regions.

> Dallas

This is entirely true of the area. Affordability of nice housing is easily in-budget, even on a single income.

If you don't mind a commute, multiple acres of land is also an option. I just recevied an ad in the mail today for 5+ acre lots on a lake, 30 minutes from Dallas starting at $189k.

We moved from Dallas to Seattle 4 years ago for family. We moved back to Dallas after 18 months due to housing costs. Our house cost about 60% of what we would have spent for a dump half the size in the Seattle area.

But, then you have to live in Dallas! I'm only half kidding. I live in Portland and I love the rain, the trees, the mountains, the wildfire smoke (kidding), etc. of the PNW.

Chicago area is similar -- you can easily get a tech job (lots of trading houses here) making 6 figures (or close to it), and get a house in the suburbs (about 50 minute train ride away) for less than 200K, or often times around 100k if you get one that is less than pristine (and these are good investments too, if you can do handyman work yourself).

Or Atlanta. Even millennial who don’t work in tech can afford condos downtown.

Atlanta is fascinating because a lot of areas of Atlanta, like midtown and buckhead, seem to be doing exactly the sort of smart building that is so apparently impossible in California: transforming inside-the-perimeter space into higher-density inside-the-perimeter space, while already being bustling business centers, to an extent I haven't seen as much in the parts of Dallas I've spent most time in (I'm familiar with the continued expansion of satellite cities/suburbs, and the use of all the land to spread things around sufficiently so that it hasn't become the rush-hour-all-the-time mess of LA, but less so what's going on in more central areas).

My guess is that the difference is that more of those spaces in Atlanta had become more abandoned residentially in the past since there was room to expand outwards, opening them up for redevelopment now, whereas in LA or SF much of the old-construction lower-density stuff has remained in continual high demand because people have already gone outward just about as far as currently possible (1-2hr each way commutes) so NIMBYism kicks in hard. Plus things like "environmental impact studies" concluding traffic will be worse, etc—I'm very skeptical of the idea that keeping density low so everyone has to commute from further away really helps the environment.

   > Its fun to dream about the future. But, a dream is all it'll ever be.

I think it is more nuanced than that. The future is always a direction and not a destination. The article points out that the direction is more mixed us and less islands, more mass transit and less individual vehicle ownership.

So for a long time the 'way' was zoning commercial or zoning residential, never in between. But the 'future' became mixed use, and new projects started getting zoned that way, and now 20 years later we've got lots of places where there are shops below and condos or apartments above. I even saw a proposal for connected residents where the owner of a shop can live right over their business which could be leased at the same time, mitigating issues with living far away from your office.

And with most things as you move forward in a direction you learn things and then those things affect your direction. To the extent that new modalities of employment (working 'remotely' in high tech as an example) it also opens up development options. Imagine a chunk of Missouri converted into a 'town' with really nice Internet service so that folks living there could work from their 'home' or maybe a community 'office' but otherwise exploit low land and building costs of the different areas.

I think you need to consider that while you're top priority is a "roof over [your] head without it costing 60% of your paycheck" there is someone trying imagine what part of the equation they can change so that they can offer that to you while accommodating the way in which you acquire that paycheck.

And yet, the population in many western countries is cratering. Right now there is a housing crunch in some places, but once all the baby boomers die then there should be plenty of houses for the smaller number of children being born. And as a bonus the housing prices should tank since the supply should far outstrip the demand.

I wish that were true. Source?

It seems, US population is not cratering. According to this population projection, it will continue to increase all the way to 2060 and beyond: https://www2.gwu.edu/~forcpgm/Ortman.pdf .

There's plenty of cities already! I live in a smaller city, for me there is a good amount of employment options and stuff to do. I have a decent sized lot, have a 20 minute commute by bike (to the burbs!) and have plenty of places to eat within a 10 minute walk.

It is very affordable here, and there is plenty of housing to boot. I was able to buy a house my first year out of school. It was about 25% of my paycheck at the time and I've since paid off the place.

What city?

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