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Comment by GFischer | Hacker News Reader

Something I don't understand is that, even with shockingly high rent prices, no smaller units seem to be built.

As a South American and having seen European housing, the only city that has something equivalent to what's "normal" here is New York.

Not even San Francisco builds small apartments/condos. An average 2-bedroom in Europe or in Buenos Aires is 600 square foot, and that's the size of a studio apartment in the United States. I'm not saying going to extremes like Tokyo and their 300 square foot apartments (I lived in a 200 square feet studio for a couple of years, it's doable).

I did a quick search and the 1000 dollar apartments/condos for rent in New Jersey are similar in size to 1000 dollar apartments here in Montevideo... but there are no 500 dollar equivalents!

I think most people in the U.S. think they NEED that much space (even when they don't).

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Building code is one of the reasons. In a lot of cities the builder is required to provide parking spaces and other amenities per apartment. This is after the minimum space required to build everything to code. This makes building small capsule apartments impractical and in some cases impossible.

See the link below for the challenges in Los Angeles.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar...

No. Small capsules are impractical in LA, because the infrastructure requires a car.

Don’t blame the building code. Those cars need to go somewhere!

You can get around LA without a car. My mom did it a few years back, and I've done it as a visitor/tourist more times than I can count. I know other people in LA who also manage.

Is it hard? Yes. Is car-free the minority? Yes. But saying the infrastructure requires a car is wrong when there's a fair number of people who make it work. LA can build developments that don't need auto infrastructure, and the more they build, the easier being car free will be.

I understand from an outside view it may look like we think we NEED that much space... But really it's economics of building development, primarily ROI for the building company. It's more profitable to make more expensive type of housing on that land than it is to make small apartments or starter homes. Hence the seemingly barren housing options within the small apartment and small/starter home markets... It sucks...

And people say this is necessary when we built thousands of starter homes in decades past and somehow developers still made scads of cash.

There was a lot more available space then.

That’s not true, it’s the building codes. Municipalities have made creating new naturally affordable housing illegal. There are minimum unit sizes based on expected occupancy, density maximums (ie up to N units per lot), parking minimums based number of units etc. It is a political problem, not a question of profit.

Well yeah, we cap total production so low that builders aren’t even allowed to saturate the .01%-er market.

If Toyota was only allowed to make 10 cars a year, you can bet they would be top-of-the-line Lexus models.

There’s no market. People who need $500 apartments get subsidies. In my city, the rent for a fancy suburban apartment is within 15% of a ghetto hole with people selling heroin out front. Now there’s a new market for dual-income, no kids and retirees who want very fancy stuff in the city.

That “$1000” apartment is a sweet spot for builders. The cost of building out a smaller, high density apartment is higher due to more trade work (plumbing, electrical, etc) and more risk abatement for building codes and ADA compliance.

Not true, at least if you are looking at the demand side. Micro-apartments got approved for building in a San Francisco suburb and got bought up right away.

Perhaps your city is an outlier, but across the U.S. micro-housing is in demand. Here's a great starting off point to read about it (and do visit the linked research in the article):

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2017/03/31/what-is-t...

SFO is an outlyer. I said there's no demand for $500 apartments (implying a median market). Bay Area micro-apartments aren't $500/mo!

I think there is demand. That's the niche that SROs used to fill in the Bay Area. Now a lot of people who would've been in units priced around $500 are living in their cars or in the street. The wait for affordable housing is long, and most landlords refuse to rent out to Section 8 tenants. That's why housing around this price point is needed by many.

If there’s no demand, why do we need regulations to prevent them?

Very cool and exactly what I was mentioning. And the MicroPAD apartments look way cooler than my old studio :)

Of course, I paid 200 dollars in rent, not 3500 !

"NEED" is somewhat loaded and subjective. We only "need" just enough space to have shelter from the elements. Things like most appliances, toilets and so forth are optional and can just as easily be provided communally (and were for literally centuries in many places).

Why should "what is needed" be higher in priority than a slightly more spacey/comfortable/whatever standard? There's a spectrum between living one step removed from hunter-gatherers sheltering in caves and Middle Class McMansions. It's certainly not clear to me that moving as far as 600 square feet for a two bedroom is necessary, even when it seems that certainly more high density housing is.

There's this odd tendency to glorify being powerless or under the thumb of others on this site. If you don't own your appliances, you are at the mercy of someone else. If the microwave in the shared kitchen is busted, you need to wait for the landlord to fix it; meanwhile hope you like eating out. If you have a shared refrigerator, you are at the mercy of other people not eating your food. If toilets, keeping them clean.

The reason why we need this space and own these things is to be able to have control over our own experience. I own a book because I don't want to have to depend on the library having it in stock when I need it. I have a bathroom so I can use it when I wan't, not have to wait for twenty minutes because someone else is being sick in it, cleaning it up, or because there is a long line for the morning shower.

I don't know if I'd go that far. I think it's less malicious, and has a better analogy with the way people would rather take from someone else than work to improve both their lots. We see that all the time in American politics: poor people railing against government job benefits because "why should they have it so good?" instead of asking themselves why their employers, who are generally much wealthier than the government, can't provide similar benefits. Same thing here.

I don't see why we have to diminish our living space to the standard of Europe (for example). We have more land, first of all. Second of all, restricted land area isn't the only reason for Europe's relatively smaller dwelling sizes: they have their own class problems and NIMBY problems.

I totally agree with this, and I think housing expenses is a really clear example of the impact government policy has on economics: LA and SF have more expensive housing than NYC, despite having worse incomes because they discourage dense development.

> I think most people in the U.S. think they NEED that much space (even when they don't).

I honestly don't know what people do with so much space. I just moved into a "large" (for me) 3-bedroom apartment with 2 roommates and think this is already more space than I need (1000 square feet total).

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