Comment by subhobroto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by subhobroto | Hacker News Reader

Housing is not affordable primarily because of rentseeking behavior from a constrained supply.

"Self-driving homes" have been available to every American for decades. They are called RVs. A more affordable and practical version are trailers.

There are trailers that expand out when parked to effectively double the floor space.

While living in a trailer is perfectly doable, there is a significant degradation in the quality of life.

Living in a studio apartment is, for the average person, a completely different experience than living in even a nice $70k trailer that has 3 beds and two bathrooms with sewage and 15A hookups.

Let's assume that the quality of life was comparable - it still costs thousands of dollars to rent a parking spot with hookups so you can live in a vehicle.

The concept the article is about is absolutely insane and far detached from reality.

It's a wierd take on a RV that combines all the responsibilities of owning a trailer with the responsibilities of owning an automobile with the risk of being unable to use the "home" when the automobile needs to go in for repairs coupled with the nightmare of having thousands of intricate parts that cannot be purchased without going through the dealership.

This is impractical and a disaster.

This not only fails to address affordable housing completely but makes a complete mockery of it.

Housing is not affordable primarily because of rentseeking behavior from a constrained supply.

Even if Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo et al were to mass produce these RVs and sell millions of them (which they will not), these vehicles will need to be parked somewhere and the rental fee for these parking spots will then become unaffordable for most.

Did it solve the unaffordable housing problem in the end?

No.

Your right on most points but what I am seeing locally is people just parking on wide streets that do not have strict parking limits. For instance, in Mountain View there are a couple of streets filled with RV's and in my neighborhood adjacent to Mountain View where I see a parked vw van with shades drawn on all the windows down the street from me. I have gotten a ticket for street parking and leaving my car there for more than three days so I assume these people just move their vehicles every couple of days so not the model predicted by this article.

Right. This article talks about nice toys for rich people and tries to conflate it, miserably, with a far fetched solution affordable housing.

I was big into the Tiny House movement for a time and you're right.

The problem is Land. Western countries need Land Reform v2.0 because despite only moderate or even negative population growth - the median person cannot afford to buy Land and the Property Rights to construct a home.

Only 40% of a house price is materials and labour.

It is simple and shocking: our governments have made it illegal to build in every way except literal law.

One, just one, minor factor is the quantity of land owned by the government - it is extraordinary. It would be possible to create a construction boom overnight by selling off many of the properties owned by councils, transportation authorities.

I live in a small town of no importance surrounded by a dozen small villages. I estimate minimum of 0.20 of the properties are vacant or underutilized by an assortment of public bodies. At one point every hotel in the town was owned by the government. Just yesterday I went to work on a small public building in a tiny village of about 50 people. I'd passed it hundreds of times and never realized our hospital system owned it - has not been used in two decades. I have no idea why they own it and I don't think they do either because there are buildings of similar size in every one of those villages which have not been used. Meanwhile there is a housing crisis where poor people can't get public housing. It's right there!

Houses for a typical family in this area would typically cost 200k-300k. Retrofitting one of these 'lost' buildings would cost 50k.

Somebody needs to preform a independent survey of all properties owned by the government, then organize the poorer inhabitants and young people to make purchase requests. If a good explanation of why the property is owned cannot be provided it ought to be sold to the public or used as public housing stock.

This is not capitalism vs communism people - it's just something that makes sense.

Upvoted.

The issue though, is that purchasing property requires capital.

That puts most people in a Catch-22 situation.

It seems like you have thought about this for a while: what about this:

Go talk to some of the landowners in your area and ask how much and what they would need to rent the space out for people to live in.

Then, you could either handle that yourself or broker a deal with someone who would.

You are on the way to thinking about a challenge that i have pondered about for a while and am working on: re Utilization.

CHECK OUT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18044075

I made an attempt to acquire a piece of property similar to this. I found that in Utah, eminent domain can be used by anyone to condemn property that is not being used for a public purpose, if you are going to use it for a public purpose.

An abandoned 65k square foot jail in my town had been unused for years, and I sought to turn it into a huge public Makerspace. I fought for years to get it, but the judge finally just refused. He didn't read the actual law.

There was a huge conflict of interest, and the mayor at the time(John Curtis, who is now a congressman) had other plans. He sold the property to an insider only netting the city $100k.

I lost the case, and my faith in politics and the rule of law.

I'm so sick of people getting away with fraud and corruption. I've seriously lost all motivation to build things.

Don't give up :)

Go check out the /r/vandwelling community on reddit before you make so many bad assumptions. This sort of living is totally doable and affordable, especially if you have a good job that can cushion any down time for the vehicle. Significant degradation is an overstatement. A decent sized van can easily fit a toilette, shower, bed, and food prep area if you get creative enough. A gym membership easily takes the shower out of the equation, and even the restroom if you're brave enough. Solar panels on the roof can handle most power needs save for high wattage appliances. With public wifi and power available at many locations who needs it. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Thank you not only for taking the time to read my comment but also sharing useful links with me.

> This sort of living is totally doable and affordable, especially if you have a good job that can cushion any down time for the vehicle. Significant degradation is an overstatement. A decent sized van can easily fit a toilette, shower, bed, and food prep area if you get creative enough. A gym membership easily takes the shower out of the equation, and even the restroom if you're brave enough. Solar panels on the roof can handle most power needs save for high wattage appliances. With public wifi and power available at many locations who needs it

There are a lot of assumptions there.

Yes, I have personally done each of those things but exactly because I am lucky to have a fantastic job that pays very well, excellent managers who understand that if the propane in my trailer runs out it's an emergency instead of a inconvenience, so I might be late to a meeting or have to remote in or that the reason why might have to leave early a few days is because I have to shop for groceries more frequently than a person who has a full size fridge in their apartment.

I am within the 1% of the U.S.

Most people in the U.S. don't have the same luxuries that I do.

They HAVE to be on time to work. They can't be making frequent grocery runs. They can't be cooking every other day. They have to purchase food in bulk, prepare them and store them in a big fridge to use over a week or two.

Time is not on the side of the typical American. It's a luxury.

Don't get me started about solar panels on roofs. It sounds good in theory. In practise, the panels get stolen at best. To get any practical current out of them given the surface area you have on a trailer, you have to purchase high quality panels, and people can see that from the street.

The trailer roof is not a flar uninterrupted surface like that of a building. It has antennas, it has vents, it has cabling - all that packed on a tiny space.

It's also a very poor signalling choice - if you have the disposable income to buy a thousand dollar solar panel, you are likely to have some more expensive stuff inside the trailer. That makes your trailer an attractive target.

There is a reason why trailer/van living is not mainstream.

If it was convenient, everyone would be doing it.

2 questions for you:

1. have you yourself dwelled in a van? for how long? 2. Do you personally know someone who has dwelled in a van?

The title makes it seem like these homes will always be moving, so no parking spots are needed.

Maybe one day, there will be high efficiency solar panels that will quickcharge off of star, or street lighting.

What advantage would always moving homes have over parked ones? They still take up the same amount of space, just the space they take up is always changing, and is more valuable since it also happens to be on a road.

There would be zero cost for renting the space. Well, until communitys fetch on and have special laws for this solution.

It's about a migration model for jobs I think.

You have two jobs, one in the city at weekends and another in the suburbs. You're out of the way for commuters and don't need to commute for long hours.

In the suburbs you might be paid to be there instead of paying to be there because you might be providing services like security, gardening while in the city the job might be cleaning.

A lot of people would like somebody trustworthy keeping an eye on their property while they're at work and there are a lot of vacant parking spaces in cities at the weekends. I haven't quite worked it out because when the commuter arrives home you might be in their space but maybe somebody can offer another version of the model.

Bingo.

Utilization.

I'm working on it. Would you like to discuss this offline?

You mean in person or by telephone? I don't live in the USA.

If you want you can send me an email with your thoughts (address in profile info field) and I'll reply, whether I've anything of substance to contribute remains to be seen but why not throw out some loose ideas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com