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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Most of the world lives in housing poverty compared to American norms.

What does "housing poverty" mean here? As far as I can tell it means "houses smaller than I am used to". In which case I have to ask what is the concern with houses less than 2500 sq ft? I can't find any evidence that housing size, above some minimum[1], is correlated with happiness. See e.g.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45420795#:~:text=The%20U....

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9732-2

or do you own search.

This desire for extremely large houses just seems to be a combination of prior expectations that houses will be large and status seeking. Expectations can adjust over time and I don't put much value on status seeking.

[1] The BBC article lists "4 rooms per occupant" as the threshold beyond which there is no increase in satisfaction.

4 rooms per occupant is huge.

Consider a 3/3 with a kitchen, dining room and living room. For 4 people (two kids and two parents) you have 9 rooms, or a little over 2 per person.

This family would need to double their house size before maxing out.

Yes, I misinterpreted the article. I assumed it was 4 rooms that each occupant could access, including shared rooms such as living rooms. A better summary is:

* moving to a larger house leads to a small increase in "housing satisfaction" in most cases;

* houses larger than 4 rooms per occupant bring no increase in satisfaction with increasing size.

My family is considered "underhoused" by the US government, because we have fewer bedrooms than occupants. I certainly don't feel it myself. We have three bedrooms for the four of us, and even chose to use the third as a media room until the kids get sick of the bunk beds.

We've lived in both sorts of situations in the recent past. Extra rooms give you flexibility and the opportunity for privacy, which is really nice with young children who aren't sleeping well yet, and might disturb their siblings if they were bunked. There are trade-offs involved in both situations, which one is better for you just depends on what you value.

I generally think that there's too much of a slant toward large houses in the new housing stock in the US, though - they're more expensive to buy and maintain, and generally not the best choice for young people.

Most of the US still lives in really crappy old homes built in the last century, with asbestos insulation, tar shingles, fiber board, and wood rot. Doesn't really compare with building standards in Europe, even Eastern Europe. China also has modernized and built some awesome cities. Middle East, and Asian cities are also pretty modern. I'm not really sure who you are comparing to? India? Africa?

Average US home is twice as big as European. Only Australian homes are bigger: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-h...

Thats not neccesarily contradicting his point, the house coild be large but poorly built. In fact that could make sence

US homes are relatively new compared to many of the homes in Europe, so I'm not sure why you're calling them 'old'.

Also, Europe's prevalent masonry construction might "feel" solid, but that doesn't equal a high level of "building standards". A whole lot of western safety/environmental/plumbing/electrical/accessibility standards have changed in the past 20-70 years.

Much in the way chrome-adorned '60s US cars "felt" solid, and older people scoffed at the inornate "plastic cars" of the '90s, this perception of quality didn't translate to actual engineering superiority.

Some of the over-sized chintzy boxes that are built in the US are actually built to pretty dang good standards, i.e.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Building_Code

1) asbestos wasn't really used widely for insulation in the normal sense of that word. 2) in the right climate, tar shingles are actually extremely effective as a roofing solution. 3) the US does not have large supplies of bricks, and many areas do not have easy access to stone suitable for building (which is also extremely expensive in terms of labor). Hence wooden frame construction. 4) fiber board, when properly isolated from the weather, is an extremely durable and strong material. it is unfortunate that it tends to require environmentally unfriendly resins to manufacture. 5) there is a LOT of poor construction in the USA, but picking on particular techniques isn't the way to describe the problems. 6) there are many cheap houses in the USA that have much better energy efficiency than classic old houses across Europe, specifically because they use wood frame construction and moderate levels of insulation and air sealing.

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