Mobile Home Skyscrapers: The Elusive Dream of Vertical Urban Trailer Parks | Hacker News Reader

Mobile Home Skyscrapers: The Elusive Dream of Vertical Urban Trailer Parks

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Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo has some similarities to this concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower

> The building is composed of two interconnected concrete towers, respectively eleven and thirteen floors, which house 140 self-contained prefabricated capsules. Capsules can be connected and combined to create larger spaces. Each capsule is connected to one of the two main shafts only by four high-tension bolts and is designed to be replaceable.

The idea didn’t catch on however, and the building will likely be replaced in the coming years.

I came here to mention Nakagin. I really hope they save it. It's such a unique building. At least from the outside, I here it's not great to live in though.

A more livable / less flexible/modular metabolist building is Habitat 67 in Montreal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67

"Today, many residents rent semi-permanent space for such homes from land owners, creating an unfortunate side effect: an incomplete form of ownership."

That applies to apartment rentals too. But if you can't afford to buy or to get a mortgage it's a feature, and not a trivial one. I lived in a trailer park for many years, and the savings over an apartment made a large difference in my lifestyle and cost of living, which helped me eventually become a home-and-land owner. If someone had "helped" me by preventing this unfortunate side effect of incomplete ownership, it would not have been helpful. My ownership of the trailer but not the land was much better than owning none of it.

Theoretically the same can be said for all homes as property tax in effect means the state owns your land and by default your home. Michigan recently had a spate of bad news events where tax commissioners were confiscating and selling homes for even small amounts. Worse the homeowner, if receiving any funds at all from the sale would see a paltry amount.

I look at it this way, how long do I keep my home if I stop paying the nearly four thousand a year property tax? I count myself lucky as family friends in up North pay three times that for a postage stamp lot and older home

Furthermore, there are a bunch of good reasons to rent rather than buy, especially if you're younger. I've lived in the same (owned) house for over 20 years now. But, when I was younger, I moved around. And, even when I ended up living in the same place for about 10 years, I appreciated knowing I could up and move without a whole lot of friction.

ADDED: And for most homes, you have maintenance, utilities, etc. (And for a condo, condo fees.) I don't have a mortgage but my house still costs me something >$500/month.

This only makes sense if the market is flat-to-declining. Otherwise, for then a mostly flat market this is bad financially - when you pay your mortgage, you are also building equity. It’s a small amount initially, but the share grows over time as balance and the required interest shrink. Depending on if you took a 30 or a 15 year loan, the 10 years in one place would have either given you a decent amount of savings or a close to paid home. If you need to move, sell and take your equity less costs of sale, still better than just your rent deposit.

Yes, but that 10 years was right out of my second grad degree and I had no savings (and a little debt). There's no way I was jumping right into buying a house/condo even if I wanted to, which I didn't. And housing was fairly flat where I was living at the time. I also just wouldn't have wanted the effort associated with a house at the time.

In addition, at least here the taxes and fees add another 10 to 15 percent. If the house does not increase at least that much in value within the time you live in it you lose money, plus the trouble and work of buying and selling.

>the same can be said for all homes as property tax in effect means the state owns your land and by default your home.

Every year I show my wife and kids the 14-15k dollar property tax bill and tell them isn't it nice that we get to pay all this money for the privilege of owning a home here (DFW).

But no state income taxes in Texas.

FYI that is over four time the maximum property tax in The uk and that includes the 10 mill plus mansions in London's embassy row.

Edit its 4x not Twice is misremebered

Yes, no state income tax but they make up for it in other ways.

To be fair, half of my property taxes $7.8k go to fund schools. Someone has to pay for the artificial turf football field and 8 million dollar sport facility at the middle school (grade 5-8).

I live in a township with no local income tax, so property tax funds everything local -- public schools, local + county roads, local police, county sherif, fire department, libraries, etc.

I lived in a mobile home for 6 years. 920 square feet purchased for $50,000 with $600/month rent on land. I live in New Jersey where apartments cost no less than $1,200 in my area.

Simple calculation says I saved about $40,000 so far while living in a better environment and space. Buying a house in this area costs no less than $200,000 and land taxes come out to ~$500/month anyway.

I highly recommend mobile home living for just-married couples.

ps - our community does not allow people to rent their homes out, so everyone who lives here takes care of the property well. I suspect this may be an important feature for better quality of life in such a community. And there are no trailers -- all homes are stationary.

I have some relatives who lived in a trailer for a dozen years or so. However, it definitely provided my relatives a considerably better quality of life at a considerably cheaper cost than nearby apartments.

I know that after speaking to them about it, their only real regret was that there was no real equity in the home since they sell like vehicles -- depreciating assets. They bought it for $40k, sold it for $5k, and paid about $500/mo in rent for the land.

They were forced to move when the land owner decided to get out of the mobile home tenancy business and sold their property to a developer.

> Simple calculation says I saved about $40,000 so far

That only works out if you can sell your mobile for $50k - typically (there are exceptions based on location and market conditions, but typically) mobile homes depreciate in value, while 'fixed' homes appreciate.

6 years ago if you'd put that $50k down on a 200k house, you'd have had a ~1k mortgage and a home that has appreciated to ~240k, instead of a mobile home that has depreciated.

The housing appreciation is overrated: your house is worth more, but so are all the other houses you want to buy when you move. And people complaining when the housing prices fall also confuse me: so what, the house you buy when you move is cheaper too.

The trailer home I bought was built in 1984. With all the people moving out of NYC into New Jersey, similar mobile homes in my development have sold for $80k. I may end up selling for a similar amount. Though I do think you're right and it is typical to lose money when re-selling a mobile home.

As a side note: I paid 0 tax when purchasing it (it's not a house, no house tax). My "closing" expenses were $40 to get the title registered at the local DMV / MVC (Motor Vehicle Commission). It's pretty nice.

This is a somewhat similar concept people have been talking about for the homeless: https://www.startribune.com/frey-moves-to-speed-up-indoor-vi...

Basically tiny homes housed inside a large warehouse space, as an alternative to long-term shelters or single-room occupancy hotels for the homeless.

It's kind of meant to be affordable, but it's also very much about protecting the community from the homeless and protecting the homeless from each other. There's a big challenge with homeless autonomy and the impact on the community, people who turn away from shelters because of the restrictions and limitations of shelters, but then end up in almost lawless situations which lead to further trauma and don't support recovery.

In the warehouse model (if it works!) people still have their own autonomous structures, locked doors, the ability to be somewhat secure. If they want to do drugs in there, then OK, we know deprivation doesn't lead people away from drugs. In the larger area (the enclosing warehouse) there's community expectations, infrastructure, support, and some degree of enforcement.

Fairly different of course, but also an attempt to balance autonomy with infrastructure.

An interesting idea. I couldn't help start to imagine what it would look like and the I found myself thinking about a large shopping mall which recently closed in Arizona. One could create quite a community inside.

In Amsterdam, the qbic hotel takes a somewhat related approach. It standardizes the hotel room inside of an existing multitenet building room (ie, it is appropriate for buildings not built to be hotels).

"The Cubi is a cube shaped module which can be put together like an Ikea kit inside the room. It contains the bed (with that infamous high quality Hästens mattress), a LCD TV screen, a work-and-dine set, Philippe Starck bathroom elements, safe and high speed internet connection."

I'm always curious about radically cheaper ways of providing quality living.

Some student home complexes in Amsterdam are built out of (I suppose new) modified shipping containers.

I think it’s a brilliant design, particularly suited for rapid assembly and relocation. Ideal for disaster relief

The Stewart Brand book How Buildings Learn mentioned in the article is excellent! The only architecture book you need. There's also a 1997 BBC TV series by the author on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLxFD-wxU4...)

Brand's book so rightly emphasizes getting the ordering of layers right, IIRC. If you are familiar with condo law, stacking mobile homes (per the article) could be seen as absolutely minimizing "limited common element" and coupled utilities. -- So in a sense the book and the article match up there as well.

Isn't it the case that anywhere where mobile homes would make sense it is also the case that land is cheap enough that stacking does not make sense?

Housing is a solved problem in the civilized world.

> “We don’t want to have a situation where you can identify the social status of a person by their home address,” says Puchinger. “Wherever you live you’ll find all kinds of social groupings and for us this is one of the most important things we want to do.” Integration and economically mixed communities are the watchwords, along with high-concept modernist architecture that in other European capitals would be the preserve of the well-to-do. Studies have shown that real integration of households of different professions and backgrounds promotes social solidarity, reduces crime, improves health, increases social mobility, avoids ghettoization and alleviates the kind of pervasive moods of detachment, disenfranchisement and alienation that characterise the reputations of some of the UK’s “left behind” areas.

https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housi...

Is an RV in a large multi-level parking structure with utility hookups a better concept? Almost like a vertical campsite. I feel like doing it with actual trailers is a bit more unwieldy.

This seems to be what the original idea was

The Kasita modules doesn't look that bad, it's very thought through.

Especially the construction, which they say is like car assembly to dramatically get the costs down.

I'm guessing, like any housing, power, water and drain would need to be connected.

Yes the Kasita does look better. Would still hate moving stuff up that many flights of stairs though.

In any modern building it'd be required to have elevators for ADA compliance...

It's not too complicated. We could expand from how cruise ships are build. Where the cabins come in ready build modules and then their water, drain, power and AC is connected from outside. In shared shaft running next to the unit.

So just give a option to chain a few of these units together.

The key idea here is modular housing; vertical trailer parks are one way to make that happen. A post I like on the subject: “ Movable Housing for Scalable Cities” by Eliezer Yudkowsky (@yudkowsky here):

https://steemit.com/startup/@eliezeryudkowsky/movable-housin...

The point about modular homes being fundamentally a solution for loneliness really hits home during a pandemic when many of my friends and family are literally unreachable.

In the goofy department ... At one time I imagined having exterior loading doors on condos so you could palletize everything to "pack" and move quickly (albeit using a crane). In a sense the OP shows scaling this up, but it now occurs to me those "loading doors" could be interior, leading to a freight elevator, with hallways large enough for pallets.

I guess this kind of exists in the form of wide windows. In Europe buildings with narrow stairs often have windows that appear conveniently placed to move large furniture in and out via crane or lift. See also e.g. [1] for various devices advertised for just this purpose.

Palletizing everything on top of that would make sense to reduce how long the moving van is required, at the expense of adding more steps. I'm not sure if that's economical.

1 https://www.erento.com/mieten/baumaschinen_baustelle/aufzug_...

Interesting ... which leads to a different question. If wealth or resources severely decrease, might people conclude that a lot of furniture is optimally-enough placed where it is, and shift to selling, buying and renting mostly-furnished units?

They’ve got to find a way to make it not look dystopian and a place you’d like to be. A huge “nakedly” concrete structure doesn’t have much appeal. Some designs I’ve seen look like they have no guard rails, for instance. Maybe it’d look better if it looked more developed. Or if it went a fully integrated direction like a traditional high rise.

Some people like the brutalist aesthetic.

Add some neon signs and play electronic music in the background, and you’ll it’ll become a #Cyberpunk hotspot on Instagram.

Do they like it in 20 years after the concrete is all chipped and looks set to fall apart?

Brutalism largely outlived its welcome for a number of reasons. But one of them is that it literally does not age well.

I like brutalism as an aesthetic, but there are so many brutalst buildings that make me want to clean the facade with a pressure washer.

Unless the architect designs around the predictable weathering patterns, a brutalist building really needs constant upkeep to keep looking good, just like some other contemporary styles.

Architecture students who don't have kids in the main

It is dystopian, though. “Shove all the poor people in tiny boxes, then stack the boxes on top of each other.” That’ll fix ‘em.

Maybe in our plague-ridden new world order the idea of dense urban areas is just flawed. City living is great for the wealthy and indentured servitude for pretty much everyone else.

They really aren't that small. A single wide is 500-1200 sqft, which is fairly competitive with apartments in major cities. A double wide is 1000-2000 sqft, which is competitive with most homes. High rises are basically just bespoke stacks of trailers; the units are just planned by an architect and custom-created, rather than being pre-fabricated and stacked.

I would probably live in a trailer if they were priced cheaper than other options and not in a terrible area. The latter is usually what kills it, as most cities have zoning laws that relegate mobile home parks to areas far from any kind of development.

Another complication is that in hot areas (the dense urban areas), most of your rent is going towards location, not to recoup the cost of building the thing. I have no doubt that in SF's financial district, they can probably recoup the costs of the building in a small number of years. I wouldn't be surprised if the land they're built on is worth more than the building on top of it. It doesn't make any sense to put up a building that's 10% cheaper, but ugly, when it only makes the whole project 0.1% cheaper.

>It doesn't make any sense to put up a building that's 10% cheaper, but ugly, when it only makes the whole project 0.1% cheaper.

That's the problem with most of the cheap/tiny/etc. housing schemes. By the time you account for whatever combination of land cost, overhead of common areas/access, utility infrastructure, maintenance, etc., you now have housing that is often substandard in some way that isn't actually much cheaper (and is going to be harder to rent/sell/re-sell).

If you ask me, we’re trying to modularize and standardize the wrong things. Housing will always benefit from being customized to the people inhabiting it. Shared spaces and utilities benefit more from generalization since they are used by a variety of people for a variety of purposes. We should figure out the essence of infrastructure and community spaces and then mass produce those as easy to assemble units so you could build a community hub wherever one is needed.

Ah but market factors probably don’t make that targetable. For infrastructure, much of the cost is probably planning and labor, as a guess. It’s probably not standardized as easily.

But I could see modular designs helping theoretically.

The trouble lies in it being a purchase for a group of people I think. Legal and social structures that make that possible on the scale I’m thinking aren’t in common use. You’d need some more mature form of an intentional community structured as a corporation with joint ownership and voting rights. These orgs do exist but they’re all bespoke and only beginning to organize. We need a tried and true system that any group of people can incorporate under, buy land and set up shop. The mind reels at the obstacles currently in place for such an undertaking. But if something like that does become common then there will be a market for hyper local infrastructure e.g. solar, well field, septic, networking, recycling and waste disposal, small theatres, communal kitchens, gardens, walking and biking paths, schools, workshops and motor pools. What you’d want would essentially be a self sufficient university campus in a box, available in whole or in part.

For some wacky blue sky visions of this sort of thing check out Archigram's plug in city.

https://www.archdaily.com/399329/ad-classics-the-plug-in-cit...

There's something interesting here; I can't quite put my finger on what it is yet; but it would seem to me that generally speaking, there are two methods to construct apartment buildings:

1) The conventional method, which also includes the use of 3D printers...

2) Pre-making the apartments or housing sections, then lifting them into place with a crane.

Pattern #2 doesn't just include mobile homes; it includes everything pre-made that can be hoisted into place via a crane.

It would seem to me that via Pattern #2, apartment complexes could be created at scale, more cheaply and efficiently than via Pattern #1, with a lot of room for future innovations in this area...

In other words, there will be a future Elon Musk style innovator, maybe several, of the second construction method...

Holy crap. This sounds like a dystopian nightmare on Earth.

Just build up more high rise apartments and condominiums. Crash the damn housing market. Homes should be made for living, not for investment and speculation vehicles. Then interconnect everything with high speed rails and subway systems.

There is plenty of land and resources in America for everyone. The only thing stopping us from making this utopian future a reality for all, is sheer greed, from the billionaires at the top that wants to keep you poor and divided.

Once self driving cars are a thing it might make sense to have towers like this. You can work while travelling to a new view each day.

Self-driving RVs have been a killer dream of mine for a while now. I hate driving, but if a robot were doing it and I could hang out as if in a train, that would be awesome.

The idea of your home being a container and the autodriver being a rented service just makes it better.

If you're up for a rented autodriver service, maybe you don't have to wait for self-driving AIs. Perhaps you can rent from a pool of human drivers, doing remote driving when you want to move, the same way they fly drones.

Jeff Wilson, the founder of Kasita, is working on a new housing startup called "Jupe." His pitch to me was that Jupe solves a lot of the zoning and foundation problems he encountered while selling Kasitas.

https://jupe.com/

Move to a trailer park to get away from the city, and move into a junkier version of a city. Living the dream.

It's such a bad idea on so many levels.

I see what you did there:-)

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