Hacker News Reader

Comment by miohtama | Hacker News Reader

While any muncipal might not be broken (can they go broken in the first place?) are there ones that are becoming unliveable and dangerous? Because infrastructure cost paid is not infrastructure maintenance debt owned. E.x. the recently collapse condominium in Miami.

View on HN

If anything, the condominium collapse in Miami suggests that Strong Towns is worrying about the wrong things entirely. They've been pushing for denser development on the pretext that low-density, suburban single family homes are supposedly a Ponzi scheme with unaffordable maintenance costs, but maybe the real danger is all the high-density, privately owned reinforced concrete condo blocks. Past a certain point they're basically uneconomical to repair - the way governments often handle this for infrastructure like bridges is by just building a new one and demolishing the old, but there's no way a bunch of private individuals are going to be able to afford that out of the blue especially if they've retired. (Particularly given that they cost substantially more to build than detached single family homes in the first place!)

This is a legitimate concern and as an eastern european I’ve always wondered what happens to old condo buildings, of which we have plenty.

Turns out every once in a while the gov picks up the tab and performs the reparations, while giving the residents an option to pay for the expenses during the next eg. 10 years or when selling their property. Some do refuse of course but mostly it works because the added value is quite high since it happens in hot areas where price/sqm is above avg. There are also estate investors buying bulk property in these old blocks knowing they will benefit from it, pushing retirees aside.

There are still plenty of troublesome condo blocks laying around without anybody touching them, but this might be a decent approach.

In some areas it may be possible to increase average density of single family home developments using land value tax plus an occupancy deduction to discourage leapfrog development and excess vacancies, to bring commuter neighborhoods closer to the urban core, with infrastructure on grid or other cost minimizing geometry.

In inner city areas where wages make up a substantially smaller fraction of gross receipts in comparison wealthy suburbs, the excess burden of state and local sales taxes on workers is substantially higher. Replacing state and local sales tax with land value tax may reveal exurban sprawl was motivated by desire to avoid austerity rather than desire for more space, and that middle class really doesn't mind living a bit closer to cities.

It should be possible to design multi-story buildings which don't unexpectedly collapse in 21st century. Perhaps public sector urban building associations can construct and maintain high quality vertical apartment cores and elevators, but auction long term leaseholds which allow owners to privately renovate and mortgage improvements for their floor or unit similar to private condos. Partial local public ownership of building associations could then be used to assert leasehold fees are always sufficient to cover regular inspections and repairs. Partial public ownership could also be used to force a sale if owners have not occupied the property in several years, died, or emigrated in order to ensure increase housing availability.

We’ve been building high density high rise privately owned buildings in NYC for 150 years and it seems to be working out OK.

NYC has outrageous coop and HOA fees - way beyond what it cost to maintain SFH in most of US. With average HOA fee for 3bdrm condo probably north of $2k/month now (and often $3k+/month), you can presumably do a lot of very expensive maintenance. It’s working fine because there are a lot of money in NYC not because it’s economical or sustainable on average american income.

That is a ridiculous over-generalization for a city of 8 million people with over one million unique structures.

Maybe NYC fees are realistic and everywhere else fees are too low to meet the maintenance debt?

Going straight from detached single-family homes to high-rise condos skips over a vast array of possibilities in between - duplexes, quads, cottage courtyards, townhouses, even the ubiquitous 4+1 with commercial space at ground level and living space above. I don't know about Strong Towns specifically, but AFAICT the modern urban-planning community is often critical of both extremes.

Advocating for the lost “middle” market of homes is something Strong Towns does.

The condos in Miami are not density. The building itself might be "density" but the site is not. Look at how far it is to neighboring buildings!

We don't advocate for density. In fact, have specifically written against density as a metric. We argue for traditional development patterns, which look a lot more like historic Charleston or Savannah than Miami condos.

> can they go broken in the first place?

I guess if financial obligations exceed revenue (and assuming they can't borrow more), they go broke?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com