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Comment by kimburgess | Hacker News Reader

While this is accurate, a more concerning secondary impact is the increased deposit. In Australia specifically, house prices are soaring. The most in-demand markets increases are currently ~$1200 per day [1]. For many people their home is a more 'productive' than they are, greatly outpacing their own earning potential. Those who already have wealth can buy in, or continue to buy in and leverage themselves into the market as it skyrockets. Anyone not in this position is left to watch as the ladder disappears into the clouds.

Shelter has changed from a base need to a commodity that's traded in a rigged system and the societal implications of this are frankly terrifying.

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-26/fact-check-are-house-...

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Yes, that's the accurate horror of the situation here in Australia!

Even a slight economic advantage is being multiplied if you take advantage of housing and stock markets.

Just having comparable incomes and earning power is no longer enough to give you economic parity with your friends and neighbours. Which is not a good for overall social harmony :-/

Wage stagnation has meant that if you don't have real estate, investments and additional contributions into your super you are going to be in an entirely different wealth class to your peers once you hit your 50s and 60s.

This may not be a fun ride for many over the next 20 years...

Raw land is cheap. Housing codes are what keep people like myself out of the housing market. If I could just dump a yurt on the land, or a cabin like our forefathers, then housing prices would be a total non issue. But a bunch of selfish NIMBYs are so scared of the poors building a yurt instead of a 2000 sq ft brick house for two people and a dog, they'll never allow it.

There are plenty of trailer parks all over the country that will let you plop your yurt down and even plumb it in to local utilities. You may not enjoy your neighbors very much.

Increasingly those trailer parks are being bought by private equity and institutional investors.

What do they do with them? Doesn’t seem like something you renovate and resell?

They extract the maximum amount of rent they can.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-w...

... and then kick the residents out when they finally get zoning approval to redevelop for luxury housing: from politicians whose votes are surprisingly cheap (most elected municipal officials have ties to the real estate industry, or are themselves in the business).

This is happening right now, here in North Carolina. The worst part? Who do you think makes up the largest part of trailer park residents here? Yep. That's right. Separated or retired military veterans, retail workers and domestic servants. They don't need to watch Masterpiece Theater to experience the wealth inequality and exploitation of the Gilded Age: they're living it every day (although our popular culture won't allow them to question it).

Oh, and one more thing: although some elitist s.o.b.'s may disagree, trailer park people are no more unlikable that McMansion neighborhood residents. In fact, I usually find the former a lot more pleasant to deal with.

Yes I have been to actual shanty towns including in a very poor latin american country and the middle east. I don't know why people here have such a hard on for there being something wrong with the people in trailer homes and shanty towns. They seemed like people who were just in different housing than some of the rest of us to me and I'm very glad their shanty town / trailer was available to them, because otherwise they'd be completely without shelter.

You might also not like your neighbours in an expensive gated community.

Does the trailer park get to overrule local building codes? Will I dislike them because they're poor or because people who live in trailers are just bad people?

Well as someone who lived in a trailer park for a few years, don't... Its not the neighbors, they are mostly fine, if generally lower income. But there _IS_ a large social stigma with living in a mobile home/trailer. The real problems are financial.

Definitely don't get a mortgage to buy a home in a trailer park. Its the worst abuses of both the mortgage and rental markets. No matter what your at the mercy of the landlord raising prices (and selling to someone who raises prices to drive everyone off), while frequently ending up underwater in the trailer itself. For people who are this low on the income ladder the ability to _move_ the trailer is mostly non-existent since it generally starts at a few thousand $$, and goes from there. So, people lose the trailers, and their investment when they can't pay the rent. Then there is the problem that even the worst built house is better quality than what you find from any of the mobile home builders which have to basically use plastic/vinyl/particleboard glued together to keep weight down with the occasional staple to hold things together while the glue is drying. Most of the homes cannot be moved after a couple years because they would fall apart when presented with road speed winds and vibration. So, often not only to they lose the home, they end up owning the trailer park mgmt for removing the trailer.

So, its bad. When people put mobile homes on land they own, they tend to build houses around them over time by adding covered decks, screen rooms, additions, new roofs, etc. Basically turning them into prefab cores of frequently reasonably nice houses/cabins after they rip out the crummy plastic bathrooms and put in actual porcelain toilets, real stoves, fridges, tile, countertops, etc. None of that really happens in your average mobile home community because people maintain the fiction that they can move the trailer even when its rotting in place.

Bottom line, I would live in a car/truck before I considered living in a trailer in a trailer park. People with children are probably better just finding another family to share a rental with and packing bunk beds in.

I think what you’re looking for is a “shanty town”. Plenty in third world countries especially by dumping sites. Enjoy your life.

Please explain how the people in these shanty towns would be better off if the only house they can afford (a shack) is demolished for failure to meet code and they end up homeless. You paint a perfect picture of people who would be ruined by our building codes.

the problem is not really that, since you could just move out to the sticks and do that if you really wanted to. heck, some places in the Rust Belt literally give away homes.

the problem is that in our desirable cities, where people want to live (as evidenced by high prices per sq ft) we have more or less stopped the natural progression of single family houses into low-rise buildings, low-rise into mid-rise, and mid into high-rise.

I'm not arguing against the progression of housing. I'm arguing to be able to build a house I can afford on land I own. Building codes serve to lock property owners out of the means to actually live on their own property. And even if these high rises become more legalized, it's a long time from that happening and institutional investors and large construction and architecture firms executing and them finally being sold, in the meantime I have to live somewhere. It's also worth noting condos are a depreciating asset, unlike land, and you are beholden to the covenants and agreements of the condo including maintenance and other mandatory assessments.

I know some guy in Manhattan is going to tell me "but it cost 0.5M for a 1000 sq ft plot here, and only 0.4M for a condo" Which may be correct, but for the many of us living in lower density cities that still have tons of jobs like Kansas City, Dallas, or Omaha there's still a huge delta between the value of a small plot of land + 10k to build yurt/cabin and the price of a condo. That reflects the economic efficiency of the owner built small structure vs the condo in these areas.

Living out in the sticks has the same economic problem as you either have to be rich, retired, or score a very rare lucrative job to come out ahead. The economic cost is as high or higher than the new high-rise condo, it's just hidden behind opportunity cost.

I really challenge you to find the percent of population living in an area where raw land enough for a small structure is more expensive than a condo. It's a very small percent.

> Building codes serve to lock property owners out of the means to actually live on their own property.

Building codes, or zoning requirements? Building codes typically cover things like fire protection, means of egress, ventilation, sanitary plumbing requirements, etc. While the requirement for indoor plumbing adds a small amount of cost to a dwelling, the zoning requirements (min, max square footage, setbacks, parking requirements, etc) are a substantially larger impact I think.

I'm pretty far on the personal liberty scale, but I don't think it's reasonable to allow outhouses or permanent portajohns in a high population density area.

The negative impact of zoning requirements don't negate the negative impact of building codes, they just add more fuel to the fire. However zoning requirements are far less egregious; you wouldn't put a daycare next to a massive toxic waste handling plant. Comparing that to me building a tin shack isn't even in the same ballpark, and I think pretty disingenuous.

>Building codes typically cover things like fire protection, means of egress, ventilation, sanitary plumbing requirements, etc.

Yes these things are all should be tossed out. If I'm a 60 pound midget I don't need the same means of egress as you; if I haul in water I may not need plumbing at all and maybe I only clean out the cat litter box with the water that is plumbed in . Maybe I don't cook inside the house; that reduces the risk of fire by half so maybe my risk of fire looks as good or better than my up to code neighbor who has a standard up to code house but cooks with grease all day, falls asleep with a cigarette in their mouth, and leaves their lighters out for their toddler to play with. These are all neat requirements "in the name of safety" that could of course save lives, but at the expense of massive loss of life for people working years (lost life) and possible homelessness to avoid the insane requirements. If my option is to absolutely slave away for 7 years to buy a house to code, or build my own shack in one year, then the opportunity cost is about 1/12th of a life lost to build the house. Is there a 1/12 chance somebody is gonna die in my tin shack? Remember I'm still criminally negligible if they do, there isn't some gotcha that you get to do something that kills someone else because the code doesn't mention it.

Outhouses and portajohns are what appear when the alternative is public urination/defecation. If the poor are zoned and coded out of a home, they're going to be urinating and deficating in your park rather than in an outhouse, sound better? Visit San Francisco to see the excellent results! By the way, the city has installed long term portajohns in a number of high density cities. I've seen them in Minneapolis and Seattle, as well as absolutely permanent ones in a certain city in Ohio.

Raw land in most denser US urban areas is not cheap. There’s also huge incentives to build additional units. I’m Berkeley where I live it’s becoming more common to see developers buy a run down single family home and raze it and the city will allow you to build a 3 or 4 unit townhome in the space. Much of this forced by state laws, particularly if a unit or two is reserved for low income families.

The cheapest land on which you could build a yurt or small cabin (illegally) in Berkeley I found on realtor is 60k (it is pending sale). The cheapest house is well north of 200k. You could build your own yurt or cabin for only 10 grand. You're joking yourself if that isn't very cheap by comparison.

[1] https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/55-Panoram...

If you are talking of hypotheticals, there are a substantial number of ex-hippies who'd let ten people set up ten yurts in the back/unused parts of their property. Which is to say that you are correct that zoning is a force that keeps the cost of housing high.

Great, will I be able to register my kid for public school there after doing so? I'll put the yurt down as my primary residence; I hear Berkeley has good public schools. If so give me their contact information and I will take a serious look at getting set up.

That land is at about a 60 degree slope, doesn’t have street parking nor off street parking nor any utilities and crappy cell service.

Raw land is not cheap in many parts of Australia.

Even in Adelaide metro and suburban areas, land is not cheap anymore!

Land is cheap within, I don't know, 50 miles of anywhere you live. But not necessarily where you (want to) live.

It has been proposed that since land doesn't respond to supply and demand, but housing does, that property taxes should apply only to land and be increased to remove most of its value. Keyword: Georgism.

FWIW: I sell real estate in two western states. If you can find cheap land, it's generally for the following reasons:

1) It's tiny

2) There's no water

3) It's not buildable given current zoning

4) Utilities are miles away / cost to attain utilities is prohibitive

Even in my area, where we still have lots of open acreage, the cost of bare land has jumped considerably in part due to zoning - yes we have land, but local authorities aren't going to let you start carving up farm land for subdivisions. There's a middle ground here and I'm glad that's the case rather than it being 100% preserve or 100% build.

1) is no barrier at all to a residence. Maybe 30x30ft is all you need at most for a small family sized structure.

2) Is only a barrier in rural areas, otherwise hauling in water into a tank is still a lot better than being homeless / having all your wealth extracted by a landlord.

3) is merely an artificial restriction created by the government. We shouldn't be restricting property owners from building a residence.

4) If you're already ok with living far from anything you can already find a few counties in the US with virtually unrestricted building codes and zoning, so this is a non issue.

I have found some land that only suffers from (1) and (2) and (4), that is close to a city, and has no building codes in a western state. It's been a long haul getting there because there are so few places in the US that allows it, and this is the only county in the country next to jobs I've been able to find it. Believe me, I understand, and truly lament how much we hate for people to freely build their homes here. We'll probably move there within the next 5 years, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier if everywhere was like that so I didn't have to slowly acquire jobs and contacts closer and closer to the one area like this. And now that I've _finally_ acquired the contacts in this area, and a job reasonably close, and my partner has obtained all the credentials to work in the area, they are talking about closing off the option of self certification of meeting code here! So we will be back to square one. This is how people get locked out of every owning a home, because frankly my family can scarcely afford to even rent a badly run down home in a bad part of town where we live currently.

You watch property prices rise and rise, the number of places allow bypassing codes dwindle. And then some asshole comes around saying "Well the codes and zoning are there to keep you safe!" What about all the years lost working to buy that "safe" house? It's better to risk a 1/20 death in a horrible house fire than it is the certainty I'll lose 1/10th of my life completely if I slave away to buy a slightly safer house. And these people also don't seem to realize I have an incentive to not kill myself or anyone else, code or no code.

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