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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Almost all "moar housing" discussions, at least on HN, call for building medium-and-dense urban apartments, which tend to be smaller than average sizes of housing. You never hear YIMBY advocates calling for building more 3500 sq.ft. single family suburban or rural homes.

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I don't understand how my quality of life will improve if I go from my current 1500 sqft home to a 3500 sqft home. Living near shops, walking around town with my family and being able to ride my bike brings me more joy than a larger home office.

I suppose if I had a larger family I would want more bedrooms. But we are done growing our family at this point - and mine is roughly the size of the median, so I don't see why we need to flood the market with homes that are too big.

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but as someone who has spent most of my time living in European cities these house sizes are just mind-blowing to me.

1500 sqft is 140 m^2, my first apartment was 30m^2. I can't imagine what you would put in a 3500 sqft (325 m^2) house, never mind something like answering the door if you were at the other side of your house.

Different people like different things

This is the entire point! Let the market provide the different things people want. No one is telling ranchers in Montana that they have to live in a walkable neighborhood in San Francisco. But most places do have laws on the books preventing more of those kinds of walkable neighborhoods from being produced for those that prefer that.

But it’s not an option when investors buy up and chase away people who want to be where they are the way they are. It’s a race to the bottom for the most density. It isn’t people building what they want for themselves but investors incrementally getting people accustomed to less and less for increasing amounts of money.

If you zoned more places to be walkable and lowered rent for the kinds of places people wanted to walk to you wouldn’t have to cram people into a few desirable places.

> buy up and chase away people

i.e. make them an offer to buy their property which they, of their own choice, accept.

> If you zoned more places to be walkable and lowered rent for the kinds of places people wanted to walk to you wouldn’t have to cram people into a few desirable places.

I'm unclear on what your point is now. Lowering the rent means allowing supply to respond to demand (since we don't set market rent by fiat), i.e. allowing developers to make offers to buy parcels and upgrade them to higher density. Are you for this or not?

I get your worry, but I think you have some of the cause/effects backwards. Investors invest in places that do not allow enough housing. The best way to stick it to the investors is to produce abundant housing.

https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac...

> If you zoned more places to be walkable and lowered rent for the kinds of places people wanted to walk to you wouldn’t have to cram people into a few desirable places.

Yes, we should absolutely relax zoning! But rents are set by the market, by and large. You drop them by allowing housing to be built to meet market demand.

I agree. So give us choice. Right now if you're doing a new housing start in the US it's going to be large and unwalkable.

There isn't a shortage of 3500 sq.ft. single family homes in suburban or rural areas in the way that there is a shortage of apartments/condos in high-rent urban areas. There isn't much opposition to this kind of new development. The major limiting factor for demand for this type of development is commute times (to everything, not just jobs). This is not the first choice of many people who would prefer to live closer to an urban center if not for higher prices caused by low supply of housing in such high-demand locations.

YIMBY advocates push for medium and dense urban apartments because dense cities are where housing shortages are most severe, and the only way to effect a net-increase in the supply of housing is to replace less-dense housing with more dense housing. Or convert public spaces like parks into more housing, but people tend to like parks. Rural areas aren't experiencing a chronic housing shortage, in fact they're typically experiencing population decline.

This is a distraction from GP's nonsensical point. How does building more 500-1500 sqft apartments increase the price-per-square-foot of any type of housing, big or small?

It turns out that plenty of people prefer 1500 sq ft. homes in walkable areas. Building more of those doesn't mean we get rid of 3500 sq ft. homes.

It's entirely possible to build large and dense. I knew a pretty wealthy guy in Padova whose family had an enormous home that all happened to be on the 2nd floor of a 4 story building.

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