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Comment by namecheapTA | Hacker News Reader

I worked in car sales for a long time. Basically every above average salesperson, and every mechanic over 26, owned their own home. In California. While it's probably not possible to own your own how doing every and any job, it's not like that was possible throughout history either. But if you do something at all specialized beyond just providing the lowest of manual labor, you can usually get a home.

I also know the construction industry well. You can glue tile to the floor, or screw cabinets to a wall, and own your own home pretty quickly.

If mechanics and slightly skilled manual labors can own homes in California, is there really a problem?

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I think the timeframe on this matters a lot. 20 years ago, absolutely. 10 years ago during the dip after the last crash, sure. But right now? I don’t think so.

You just named two of the largest industries in the nation. Cumulatively probably something like 10% of GDP is driven by automobiles and construction. Of course there is ample opportunity.

But also 10% of GDP doesn't mean 10% of citizens are employed in those industries. Likely it is less than 10% of the population.

I think your anecdotes do not generalize to the population.

Glad you added more to that comment. I have a personal belief that "owner builder" is going to be something you're going to hear about more and more.

People that are less fortunate are going to start getting investment together to buy raw land, build a house and sell it for upwards of the salary of an AI developer at Google.

This is something people can get started on literally tomorrow.

That's an interesting idea. Much like how China develops cities first, then moves people into them later, you seem to be suggesting individuals could build cheap houses on cheap land to incentivize infrastructure building toward and outward from new construction.

I don't think the economics work out here for the "less fortunate" because there is a certain minimum threshold of time-plus-money necessary to start this process, and I think without detailed planning provisions it will end up as worse-than-useless sprawl, but it's something to build on, if you'll excuse the pun.

Definitely will be worked out, and I wouldn't be surprised if a startup shows up to get people motivated (with advice, resources and planning assistance) and help them find investment.

This is exactly the lack of planning I insist will cause more problems than it solves.

Materials costs have come down but are still rough. Big builders get the priority of supply too. People want to drive less and work from home but you can't buy "raw land" with anything to walk to or any kind of internet speed.

How do they certify that the homes are built according to the code? They do not seem to be licensed contractors or something, getting that license is not that cheap and fast, and you need quite several for a house.

You can live in a structure which is not certified as meeting the code's requirements. But selling it would be hard.

you can't get past permits and inspections without building to code. the main builder does not need to be a GC or have any kind of contractor license what-so-ever. There are still some pesky laws in the way, but it can be overcome with some fixes to red tape.

The California Building Code [1] consists of 12 volumes, the second of which (based on the International Building Codes) is 766 pages long. It is available for purchase for about $1200, or you can pay $237/year for a subscription. Despite having the force of law, it is copyrighted, which means that free copies (which do exist, floating around on the net) are technically illegal.

Houses in California cost more than a Google AI developer's salary because you have to know more than a Google AI developer to build them.

[1] https://www.dgs.ca.gov/BSC/Codes

That's the link I used to learn it, it's available online from that link for free. If you look at the CRC - it's an easy read, designed that way on purpose. Chapters are streamlined and much shorter, reads much faster. It's not quite a how-to guide there's definitely some challenges.

You want to replace qualified with unqualified labor. That's not going to be competitive, or let alone possible due to the code violations that a bunch of untrained guys will inevitably produce.

> If mechanics and slightly skilled manual labors can own homes in California, is there really a problem?

Everyone needs shelter but society needs people who are not mechanics.

Everyone needs shelter, sure. But just because Malibu is nice doesn't mean I can just show up there and expect a place to live while doing the most basic of jobs. You can extrapolate this to any town that doesn't fit the budget. You can get a studio in Merced, CA for $600 a month.

And we're not even talking about shelter. We're talking about owning a piece of the earth and having dozens of other humans build you a shelter, and then letting you sell it one day. Making other humans build you a home probably isn't going to ever be so cheap that everyone could just buy their own. That's why people live with family or friends or work to learn skills beyond minimum wage.

> I also know the construction industry well. You can glue tile to the floor, or screw cabinets to a wall, and own your own home pretty quickly.

You need land to construct a home on in the first place, and land prices have exploded over the last decades fueled by insane amounts of cheap dumb investment capital.

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