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Comment by mrbgty | Hacker News Reader

Curious. Why are single family homes unsustainable?

The land that is next to the jobs is expensive. The construction costs of single homes are going to make it out of reach for those who are in housing precarity, even if you make them "tiny houses."

Why not phrase it as "having too many kids and accepting too many immigrants is unsustainable" rather than "single family homes are unsustainable"?

Might not be the best resource for this, but the youtube channel "Not just bikes" has a few very interesting video on suburbs that could be a decent start. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A

To go further, there are plenty of article around the subject on https://www.strongtowns.org/

When I briefly looked into this, it appeared that my town's school budget absolutely dwarfs the budget for things like roads, so if the roads are bankrupting us, we're really screwed if we need to somehow fund education. So I'd be a bit wary of taking their claims at face value.

That is often because the roads, sidewalks, etc. aren't actually maintained properly, they do some minimal patchwork and when it gets too bad, they ask the state to bail them out.

What about garbage collection, waste water, and electricity wiring? All of which are inefficient in a sparsely populated area.

Garbage collection is private, so I assume they're charging a fair price. Water/power cover their expenses through monthly bills. Sewer is mostly covered through monthly bills, with a small amount coming from "other sources" which I don't understand.

Lots of nearby homes are 70+ years old, so it's not like it's just that it's new construction and hasn't encountered maintenance costs yet.

Housing type and housing location have a large impact on energy usage. 1000 homes outside of a city requires 1000 cars, and the structure itself will likely not nearly be as energy efficient as a single unit in a larger building.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/lo...

Sure, things can be made more efficient one way or another. But why are single family homes unsustainable?

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