Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available, but they're not allowed to do so.

From a bit of googling I think that there are different conceptions of what a townhome is across different regions, so it might be helpful to describe exactly what you're referring to.

Where I live, a townhouse/townhome is more or less just a single-family home without space to the left and right—it has a front door and usually at least a second story (sometimes three), it most often has a garage, and the left and right walls are shared with the next unit [0]. Typical total living area between all the floors is 1000-1500 sqft.

Judging from the picture in the article, the kind of townhome that I'm thinking of would absolutely not be a more efficient use of land per housing unit than what they're doing here with these tiny homes.

I'm assuming that you're referring to something different?

[0] This is typical of what I think of as a townhome, if anything a bit more efficient than most: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2914-Yates-St-Denver-CO-8...

Edit: Here's a link to the property on Google maps so you can see the full scale of each unit: https://maps.app.goo.gl/cqLLmbU3Rtufkfx78

Similar opinion here. I'm for just about any kind of added housing, but it seems like it'd be a lot more land efficient to do something higher density.

Is it a single "family" home? Japan has tons of studio apartments of 200sqft or less. They're about the size of a college dorm room but usually have a bathroom/shower, kitchen sink, and a single burner stove.

To an American they're small. To a Japanese person who's used to them, they're normal. They're not "family" homes though. They're "single person" apartments.

Here's one

https://www.chintai.net/detail/bk-C0100888800000109404795300...

Maybe not everyone needs 800sqft+ per person?

Society would be better served, but the whole system is stacked against it. Zoning, banking, and buyers. When a developer builds a luxury single-family suburban development, they make good money for less complexity, less risk. Marketing is easy, contractors in all the trades are easy, customers are easy, mortgages are easy (party due to federal gov't), etc. Everyone from masons to marketers to moms are comfortable. Change requires the gov't at all levels to put a metaphoric thumb on the scale.

In the interests of full disclosure, I despise doing resi new construction, but many guys do it exclusively.

I was thinking about this last night, what with people currently obsessing over "walkable cities." First, we need to understand why some people don't really like dense housing. Let me try a rough list without a great deal of order. Noise, smells, having to not make noise, crime, vermin infestation, inability to re-shape the property, the lack of permanence (you can be kicked out) ... that's a good starter. Some of those are inherent to the housing like the inability to re-shape the interior much. And I think vermin infestation will move up the rankings with bedbugs. But most of the rest seem fixable.

In fact, most of the rest have been fixable for a very long time. We could totally do a lot better with the ventilation and the HVAC in these larger buildings. We absolutely could have a lot of soundproofing so your upstairs neighbor who juggles bowling balls at three a.m. (but he's not good at it) can do his thing, or maybe you wouldn't have to tiptoe for the guy under you who works third shift. Fixable.

But the fact that they are fixable and that we haven't fixed them is a very, very strong signal that We're Not Going To. In short, we could build some nice multifamily housing where you wouldn't have to deal with cooking smells, or cigars, or the catbox, or whatever, but collectively we just refuse to do so. I think that will continue. And so some people will go on to not like that kind of living situation.

Perfectly possible. We're just not gonna.

Townhomes take up a lot space for stairs. If you want efficiency, you really want apartment buildings full of flats that can amortize shared stair and elevator costs across lots of units.

Tiny homes or…even single wide trailers can work well as housing when land is not so expensive or on land that can’t be built up on right now (the land isn’t typically sold with the tiny home in that case).

I am really not a fan of tiny houses either, but I wonder if detached houses (even if they have to be tiny) might be a good fit for formerly homeless people.

After years of being homeless, it's probably nice psychologically to look at a house, an individual object, and think, "I have that all to myself." And detached homes allow more privacy, something you can't get when you're homeless.

Also, there are probably people with mental health or behavioral issues. Having the separation and noise isolation might make it easier to get along.

You cannot build anything on-site "dirt cheap". Check out labor and materials costs in construction. This is why all these "tiny houses" are brought up, apparently they are built off-site and do not cost nearly as much as the traditional construction. Can you ship a townhouse overseas in a container ship? If not, it's not going to be dirt cheap even if the land, and planning and permitting are free.

“Housing First” is such a bit like communism - perfect in theory. The problem is you need “second” and “third” things too, and the political will often just doesn’t exist.

I lived near a “housing first” facility that was no better than a homeless encampment.

Community First, which the article references, has hundreds of these tiny houses and homeless residents. They have on-site activities, farming, a clinic, an outdoor movie theater, and a rotating staff of volunteers that contribute time and assistance.

I volunteered there about 5 years ago. One of the residents I met told me not everyone thrives there and they churn out back to the streets, but it's still 400 fewer homeless people as a result.

This is a funny thing. I recently looked into living in a central location downtown, and all the rents are far beyond my means as a Section 8 participant. But if you put "affordable housing" way out in the boonies, then how do residents access any services at a reasonable price? If we need to run all over town for stuff, why live in a God-forsaken location like that?

Downtown in my metro area is not only a transit hub, but a central location for goods and services. I could easily walk around, catch a bus or an eScooter, and have everything I want within mere blocks. Instead, these "affordable housing" developments are in suburbs where you've got one bus line and a Starbucks 3 blocks away, and your grocery stores are nowhere to be found, and your place of employment is way across town. Just not making sense.

Hmm, when I hear “artist housing” I always assumed they meant “interesting people who make music and maybe paint”. But “interesting” is too subjective to be real. Freestyle watercolor is no foundation of an economy.

We should not judge other humans by their ability to make rent. Some of my best friends struggle to do that.

But for a city making rent is all that really matters. They don’t care if you literally create art. They care if you buy coffee and pay sales tax.

So, do city planners look at “artists” as a revenue stream?

This is the same demographic that stereotypically spends the better part of a million bucks on an undergraduate education with no expectation of return.

Does “artist” mean “liberal artist”? As in “willing and able to buy in to and comply with a middle class lifestyle?”

What, building outside the expensive areas of a city? That would just make too much sense.

The politicians give tax breaks and in many times, outright pays $$$$$ for these private services to those in need. The owners of those services in turn donate part of the profits back to the politicians. It's just a hidden way for the politicians to transfer wealth from the tax-payer base back to themselves in a clever cloak of woke-ness. I mean, who hasn't heard of the 700K+ single bedroom houses for the needy in Los Angeles. I'm sure this happens everywhere. It's really unfortunate, and brazen tbh, that such fleecing occurs in plain site. Meanwhile, those who really need the help don't get it because it was never really about them. It was just about the optics.

https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-t...

People, including unhoused ones and artistic ones, need to live near downtown because that's where jobs and services are, including needed social services, and transportation to the rest of the city, as well as community. In typical cities, the art galleries, museums, schools, etc. are downtown.

If you have a family and spend your time with them and at work, a home away from the city center makes sense. If you need to do a lot with people outside your home, then you want to be where the people are.

> One things cities do wrong is trying to house homeless people near downtown.

It's pretty critical to build housing where there's actually need, or it won't do much.

Yeah, maybe. But a tiny home isn't gonna hurt.

Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good, hey?

And I'm no expert, but I imagine there's a circular relationship between the issues that homeless people have. Not having a home often means no address (unless they're able to access a PO box or similar?) so difficulty receiving mail or getting a bank account; it can mean less physical security so a higher risk of being a victim of crime (e.g. theft, assult); a higher risk of problems with the police; probably greater risk of ill health due to living conditions; and far less psychological security - to name but a few.

> Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes.

So your saying homeless people actually do have homes??

Research indicates that expensive housing makes homelessness much worse.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

Indeed, it's the primary driver of homelessness.

Things like drugs and mental health make things worse, but "at the margin" as economists say, if your housing is cheap, you might be able to hold on to it even if you have some problems with an addiction. There are plenty of wealthy people with drug habits who are not homeless.

The majority of homeless people are homeless for economic or relationship reasons like loss of job/income, insufficient income, breakups and divorce, and lack of affordable housing[1].

The fastest growing demographic of homeless people are entire families.

[1] https://homelesslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Homeless_...

Right, depression and other mental health conditions, various addictions, heath problems, lack of basic numeracy and literacy. These need to be dealt with as well.

It certainly makes things easier, actually. You can be homeless because you were priced out of the market. Homelessness can be both the cause and the effect of other issues. My partner works in mental health / AOD, and repeatedly exclaimed how much pressure was ‘accidentally’ taken off so many people when lockdown-era economic incentives gave people in my area a better shot at just getting back on their feet. Housing matters an awful lot.

The moment until they lose their homes they are not homeless.

If you read the article, this is discussed. It’s not a panacea but helping some people is better than shrugging and helping none.

This works both ways, though. Once you're without a home, it is harder to keep the rest of your life together. Lars Eighner's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Eighner) book "Travels With Lizbeth" mentioned that one of the things that was so attractive about spending the little money he had on alcohol, was that it was an achievable goal. Getting enough money for a down payment on an apartment, was (or at least seemed) completely out of reach. Getting enough to buy a bottle of booze seemed achievable. Once you're homeless, it is difficult to get or keep a job, and the downward spiral of mental health issues, etc. can be self-reinforcing.

No they don't. Austin has plenty of density in its urban core and has been knocking down single family homes for high rises on a constant basis for the last 20 years. Either way, this is a homeless community that reduces tents from underpasses, it has nothing to do with density.

> Tiny homes reduce housing density and effectively necessitate car usage to connect people to services which is already unaffordable and will only become more unaffordable. Electric golf carts and public transit do not solve this problem.

Why would tiny homes necessitate car usage? What's the issue with public transportation?

"Tiny homes reduce housing density and effectively necessitate car usage . . . "

Compared to what? Most of the USA, and ESPECIALLY Texas, is full of single-family homes at 4-7 per acre. Tiny homes can easily be 20-24 per acre. Zoning and banking prevents building tiny home communities. We are awash in suburbia and you claim tiny homes reduce housing density?!?

Austin is nowhere near its potential for infill development, though.

> rent control

A displacement-prevention measure, not a housing affordability measure

> allowing more housing to be built

That's what they are doing, building houses, and you are pushing against it. You may not like the houses, but they are the best available option for many people, as proven by the fact that they are choosing to live there.

It does not make sense, vehicle usage is expensive, becoming more expensive due to energy costs increasing over time, and car owners are not paying for the true cost of their cars because externalities like the environmental impact of cars isn’t priced in.

A major policy objective is to get climate change under control, sprawl directly makes that problem worse.

Also think about why it is that some cities are so big. Usually big cities have access to a port, a railway, things that make moving goods cheap. New York has ports, Boston has ports, SF has ports, and part of the reason housing is so expensive is that being next to water constrains the space available for development. Building towns in bumfuck nowhere may be cheap in terms of land but that’s because actually living there results in high prices for daily living. A MASSIVE part of what is driving housing prices is energy prices, because it can make sense to spend more on housing and less on energy.

What makes more sense is a hub and spoke model. You don’t nessecarily want people living in a big city, but you can still efficiently move goods from the big city to “spoke” cities, and then you have these “spoke” cities adopt things like high/medium density housing like apartments, townhouses, and mixed vertical commercial/residental. Have some residents with cars, some without, so the latter can bum off the former. Take advantage of shared transportation options like package delivery (shared truck) or ride sharing (shared cars). Also by doing things in this way, you have to ensure people have services they need locally available and can easily afford to access them even if they have no car.

If your solution requires everybody to have a car it’s no solution at all because we literally cannot afford to buy a car for everybody especially given 50 years from now we’re likely going to run dry on cheap oil and we have no replacement available that can scale to the entire US population aside from maybe light EVs like e-bikes. 50 years isn’t that long of a time when we’re talking infrastructure. We really need to prioritize our transportation energy usage and focus it to applications like shipping goods and construction, not use it to move residents around because we designed towns in a way that they’re unviable if everybody does not have a car. In fact, we should be planning for this future NOW by making livability without a car table stakes for development of middle/low income communities.

This is one of the main rhetorical techniques that 'progressive'-type nimbys use to suppress housing. "This new housing isn't good enough. We should treat our homeless better than this."

Completely failing to see that the fact that people are choosing to live in these houses is proof that they were the best available option to at least some people, and that for many the alternative is homelessness.

...which is way better than a trash-filled tent site in the woods, which is where the homeless in Austin who aren't at this site, often are.

> putting these far outside of the city takes people away from resources like other people said

Thanks for sharing your experience. What are some examples of these resources?

Agree. These tiny homes are probably not a very efficient use of scarce land resources.

Cities can't politically organize to build housing because the payoff is after any of the politicians being in office. It's too long term.

You'd think developers would be the most powerful lobby in terms of local politics. But the collective defense of housing value inflation is almost stronger than social security in terms of uniting boomers

How much time do you have? The short version is that while there's not necessarily anything wrong with them in principle, in practice there's a pretty impressive amount of exploitation at nearly every level of the industry. It more closely resembles the dynamics of car sales and financing than it does a downmarket version of conventional real estate.

https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/w...

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/03/1033910731/why-are-investors-...

https://www.denverpost.com/2022/03/23/mobile-home-park-rent-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCC8fPQOaxU&pp=ygUebGFzdCB3Z... (~16-minute Last Week Tonight segment)

That is essentially what these are.

Edit: and to answer your question, nothing. People should be allowed to build and live in those too.

Not too much, but they aren't efficient enough either...

Compared to what though. Because the status quo also isn't working.

It's a community and it works pretty well. Go check it out if you find yourself in Austin.

This community isn't a ghetto. I've volunteered there. If you're ever in Austin you should go visit.