Why we can’t build family-sized apartments in North America
centerforbuilding.org
centerforbuilding.org
So, as an American living in Portugal, I'm not so sure the grass is greener.
It's true that our apartment would be illegal to build in the US. There's only one point of egress in a fire, and it's the stairway we share with our neighbors. That means there's no need to have a long hall like in America, but I'm not really sure the reason prices have ballooned in America is the extra few square feet spent on a little bit of stairway.
There are other ways European apartments are smaller, of course. Even our three bedroom apartment has no linen closet, no laundry room, no closets at all actually. The bedrooms have what I would call extra-large armoires. Again, our three bedroom place is very much built for a family, but the kitchen has a refrigerator smaller than the one my American best friend uses for beer. It's really RV-sized.
Just everything in Europe is tiny. T i n y. And frankly, it's not that much cheaper over here either.
Maybe the extra hall space you need to have two points of egress in a fire is part of it, but that ain't all of it.
I would argue the other way, as a European, I've been to multiple places Asia and the Middle East and everything is either the same size or smaller than in Europe.
I haven't been to Africa or the Americas, but I'd say from my perspective, that things in the US are just extra large.
Last time I was in Europe at a friend's place they asked where I wanted to go for breakfast. Breakfast? I don't need to pay someone else to fry me an egg.
It's absolutely not. Doing one grocery run per week is entirely possible, and fresh food often doesn't last long beyond that anyway.
> Last time I was in Europe at a friend's place they asked where I wanted to go for breakfast. Breakfast? I don't need to pay someone else to fry me an egg.
You're generalizing from one experience in Europe to an entire continent. Going out for breakfast is very unusual in the places in Europe I've lived in. I don't doubt that it's common elsewhere, though. Personally, I've been to breakfast restaurants in the US much more often than in Europe.
Yet in the US there are a lot of restaurants open for breakfast. Some of them are not open any other part of the day.
In short what is your personal culture and what is really US vs Europe? I think you are correct the in Europe people shop more often, but I'm not sure we eat out that much differently as a whole - people who eat out eat out a lot, while people who don't don't.
Europe's a big place. The UK has strict open and closing times for restaurants (don't ask me what they are, only that 12 noon is 12 noon and I couldn't step inside at 11:55a for lunch). And the culture thinks beans and white toast are breakfast. But people definitely eat out for breakfast and even brunch.
But even those examples contradict your friend. I'll give you one generalizations to take home: Europeans like to mess with Americans.
The difference is maybe that often times you can supplement your weekly food run with small trips to the corner store during the week.
I've had some people use having children as an excuse for why they eat so fast, but I've seen people in Europe or Latin America take their young children to dinner and those kids behave and sit at the table and listen. Such a thing is almost unbelievable to American parents.
I blame puritanism for the lack of interest in food, sure; but the emphasis on excusing it with the pressing need to work is funny because it's like a defense of joylesssness.
The parent commenter moved from America to Europe, so the size difference is obvious.
I agree that many parts of Asia have similar size standards.
Things in America are just very large.
Maybe harsh, but North Americans just love to consume consume consume planetary consequences be damned.
Per capita CO2 emissions (aka carbon footprint):
- 15.5 Canada (?!)
- 14.5 USA
- 8.5: China
- 3.3: Vietnam
- 15.5 Australia
- 3.7: Sweden
- 8.2: Germany
- 7.8: Netherlands
- 5.5: Italy
- 1.9: Morocco
- 6.8: South Africa
- 3.6: Mexico
- 2.2: Brazil
If you live at nearly x2 the CO2 footprint of West/Central Europeans, and above x4 for most of the planet, it gets a lot easier to live large.
Of course, North America having a lot of space geographically makes it easier to build big, and there is probably a ton of other factors as well. But it is an important thing to note.
That's probably it.
I've also been to New Zealand, and everything was smaller there too. Though still not as small as stuff in Europe.
Cars are where it holds the most true. I told my American friend we're thinking of getting a Mazda CX-5. His reaction was, "why so small?"
I told my Portuguese tutor I was considering the same car. He asked why we needed something so large.
But these were considered luxury by Chinese standards, older housing built before the 90s could get weird, like no hot water and instead you have a tank that needs to activated a half hour before your shower.
I've been told it's for easy cleaning. You just pull the sprayer off the shower and splash the whole room like you're at a car wash.
Having said that, the person who told me that was not Korean.
It's possible that you can walk 5 min to get more beer while he has to drive 30 minutes?
Most regular drinkers function fairly normally around the legal limit, it is set really low.
I can get good selection of beers or other alcohol at reasonable price in the regular store within 5-10 min of walk anywhere in the city assuming it is not middle of the night.
Not in the US. The legal limit in almost all states is 0.08.
The point is the europe apartment doesn't need survivalist style storage because it's close to stores. I could have said Mars bars or steaks but the OP post was about a beer fridge so I went along with it.
A while back someone here made a great point about why Americans love to take vacations to European cities. It triggers a nostalgic wave in them bringing up warm feelings they had the last and possibly only time they lived in a community that they could explore and enjoy simply by walking and biking around. You know, that wonderful time when they lived....on a college campus.
The reason why there is little room for storage in the those tiny european apartments is the same reason you didn't have a huge fridge in your dorm room in college.
And in many of those places you can walk around with a beer in your hand in public. Yes, that's right -- just like college.
Outside college, car culture in the US encourages stocking up habits which in turn encourages the search for more storage space.
We live near a Lidl (similar to Aldi) and it's fine for a quick trip for the staples.
But if we're cooking something like what you'd find in the New York Times or Delish or whatever, we're driving to a big old supermarket just like in the States. We find ourselves still following the American model of driving to fill the car with groceries once a week because we like a lot of variety.
If you're content with the national cuisine of Portugal, you could totally always walk to buy groceries though. They're fond of fish and a specific kind of grilled chicken. And in fairness, their chicken is really quite good.
The problem really is the hallway cutting the building in half. It puts such restrictions on what can be built in sensible ways.
However this article is about people who live in apartments - in the US that means either those without a family or poor.
Those without a family may want 3 bedrooms - either for offices (his and hers) or a guest bedroom, but cannot really see need for more than that. They also want them to be large and so are happy with the current state of things.
You would expect the poor to want to compromise on smaller fridges, and bedrooms - but many would prefer to have 4 tiny bedrooms (with only beds in them), and 1 bathroom, all in the space of a current US 2 bedroom apartment. They still dream of the larger bedrooms, fridges and the like - but they well know they cannot afford it.
Like you said, fire needs to be considered. Current codes are harming the poor, but it may be less harm than from allowing fire to kill them.
The last time there was a discussion on fire codes on HN, I looked up some statistics and reports from Finland. It's a country with an unusually large number of fire deaths per capita for a developed country, because of attitudes and because saunas are common.
Almost all fire deaths happened in the unit where the fire started. Unusually deadly home fires almost always happened in single-family homes. I couldn't find any reports of fires where a second stairwell accessible from the same corridor would have prevented deaths. There were some fires where a second exit from the unit (to a different corridor) would have helped, because the fire started near the exit and people couldn't get out.
This only applies to mid-rise and low-rise buildings. There are very few residential high-rises in Finland.
That could be because of effective fire codes.
> I couldn't find any reports of fires where a second stairwell accessible from the same corridor would have prevented deaths.
Meaning, you couldn't find anything either way, or in what you found, the second stairwell wouldn't have helped?
Fire codes are effective and fire fighters arrive quickly enough. If you can get out of your unit, you can get out of the building. Second stairwell requirements address a risk that doesn't really exist in Finland. The real challenge is detecting a fire in your unit quickly enough to get out.
Having travelled through several parts of Europe and Asia, I think a more general takeaway would be that everything in America is very big.
Even if 4-bedroom apartments were plentiful, I suspect people would still be pushing to live in a house rather than an apartment. If the demand for large apartments isn't there, builders aren't very incentivized to build them.
As I noted elsewhere, I think the demand for 4 bedroom apartments is mostly to the poor right now - they want 4 bedrooms in the same space of a current 2 bedrooms - make each bedroom smaller and only 1 bathroom to share (or may a half bathroom for the second bathroom not a full one). The layout of a US 4 bedroom by nature ends up with a lot of wasted space in expensive closets (unless you get a corner unit - there cannot be many of these in a two staircase building but they would look more like Europe)
Though I have often asked what it would take to attract an upper middle class family to an inner-city apartment. They want large apartment - but it needs to be affordable (not downtown rents). But there is a lot else about inner city that needs to be fixed first (crime tends to be bad)
You can of course buy more lots to combine but that takes more money, and more time, because you have to wait for a bunch of adjacent lot owners to sell.
Any country with urban planning and building codes imposes this sort of restrictions.
And TBH you can't really extrapolate your residence in one place to conditions in all of Europe, it is quite different.
I'm guessing parent also lives in Lisbon or Oporto, which doesn't exactly extrapolate cleanly to rest of Portugal even.
Not that old. 2010, maybe?
It's a building with 4 stories. We're on the second (Portuguese would call it the first floor; like hackers, they count the ground floor as zero).
If you walk out our door, you see an elevator and a stairwell with an insulated steel door to the stairs. That's it; that's the only point of egress.
Though in a pinch, I could jump from the balcony and probably just break an ankle or something.
I might be misunderstanding, but isn't the OP all about how Europe allows single-stairway and the US does not?
I was living in an Apartment in Sweden built in 2018 with only a central staircase and no sprinklers and never actually noticed anything else in the few years I lived there
This means that new construction and significant renovation all fall under the international building codes.
I think that the USA doesn't have the existing family sized apartment stock that the market might current be demanding. The other countries by having larger existing stock means more housing available at lower safety standards.
The final type of zoning that could effect is the style and use type zoning. I personally think that the style and use type zoning has a small part in our housing availability.
As I've explained before, it's the World Series of building codes:
On the other hand they can also be used as alignment tools to see measure compliance of various markets.
I have noticed a number of modular and manufactured builders will now build to any code standard.
I currently live in a flat in Barcelona (the European one) and two out of three bedrooms has at least one built-in closet in them.
The real kicker is that price of houses / assets is not attached to physical reality any more.
Financialization drives up the price of real estate. When the financial markets trade real estate, no-one gives a rat's ass if it's a mansion or a shed - the only thing that matters is that number goes up. As was demonstrated in 2008, no-one even knew anything about underlying value of the asset and nobody cared.
In every country in EU number of houses per person has been increasing, and at the same time, prices of houses have been increasing. You cannot build your way out of this.
Real solution to the housing crisis is to reign in financial markets, it's not anything to do with building.
This is the reason that interest rates are fundamental. If we really have turned the corner on the steady decline of interest rates that we've seen over the last 20-30 years then property markets are not going to 'plateau'. They will fall to a point where new buyers can afford to service the loans. Of course, as noted above (prices being as high as they are due to expected future increases), if prices are falling then not only do new buyers wait for prices fall to a point where they can service the loans again, but they will also focus more on utility value as public sentiment moves away from 'property prices always go up'. This will compound the falls.
That said, there will undoubtedly be a lot of policy engineering employed to avoid losses and kick the can further down the road. In the long run I don't think it will be successful. The only thing that will save the property market is a return to low rates.
Every time the issue of housing affordability comes up on this site, the debate quickly moves to zoning and nimbys and such. In my view this is important to an extent (more so in some areas than others), and building more homes is always helpful, but it is not as significant as interest rates and the 'artificial' demand that is induced by speculation.
12 years of ZIRP certainly didn't help. It's a massive payout to the finance sector and to people who had assets to borrow against (or even just a bunch of cash to put in the stock market).
If we had 10 year maximum mortgages, real estate would cost 1/3rd as much, roughly.
Sorry to invoke a cliche here but... Europe doesn't start and end in Portugal.
There are plenty of large-family apartments in some cities. Especially new developments usually have a mix of studios, one-bedrooms and beyond.
In terms of old buildings (i.e. older than ~100 years), many European cities have apartment buildings designed for wealthy families that would house their staff in the same building. The problem there is actually that these are too large to rent out to most families, not the opposite.
It really holds true across the continent. Stuff is just smaller.
Comparing apartment sizes (i.e. excluding single-family homes) makes more sense in a conversation about family-sized apartments.
In my very limited experience, US apartments in expensive cities are often tiny as well, washer/drier in-unit is not a given (whereas any apartment without a washing machine would be considered archaic/unlivable in many places in Europe), and the most economical option to get more space is to move to a single-family house.
I haven't always had a laundry room in apartments I've rented in the US. When I haven't, there's been a shared machine room that all the tenants use with rows of machines. But most of the apartments I've rented in the US have had laundry rooms.
Laundry rooms are, as far as I can tell, something that simply doesn't exist this side of the Atlantic. They put clothes washers in the kitchen and even in humid Porto, vented tumble dryers are pretty uncommon.
Granted, New York, Boston, and San Francisco are different. But if you're in Denver, or Austin, or Dallas, etc, you can expect an apartment with far more storage than similarly sized European cities.
Yeah, they're considered crimes against both delicate fabric and the environment :) Drying racks have the added benefit of humidifying apartments in winter, when the air often gets quite dry from heating.
One peculiarity at least in Germany is that people move with their washing machines (as well as with their kitchens, very often). While I do miss my in-apartment washer a lot, I don't miss having to think about how on earth I'm going to get it to the other side of town without breaking either somebody's back or stairwell...
But right now, the humidity in Porto is 91%. A pair of jeans would smell bad before they finish air drying. Also, my 3 year old loves soup but hasn't really figured out how to hold a spoon without spilling. We do laundry so much because of that kid...
Maybe someone can enlighten me about how to do air dry all of my family's clothes. Clearly I'm missing something because I don't get it. If you lay out your clothes to dry on a rack, you have room for maybe half a load, so is a family just doing laundry every day?
But yeah, hang-drying in high humidity is rough. It really works best in winter with heating on, or in summer with the AC running (which also removes humidity) if there is one. Ventilation is key, too (cross drafts are great; a room can get saturated very quickly).
Where I am the rate increases are capped but if they want more money they just work around that by increasing the valuations.
I find the YIMBY assumption that everyone wishes every city and town was more NYC to just be untrue. People just want detached houses to be cheaper. Most aren’t dreaming about affording a 3 or 4 bed apartment.
At least, that is my experience so far, YMMV.
Growing up in Southern California a 45 minute drive in suburbia leads you to ... more suburbia. Meanhwhile, in concentrated Portland, a 45-minute drive from the inner city leads you to... empty land. It's a very different experience. We get the best of both worlds. My kids can walk / bike to their activities; we're smack dab next to world-class museums and zoos and cultural events; and the kids get to enjoy ample time in the wilds exploring. Why anyone would choose a typical suburb over this, I cannot comprehend.
The only reason that makes the most sense for me is cost. I agree living in the city can be more expensive due to the dearth of housing. Completely understand that. However, if we built it up more, it would be fine. Portland feels empty most of the time anyway. Even before COVID / protests, it still felt pretty empty, and it's in the top 25 US metros for population, so most people are going to be living in less populated areas.
You are welcome to your own preferences, but why is it important to insist that others can't have different ones? What is it to you if people like cities?
If the people who live in cities have some fantasy about how they think people should live, and they push for legislation to be passed to "fix" the issues they see in the city, then laws/rules can end up being applied at a state level. That would then impact the people who opted to not live in a city - where the issues are potentially stemming from in the first place..
My impression is that people in major cities don't care what you do in the suburbs.
America is mostly suburban not by choice but because suburbanites voted to make it illegal for their neighbors to incrementally increase density.
The entire argument is so fucked up in America because the nimbys keep framing it as fucking high-rise condos vs single-family homes... when throughout most of history, the obvious solution for housing shortages was just converting some homes into duplexes.
God I hate this argument. You can't say Americans choose suburbia when it's literally illegal to do anything else. It's like saying "Northern Californians just like buying their electricity from PG&E" when it's literally the only legal option.
People can choose how urban or suburban they want to be, by choosing a community that fits what they want. Don’t move to a cookie cutter suburban area expecting it to change to fit your desires. The current setup evolved over decades and won’t change over night, and it is the way it is, because people wanted it that way (at least at some point in time).
If people wanted to change the rules of the city, they’d put it on the ballot and vote. If this isn’t happening, it’s because they are choosing not to. This doesn’t mean people don’t have choice, it just means that if you want something different today, you need to choose somewhere else to live. The alternative is choosing to get involved in local government and working to change those rules, and getting the citizens on your side. That can be a long road, but someone fought to do that in the past.
There are a lot of reasons people may not want to live next to a bunch of rental units or low income housing. Call them names if you want, but forcing this on them is taking away their choice.
My point is that this is happening. This is exactly what’s happening. In California and across the country, local control is exactly being overruled by state power, exactly because suburbs have created impenetrable legal requirements for anyone who does not already own a home to build one.
The main argument for choosing a condo is cost, but outside the most expensive coastal areas like NYC or LA a house is not so prohibitively expensive that it makes a lot of sense to buy an apartment instead.
Also cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen people even in a place like San Francisco complain about condo HOA fees which can be close to $1000 a month. Many people don’t want to pay those.
I'm skeptical of your claim. From what I read in social networks, newer generations of Americans don't even believe they will ever afford an apartment, let alone a detached house. I seriously doubt that there's a generation of choosing beggars who only accept living in a type of home they can't possibly even dream of affording.
And the point is a 4 bedroom condo or apartment in an expensive urban city is going to be significantly more expensive than a house in some cheaper suburb. Lots of people do choose to move out of cities into suburbs for this reason. That isn’t a new thing.
You're making hypothetical claims comparing "expensive urban city" with "cheaper suburbs". Your hypothetical scenario would only be valid if there are no affordable urban areas and there is no tradeoff in living in the boonies, and the only way that people could conceivably live is in >3bedroom mansions. The whole world does not live like this, including the US. It sounds like the real estate version of "let them eat cake".
Supply and demand is also tied into this - younger people who want to live in cities flock to like 3-5 major cities, which have populations upwards of 5m. If you aren't trying to live in a city (like the OP suggested) you have (basically) the entire rest of the country to choose from.
Apartments in the city are too expensive ->
It's because we're not building enough apartments in the city ->
But Americans don't want to live in apartments in the city ->
Why are they so expensive then? ->
Well, see, it's because there is too much demand and not enough supply, buut not like the article says, actually the people who want these apartments aren't real Americans or maybe they deep down really DO want a suburban house but they just don't know it etc etc etc
Americans simply want a lot more space. If a developer built smaller sized 3 or 4 bedroom apartments they would have trouble selling to the price point they want.
All those above are just few and general top-hierarchy of a forest of rules.
Yes, those are all important and good for you, BUT all that add up to the cost for the actual build.
The land itself that is to be developed has to go through a long line of expensive processes, tests and certifications. Investigations to ensure that there is no disturbing bird nesting areas, or too close to small streams that may have rare species.
Again, all that is good, but cost and will drive up the price of the final product.
I've a relative in construction, and he notes that margins are so small it doesn't make much sense for all that effort when there are other options.
Americans will pay the most for the smallest spaces, such as in NY.
Imagine you went to those people paying high rent for a small place and moved them to a small town in Montana, keeping the same pay. The cost of living makes it possible to own a large house in town near everything there is to do, so would they continue to live in a small space anyway?
> If you need to live in NY ... If you can move to New Jersey ...
That assumes people live in NY because they must, and move to NJ if they can. IME, it's usually quite the opposite! But of course many do prefer - well, they'd prefer Westchester. :)
> The cost of living makes it possible to own a large house in town near everything there is to do, so would they continue to live in a small space anyway?
That's true anywhere, including midtown Manhatten. If someone could afford a nice ranch house with a yard there, they'd buy it! :)
That is the point: people are living in small places in NY not because they prefer small places, but because overall that is the best compromise for their current life situation. Change something about your life situation and the best compromise changes.
Right, who said otherwise?
I'm American and I don't. Stop stereotyping.
I live in a wealthy, 99% white zip code and that’s exactly how it happened.
Things here are really, really bad. Zoning is the only lever we have to fix it.
Increasing sprawl is fiscally irresponsible and most cities are underwater without extra funding as it is.
Yes dark is not a good argument against this, but it still isn't practical to have apartments that small - it has been done, but all the cases I know of it was out of spite. (someone ended up with a small lot and didn't want to sell)
This isn't the dense city I want you live in. I would love to have long term stable tenants in normal market conditions. The price controls just structure it so that this is not attractive anymore.
or big suburbs without anything in them. Where is the uber, airbnb and doordash for housing?
Buildings are living things that are constantly being changed by their owners too. After 10 years of their being lived in no two cookie-cutter houses will be the same either.
The reason what you want doesn't exist is because it's impossible to scale using technology without rendering these differences moot. The construction industry is doing the best it can by clearcutting every lot and bulldozing the surface features into a set of flat terraced lots and then building houses on that infill. The only thing SV could contribute is capital.
But the city council is pretty incompetent. It is a govt monopoly with no real incentive to be competent.
The zoning laws don’t allow building multi story apartments. The city council drags their feet for years to approve building permits.
People literally shit on the road. Crime is rampant. You’d be driving on the road, glass is smashed and someone takes your bag.
Trains don’t run on time. Some stink. You could spend a million and barely get a shack for a house.
Go to any of the modern Asian or European cities and there is a stark difference. They’re clean, trains run on time, they’re fast, low crime, little homelessness.
California governance is corrupt and incompetent. They earn the most from taxes compared to any other state. This is not a money problem. It is a “things are shit because we want them to stay that way.” problem.
Or, contractors.
I get the feeling residential building doesn't scale well outside of monopolistic competition, partially from red tape, partially from supply constraints/supplier network monopsonies.
However apartments because of size quickly get to the point where you cannot build them without already having experience. Banks know that the details are just enough more complex than a small house that they won't risk a loan on someone without experience. Which opens the question: how do you get experience without experience?
but it seems like many programmers in silicon valley enjoy their wooden walls houses with no shops or bars around them just because they go up in value
I live in Portland. I’ve been cornered for my opinion on urbanization, so I’ll give it.
But at least here, many people have black and white opinions. Either you don’t care about the environment or you don‘t care about displacement.
This is why we needed the Green New Deal or Build Back Better. Urbanize, but increase social safety nets, provide rent control…
I don’t claim to know which levers to pull, but we definitely need to pull more than one at once to meet the goals of increasing density without driving people out of their own neighborhoods.
But doesn’t it seem strange that increasing density would increase displacement?
The US has a lot of political barriers to things like the Green New Deal. So when areas are urbanized, those against urbanization can point to the flawed execution and they certainly have a point.
That said, I’d love to see the Green New Deal return.
Outside of SF and Silicon Valley.
Unfortunately, the recent generation of tech workers have not been represented in local politics. As far as I know, none of the supervisors or mayors in recent memory in San Francisco have worked in technology; they typically come from nonprofits, unions, or just landed gentry. It is not young tech workers who refuse to rezone and amend the building code for affordability, it is older homeowners and nonprofit special interests. The Board of Supervisors (the city council) has been rather hostile to tech for the past decade or more.
but at the same time, they spend billions on metaverse stuff no one wants
Nobody tell him.
hypocritical mindset
This is an issue of zoning, therefore local politics, which is complex, specially in DF
Having light on both sides of an apartment makes the whole apartment brighter and improves air circulation. Almost every apartment I visited had a similar layout—totally unlike apartments I've seen in the U.S. A townhome is probably the closest thing we have here, though they only go 2-3 stories and don't share staircases.
it's like the architect's version of 'banana for scale'
There are a lot of things like this that consciously or subconsciously push people to have smaller families.
We actually moved from that unit into a larger multi-bedroom apartment with attached garage and multiple entrances... and still weren't getting screwed by rent.
Eventually got a house, but still. These things definitely exist here.
Maybe don't live on the coasts?
Also important: Who funds the 'Center for Building' and pays these well-qualified professionals? I don't see it addressed on their website.
The goal seems to be getting rid of regulations that hinder building European style apartments.
I can't help but wonder if this is really a trend people are interested in, OR is there some effort to sway public opinion into deregulating housing. Why do the article ALWAYS mention Europe? Is it a marketing tactic designed to trigger our 'america-europe inferiority complex'? Is it an effort to change laws to allow for larger ROI for a single piece of land?
Is it REALLY impossible to build apartments like we have in San Francisco these days? I am totally unconvinced removing these requirements would REALLY make life better for renters. As a renter who keeps getting shitter and shitter apartments, despite paying twice what I did in rent a decade ago.. I am afraid that this is just another effort to fuck us
Anyway, this is 100% a conspiracy theory (that I have 0 evidence for).
We know that in the US newer apartments with all those rules do better in fires than older apartments. We also know that overall housing in Europe does better in fires than housing in the US. The people pushing for this want you to think that the US would do better in fires to adopt European regulations - but a close reading of the above two facts makes it obvious that we are not comparing like things.
That said, the US does have high housing prices, and regulations are part of it. This article clearly points out a real downside to the US codes.
Overall I get the feeling that supporters of this are hiding some facts from me that are important.
Yes, washing your hands is good
Yes, some soaps are better than others
But I wasnt looking to buy soap, and I really dont want to spend $20 on 8oz.
I think I also have been struggling with how we in the US have lost a lot of community spaces in the last 50 or so years
Arcades are gone, malls are dying, parks have few people in them, government buildings are fortresses, small town shops were killed by wallmart, restaurants are massive chains selling microwave meals, main streets are four lanes of traffic…
I long for interesting neighborhoods with shops and restaurants I can walk to.
But even after reading these articles I am still unconvinced deregulating apartments is the answer.
Maybe I just fear deregulation since I keep hearing how the deregulation of the 80s and of the housing market was not a good thing
Is there a difference? I mean, if public opinion is swayed, then does that not mean they are now interested in it?
Yes.
Found the shill! You working for Blackrock??
I'm confused. The overwhelming majority of apartments in my state are two and three bedroom ones.
4 bedrooms - less than 5%, 3 bedrooms - 10%, 2 bedrooms - 30%, 1 bedrooms - 40%, studios - 15%.
As a result, the larger units are not just more expensive due to square footage, but the pricing scales non-linearly per square foot because 3+ bedroom units are a rarity. Typically you'll see a 3BR have 50% more square footage than 2BR but cost 2x the price.
It's not uncommon for people who have their first kid in a 2BR to then buy a studio or 1BR in the same building for their kids to play / grandparents to stay over, rather than selling and upgrading to a 3BR.. as insanely inconvenient as that sounds, due to cost.
If you look at rental buildings the skew is far worse. There is a 500 unit rental building that opened near me 5 years ago with apparently no units larger than 2 bedroom. Another one with 325 units shows the same. And finally the most recent 605 unit building with, again, no units above 2 bedroom in size.
To add insult to injury, many rental building 2 bedroom units are really configured for people to split with a roommate rather than house a family.
So to have 3BR+ in the city you need to be wealthy enough to save up down payment money for ownership, and also have income to cover paying both a space and price-per-sq-ft premium.
The three most recent large apartment (not condo) projects in my area were 50% 2 bedroom units, 30% three bedroom, and the rest 4 bedroom. No one-bedroom units at all.
The takeaway I have from all of this is that this is something that varies quite a lot from place to place.
The bigger issue would be plumbing for bathrooms & kitchens.
And if you're curious about new construction, you can find it here https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/highlights.html
You'll find that in 2022 over half of new apartment units had 1 bedroom or less. I guess you live in a very different state that is not reflective of overall trends across the US.
Because I've researched it.
> Have you looked at statistics for housing stock in the US in general?
I wasn't talking about the US in general, I was talking specifically about my state. Housing situations vary wildly across the nation, though, so I shouldn't have been surprised that things are very different in my part of the nation than in others. Still, it did confuse me.
Now I'm less confused. What the article is talking about isn't really that applicable to my corner of the nation.
Another option is more stairways, fewer halls.
For the childless WFH-er trying to concentrate, it's not much fun when kids noisily use the communal areas of apartment buildings as a playground. I know this from experience. Thankfully, noise-cancelling headphones are pretty good these days.
This is a very Anglo-spheric perspective, and it's because you guys can't build nice apartments
I grew up in a nice apartment in Eastern Europe, the building had an enclosed courtyard and was a safe place for dozens of kids to play and socialise. You would let out kids without supervision, there are always adults around and they all know each-other. If something serious was going down, they would intervene and call relevant parents.
There are always old grandmas sitting on the bench, gossiping and eating sunflower seeds, they were the biological CCTV system. You could also always look out the window and see what your kid is doing.
Courtyard here is "don't step on grass', 'don't make noise', 'don't play games', so what the hell is it for?
Quite frankly English and Americans just don't get how to build nice cities at all, that's why they always want to move to the suburbs or some village.
It would not be hard to design an enclosed communal area visible to all of the units. Lots of early suburbs had a communal design where the play area faced into the kitchens of the houses.
You can easily have a family in an apartment if it has 2-3 bedrooms in it. That’s a very common design in Eastern Europe and other parts. It’s only in NA do people believe that you can only have a family in a SFH
Its a real shame our cities aren't multi-generational; it can be done, eg Tokyo. For the most part people move to the 'burbs when they have children, which is fine, but it shouldn't be the only option.
In the USA it seems, everywhere else lots of families live in apartments, houses are expensive and/or far away from jobs.
> Children/large families can be noisy.
Yes, they can. You can also get a single neighbor blasting music at ungodly hours.
> they benefit from safe outdoor space to play.
There is this invention called parks, you know about them? It's open space which can be used by anyone.
> For the childless WFH-er trying to concentrate, it's not much fun when kids noisily use the communal areas of apartment buildings as a playground.
Complaint to your hoa or something.
You haven't described a problem for the families with children, you've described a problem for others (you) who are using the building in a way it wasn't designed for.
Your kids, maybe. This isn't a ubiquitous perspective. But, some people don't tell their kids "no" about anything, so...
I'll teach mine to mostly yell in big open spaces, while biking, on a playground, during sports.
I don’t know where you’re coming from as for safety. A single family home doesn’t imply safety and an apartment building can have both indoor and outdoor play areas.
Personally, I love the sound of kids - it creates an atmosphere of energy, joy, love, a lack of cynicism (such as found in certain HN posts :) ) ... It's a wonderful work environment and a palliative for working with (many) adults.
(Sadly, they grow up to be adults like the rest. How does that happen? We suck at raising kids - they come out worse than when they were at 6 or 10 years old.)
But, lots of parents today let their kids scream as if they're being fucking killed, like they're in some form of serious danger - for hours. When the "serious danger" is their sibling chasing them.
Aside from being rude, this can be really disconcerting.
Because, if you truly live in a community of people who care, some of your neighbors are stopping what they're doing for a minute to listen & make sure the child "screaming bloody murder" is actually fine.
It is NOT rude for kids to yell. It is rude to live in a building where kids yelling can distract you. The problem is the building though, not the people/kids inside.
It is not rude for kids to yell and laugh while playing.
It is rude to let them keep screaming as if they're being hurt, in pain, or facing danger.
It is rude if they're screaming for hours.
If I did what I described, my parents would have simply picked me up, carried me into the house, and into my room (until I was done alert-screaming like I was in danger and needed help).
We get it, (from your repeated replies) - you are not motivated in the same way.
Just don't look at me strange when I look at you strange, if your kid is kicking and screaming in the middle of the walkway. That seems to be another commonly "uncontrollable" behavior of children, for some parents.
But almost most apartments are multi-bedroom???
I searched my area on Zillow for Apartments/Condos for rent. [1]
Studio - 85
1 bed - 225
2 bed - 233
3 bed - 39
4 bed - 1
https://www.zillow.com/salt-lake-city-ut/rental-buildings/?s...
Which the article depicts as unusual.
I also wouldn't consider a 2-bedroom unit "family sized", since even a couple living without kids probably needs to use a bedroom as an office, study, or something else.