Why Are Housing Costs So High? The Elevator Can Explain Why
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
>A basic four-stop elevator costs about $158,000 in New York City
Oh wow that's a lot. What's the final sticker price for a four-stop building in NYC? What percentage of that price is the elevator?
Just the LAND for a garbage soulless Fast Casual over-1 at 150 Meserole Street cost $7.5 million: https://newyorkyimby.com/category/150-meserole-street
So the elevator's only ~2.5% of that cost and we haven't even demolished or built anything yet.
My favorite is when people (these people, the Center for Building in North America) claim that the US's 2nd stairwell requirement is "killing affordable housing" and then I point out that the square footage of the 2nd stairwell is not enough to add an additional bedroom.
It's all just property developers agitating to cheap out on their buildings while making one bedroom very slightly larger or adding a walk-in closet thus making it "premium" and allowing them to charge more.
* the service companies are either Otis or an Otis dealer, so essentially 2-3 companies have an oligopoly on Los Angeles
* all parts must come from Otis (which mattered during COVID supply chains, when you either paid Otis directly for faster service or waited forever for the part to arrive)
* all shafts and mechanisms seem to be custom-built - there's no drop-in replacement service or alternative product (from likes of Mitsubishi or others) we can easily switch to
It's a small industry with few dominant players designed on extracting maximum revenue. Servicing is pretty much mandatory, limited to a few authorized dealers, who know you have limited options.
I don't think their concern is about the footprint associated with the second stairwell. I think it's that any additional building requirements not directly related to the primary purpose of housing -- whether it be a second stairwell or mandatory onsite parking -- add to the price of housing and thus decrease overall affordability.
Neither the old members trying to manage those steps sans chair, nor them remaining housebound and isolated on Sundays, are better "promote the general welfare" outcomes. But neither the industry nor state regulators seemed to care about anything beyond their own revenue streams.
Ohio State University's hospital and modernization was bought and paid for by Jeffery Epstein's best friend and closest associate for over 10 years and we just pretend it didn't happen.
They sold a farm field down the street to my new home to Amazon and it's been a dust cloud all summer.
Our "family court" has been sold off or coopted by the Ohio Bar Association who now runs the courts like a personal income stream.
Despite the Federal government telling us not to Ohio still proudly has dozens of private prisons and coincidentally one of the highest incarceration rates.
We still have a debtors prison system for people late on child support payments but at the same time they refuse to enforce parental rights.
They just sold off oil drilling/fracking rights to all of our state parks...