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The construction will focus on whatever is in demand. Moreover, expensive luxury units often make more family units available, because then the new occupants of those luxury units vacate the existing family units they'd have otherwise occupied.

No, it'll focus on whatever's expected to be most profitable, which is not necessarily the same thing.

The price they can sell the unit for is determined by demand. Profit is then the difference between that and their costs. But selling units with lower demand would then only be more profitable if those units also had lower construction costs. Which isn't really consistent with the practice of making luxury units.

Unless they keep those vacated units to rent them out on AirBnB.

If you didn't build those units, they would be taking existing units for that rather than the new units, right?

And if they use those units for that then the demand for new units from people who want to live in them will still exist and it will continue to be profitable to build even more units.

No, at least not in the sense as what is in demand by the population, they focus on what is in demand by the investors. All new construction projects advertise themselves either as luxury or as investments. The fact that hosing is usable as investment is what has ruined the market, and the demographics of the west.

The middle segment of the market 10 years from now is the same as the high end segment today.

Obviously when people construct buildings, they put in the nicest viable finishes and decor. No profit-seeking entity goes through all the effort of raising a structure only to finish it off with linoleum and shitty cabinets.

The lack of housing for families is a consequence of 4 roommates preferring cheaper rent in a 4bd than to rent 4 singles.

Thats not true. Social housing does exactly that.

The difference between "social housing" and "luxury housing" is literally whether or not anyone is making a profit on it. A new apartment tends to be nice regardless of how its construction was funded.

In places where social housing works, the government builds enough new, shiny apartment buildings to keep the market rent low. Obviously, the construction of apartment buildings MUST FIRST BE EASY AND LEGAL for the government to do this.

It appears to me like we did manage to build from-scratch cheap housing at a profit in the 50s-80s in Europe. The key were cheap, dense, ~5 story prefabricated buildings, with some greenery around them. What is now known as commie blocks in the anglosphere.

Turns out that when you build something that's not particularly nice when it's new it becomes unattractive as it ages, which creates unattractive high-crime neighborhoods. Great to solve housing, but very unattractive for anyone else in the area. We basically stopped building them

You can maintain that housing just fine, the market generally chose not to.

Further it’s not housing that creates poverty, and thus crime ridden neighborhoods. Somewhere is going to be relatively poor and thus both poorly maintained and crime ridden. Cities have seen the exact same building go through cycles of poverty to prosperity and back.

I would actually say it's very rare for a building type to be in tip-top shape constantly and not fall into some dereliction if anybody but upper-middle income people live there.

At least in the US, a lot of the popular "historic" building types like the New York brownstone had a midlife period where they were deeply unpopular and ill-maintained.

I think this has more to do with the ownership/residence situation. There was a study done of a redlined neighborhood, mid-century, that was slated for razing as part of an urban renewal initiative. The residents were all working-class black families. The houses that were owned by the residents were well-maintained; the ones that were owned by landlords and rented out were of a condition stereotypically associated with urban decay.

This makes sense. Owners, even poor ones, will do their best to maintain their housing; less wealthy owners especially would know that they're likely stuck with their unit and should do their best to keep it comfortable. Renters have no incentive to (it might even be illegal for them to make improvements), and landlords are unlikely to cut into their profits if they can avoid it.

I would say that policy which encourages long-term renting - per-property, as well as per-renter - is deleterious to the socioeconomic fabric. The majority of a housing unit's life should be spent inhabited by its owners, and the majority of a person's life should be spent in a house owned by themselves or their family.

this is really dependent of the type of housing. midlife is when you start needing to replace things and the downsides of the housing become way more apparent.

To give the example, brownstones became unpopular as it became apparent their designs resulted in high heating and AC bills since they were pretty drafty and poorly insulated. Only when they blossomed into being "historic" did people start valuing them enough to start fixing the problems and restoring them.

I think you're talking past me. What does this reply have to do with gp?

I think the question is, the people who are a bit bad, but not really bad, like the graffiti tagger, the shoplifter, the guy who gets really loud when he drinks maybe throws a punch once in a blue moon, the drug addict that can hold down a simple job most of the time - do you want them to be homeless or do you want to build cheap housing for them?

This is Hacker News, where the rich must be taxed and penalized, CEOs, politicians and management thrown into prison for malfeasance, and there oughta be laws about everything, and HOAs are harshing our mellow.

So a "crime-ridden" neighborhood or "slightly bad" people perhaps relies on defining crime narrowly as things that poor people do

> No profit-seeking entity goes through all the effort of raising a structure only to finish it off with linoleum and shitty cabinets.

Interesting, I observe the exact opposite

New builds use low quality materials uniformly because that maximises their profit

There are exceptions, but they are exceptions to the rule

I am in New Zealand. Our building industry is in a dreadful state

Your children will surely be happy that all need to sleep/live in a single large room when it has premium surface finishes...

(also often the quality is not really premium/luxury, and the design is soul crushing everything black)

God willing, by the time I have kids cities will have gotten their shit together and built more housing.

So what happens if you don't build those flats suitable for single people. Where are they supposed to go? Are not worthy of housing? I really don't understand what the problem is.

Let's flip the question? What happens when you don't build housing suitable for families?

Yes, demographic crisis.

A flat suitable for a family is suitable for single people living together (see american sitcoms), but the opposite is not.

The proposal seems to be to not build anything, because it's a problem if apartments for single people are built.

I think we all also agree that it's a problem if housing for families is not built. But the route to more housing is rarely through problematizing other types of housing.

The proposal is definitely not that. The route to more housing for locals is definitely by "problematizing" empty flats build for store of wealth by foreign investors, that I see locally.

> Flats suitable for families are not being built

FWIW this is also very true in the United States, layouts of new units are generally completely unsuitable for families and that's why upper middle class but not rich enough folks in San Francisco tend to rent/buy condos in older buildings.

Different problem than in France I guess, where the square meterage is just too low, here in the US it's just wasted.

US flats generally have a lot more due to different social standards; the in-unit washer/dryer is not common globally, for example. Or apartments with double vanity bathrooms.

The families thing is also because all other things being equal, more bedrooms will lower the price per sq ft of a unit due to weaker demand; and right now studio and one-bedroom demand is so high that you could reasonably build a building full of them and generate profits.

I recognize this is enormously frustrating for people with families, but the reason this is happening is because there's a shortage of housing for single people, and so while there is demand from families, it makes more sense for builders to meet the unsatisfied demand for single people first.

We have more demand for single apartments than ever before because of changing household size dynamics. People are staying single longer and also living longer and thus more likely to become widowed.

The only way out of this problem is to enable more building of housing to more balance the demand of single unit apts with larger unit apartments.

It's also worth pointing out in crowded cities like San Francisco that large numbers of single people band together as roommates and rent family sized units in order to afford rent, and due to a general shortage overall.

When those single individuals are able to move out into a smaller apartment, it starts freeing up the shared family size units.

Banning single units is extremely counterproductive and overall raises prices for families in situations like these.

> the luxury segment, and the middle segment of the market is pretty much non-existent

Why is so little getting built [1]?

[1] https://www.property-forum.eu/news/housing-construction-clos...