In a country dominated by 'fast food', why not 'fast housing' - "McHouses" for the people.

[VirtualLarry]

After reading so much about homelessness, and then contemplating how food service in this country evolved -- everybody needs to eat, so the market came up with fast food. Not the most tasty, but generally fast, convenient, and efficient, with an eye to serving as many customers as possible.

If we, the American industry, can rise up and do that for food, SURELY, it must be possible in the same vein to do something similar for the housing market. Pre-fab mini McHouses, drop off two halves somewhere on a tiny lot, connect water/sewer/electric, good to go!

You could have entire suburban developments of these McHouses in rows, maybe not much lawn (they don't have big lawns in Portland, OR, either), but some sort of bus service available, so owning a car wouldn't be necessary, or in the future with FSD cars, if they ever get that far, one EV per block of houses, paid for via the HOA.

It wouldn't be an "ugly" high-rise, it would have HOA contracts, so it wouldn't turn into "the projects".

These essentially would be "starter homes" for younger people, people transitioning from homelessness to housing, etc.

They would retain the sort of feeling of a single-family / single-floor house, just smaller and slightly denser.

Please stick to the topic of discussing the McHouse concept, and try to keep this thread a-political.

 

[DigDog]

well .. this isnt exactly an easy subject, no? and i don't mean "to not bring politics into it". But rather the "how do you actually get it done" problem .. and then some more.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Those are easily and widely available in many areas. 32 x 80 is common, two 16 x 80 halves, called a double wide. Recently I've seen 32 x 50s available.

Usually installed on a site with a basic wall foundation, or just a layout of concrete block, with enough space to get under for the connections, but they can be placed on a basement.

Problem is maneuvering the 80' length in confined areas.

They used to be quite cheap, under $50K generally, but have risen recently.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I've also seen other types of modular housing that is built to the buyer's specifications. They might be in 8 or 10 pieces, trucked to the site and assembled with a crane. More expensive, but look more like a stick built house.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I guess one big question that I should ask myself is, how are these functionally different than mobile homes / trailer parts, and condos / town houses.

Assuming that there might be a public or even private "housing authority" lording over a patch of these.

Surely, though, a company that could successfully acquire enough land for a swatch of these mini-homes, and develop them cheap enough, could get investment money to replicate the effort in other locations within their state, or beyond state lines.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

They generally look like this:

But can end up looking like this:

I don't want more sprawl on open land though. I want to see cities renovated with the older housing either restored, or if too far gone, demolished and set up for modular, quickly available units.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

They're also doing stuff like this in some places:

I've even seen some done with old shipping containers stacked in various configurations, then modified on site to be living space.

 

[DigDog]

1. land is expensive. People want to live somewhere where there's stuff to do, jobs to go to, stores to shop from, and that doesnt take hours to commute to anywhere.
"land" also means roads, traffic lights, electricity poles, drinking water, police & fire departments, a whole shitload of infrastructure that doesn't come cheap.

2. pretty much every country in the world has their own "projects". Rome has a single building that is 1Km long, houses 4500 people. It's a monster, and while it was designed fairly "humanistic" at the origin, it degraded rapidly because low-income families and high-maintenance costs don't really go hand in hand. I mean .. i know. My stepfather used to live there. It is very rare that any kind of high-occupancy government solution lasts long, and a private building company will never have the funds to completely build a small city without government support (as per 1, roads, sanitation, schools, hospitals etc).
There were some vaguely successful versions of this during the early 1900s / 1800s.

3. the McHouse solution already exists, in various forms. Building a house is actually .. fairly easy, depending on how low your expectations are. The primary reasons why small houses are still being built in brick instead of "modern" methods is because they last longer, and obviously buildings in high-density areas (e.g. cities) are concrete and steel because they need to support multiple floors. But many different solutions exist today, all with various caveats, from the 3D Printed House, to prefabs, "deck" homes, all-steel homes, container homes, in-the-ground houses, etc.

You still have all the problems from (1) to deal with; i can buy a freehold plot of land not terribly far from my job for around six thousand bucks. There's no sewers, no internet, it does have power, but no water, no road. I'd need planning permission (govt approval), all the above services, tools to move the materials in, etc and then could feasibly cut a lot of the costs, but no bank in the world would give you a mortgage for that, because if you should stop paying the mortgage, they wouldn't have a house to sell to make their money back.
Building companies do actually do that, but to a building company "saving money" is actually irrelevant; they will build in a spot that attracts more buyers and simply price the houses accordingly. The problem is that it's not really that profitable to make cheap housing, it's much better to make market-appropriate-cost housing. And also the problem isn't that there's too many poor people who can't afford houses, the problem is that there's too many not-poor people who CAN afford them, and those are the customers that they cater to.

Remember that banks will always be a part of the equation, ever for larger companies. if you build a nice block of flats in my town (which they just did, by coincidence) and it takes you 3 years to sell them, the bank that loaned you the cash isn't really worried how quickly you repay them, because they can see with their own eyes the physical asset you have build.

There is no scenario with private building companies where a house is sold the moment it is built - it there was, everyone would be doing it, even if this meant a miserable 2% profit on the investment, how long do you think it takes to build a house? a month? that's 24% profit per year, and believe me, it's not a 2% profit, it's much, much more.

Only a government could pull off something like that, and generally the results aren't great, because they don't have to meet the expectations of a market, so they tend to just economize, and then everything collapses.

 

[dullard]

Fast food is only fast if you ignore the drive time to/from and the wait in line which can be quite long. Fast food is only inexpensive if you ignore the cost of the car and fuel (or other transportation costs). Fast food only works if you pass many of the costs onto others (employees need government assistance, garbage litter from takeout is picked up by volunteers). Fast food fills the immediate need of the person (hunger) but ignores the long term issue of eating low-quality low-nutrition food.

Since fast food works only by ignoring many variables, lets apply that to housing. Does that mean shoddily built houses made of lead and asbestos, lacking any form of insulation, ready to crumble at any time, with no sewer connection (just let it drift across town), and with property taxes somehow paid by others?

You were probably thinking more of the mass production aspects of fast food. And for that there are already plenty of solutions. See the posts above for examples.

The real issue is density.
(1) We need to make dense housing profitable for builders to make. Right now for a given amount of work/time the builders make far more profit building a large, high-end, 2nd home for wealthy than they do making a set of small homes for the less well off. That could be done by many different ways, but they are all political so I won't bring them up.
(2) We need to change laws that in effect cause low-density housing to be the only realistic thing to build. Dense housing is outlawed by numerous laws including zoning and parking requirements. That would be like saying build more fast food restaurants, but only in 6% of the town* and by the way that 6% is already occupied by fast food.

* Map of San Jose where the areas in pink outlaw building dense housing:

Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House With a Yard on Every Lot (Published 2019)

Rising concerns about housing affordability, racial inequality and climate change are causing cities nationwide to re-examine their attachment to the detached house.

www.nytimes.com

 

[pete6032]

You need a city to enact zoning for that type of housing and no city will ever do that on a large scale.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

You kind of already have this type of housing that is appropriately zoned via mobile home parks. Some cities are designating blocks and zoning them appropriately for tiny homes, but these aren't targeted for homeless. To entice the builders to develop, they offer density bonuses and other incentives with strings attached such as a 20% minimum requirement to sell to low/very-low income households, but the rest at market rate.

As a land use planner I wish it were so easy to throw up some McHouses somewhere. Above posts already identify the real constraints of establishing such a development (infrastructure, zoning laws etc.). The reality is that the vast majority of "unhoused" (I think that's the pc term being used lately) just don't want to live in a place described in the OP. They don't want rules, they want to be able to come and go as they wish etc. and most don't take advantage of the services provided.

The county I previously worked for established a 70 unit navigation center, equipped with a community kitchen, showers, community living area as well as resources to help them get back on their feet. This includes staff from human services and behavioral/public health. Last week, only 4 of the units were being occupied. Workers are practically begging unhoused to come in and take advantage. They even allow pets. They're modular units, and I helped permit it the project to have a secondary occupancy in the event the center gets scrapped or state funding runs out. If that happens, the center can easily be converted to a community/rec center of other place of gathering.

 

[Torn Mind]

It depends on which track did someone became homeless.

The "destructive" and legally savvy professional victim claims situations of crisis so that a single cent is not spent on the housing. But because one cannot see into the mind of a person to determine whether a complaint is made in bad faith or not, their claims have to be honored to an extent. The individual essentially seeks to create the conditions of a defective tenancy, and unwitting landlords not adept in inspection protocol are easy pickings. Owner-occupants who wind up becoming landlords do not have this sort of thinking. Creating uninhabitable conditions results in the landlord being unable to collect rent.

So, for a "McHouse", they all still require all the plumbing, electrical, etc to work.
There's also the matter of crime, as many homeless are also criminals.

But here's the reality. No government as ever allowed land to be just lived on without something in return. Not paying or letting things "sit" allows for actions to allow another to take over the place and use the land. Real property is ultimately the property of the government. Thus, anyone who owns it has the obligation to pay taxes. But there is the hidden obligation of making sure the land is not idle either. Property is the revenue stream of government. The occupant pays property taxes. But income tax has a relationship with property tax. A higher property tax area also has high income tax owners. So eventually, the McHouses would be filled with high income earners paying high property taxes because government wants more tax revenue.

 

[highland145]

Mentioned in the credit thread, my boss is on the county housing authority board. They have a 16ac plot, in the city limits, where they tore down 1950 single story quads so they can build new. Effing city says they have to have 90% grass on non building footprints. The place is covered with 70 year old oak. Grass will never grow under them but....they can't cut the trees cause we're a tree sanctuary city or some shit. Eff bureaucrats.

 

[Fenixgoon]

It depends on which track did someone became homeless.

The "destructive" and legally savvy professional victim claims situations of crisis so that a single cent is not spent on the housing. But because one cannot see into the mind of a person to determine whether a complaint is made in bad faith or not, their claims have to be honored to an extent. The individual essentially seeks to create the conditions of a defective tenancy, and unwitting landlords not adept in inspection protocol are easy pickings. Owner-occupants who wind up becoming landlords do not have this sort of thinking. Creating uninhabitable conditions results in the landlord being unable to collect rent.

So, for a "McHouse", they all still require all the plumbing, electrical, etc to work.
There's also the matter of crime, as many homeless are also criminals.

But here's the reality. No government as ever allowed land to be just lived on without something in return. Not paying or letting things "sit" allows for actions to allow another to take over the place and use the land. Real property is ultimately the property of the government. Thus, anyone who owns it has the obligation to pay taxes. But there is the hidden obligation of making sure the land is not idle either. Property is the revenue stream of government. The occupant pays property taxes. But income tax has a relationship with property tax. A higher property tax area also has high income tax owners. So eventually, the McHouses would be filled with high income earners paying high property taxes because government wants more tax revenue.

it's cheaper to house people than it is to lock them up in prison.

 

[BoomerD]

No one really wants "those people" living near them.

 

[bbhaag]

I don't really see the connection between serving people food quickly and building out infrastructure for people to live in. It seems like those two things should never go together.

 

[purbeast0]

Fast food isn't even cheap anymore nor is it healthy.

You can eat chicken and rice for a meal for a fraction of what a combo would cost you now a days, and it will be a lot healthier for you.

The problem is people are just lazy and don't want to cook their own food.

 

[highland145]

it's cheaper to house people than it is to lock them up in prison.

Soylent green...just sayin....

Real answer, prolly not...just looking at costs.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Mentioned in the credit thread, my boss is on the county housing authority board. They have a 16ac plot, in the city limits, where they tore down 1950 single story quads so they can build new. Effing city says they have to have 90% grass on non building footprints. The place is covered with 70 year old oak. Grass will never grow under them but....they can't cut the trees cause we're a tree sanctuary city or some shit. Eff bureaucrats.

Stuff like that is why I'm so glad I managed to find land in an unorganized township. The BS rules cities come up with are so ridiculous and it's getting worse and worse. Oregon recently past some laws now that basically killed homesteading. Lot of people are at a loss what to do now as their life style has basically been destroyed. Considering that's state law that's kinda scary as that would affect even unorganized townships too. You pretty much have to move to a whole different state to get away from that.

 

[highland145]

Continue their lifestyle....dig holes. This has been coming to the US for a while, against small farmers.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You kind of already have this type of housing that is appropriately zoned via mobile home parks. Some cities are designating blocks and zoning them appropriately for tiny homes, but these aren't targeted for homeless. To entice the builders to develop, they offer density bonuses and other incentives with strings attached such as a 20% minimum requirement to sell to low/very-low income households, but the rest at market rate.

As a land use planner I wish it were so easy to throw up some McHouses somewhere. Above posts already identify the real constraints of establishing such a development (infrastructure, zoning laws etc.). The reality is that the vast majority of "unhoused" (I think that's the pc term being used lately) just don't want to live in a place described in the OP. They don't want rules, they want to be able to come and go as they wish etc. and most don't take advantage of the services provided.

The county I previously worked for established a 70 unit navigation center, equipped with a community kitchen, showers, community living area as well as resources to help them get back on their feet. This includes staff from human services and behavioral/public health. Last week, only 4 of the units were being occupied. Workers are practically begging unhoused to come in and take advantage. They even allow pets. They're modular units, and I helped permit it the project to have a secondary occupancy in the event the center gets scrapped or state funding runs out. If that happens, the center can easily be converted to a community/rec center of other place of gathering.

The issue is these cost just as much as a house now days, it's pretty crazy. Mobile parks do in fact seem like the perfect solution but they need to bring the prices down so people with not a lot of money can actually afford it.

 

[highland145]

What's the cost for 1 on the Red compound?

 

[MrSquished]

What's the cost for 1 on the Red compound?

Please do it. This sounds absolutely amazing. Please you two, brainstorm this together. Make it work! Two redblooded homesteaders out there in the Canadian wilderness!

And don't forget, put it on youtube for our entertainment.

 

[Red Squirrel]

What's the cost for 1 on the Red compound?

That's an idea, start a trailer park lol. Probably won't do that, but I've thought of doing Airbnb. I wouldn't want to go too big as it could draw unwanted attention, but maybe have 1 basic cabin that I rent out. Would be popular during hunting season.

I'm looking at hiring out the land clearing since doing it myself is a bit futile and just takes so long. If I can get a driveway and a nice clearing done it will really bring me ahead. I might bite the bullet and buy a sea can even though they are retarded expensive, but it would at least give me a secure place to store tools so I don't have to keep lugging stuff back and forth. Last year I spent more time lugging stuff around than actually doing work.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

They have fast food houses. They're called tents and lean-to's that you see underpass and around the city aquaduct.

Housing is one place I will agree with conservatives on. Too many sticks, not enough carrots. Getting a permit for city water costs $20,000 fucking dollars. If you want to cut down trees (invasive eucalyptus trees mind) brace yourself for years of court battles from the misguided sierra club.

Lot of "man made" fixed function time and cost goes into building housing. Even the well intentioned end up building a ton of market rate housing cause affordable housing just isn't affordable to build.