It’s interesting to perspectives from elsewhere. The Netherlands is also facing a housing crisis, and they’re also talking about significant increases in construction. Part of that will be to limit local control.
Interestingly, they’re also talking about changing the type of construction: fewer rooms.
There isn’t quite enough context to explain why that would help, but it’s something I haven’t really heard politicians saying here in Canada.
What changes would you make to speed up housing growth here?
This is how Japan has “affordable” housing. 300 square foot per person or less on average. Bedrooms get reused during the day by putting the bed away.
Laundry is in the kitchen or bathroom, no dedicated space. No utility closets.
No yards, no property setbacks, and for a lot of apartments no parking at all or only single stalls for some people.
You can see all of this in the way they name their rental/sales listings.
1DK means 1 bedroom, with a dining room and a kitchen. Dining room meaning that the kitchen is large enough for a table, not a separate room.
1LDK adds a living room. That’s still likely under 400 square feet.
1K also exists. It’s literally 100-200 square feet and a kitchen in the main area, and a bathroom. The bathroom has a clothes washer, but no dryer. Most people hang dry in their room or balcony.
We honestly should build entire towers with a hundred 1K units here within 1 block of transit hubs and no parking.
Even our micro housing is not usually this small and most zoning bylaws dont allow for anything like that.
Giving people an absolute minimum option relieves stress on the other larger units which brings overall prices down. Such buildings would be much cheaper because they use less land and as the original post mentions they have zero luxuries. It’s copy paste of the simplest possible housing unit and your only customization is wall paint colour.
And we are looking for the cause why people aren’t starting families…
You are only thinking one step at a time.
A lot of people who would move into these units live in 2 and 3 bedroom units with roommates. That would free those larger units up for couples and families.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but that reminds me of the adage of loosening laws to get companies to build condos and houses, even if most development consists of luxury housing units because somehow there is more on the market, ergo more supply. I am not sure how far either calculi hold true.
A) most development marketed as “luxury” are not actually luxury in any sort of way. It’s just a marketing tactic.
B) I wouldn’t expect this to be built by for profit developers. The government should be the one building it.
“Luxury” means “market value”, i.e., will be rented/sold for maximum profit margin.
I think this is a wholly sensible wish. The thing is however that the governments are building nothing in this political climate and would rather wait for people to die off to make room.
Why shouldn’t families be able to live close to transit?
They should, how does what I suggested prevent that?
I understood your text as saying that we should flood the areas close to transit with studio apartments. If that’s the type of accomodation that’s mostly available close to transit that would make it so that families (who tend to need multiple bedroom apartments) would not have enough options close to transit.
There’s a ton of space next to transit, adding even hundreds of these buildings across a city wouldn’t limit regular apartments in the same areas at all.
We also don’t tend to tear down apartment buildings that already exist very often.
Those sound like rooms in a boarding house. That would be way better for some people than larger units, or living on the street.
I guess the key is that they need to be affordable.
That’s the problem. Here it would be billed as a “Luxury Tiny Home Experience” and they’d charge $3k/month rent. Corpos know plebs don’t have money, so the only market is the luxury market.
A boarding house usually has shared spaces as well. These units do not. They almost all have external facing doors too. More like a tiny motel than a boarding house or dorms.