05-30-2019, 02:23 AM
(05-29-2019, 11:28 AM)David Horn Wrote: I'm a big Sarah Susanka fan, and have several of her books. I'm definitely a smaller-is-better type, though too small for the area may make a house unsalable too. We live in interesting times in that regard. I live in a rural are that has a large recreational lake. We have houses here (neighborhood dependent, of course) that are anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 square feet. Some of the larger ones are intended as family resorts, and occupied sporadically by extended families, but a few are owned by Boomers who still carry the bigger-is-better torch. Some are well made (and pricey) and others are the typical spec-house-on-a-grand-scale. The spec-house neighborhoods are already getting a bit seedy. The others seem to holding their value. We'll see if the next generation can maintain them, since most will be passed-on rather than sold.
FWIW, I don't see tiny houses lasting as "a thing" for much longer. Most were inexpensive enough that they can be used for things other than full-time housing, when the owner-occupants finally realize that living in an urban apartment only works well in a city. Likewise, the McMansion is already a boat-anchor for Boomers (mostly) trying to down-size into something manageable: true in suburbia and true here as well.
I am unfamiliar with her writings, but as a general rule the solution to inequities in real estate have solutions in
(1) revitalizing the economies of cities that the Great Recession/Little Depression have ravaged, and
(2) building smaller.
(1) Failure to do the first implies that America will splinter on regional divides in economic reality with a few areas getting the mass employment and the rest of America becoming basket cases. The mass employment comes with people living in tiny apartments unsuited to children -- housing with the space typical of infamous housing projects apartments but more 'luxury'. I would guess that educational achievement for American kids correlates to square feet of living space for children. (Note that reading and math scores tend to be highest for public school kids in the Great Plains states. Children need privacy so that they can do homework and do independent reading without having to hear distractions outside.
Those places with the mass employment are also places with the most childless couples. Even a second bedroom is extremely expensive to the middle class in Silicon Valley. Yes, I am for Zero Population Growth, but we had better have child-friendly environments that bring out the best in children so that those that we have become competent adults.
As for Silicon Valley -- it too can go the way of Detroit as the next technological marvel makes the current high technology less relevant as a share of the economy. That happened with Greater Detroit as automobiles became a smaller share of economic activity and auto manufacturing became less concentrated in Detroit. Detroit used to be the world's richest city, and now it is one of America's poorest. Rochester, New York looked very good twenty years ago.
(2) Maybe there will be pressures to build tract houses again. These are much better for children than are apartments as a rule. Suburban governments see McMansions as cash-cows for taxation.. but of those quit selling, then the tax base can vanish. They are badly-built, and they are horribly-inefficient uses of land.
Quality tract houses in large numbers solve more problems than does one McMansion. Sure, tract houses imply more roads to be plotted and paved, more schools to be built and staffed, and a more elaborate waste-treatment system... But divide this by the numbers and you get more people living moderately well instead of a few living in opulent splendor and most in squalor. Sure, poor people have been expendable in America for nearly forty years, but that is one bad habit that must change in American life.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.