If We Made Shoes Like We Make Housing, People Would Go Barefoot | Hacker News Reader

If We Made Shoes Like We Make Housing, People Would Go Barefoot

strongtowns.org

38 pointsjseliger22 comments

I'm not sure I understand the analogy.

In the analogy to shoes, there are two types of shoes: a high-end loafer and an elite-brand tennis shoe.

How does this translate to real estate? High end real estate and ... not high end? I don't understand how there are only two types of real estate. Condos, co-ops, single family detached, multi family, townhouse, cottage, bungalo, mobile home, Victorian, ranch style ...? It also states there are only a few suppliers, but it seems like there are a lot of home builders. I don't think its as centralized as a lot of other things like electronics suppliers for instance.

The article then goes on to state that zoning artificially dampens supply and subsidies distort the market, and that's true. We should lift onerous zoning requirements and end subsidies. But zoning is a local issue and in reality people want to have some control over the neighborhood they live in. I am probably more anti-zoning than most people, but I would have limits as well. No zoning is great until your neighbor decides to convert his lot into a trailer park. So such a blanket statement is a non-starter in many places. There is definitely that can be done on subsidies and onerous regulations that most people don't like (e.g. parking requirements, contradictory accessibility rules, permits for simple things). And then zoning should be done gradually with the obvious low hanging fruit (e.g. an empty lot is technically a historic site).

> No zoning is great until your neighbor decides to convert his lot into a trailer park.

I’m completely fine with this. Let people do what they want with their property. As long as it’s within the law, e.g. noise, crime, not opening a factory in the neighborhood.

A couple of RVs or double wides, why do you care?

I own rental property and personal property, actually I care a lot more about the neighborhood and property values than the average homeowner. But I’ll tell you what, the so called pro-housing, progressive folks are some of the most racist, condescending people in the world when you want to build low income housing or a trailer park in their backyard.

> I’m completely fine with this. Let people do what they want with their property. As long as it’s within the law, e.g. noise, crime, not opening a factory in the neighborhood.

So your saying that you are completely fine with lifting zoning regulations as long as there are regulations for what the zone can be used for that people are forced to follow?

Snark detected, but there are multiple jurisdictions globally where "zoned-for-residential" actually means regulations rivalling a Tolstoy-epic on what residential use is not allowed.

The way I interpreted the analogy was "people would rather be homeless than live in a shitty house".

...i know it's wrong.

If there was a fixed number of shoes, then shoes would probably be made the way housing is made. And indeed, getting good shoes was hard before the industrial revolution, which made making new shoes a lot easier.

For anyone who lived in Europe is hard to say American Houses are high quality. Even McMansions are built with flimsy materials and require extensive and expensive maintenance. Every small accident can turn into a nightmarish repair project. If you tear down most homes around 40 years old of course you're going to have housing crisis.

It's not about the quality of construction techniques - plenty of European cities have similar housing crises.

Commercially-built, American tract homes are built for lowest labor and lowest material costs. They frequently skip every 2nd or even 3rd studs on non-loadbearing walls. The new house my mom bought had endless quality defects (holes) that had to be repaired including cabinets missing shelves, door jam gaps, missing weatherstripping, broken dishwasher, and problems with the garage door. Let me add that most non-custom, commercially-built homes in Texas completely lack any attention to architectural design aesthetics and are just plain ugly.

In America, it is rare for homes to be ever torn down unless they're extremely damaged by termites, very old and not up to modern codes and not considered a historical site, or a 1-wall demo "remodel" cannot be accomplished.

> They frequently skip every 2nd or even 3rd studs on non-loadbearing walls.

I have never seen this. It seems trivial for an inspector to catch, and 2x4s are cheap. It makes no sense for a tract builder, whose profits are a function of successfully pumping out a new house in 100 days, to take such a low reward high risk action and end up delaying the build time.

> Commercially-built, American tract homes are built for lowest labor and lowest material costs.

This seems location and builder specific, and not at all generalizable based on a single anecdote.

> In America, it is rare for homes to be ever torn down unless they're extremely damaged by termites, very old and not up to modern codes and not considered a historical site, or a 1-wall demo "remodel" cannot be accomplished.

This, too, seems location-specific. In Denver, older houses are being torn down constantly to put up new builds. I’m not clear why you’d think it’s universally true.

New construction has to meet building code/pass inspection and plans have to be engineered and permitted. If an engineer has done calculations and its safe to skip studs, I see nothing wrong with that. Less studs = more insulation. (I prefer to build 24 OC)

QC issues are on the buyer, which is why it's standard to have an inspection done.

Functionally, this is not true.

Many buildings never get inspected at all. Or, if they do get inspected, it's by someone who wants to spend 1% of the time there compared to what they should be spending, so they just don't bother with doing most of their job. Or they're being paid by the builder to look the other way.

Building codes are the sort of thing you worry about if you're not an actual home builder, and you think that the inspector is actually going to do their job.

Most buildings never come within a mile of an actual engineer. Or architect.

Now, if it's a high end home where they really want to make sure that they follow all the laws and regulations, they might actually hire an engineer and be able to figure out that they can safely do 24 OC studs in certain circumstances. But that's not even 1/10th of 1% of homes that are built.

>New construction has to meet building code/pass inspection and plans have to be engineered and permitted.

First time, huh... [1]

I was a residential contractor for enough years to have witnessed several instances of "inspector on-site for just a few minutes, didn't even cross the treshhold" [usually to my benefit].

In my local AHJ, inspectors have just 30 minutes for each permitted project... and majority of <$10k projects "off the books."

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/james-franco-first-time

I eventually had to retire from residential electrical contracting, because very few clients can afford to "do things correctly." Of course, the most correct thing would have been to BUILD IT CORRECTLY IN THE FIRST PLACE, but few homebuilders have intelligent-enough clients to make build quality their standard.

As the old roofing joke goes: "warranty runs out; water runs in."

Yeah, near victim of residential fire here.

1960s house with aluminum wiring here.

Bare minimum you must do when buying such a house is to recheck every wirenut in every box.

Replace all wirenuts with zinc-based lugnut if any copper wire touches aluminum wire. The Bare minimum effort.

No time? Invest in cheap ($60) 32x32 pixel infrared sensor and look for a heat producing wiring box. This one caught one that completely melted the wiring conductors.

I don’t want to complain too much since it’s an out of context exert. But this article gets lost in the analogy. Given the source though, I think the “cheap shoe” that they’re longing for is apartment buildings. Houses are considered high end not because the construction is actually good, but the land use.

We should be making much more low end housing, absolutely. That said, even the cheapest housing costs the time of tradesmen and substantial materials costs, not to mention land. It will always be a substantial chunk of minimum wage earners' income because minimum wage is too low and/or out of whack with real costs.

So you want trailer parks? Mass produced, identical, movable, cheap enough so that people can own more than one? I'm not against the last one but that is the government's fault with laws saying "you must do this" "you must not do that" "you can't do that here" "you must pay us yearly for owning a shoe". Something tells me the article isn't advocating to remove all these except the "can't do that here" one.

Tangential PSA: modern shoes damage people’s feet. Your own toes are likely curled inwards from a lifetime of shoe use. If your regular shoes have arch support, then your arches will likely have atrophied too. A raised heel is bad for your posture and changes your gait.

So maybe we should go barefoot, some of the time.

I’ve been trying to come up with a metaphor to explain the housing crisis in California to my friends in LATAM. Shoes are a pretty good. I want something punchier, though.

The entire excerpt is a low-quality strawman.

Start with why housing isn’t a commodity; and why it can’t be produced on the cheap by slave-labor.

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