We can build affordable housing. the right question to ask is: why is housing unaffordable?
First: look at more economical design philosophies: Rob Roy of Sauna fame, Lester Walker who wrote tiny houses, and somewhat less of Sarah Susanka. Oh, and who can leave a pioneer hacker out: R. Buckminster Fuller - who thought of practical solutions to house humanity and called our planet space ship earth. Bucky was so innovative he was taken as a quack by many.
The main ideas are simple: maximize volume and reduce surface skin - this makes for cheaper building and less heating/cooling energy. There are trade offs between the sphere and livability - but cubes(with slanted roofs) beat most conventional designs by far. Really think about the floorplan: rooms can serve two purposes or more, get the plumbing reduced to the minimum, bathrooms adjacent, and directly above on the next floor - these are worthwhile design constraints. All the while aesthetics can be improved - which I see evidently contributes greatly to quality of life. There is a science to living.
Then on to land. You know for all the worshiping architects and media give to Frank Lloyd Wright they don't mention his hatred of cities, and his explanations for why the rural life rules. I think there are strong media influences to keep people in the cities - while it may not be good for the majority it does keep more open land available to me.
It's ridiculous to pay more than half the building cost of a home to land prices. I understand people need to work and that is an artificial draw of the city. But, maybe we need to reorganize the way we live to make everything more efficient. The centralized industrial economy where we need cities of work camps is passed. Most jobs can allow people to telecommute, and we will find more physical and service jobs done by increasingly intelligent machines.
Second: the system is designed to make us debt indentured servants. Mortgages are often no more than the chains of slaves in their sheet rock cages. Look at how the housing market is manipulated by lending: if the majority can borrow more money to out bid for houses then the price of housing will go up. And they have.
Third. Standardization. We build houses like custom artwork. I'm not saying we need to live in prefab trailers, but we can economize buildings by far.
Think of your money in terms of sheets of plywood(currently under $20 a 4"x8" section for CDX) and drywall($8) and realize what you could build. The average taxpayer could build a house with money the government demands and uses to prop up housing prices.
The bottom line is that there is no constraint on building things affordably yourself unless it's imposed the government of the powerful in the form of publicly acceptable zoning, banking, and miss-education in the public schools - what would be a more valuable lesson than learning how to shelter yourself? I'd much prefer kids learn that than fluff social studies and all the other time wasting crap they feed them.
Unlike all the soft suburban dwelling people, some of us realize there is a real world where things go wrong, and being able to still use your computer for critical things can be a life saver. Just ask the military, even if you SIPRNET is down you still want to pull up imagery, print out maps and plan your mission to go kill the guys who made our power fail.
First: look at more economical design philosophies: Rob Roy of Sauna fame, Lester Walker who wrote tiny houses, and somewhat less of Sarah Susanka. Oh, and who can leave a pioneer hacker out: R. Buckminster Fuller - who thought of practical solutions to house humanity and called our planet space ship earth. Bucky was so innovative he was taken as a quack by many.
The main ideas are simple: maximize volume and reduce surface skin - this makes for cheaper building and less heating/cooling energy. There are trade offs between the sphere and livability - but cubes(with slanted roofs) beat most conventional designs by far. Really think about the floorplan: rooms can serve two purposes or more, get the plumbing reduced to the minimum, bathrooms adjacent, and directly above on the next floor - these are worthwhile design constraints. All the while aesthetics can be improved - which I see evidently contributes greatly to quality of life. There is a science to living.
Then on to land. You know for all the worshiping architects and media give to Frank Lloyd Wright they don't mention his hatred of cities, and his explanations for why the rural life rules. I think there are strong media influences to keep people in the cities - while it may not be good for the majority it does keep more open land available to me. It's ridiculous to pay more than half the building cost of a home to land prices. I understand people need to work and that is an artificial draw of the city. But, maybe we need to reorganize the way we live to make everything more efficient. The centralized industrial economy where we need cities of work camps is passed. Most jobs can allow people to telecommute, and we will find more physical and service jobs done by increasingly intelligent machines.
Second: the system is designed to make us debt indentured servants. Mortgages are often no more than the chains of slaves in their sheet rock cages. Look at how the housing market is manipulated by lending: if the majority can borrow more money to out bid for houses then the price of housing will go up. And they have.
Third. Standardization. We build houses like custom artwork. I'm not saying we need to live in prefab trailers, but we can economize buildings by far.
Think of your money in terms of sheets of plywood(currently under $20 a 4"x8" section for CDX) and drywall($8) and realize what you could build. The average taxpayer could build a house with money the government demands and uses to prop up housing prices.
The bottom line is that there is no constraint on building things affordably yourself unless it's imposed the government of the powerful in the form of publicly acceptable zoning, banking, and miss-education in the public schools - what would be a more valuable lesson than learning how to shelter yourself? I'd much prefer kids learn that than fluff social studies and all the other time wasting crap they feed them.