Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable Housing

[Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

We tear our hair out trying to make housing more affordable.  It must be the 
zoning.  It must be the lenders, or the down payments, or the equity.  It must 
be the size, so make them smaller.

But I fear the answer is none of the above.  It's not that housing is too 
expensive, it's that wages are too low.  Wages for the bottom third, or the 
bottom half, of American households have stagnated for at least a couple of 
decades, while at the same time, housing costs have appreciated by at least a 
couple percent a year in the slow markets, and more like six percent in the hot 
markets.

Our problem is not expensive housing, our problem is income inequality.  If we 
gave big pay boosts to the two lowest quintiles, and modest pay boosts to the 
next two -- covering these costs with reduced pay and benefits in the top 
quintile -- we'd be amazed at how fast the unaffordability problem would 
evaporate.  But if we can't identify the real problem, then indeed shall we all 
go bald tearing our hair.

Thanks,
Philip Dowds
Cornerstone Cohousing
Cambridge, MA

> On Sep 9, 2016, at 5:04 PM, Brian Bartholomew via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Seems to me, tiny houses on wheels are a way to avoid zoning, which
> bans small houses of a more affordable size.  A downside of tiny
> houses is they have weight and size restrictions due to road
> transport, and they can't be built to normal building code strength or
> durability.  I wouldn't want to be in one during a hurricane.
> 
> Remove that zoning, and you'll see smaller, more affordable houses
> reappear.  Then only move the people, not the houses.  Remove other
> mortgage/real estate red tape, and these smaller houses could be
> bought and sold as people move, without losing a large chunk of
> accumulated equity each move in overhead.
> 
> Brian
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