Much smaller apartment sized unit could be fabricated in Mexico and shipped to US cities and placed upon lower valued land likely on the outskirt of town. Municipalities could extend bus service to these new communities so they would have access to shopping.
OK what’s wrong with my vision?
The same materials land labor can be used to build McMansions that sell at a higher profit margin. That is the same reason there are hardly any low priced, economical cars, on the US market anymore.
Public transit is socialistical. That money should be given to the “JCs” instead, we are told.
First, the $84K cost isn’t for the 2260 sf home. It’s for their smallest model. About 1,400 sf. Still cheap, but not as cheap. About $60 per sf. That compares favorably to low end construction costs in the U.S. at $100 per s.f. But it’s not huge savings, and part of that will get eaten up in transport costs.
Second, there are other costs that aren’t just the cost of the physical home. Grading and elevating the site, infrastructure hookups (water wells and septic systems, or connection to public service), impact fees, permitting fees, and the like also have to be paid.
And finally, U.S. cities that have cheap land on the outskirts of town are not necessarily the ones with the dearth of low income housing. The least affordable cities are the ones that are land constrained, either by geography or regulation (greenbelts and urban growth boundaries) or both. So this isn’t a solution for places like NYC or SF. In places like Houston, which do accommodate people “sprawling” to the low-cost land on the outskirts, housing prices are more realistic: median starter homes are around $220K, which is not that much more expensive than this modular house would be, all-in with land costs. In places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh, starter homes only cost around $100-120K - these home would actually be more expensive than you can get on the market.
Is that figure still valid? 50 years ago when I worked as an insurance underwriter we used that figure for average construction of a new house. Surely that has gone up.
Low Income housing cannot be built on prime real estate. Working folk will have to commute to work.
50 years ago many commuted from Orange county to Los Angeles. A 2 hour commute then. A co-worker of mine had an arrangement with our manager. He reported to work at 6am and was out the door at 3pm to avoid traffic.
Sure - but the affordability crisis has a geographic/location component. It’s not that people can’t get cheap homes anywhere. As noted above, starter homes in places like Pittsburgh and Cleveland are only about $100K - and that includes land. Not much more than the modular home. The problem is that people are having trouble moving to places that afford economic opportunity, especially in the spiky “global cities” like NY or SF. It’s not hard to find inexpensive housing in undesirable locations, but the real issue is in more constrained areas.
Almost certainly not - homelessness is a complex problem, and many people that are experiencing it wouldn’t necessarily be able to avoid it if they simply relocated to a lower cost community. Especially since there’s probably a fair amount of self-selection at work - some (I would think many) of the people who find themselves no longer able to rent/own a place in New York or SF will end up moving to a smaller, more affordable town on their own devices. The ones that are left are the ones that can’t (or won’t) make that happen.
Remember Levittowns from what 1948? Mass produced identical houses reduces cost below “average.”. This was a solution to the housing shortage after WWII and was aided by VA and FHA loans. And fit with soldiers returning from war who wanted to start a family.
This was a great program that worked well. The houses were so identical people sometimes had trouble finding their home.
Best known is the one on Long Island. Another in PA is now renamed Falls, north of Philadelphia. And there was one in NJ too.
Most of us would like to live in 2500 sf or so, but 1200 sf is very comfortable compared to most apartments. And works well as a starter home while you build some equity.
To ignore this end of the market is foolishness. We should expect better of our leaders.
Yes, the auto industry ignored this end of the market as less profitable and let Toyota et al have it.
Even today they find pick up trucks more profitable. In St. Louis we once had assembly plants from all three majors. Lots of people worked there and everyone drove an American brand.
Now when i pull up to a stop light, three fourths of the cars are foreign brand, mostly Asian, but assembled in North America. Pickups are still American. Most SUVs are not.
Nothing at all. If you believe it to be feasible, start a company to do it, or at least invest in a company that will do it. That’s how visions get realized.
A thought crossed my mind this evening: deport 10M people, and a few million low end housing units become available. Find some pretext to deport another 10M, and a few million more low end housing units are available. As noted a couple times in recent days, deport all the Muslims in Dearborn, and half the housing stock becomes available. Muslims around here tend to be small business owners and professionals, so the available housing would be pretty nice.
A documentary I watched a few years ago, claimed that some 20-25% of the German Federal budget, in the late 30s, was funded with the property the government seized from the people it had deported, or locked in a concentration camp.