Posted on 12/31/2006 3:10:03 PM PST by Lorianne
Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver are creating strategies to encourage the development of modest, more affordable houses ___ In these three Pacific Northwest cities, the progressive power of urban planning is taken very seriously, and concepts like livability and sustainability dominate the local civic culture to such an extent that to visit all three in rapid succession, as I did in October, is to drop in on another country. It’s not the United States or Canada, but a more highly evolved combination of the two.
In each city I was impressed by major developments, dramatic projects that promised to refresh the urban landscape in conspicuous ways.
It was in Seattle, however, where I saw the best small house. Dave Sarti, who co-taught a design-build studio at the University of Washington last year, had constructed an 800-square-foot house with a 160-square-foot double-height attached workshop. It’s a sweet fire-engine-red box planted in the backyard of a Central District home. I walked down the grassy driveway past an unremarkable blue traditional home and was surprised to see this Bauhaus cube where another yard might have a swing set.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
That's all??? WOW.
Good luck--I wish you the best success. Massachusetts is ONLY building McMansions on 2-acre lots, or expensive loft condos downtown, and consequently the young people are fleeing the state. We need affordable options that match how people live.
Give people extra space, even without kids, and they'll fill it up with stuff they didn't know they "needed."
180K for an 800 sqft home? What kind of a complete idiot pays 225 per sq foot on a shack?
For the record : 2003 NEW HOME : 3023 sq ft : under 170K
The whole point of adding small houses to the existing footprint of the city is to make the city more accessible to young people who can't buy in now at inflated prices.
Easy enough for a single guy with money to live in a small house with a large workshop attached. But if you have a wife and kids, it ain't gonna work.
Of course the kind of folks who write this sort of article or want Seattle to micromanage private housing probably don't have any kids, and don't think they are necessary. In fact they are undesirable. So we get the bauhaus cube instead of a swingset.
The culture of death at work behind the shiny words.
You be hard pressed to find a group who could do worse than what 'urban planners' have done in the last 50-60 years. Heck, I'd be willing to let Diswashers and Busboys have a go at it.
That's great, but obviously Texas is building homes under a different set of circumstances than the Pacific NW. Different salaries, too. It's not comparable. (And what they're trying to do here is to keep young people from moving to places like Texas where homes are affordable because the land is almost infinite.)
It's a starter home. People trade up when they have kids or downsize into it when the kids leave home. The market has always worked that way.
Price per square foot is not the only criteria the value of a house.
Price/SF is the banker and realtor yardstick for value. Fine for those who buy into that measure of 'value', but not everyone does.
The problem in the NW area is not a scarcity of land, it is a surplus of socialism-impaired planners.
Texas, on the other hand, has an open season on social planners. ;-)
When I bought my house 10 years ago, there was one traffic light between Avondale Rd. and my house. Now there are about 10.
I have an ice fishing shanty, and could sublet the basement...
Our situations are similar. I'm a single empty nester. I downsized four years ago to a 1600 sq ft 3 bedroom with a study. It's more than I need, but it's very difficult to go much smaller in my area and be in a good neighborhood. I looked at townhomes but they cost more per sq ft here, you have to pay HOA dues and I don't want to share walls.
"800-square-foot house..."
They can kiss my skinny posterior. I grew up in a 900 sq ft house because my father banked every nickel he made, not because we were broke. That's 2 - 180 pounders, a 200 pounder, and my mother, who barely avoided getting crushed.
I WILL NOT live that way again unless I have to. I know that's all some can afford, but if you can afford larger and want it, see my first line as to my attitude to government mandated teensy houses. Commies.
You got that right. We downsized from 2500 sq ft to 1900 sq ft ten years ago... not enough storage, we had to add on.
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We downsized from 3000sf to 1500sf...not enough storage so we got rid of everything we didn't need or didn't use. We discovered that much of our time, money and effort in the big place was a waste that should have gone into savings and retirement. Although we're doing fine, we realise now that we probably wasted several hundred thousand or more on space, premium cars and other things we didn't need or use
Yes. People lobby government to "protect their property values" and succeed in making housing scarcer and costlier.
I think you're on to something. I would love to find a two bedroom, two bath home with an office and open kitchen/den on a smaller lot finished out like a larger, custom home.
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