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And children.

They won't tell you the punchline. They also want to stop you from having children.

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All part of the own nothing reset push.
They want people living in cubicals.

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Prices go up because people want to live there.
People want to live there because of the space and low density.
To make it affordable, you have to take away the reason people want to live there.

It sounds like a basic supply/demand issue being framed out of square, as if people wanting to live somewhere means they must be able to live there.

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The question came, as it always did, just as Jason Peasley finished making his case for Brown Ranch, a development that would grow the size of his city by one-third and finally provide some affordable housing for the hundreds of people doubled up in trailer parks and hotel rooms in the ski town. The development, as Peasley pitched it to the room of residents gathered under thick wooden beams in the local community center, would use density to solve the housing problemmainly by building apartments and attached homes.

"What about single family homes?" a woman standing in the back of the meeting room asked. "Because I would like to buy one someday."

Steamboat Springs, Colo.where Peasley serves as the head of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority, providing affordable housing to all of Routt Countyis a mountain town that draws people for its wide open vistas and outdoor space. The idea of living in an apartment on what is now green rolling hills jarred people with visions of their own porches and yards, who had seen their neighbors amass hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity just by owning a single family home during the pandemic.

"Personally, I would take a very, very small house," another resident said.

"So would I," the woman in the back said quickly, so as not to be left out.

Peasley sighed. Nine months ago, he'd been given an opportunity that most urban planners dream ofan anonymous donation of 536 acres of land to build long-term affordable housing for people who live and work in Steamboat Springs. But it's difficult to get buy-in to use hundreds of acres to build multifamily homes in Steamboat, which currently has 1,400 fewer housing units than are currently needed. Residents might support density in theory, but what they really want is a single-family home to call their own.

How Steamboat solves this conundrum could have implications for communities across the country that are struggling with affordability as their populations grow. Home prices have soared in the past two years in cities like Austin and Phoenix as well as in ski towns like Truckee and Sun Valley. Adding more dense housing units would help keep prices affordable, because many of these places have natural boundaries like mountains or oceans that prevent developers from sprawling out. But proposals like Peasley's are usually thwarted by neighbors who complain about their views being blocked or their parking becoming limited or their beloved townwhich they themselves moved to years or decades beforegetting too crowded.

Many communities like Steamboat are reaching a breaking point. Here, the need for more housing had been abundantly clear even before the pandemic, as investors turned condos and apartments that had once provided workforce housing into cash cows on Airbnb. Then, in 2020, remote workers flocked to Steamboat. For all the urban planners proclaiming density to be the solution to America's housing needs, the majority of Americans still dreamed of a single-family home, with a yard, a tree, and room to grow, and the pandemic only whetted that appetite as families spent more time at home and looked for private outdoor space and extra rooms to double as offices. The median listing price of a single family home in Steamboat is now $829,000, up from $529,000 in 2019. Rents for a one-bedroom apartment are hovering around $2,100, about one-third higher than the national average.

By July of 2021, 60 percent of Americans said they'd prefer to live in a place where the homes are large and farther apart, even if schools, stores, and restaurants were a few miles away, up from 53 percent before the pandemic, according to a Pew Research Center survey. In contrast, 39 percent preferred a community where homes are small and close to each other but where schools, stores, and restaurants were in walking distance, down from 47 percent in 2019.

That's even though half of Americans say that affordable housing is a major problem in their community. As Peasley has tried to explain time and again, affordability and density go hand in hand. Single family homes are much more expensive to build than attached homes or apartments, and they take up more room, and need more resources to maintain. Steamboat could build seven attached homes for the amount it would cost to build one single-family detached home, according to projections by Mithun, a consulting group helping with the project.

"We have an opportunity that maybe no other community has to really thoughtfully address our housing issues in one massive development," Peasley, a tall redheaded urban planning guru who could be mistaken for an Olympic skateboarder, told me recently. "This could really be a template for our 21st century live, work, and play."

Peasley is uniquely suited to helping convert Steamboat to pro-density. He was a city planner for Steamboat Springs for five years before taking over the Yampa Valley Housing Authority a decade ago; his tenure has created hundreds of units of affordable housing. His success in getting tax credits to build some affordable housing in Steamboat is what motivated anonymous donors to give him the money to buy Brown Ranch and build even more. Peasley hopes to build 2,300 units at Brown Ranch, which would meet the demand projected for the next two decades.

But no matter how many times Peasley explains this all to the community, even the most self-aware residents of Steamboat are having a hard time letting go of their vision of a home and yard to call their own. "The disconnect we're having is that everyone wants the American dreama single-family homeand economists tell us it's not possible," Peasley says. The surest way to wealth in America has long been to stake claim to a plot of land and a home, but places like Steamboat are discovering that if they are dedicated to welcoming everyone who wants to live there, they're going to have to pioneer another way.

MOAR

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You know what I find really funny about all this. Is years ago, I was a developer and was trying to build affordable housing. Wanted to build duplex, tri plex and 4 plex places and starter homes. The planing departments wouldn't hear of it. Only single family homes with "impact" fees so high that you could only build high end places. Even in the shitty parts of town. BUT now that housing has gotten so bad, because of there planing and rules. THEY are getting to build housing and they want to build the type of places that they have BLOCKED anyone else from building for decades. They only want affordable housing if THEY own it, or there cronies own it. How dare people get cheep starter houses or low rent places.

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You know what I find really funny about all this. Is years ago, I was a developer and was trying to build affordable housing. Wanted to build duplex, tri plex and 4 plex places and starter homes. The planing departments wouldn't hear of it. Only single family homes with "impact" fees so high that you could only build high end places. Even in the shitty parts of town. BUT now that housing has gotten so bad, because of there planing and rules. THEY are getting to build housing and they want to build the type of places that they have BLOCKED anyone else from building for decades. They only want affordable housing if THEY own it, or there cronies own it. How dare people get cheep starter houses or low rent places.

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I would like a 3 bedroom 2 bath house (master in the loft) within range of broadband internet but outside the city somewhere.

Not in Virginia, though.

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i've been everywhere out west for work.

only two places with a hold on me are the PNW and montucky.

still wanna check out alaska () and the carolinas, TN, and arkansas.

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Short list for me:  Colorado, Montucky , Idaho.

Alaska is a bit TOO wild for my taste, I think.

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Using Steamboat Springs is a scam

Thats Marie Antoinette shit right there.

"I want to live in a beautiful, remote, small Colorado mountain town, and I want to buy a 3bd/3bath ranch house on a barista salary."

I wanted to live in Steamboat, shit was too expensive, so I didn't.  Easy easy

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don't forget WY and UT.

from what i can tell AK is basically montucky with oceans, glaciers, yetis, polar bears, more meth, more poverty, more natives, more trees, more rivers, more rain, more oil & gas, and more crime.

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Bus them in. It's much cheaper and they don't have to live in a nice area that they can't afford to live in in the first place.

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Suburban communities are mostly destined to be ghettoes. The low lane value means there’s no economic case to bulldoze blighted housing and rebuild. The day they open is their wedding day; it’s all downhill from there.

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Single family housing isn't affordable because developers keep making subdivisions will large expensive houses instead of affordable ones.  Period.    Watching the Phoenix metro expand by millions of people over the last couple decades almost all new subdivisions have been 2k sf homes on average.  My neighborhood build in 1983 was entirely 1200 sqft homes with a carport.  Over decades most people improved their home adding a bedroom or building a garage out of their carport but the homes were built for people to be able to afford them.

I think city planners encourage expensive housing so they can take in more property tax revenue leaving people with little options on buying a house that simply meets their needs and is affordable.  People are buying way more house than an average family needs .

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The math is pretty simple, developers can't make money on small houses, the cost of building them is too high. That's why they build things like townhouses that are smaller and more affordable.

If you want small houses to be affordable you need to put them on small lots with small roads and small parking lots.

Phoenix has a zoning code designed for large houses on large lots, and it's absolutely hostile to small houses.

Planners encourage expensive housing because the people like the ones in this thread think that small houses are for their moral and financial inferiors.

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Few want to live in an apartment.

- More noise
- Issues with neighbors becomes more commonplace
- Other issues, like plumbing becomes more problematic
- Nastiness. You can be as clean as you want but if they guy next door sleeps next to bags of garbage, enjoy your cockroach and bed bug infestation
- Going back to noise, you can't turn up the TV, music or whatever as you want
- Dealing with more people
- Less space
- Generally harder to access something like a garage


And many other reasons. They have their place but there is a reason having an actual home is desired. That is what almost everyone wants.

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Read urban planner and saw all I need to know. That whole field is hell bent on denser is better.   Steamboat is not urban suburban at most.  


Affordable housing is code for business owners need cheap labor and don't want to pay wages to have people live in the area.   I sat on my towns housing committee and it was all realtors and business looking for a way to subsidize their employees.  

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Hey, this is how the communists roll.  
You'll take your Section 8 housing, your weekly chocolate ration, and you'll like it.  

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Of course it will be impossible to force everyone into sustainable, state owned housing while we're still armed

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I get the developers can't cash out as well but I guess it's largely a problem of idiots trying to look rich and willing to be house poor to do it.

My house is small.  Expanded to 1400 sq feet 3 bedroom and a one car garage from a 1200 SQ ft 2 bedroom with a carport.   My kids have bedrooms.  We have a bedroom.  I have a livingroom and a small yard and patio.   I also have no debt at 38 years old because I paid my small affordable house off two years ago.  Now I'm planning retirement by 50 while most of my peers that bought these giant new houses have zero investment. Can't afford shit but their car and their house. They may feel successful because their house is big I guess but I'm the one who pities them.  Im stacking cash and work in places I'm happy because pay is a secondary concern.  

America is addicted to being poor for the sake of looking rich.

If I was shopping in today's market with so little affordable housing I'd be shopping for a  double wide and a place to park it on the outskirts of town.  Commuting would suck but a home is a home and it doesn't need to cost that much.

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All it would take to get people into apartments is to stop subsidizing single family housing.

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And children.

They won't tell you the punchline. They also want to stop you from having children.

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Hey, this is how the communists roll.  
You'll take your Section 8 housing, your weekly chocolate ration, and you'll like it.  

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The City planner youtube sphere is very cancerous. Most of them are leftist redditors, and it shows. There are valid reasons for things like mixed use zoning and mass transit, but very few of them are willing to present both sides of it when they make videos. It's usually "American cities suck and here's what NEEDS to be done about it."