[cglan]

Definitely not against this, since any housing is good, and I hate letting perfect be the enemy of good, but not sure why we are so intent on scaling the concept of a single family home down to 200sqft.

Townhouses in NYC have existed for over a hundred years, and generally across the world are an extremely viable concept for dense and cheap housing. It's perfectly possible to build cheap townhomes that can house 6 or 12 families each, without being oppressing mega apartment complexes. Townhomes in NYC were a working class concept originally. We could be erecting thousands of cookie cutter townhomes in somewhere like Austin for dirt cheap housing. The density would bring better benefits in terms of infra scalability, mixed use, and public transportation. All these solutions feel like they're silly middle school solutions for a problem that was solved hundreds of years ago

[crooked-v]

The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available, but they're not allowed to do so.

[samstave]

There is another reason - single-family dwelling housing.

As an example I proposed to the City of Alameda a few years back to develop a tiny-home community on the base end of the island...

I was working with tiny home manufacturers but the city had their zoning laws set that tiny homes would not work - even in a planned area:

the zoning requirements were that each lot must be 2,000 SF min. for any dwelling - and can only have one primary entrance... but here was the reason that is important:

You could not put more than one unit on anything less than 2,000 as multiple units in that area cannot have separate entrances and shared utilities - otherwise its condidered an apartment building and would require a single entrance, cannot share power, water, etc.

Sothe zoning laws (and permitting process) need to be overhauled in most municipalities to accomodate tiny home groups - regardless if the intended residents are from the homeless population or single/couples that want that lifestyle irrespective income/career style.

[wyldfire]

Townhomes are present all over the city of Austin and surrounding areas. At least in this case it's not an obstacle.

[lukas099]

Of course they are present. That doesn't mean the market is supplying them in anywhere near the quantity demanded.

[crooked-v]

Philadelphia is another of the rare counterexamples, as the zoning there allows new row houses and townhouses almost everywhere.

[lukas099]

Philly is an old city. It probably already had townhomes everywhere, and would benefit from allowing further stages of density.

[xienze]

I don’t think townhouses are anywhere near as rare as you’re letting on. I’ve can’t recall the last time I haven’t seen them in any decent-sized (50k+) city.

[cpursley]

Yep, there’s even a website dedicated to this:

https://missingmiddlehousing.com/

[bequanna]

This rings false. Townhomes are seen in large numbers in almost all suburbs and I don’t think they inspire the same NIMBY fury that apartments do.

[heavyset_go]

In my experience, they do, but they're marketed as luxury housing so the stigma isn't as apparent to your typical person who is sympathetic to NIMBYism.

[closeparen]

Townhomes are seen in large numbers in the form of townhome developments i.e. pave a parking lot off a major road and throw up several rows of townhomes in it. What is less often permitted is for an existing city grid to have a mix of single-family and townhomes, or for older single-family homes to be replaced by townhomes as an area becomes more in demand.

[crooked-v]

> large numbers

Any "large" numbers you see are still decades behind the amount of construction needed to actually meet demand (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...).

[CapitalistCartr]

Here in Florida they're not "seen in large numbers", they're dwarfed by the ordinary suburban single-family dwellings, both already built, and new developments going up like wildfire. Every other form of housing combined is dwarfed by them.

[travoc]

A tiny home installed adjacent to other tiny homes is just called an “apartment” and there are millions of them across the U.S.

[crooked-v]

Middle-density housing is all the things that are in between a single home and an apartment building: duplexes and triplexes, row houses, dense townhouses, multiple small cottages on a single plot of land, etc. They're typically all both cheaper to build than apartment buildings and better liked by the residents, but zoning in most US cities doesn't allow any of it.

[lolinder]

From a bit of googling I think that there are different conceptions of what a townhome is across different regions, so it might be helpful to describe exactly what you're referring to.

Where I live, a townhouse/townhome is more or less just a single-family home without space to the left and right—it has a front door and usually at least a second story (sometimes three), it most often has a garage, and the left and right walls are shared with the next unit [0]. Typical total living area between all the floors is 1000-1500 sqft.

Judging from the picture in the article, the kind of townhome that I'm thinking of would absolutely not be a more efficient use of land per housing unit than what they're doing here with these tiny homes.

I'm assuming that you're referring to something different?

[0] This is typical of what I think of as a townhome, if anything a bit more efficient than most: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2914-Yates-St-Denver-CO-8...

Edit: Here's a link to the property on Google maps so you can see the full scale of each unit: https://maps.app.goo.gl/cqLLmbU3Rtufkfx78

[crooked-v]

> absolutely not be a more efficient

The listing you linked looks like a much more efficient a use of land and resource than the tiny homes from the article: about the same amount of land per unit but able to hold substantially more people per unit, plus all the economies of scale that go with shared utilities, heat conservation from shared walls, and so on.

[lolinder]

Scale is hard to judge, but my gut sense is that land per unit is at least double in that listing—these units go back pretty far to make up for minimal street frontage.

Housing units is what matters for solving homelessness, not number of people housed. These tiny homes aren't intended to house whole families. Yes, you could fit 8 to 10 unrelated homeless people in a single family home or townhome, but there's a reason why that's not pushed forward as a solution—people don't generally want 9 strangers as roommates.

I definitely agree that the economies of scale that come with the shared walls make a huge difference for general practicality, but I was only speaking of land use per housing unit.

Edit: Here's a link to the satellite image [0] so you can see the depth of the property. The unit alone is about twice as deep as it is wide, and then it has a backyard per unit in addition to that. My very rough estimate with the Google maps ruler suggests about 1000 sqft footprint per unit.

[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/cqLLmbU3Rtufkfx78

[dmos62]

Roommates? This discussion is perplexing. Don't you have apartment buildings where you're from? An apartment in a multi-story house is more space efficient than a single-tenant house is what the observation was, unless I'm missing something.

[lolinder]

Yes, we have apartments, but this conversation is about townhomes and the different definitions of townhomes people use. Apartment buildings are absolutely the most efficient use of space, but the original poster on this thread was arguing for townhomes, and what is called a townhome in my area is just a single family home with shared walls with the neighbors to the left and right.

Hence roommates—townhomes (by the definition in my area) are not an efficient solution for homelessness unless you have many roommates.

I have a suspicion that what OP calls a townhome is something I would just call a small apartment building.

[cglan]

Sorry, we definitely have different definitions of townhomes. Where I am from (NYC) a townhouse is typically a 2/3 story build, narrow. With 2/3 units or sometimes split down the middle giving you 4 or 6 units or as high as 12 usually, often with an english basement and a back yard.

This is what I am talking about https://streeteasy.com/blog/types-of-townhouses-in-nyc/

DC is full of them too, so is boston. Googling NYC Park Slope Townhouse would get you tons of images of nicer ones, but there's tons of cheap vinyl sided ones that are just fine.

[seanmcdirmid]

Tiny homes also work well for housing people that are difficult to house normally. Like, they have an addiction problem and are likely to trash or burn down a unit they are given, a tiny home isolates that problem a bit.

[AlbertCory]

Exactly. In CA, "townhome" just means "condo with no upstairs or downstairs neighbors, and shared walls."

[at_a_remove]

I was thinking about this last night, what with people currently obsessing over "walkable cities." First, we need to understand why some people don't really like dense housing. Let me try a rough list without a great deal of order. Noise, smells, having to not make noise, crime, vermin infestation, inability to re-shape the property, the lack of permanence (you can be kicked out) ... that's a good starter. Some of those are inherent to the housing like the inability to re-shape the interior much. And I think vermin infestation will move up the rankings with bedbugs. But most of the rest seem fixable.

In fact, most of the rest have been fixable for a very long time. We could totally do a lot better with the ventilation and the HVAC in these larger buildings. We absolutely could have a lot of soundproofing so your upstairs neighbor who juggles bowling balls at three a.m. (but he's not good at it) can do his thing, or maybe you wouldn't have to tiptoe for the guy under you who works third shift. Fixable.

But the fact that they are fixable and that we haven't fixed them is a very, very strong signal that We're Not Going To. In short, we could build some nice multifamily housing where you wouldn't have to deal with cooking smells, or cigars, or the catbox, or whatever, but collectively we just refuse to do so. I think that will continue. And so some people will go on to not like that kind of living situation.

Perfectly possible. We're just not gonna.

[thfuran]

>inability to re-shape the property, the lack of permanence (you can be kicked out) ... that's a good starter. Some of those are inherent to the housing like the inability to re-shape the interior much.

Those are not density problems; they're renting problems. You can rent a single family home or purchase an apartment.

[at_a_remove]

Okay so I have a condo right, I bought it, it's mine. Can I add an extra room? Maybe a patio? An outbuilding?

[lukas099]

A couple problems.

1) We not only can, but we do build high-quality multifamily housing. Not enough, but then again we're not building enough of any kind of housing

2) Sure, some people don't like dense housing, but it's obviously preferable to the alternative for a lot of people, otherwise not so many people would live there.

[faeriechangling]

All of those are good points. Living high density sucks.

The thing is, something has gotta give. It’s simply not possible for everybody to have a front yard and backyard and standalone dwelling. Density is likely the lesser evil.

[lukas099]

> Living high density sucks.

Sounds like "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded". Obviously the high-density places are providing something, or they wouldn't be high-density.

[Gibbon1]

When I think about this I think there are two ends of this spectrum. On one end you can argue the merits of quiet detached housing on a large tract of land vs things like town housing. The other end the merits of living in an efficiency apartment vs sleeping on cardboard in a doorway.

[nox101]

Is it a single "family" home? Japan has tons of studio apartments of 200sqft or less. They're about the size of a college dorm room but usually have a bathroom/shower, kitchen sink, and a single burner stove.

To an American they're small. To a Japanese person who's used to them, they're normal. They're not "family" homes though. They're "single person" apartments.

Here's one

https://www.chintai.net/detail/bk-C0100888800000109404795300...

Maybe not everyone needs 800sqft+ per person?

[thfuran]

A single family home is a detached building that isn't broken up into multiple isolated units like a duplex or apartment complex. They're not complaining about small dwellings, only a tremendously inefficient mode of housing people in small dwellings.

[adrianmonk]

I am really not a fan of tiny houses either, but I wonder if detached houses (even if they have to be tiny) might be a good fit for formerly homeless people.

After years of being homeless, it's probably nice psychologically to look at a house, an individual object, and think, "I have that all to myself." And detached homes allow more privacy, something you can't get when you're homeless.

Also, there are probably people with mental health or behavioral issues. Having the separation and noise isolation might make it easier to get along.

[TulliusCicero]

Similar opinion here. I'm for just about any kind of added housing, but it seems like it'd be a lot more land efficient to do something higher density.

[CapitalistCartr]

Society would be better served, but the whole system is stacked against it. Zoning, banking, and buyers. When a developer builds a luxury single-family suburban development, they make good money for less complexity, less risk. Marketing is easy, contractors in all the trades are easy, customers are easy, mortgages are easy (party due to federal gov't), etc. Everyone from masons to marketers to moms are comfortable. Change requires the gov't at all levels to put a metaphoric thumb on the scale.

In the interests of full disclosure, I despise doing resi new construction, but many guys do it exclusively.

[pandaman]

You cannot build anything on-site "dirt cheap". Check out labor and materials costs in construction. This is why all these "tiny houses" are brought up, apparently they are built off-site and do not cost nearly as much as the traditional construction. Can you ship a townhouse overseas in a container ship? If not, it's not going to be dirt cheap even if the land, and planning and permitting are free.

[seanmcdirmid]

Townhomes take up a lot space for stairs. If you want efficiency, you really want apartment buildings full of flats that can amortize shared stair and elevator costs across lots of units.

Tiny homes or…even single wide trailers can work well as housing when land is not so expensive or on land that can’t be built up on right now (the land isn’t typically sold with the tiny home in that case).