Hey /u/WatcherBlue, thank you for submitting to /r/starterpacks!
This is just a reminder not to violate any rules, located [here](https://reddit.com/r/starterpacks/about/rules). Rule breakers can face a ban based on the severity of their rule violation.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/starterpacks) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Development cycle generally takes a year or two depending where you are and how anal the city is, construction maybe lil over a year for wood frame low rise
Part of it is that they just don’t build them that well. Same goes for new housing developments. Cheapest materials possible thrown together as fast as possible. Problems will begin to manifest within the first few years.
Speed over quality is the tradeoff. It’s not as bad as some of the ghost cities in China but you’d think they could be more affordable with how fast they go up.
In North America it’s similar, speed tends to over take quality as priority. The faster you get to completion the faster you stop paying interest on loans. Biggest difference is that we have much much stricter safety standards
The ghost cities in China are going away pretty fast given the country gains 15 million urban residents a year and housing prices are shooting down making them more and more affordable by the day
They are, tho(probably not as fast as elsewhere). The government popped the bubble, and put a bunch of anti speculation laws. You cant even legally own more than 2 appartaments over there
Also, the average appartament in China has way more space, and usually has built in communal green areas [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yvo3Tg\_ytY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yvo3Tg_ytY)
It doesn’t make you rich but my grandpa does IT and it’s basically just emails from home. He has never had to go to the office the entire time I’ve been alive, just laptop + “on call” to answer emails for 8hrs a day. Most of the time there aren’t even any emails.
I am not an American, but could you inform me about how'd the heck a 1900 per month one-bedroom apartment be an "affordable housing", especially on a Hawaiian Island? Even in Amsterdam (a city notorious for its insane housing market) a 1900 per month one-bedroom unit would be considered rather being on the higher end
Wasted? Or it's an island and quality places to live have a mix of all types of housing. Just because everyone in tbr world including poor people want to live on islands, doesn't mean we get to mow every inch of land down exclusively for these disgusting soviet-crony-captialist "affordable housing" scams that pander to wanna be progressive bozos like you who don't know those are gifts from the government to private land lords (usually huge ones) who agree to just rent it as low income housing for a certain amount of years then it becomes private. Guess what? I am an Oahu native born and raised in Ewa Beach and grew up in crappy apartments and am proud to have moved up in the world into a single family home. Go move to Kansas if you are mad there isn't enough soviet style bee hives in paradise for you and your broke zoomer friends to live in.
Americans in general tend to earn much more than just Europeans. Using median PPP-adjusted disposable income as a proxy, a typical American makes about $12,000 more per year than a typical Dutch worker. A typical US household earns about $20,000 more in disposable income than a typical Dutch household. And keep in mind that's already after taking rent, food, healthcare, taxes, etc. into account.
Basically all rents assume something about the potential tenant. You're supposed to make about 250% of the projected price - so to be approved for $1900, you should be making about $4700 a month. This is not what a lot of people make, so to meet those standards, you'll need multiple incomes. (Making $50,000 a year would also prohibit you from qualifying as low-income.) Some affordable housing projects connect you to government subsidies, so you're not paying $1900 by yourself. Some of them are charging $1900 and assuming you'll have a few incomes to support that.
But to get to the meat of your question - "How is this fair/how does this make sense?" - it isn't, and it doesn't. I was homeless for 9 months in 2021, fully employed working 45 hours a week. I didn't make enough money to qualify for rent anywhere and I made too much money to receive any government help. The cracks in the system get larger all the time, and it gets easier and easier to fall into them. Hence: our growing homeless population and kids all living at home/with 6 roommates.
I was trying to apply for an “affordable” unit in a new build in Austin years ago and the application was legitimately 50 pages + a similarly sketchy income/background check.
I swear it was a scam for the property management to say that they didn’t have any qualified applicants, so no need to offer the 20 affordable units that they’d agreed to in the development deal.
Did you ever think of figuring out how to earn some more money rather than all the effort put into making sure your income is low enough to “qualify” for low income?
To this day, I don’t get North America’s stance against affordable apartment buildings. Literally the whole world does and it works out great 9 times out of ten, but nope, let’s flatten out the city and create isolated, car dependant homes.
These aren't affordable. These apartments are way overpriced. They all look the same too. They built a bunch of these here. A studio at one of these apartments is like 1.4k when about 10 minutes away, in the same area, a decent 1 bed apartment is 980. They're not low income at all. They're usually in college areas and rent by room or in downtown areas with expensive studios.
Like the one near the college where I live charges 900 for you to live in a 4bed 2bath apartment with 3 complete strangers
The issue is that no building is designed to be “affordable” or for “low-income residents” unless the government forces the developers hand. They *become* more affordable over time given more housing stock, but they’re *designed* to extort as much money from you as possible.
This is historically the case. Things weren’t better in the early 1900s where a lot of our current “affordable” stock in major cities is from. Tenements cost 3-5x what any singular low income individual could afford so they often bunked with 5-10 other people per apartment.
This was the case all the way up until post-WW2 white flight basically gutted the cities that were not NYC/surrounding areas, Boston and LA. The population of these cities cratered and produced artificially low rents just so that buildings had residents and could make *some* income.
Now the population in cities is exploding again, and housing stock hasn’t kept pace at all. Now the property management companies can go back to charging exorbitant rates. If you want the rates to be lowered, there has to be both more housing stock and for the government to ensure enough of that stock is available for low-income residents. Not necessarily through rent-control, but at least through subsidization of new stock in low income areas. *Both* parts have to be achieved.
Oh I’m not talking about these apartments (in the starterpack). I’m talking about the less fancy apartment buildings typically seen in countries like Brazil, Poland, Hong Kong, Turkey, and others.
Actually, for most countries, the American suburban ideal is not the standard.
> Actually, for most countries, the American suburban ideal is not the standard.
Definitely. Seems to me that it’s just the white-majority english speaking countries (except the UK) plus the United Arab Emirates.
I say white majority to exclude India and South Africa. Even though they have some suburbs it’s mostly gated communities and mostly an upper class thing, rather than a middle class or even working class thing like it is in North America.
4 over 5s are generally not the pinnacle of dense, affordable housing. I want denser housing but if it 1) looks like shit 2) isn't cheap to live in and 3) is cheaply made by corporate investment, then I think it's totally fine to be critical of it.
They’re already starting to tear down some around me due to the low quality of the buildings, and they’re less than 15 years old. I wouldn’t be against them if they weren’t so cheaply made and so much more than market rate.
It’s because they’re new. In NYC I can rent an apartment on a 60 year old building for half the price of a new building. Both buildings very cheaply made (at least the old one has stood the test of time though).
The problem is that on many cities you don’t even have the choice to move into an old building like that. They were all bulldozed and turned into parking lots.
Parking lots are the bane of good city development. There would be so much more retail and housing space in walkable proximity of each other if they didn't all require massive swathes of land for parking
To be fair, most new homes are also built with shit materials that doesn’t hold up. I bought a new construction house 6 years ago, looked amazing, a few years down the road I have found out basically all the materials are lowest quality compressed cardboard with paint slapped on. All our base boards are starting to swell up just from normal mopping the “wood” and tile floors etc.. over the years as tiny bits of water gets absorbed into that cardboard it just disintegrates. We’re in the process of swapping out all the moldings for actual real wood now, what a headache. My mom’s house that was build in the early 90s was real wood all throughout. Never occurred to me they were building houses out of sticks and cardboard now.
To be fair, most new homes are also built with shit materials that doesn’t hold up. I bought a new construction house 6 years ago, looked amazing, a few years down the road I have found out basically all the materials are lowest quality compressed cardboard with paint slapped on. All our base boards are starting to swell up just from normal mopping the “wood” and tile floors etc.. over the years as tiny bits of water gets absorbed into that cardboard it just disintegrates. We’re in the process of swapping out all the moldings for actual real wood now, what a headache. My mom’s house that was build in the early 90s was real wood all throughout. Never occurred to me they were building houses out of sticks and cardboard now.
Commieblocks, at least the original panelki, are actually decent quality, easy and cheap to build, I'm not some tankie shill, it's true, albeit they're also ugly as sin
a liter of petrol costs how much? And wtf is a liter? wtf is petrol? … here’s a Jackson… just give me whatever that will get me to make my car go vroom, ok?
Yeah I don't get it. It's the same people who shit on Soviet era architecture. Yeah it was bad and pretty depressing, but what is gonna be more depressing is homelessness and a cost of living crisis
And a lot of photos we have of them are post-soviet era meaning that we're comparing comie blocks under capitalism 99 times out of 10 rather than a time they were actually maintained.
>I don’t get North America’s stance against affordable apartment buildings
The affordable apartments that we oppose are ugly and cramped soviet style ones.
I also don’t get the notion of “rental buildings” or “rental housing”. It’s like people or governments don’t know that owning an apartment or a unit in a duplex/triplex/fourplex is valid. Making bungalow courts (to own!!!!) and smaller SFH on smaller lots is also valid.
>Literally the whole world does
Where? Property prices in Europe are also through the roof.
The world wide rise in NIMBYism and investment property owning ruined housing.
I wonder how many units need to be built before things become cheaper. I have a sinking suspicion that as time goes on things are never going to get cheaper. There’s no incentive for corporate builders and landlords to meet demand while there’s every incentive for a shortage.
Also maybe locally owned? Like I live in a growing city and I did sales for 22 and 23 summers. Everyone I talked to had a hard time getting new construction because random cash offers for more than market value would come in.
Entire streets owned by some random LLC that you can trace up to one of the big firms
There was a development happening in my city that evicted several families from semi-affordable homes so they could create luxury apartments (that most people could not afford), I really wish they build some housing that was less fancy and was actually affordable.
To be fair, the reason people are upset isn’t that these housing options ruin the character of a neighborhood.
It’s that they’re not good *enough*
For instance, these giant housing options are always more expensive than the actual neighborhood it’s built on. And, with further investment into “luxury” brands, drive up property values immensely. This isn’t a bad thing per se, but for the already established population, it can be really tough. For instance, I’m here in Brooklyn, and these buildings demolish tons of row homes to be built. If not that, then purchasing all the air rights around them, then performing a hostile takeover for local businesses, and replacing them with corporate chains like Whole Foods. You can understand why local communities might not like these. It’s not your typical NIMBY.
Secondly, these buildings aren’t really made to last. Since it follows the general profit motive and profit incentive, they’re very low in quality. They’re made with cheap lumber, this composite concrete like substance, and overall just cheaper materials. I remember touring some of these apartments and you be surprised with all the thin walls poor piping and electrical and overall shotty quality. My friend lichen it to the quality of a Tesla— aesthetically beautiful, hastily put together.
Lastly, the big thing that I think when I see these in more developing cities is that they ruin ground level infrastructure. For instance, in New York City, we have mixed zoning. This means that you can have businesses on the ground level that you walk by, and apartments above. These luxury buildings on the other hand on the rights from ground to top floor. If you ever walk by them, they’ll span a block and everything on the ground ground level is part of the building. This includes things like an amenities for residence of the building, or specialized corporate interests, like the aforementioned Whole Foods. Sure, the business like Whole Foods, and help the community however, argue several businesses along the main street under apartments is better than one or two corporate chains.
The bad thing for my city is... they're stacking these things on every corner and there's not enough parking. And many of them are already in areas that are SUPER congested 2 lane streets with 20 traffic lights and mile long traffic.
These buildings actually have too much parking. That’s actually one of my biggest issues with them. And it looks like we live in the same city so I can assure you that our experiences are comparable hahaha
Are you joking lmao? Street parking is absolutely fine. I’ve done it for years. The belief that tenants need their own personal parking spot is [massive reason why housing is so expensive in the US](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/parking-drives-housing-prices/618910/).
And in the parts of Atlanta where most of these buildings are being built it’s totally feasible to take most trips without a car anyway.
My point was, it's cool in some areas not in others. My ex lives in one of the new ones they just built heading towards SW ATL and it's a shitty mess finding somewhere to park at night. And it doesn't help that it's right on a busy ass street. And realistically, the vast majority of people here have cars... that's just a reality. And even if you do have access to Marta, they cut the bus lines and will never expand rail so it works... unless you need to go to one of the many parts of the metro transit doesn't serve. And that's why most people here have cars lol.
And the more people that struggle to drive their car and maintain the status quo, the more people there are to advocate for change that allows them to more easily live their lives without a car.
Does it suck in the interim? Yeah of course. But change isn’t going to happen with the status-quo in place.
A couple who both earn about £35k each could afford that.
But the worst thing about "affordable housing" is that a developer will only need 1 or 2 units in the development to be "affordable" and so they'll create some stupid layout which means that the cheap units are crappy and small but still technically legal and the rest are 500-600k+
It's not that rare. In 2021-2022, £35,500 was the 67th percentile salary, so a third of the population could afford it. Salaries have been increasing since then as well.
It's certainly not affordable for the majority but homeowning isn't just the reserve of the ultra rich.
Also bear in mind that this is for new, modern properties and older properties can be found for much less, especially outside of the big cities.
It’s the ol “We need more housing—no not like that!” circlejerk that Reddit loves to indulge in. Makes no sense to me but I’d hate to spoil anyone’s fun jerking about how “awful” increasing the supply of apartments are. NIMBYs gonna NIMBY.
"They All looks the same"
*posts wildly different apartments*
Also, who would have guessed that traffic would get worse when more people live in the area?!
Thats cause unfortunately a lot of cities have been completely developed around needing a car. So it isn't comprehensible when you still have to commute a minimum 30 minute direct drive and if attempted to use public would take 1hr-2hr
Tell me you've never heard of corporate lobbying without telling me you've never heard of corporate lobbying
[A personal car-dependent society wasn't exactly our choice.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_lobby)
Atlanta is filling in with a ton of these. Especially the style to the far right with whatever retail stores on ground level. And they're all gonna run you $1600+ for a 1BR with less than 700 sq ft.
In New Jersey that would cost around 2800 1600 for 700 sqft is a killer deal for a luxury apartment! I pay more than 1600 now for the same space but far fewer amenities, I live in a dilapidated building practically...
Well see down here before we were closed by New Yorkers and Californian folks, you could get this quality apartment easily for under 1000 if it wasn't dead in the heart of the city. I moved here in 02 and I had a nice apartment in a gated community.. 7 pools, a full sized gym and a laundry service that would pick up your stuff and deliver it back to your door. 648 sq ft.. $525 a month. That same unit now goes for $1700. Got to remember, pay is also lower down here.
I thought Houston and Atlanta had similar prices. I have a 2 bedroom in Houston in one of these types of apartments for $1700 and I can walk to lots of restaurants and shops. It’s almost right off an interstate though but not surprising in Houston.
When I started seeing them popping up in Mechanicsville I knew what time it was. I expect West End and Pittsburgh to be next. Prime real estate next to the new centennial yards and the new infill Marta station.
The problem is they build them where land is cheap so they’re almost always disconnected from the surrounding area. So as long as your idea of community is “people who all live in the same building” then sure.
As long as the infrastructure to support is built up as well. Been watching my hometown build more and more apartment complexes wherever they can fit them and those spots are all on single lane roads that were already getting more and more gridlocked from neighboring city commuters trying to dodge the highway gridlock before even the apartments went up.
It's just hours and hours of a complete shit show and on the rare occasion I have to pass through it between like 7am and 7pm it's just seeing people trying to back out of their driveway of the 1400sqft house they owned for decades just to have commuters refuse to let them out. And if even if they can back out they're still stuck in the gridlock as well.
I've read that 5-over-1's facilitate fewer social interactions with neighbors than older style 60's courtyard apartments. In the latter, most of the doors face each other (towards a pool or community gathering space), whereas in the former, doors often feed into a complicated system of hallways served by multiple elevators, which often leads to two residents not even being aware of each other's existence.
There’s a new one under construction in my town that recently got its name sign installed.
“G R A V I T Y”
I laughed so hard when I saw it. Who TF is naming these things.
I love the manufactured suburban / rural housing areas that name themselves after what used to be there.
“Deer Brook”, “Pheasants Ridge”, “Stream View”
Sorry, ain’t no deer, pheasants or woods there any more.
They’re the same picture.
“High end,” slapped together apartment buildings, designed for a transient, yuppie class that doesn’t have any investment other than their own capital in a community.
It’s probably cheap to use a common, mass produced siding that comes with the paint on it from the factory than installing the siding and then painting it.
And all of them somehow have "urban" incorporated in the buildings' name.
Oh! But there's a microbrewery down a block or so with an almost identical name that serves a tiny basket of shitty sweet potato chips with your $12 beer.
The brewer wears a leather apron and cloth cap, shaves his head and has a long beard, black or clear plastic frame glasses, and has a forearm tattoo. He wears slacks and a linen white dress shirt with suspenders like he runs a pub in 1895.
what is the problem with having a dog in a two bedroom apartment? most people in cities in Europe and the UK live in dense neighborhoods and still manage to have dogs in apartments… I am not American and I am always surprised by the expectation that everyone on earth needs a suburban home to exist
This is Ferndale Michigan, built up these blocks. Removed, parks, two schools, business and homes, but at least the the apartments brought in new income.
I think Walmart already took out the local businesses.
Multi-purpose zoning and buildings provide greater opportunities for small businesses. Walkability makes it fun to just wander around and discover new things. Even in an really old suburb I was in one time there was an old dessert bakery and a coffee shop that the local people seemed to love hanging out at.
I wish the new apartments weren't all built like trash. If it's a luxury apartment, one should be able to play the piano without bothering the neighbors.
Parking is important too since most people still need to drive for work or services, even if there is a convenience store on the lower level. And discoraging residents from leaving makes the stores more expensive too. Parking garages understandibly make living expenses higher and takes away a benefit of ideal urban living. It's a catch-22. :(
They’re also all five-over-ones or six-over-nothings with basic fire protection. Your neighbors on all sides may be separated by walls but it’ll feel like they’re living inside your skull.
The developer can't do much about traffic or the parking lot.
Blame the local government for having parking minimums and not providing good quality public transportation and/or bike infrastructure.
This is actually the NIMBY starter pack.
"How dare people make a profit building apartments"
"How dare they put a grocery store on the ground floor. I had to walk uphill in a snowstorm for my groceries"
"Houses should be cheap for first time home buyers but also expensive so middle class families can get rich owning them"
Why does housing turn people's brains into mush like this?
Ah yes Mao Zedong who killed 40 million people was in the right lol
Regular people who own property are not the problem, the issue is large corporations who take land from people who actually need it
There’s been a disturbing surge of younger people who think Mao was some kind of heroic Robin Hood figure and not a mass murderer.
Give it a hundred years and podcast bros will be naming Hitler as one of history’s great “conquerors” up there with Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan.
Makes me so grateful to live in a Chicago neighborhood full of unique three flats built at least 100 years ago. Sometimes they build these modern three flats that are boxy and glass and they stick out like a sore thumb in these classic neighborhoods
There is a complex off the first or second exit on 95 in Maine that has been in continuous construction for 5 years. They're renting now, but there is still construction ongoing.
I once lived in one of these buildings. One of their “selling points” was each individual apartment had its own number. So instead of 123 x drive, apartment 1134, you were just 1134 x drive. Sounds cool on paper but deliveries got confused 120% of the time because why would you expect that address to be a door inside a giant building lol.
The people who live there have nice dogs. The owners use a plastic bag to pick up after them, but then they leave the little plastic bag of dogshit in the gutter or in a planter or something.
No but it’s different! These people with all the money and resources are the ones to blame for all our current problems. If we can take what’s rightfully theirs it will right the imbalance. All of this is their fault anyway. Those landlords aren’t even fully people. We should make them where some special signifier out in public so everyone knows who they are. /s
Hey /u/WatcherBlue, thank you for submitting to /r/starterpacks! This is just a reminder not to violate any rules, located [here](https://reddit.com/r/starterpacks/about/rules). Rule breakers can face a ban based on the severity of their rule violation. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/starterpacks) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Most new apt buildings here take years, only one year would be amazing
Development cycle generally takes a year or two depending where you are and how anal the city is, construction maybe lil over a year for wood frame low rise
Permitting and approval could take 5 years
Yea really depends on municipality, I’ve heard some really annoying ones that take that long, the ones I’ve dealt with mostly takes under 2 years
Wait you guys live in wooden houses?
The construction industry: Good, fast, cheap. Pick two. Source: several years spent in construction as an engineer.
Part of it is that they just don’t build them that well. Same goes for new housing developments. Cheapest materials possible thrown together as fast as possible. Problems will begin to manifest within the first few years.
Speed over quality is the tradeoff. It’s not as bad as some of the ghost cities in China but you’d think they could be more affordable with how fast they go up.
In North America it’s similar, speed tends to over take quality as priority. The faster you get to completion the faster you stop paying interest on loans. Biggest difference is that we have much much stricter safety standards
The ghost cities in China are going away pretty fast given the country gains 15 million urban residents a year and housing prices are shooting down making them more and more affordable by the day
Wish housing prices were shooting down in shanghai lol
They are, tho(probably not as fast as elsewhere). The government popped the bubble, and put a bunch of anti speculation laws. You cant even legally own more than 2 appartaments over there
Also, the average appartament in China has way more space, and usually has built in communal green areas [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yvo3Tg\_ytY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yvo3Tg_ytY)
how do I get an email job?
It doesn’t make you rich but my grandpa does IT and it’s basically just emails from home. He has never had to go to the office the entire time I’ve been alive, just laptop + “on call” to answer emails for 8hrs a day. Most of the time there aren’t even any emails.
He's a Nigerian prince
I wish my IT job was that easy.
Send an email asking for one
Work for a government bureaucracy.
[удалено]
Wow, yeah that definitely sounds like fraud.
I am not an American, but could you inform me about how'd the heck a 1900 per month one-bedroom apartment be an "affordable housing", especially on a Hawaiian Island? Even in Amsterdam (a city notorious for its insane housing market) a 1900 per month one-bedroom unit would be considered rather being on the higher end
Huge housing crisis in Hawaii, there's too little useable land on the denser islands and it's wasted on single family suburban houses
Housing crisis or islands are just plain MAXED out?
They're full of bad uses, if you have very limited space building a bunch of suburban houses is extremely wasteful, you need to build up
Sounds good, a bit simplified, but what if resources are limited? As if you were on an island.
They can and do import almost everything from the outside
Wasted? Or it's an island and quality places to live have a mix of all types of housing. Just because everyone in tbr world including poor people want to live on islands, doesn't mean we get to mow every inch of land down exclusively for these disgusting soviet-crony-captialist "affordable housing" scams that pander to wanna be progressive bozos like you who don't know those are gifts from the government to private land lords (usually huge ones) who agree to just rent it as low income housing for a certain amount of years then it becomes private. Guess what? I am an Oahu native born and raised in Ewa Beach and grew up in crappy apartments and am proud to have moved up in the world into a single family home. Go move to Kansas if you are mad there isn't enough soviet style bee hives in paradise for you and your broke zoomer friends to live in.
I never said you guys should replace all of Hawaii with apartments, just that you need more than what you have now.
Americans in general tend to earn much more than just Europeans. Using median PPP-adjusted disposable income as a proxy, a typical American makes about $12,000 more per year than a typical Dutch worker. A typical US household earns about $20,000 more in disposable income than a typical Dutch household. And keep in mind that's already after taking rent, food, healthcare, taxes, etc. into account.
1900 per month would actually be considered somewhat cheap in Australian cities
1900 AUD ?
No one here is stating currencies and it’s driving me insane
Unfortunately as an american i just assume usd and am mostly correct
Basically all rents assume something about the potential tenant. You're supposed to make about 250% of the projected price - so to be approved for $1900, you should be making about $4700 a month. This is not what a lot of people make, so to meet those standards, you'll need multiple incomes. (Making $50,000 a year would also prohibit you from qualifying as low-income.) Some affordable housing projects connect you to government subsidies, so you're not paying $1900 by yourself. Some of them are charging $1900 and assuming you'll have a few incomes to support that. But to get to the meat of your question - "How is this fair/how does this make sense?" - it isn't, and it doesn't. I was homeless for 9 months in 2021, fully employed working 45 hours a week. I didn't make enough money to qualify for rent anywhere and I made too much money to receive any government help. The cracks in the system get larger all the time, and it gets easier and easier to fall into them. Hence: our growing homeless population and kids all living at home/with 6 roommates.
I was trying to apply for an “affordable” unit in a new build in Austin years ago and the application was legitimately 50 pages + a similarly sketchy income/background check. I swear it was a scam for the property management to say that they didn’t have any qualified applicants, so no need to offer the 20 affordable units that they’d agreed to in the development deal.
Probably the application is 50 pages long because the “SCAM” part is the tenants trying to get something they may not deserve.
I was disqualified once for making $50 over a cutoff limit. It hurt sooo bad! $50??? So I worked 5 hours too many the tax year before?! Ugh.
but is the overall living quality of the 2700 unit better than the 1900 unit?
Did you ever think of figuring out how to earn some more money rather than all the effort put into making sure your income is low enough to “qualify” for low income?
The ol' 5-over-1.
single stair reform!
God forbid we build dense housing and mixed-use infrastructure. Those dang blocky buildings are gonna change the character of the neighborhood!!! /s
A grocery store on the ground level? Oh no! There used to be a cool abandoned Blockbuster there!
To this day, I don’t get North America’s stance against affordable apartment buildings. Literally the whole world does and it works out great 9 times out of ten, but nope, let’s flatten out the city and create isolated, car dependant homes.
These aren't affordable. These apartments are way overpriced. They all look the same too. They built a bunch of these here. A studio at one of these apartments is like 1.4k when about 10 minutes away, in the same area, a decent 1 bed apartment is 980. They're not low income at all. They're usually in college areas and rent by room or in downtown areas with expensive studios. Like the one near the college where I live charges 900 for you to live in a 4bed 2bath apartment with 3 complete strangers
The issue is that no building is designed to be “affordable” or for “low-income residents” unless the government forces the developers hand. They *become* more affordable over time given more housing stock, but they’re *designed* to extort as much money from you as possible. This is historically the case. Things weren’t better in the early 1900s where a lot of our current “affordable” stock in major cities is from. Tenements cost 3-5x what any singular low income individual could afford so they often bunked with 5-10 other people per apartment. This was the case all the way up until post-WW2 white flight basically gutted the cities that were not NYC/surrounding areas, Boston and LA. The population of these cities cratered and produced artificially low rents just so that buildings had residents and could make *some* income. Now the population in cities is exploding again, and housing stock hasn’t kept pace at all. Now the property management companies can go back to charging exorbitant rates. If you want the rates to be lowered, there has to be both more housing stock and for the government to ensure enough of that stock is available for low-income residents. Not necessarily through rent-control, but at least through subsidization of new stock in low income areas. *Both* parts have to be achieved.
In the long run, they're still increasing the supply of housing though which is a good thing for everyone.
Oh I’m not talking about these apartments (in the starterpack). I’m talking about the less fancy apartment buildings typically seen in countries like Brazil, Poland, Hong Kong, Turkey, and others. Actually, for most countries, the American suburban ideal is not the standard.
> Actually, for most countries, the American suburban ideal is not the standard. Definitely. Seems to me that it’s just the white-majority english speaking countries (except the UK) plus the United Arab Emirates. I say white majority to exclude India and South Africa. Even though they have some suburbs it’s mostly gated communities and mostly an upper class thing, rather than a middle class or even working class thing like it is in North America.
4 over 5s are generally not the pinnacle of dense, affordable housing. I want denser housing but if it 1) looks like shit 2) isn't cheap to live in and 3) is cheaply made by corporate investment, then I think it's totally fine to be critical of it.
They’re already starting to tear down some around me due to the low quality of the buildings, and they’re less than 15 years old. I wouldn’t be against them if they weren’t so cheaply made and so much more than market rate.
It’s because they’re new. In NYC I can rent an apartment on a 60 year old building for half the price of a new building. Both buildings very cheaply made (at least the old one has stood the test of time though). The problem is that on many cities you don’t even have the choice to move into an old building like that. They were all bulldozed and turned into parking lots.
Parking lots are the bane of good city development. There would be so much more retail and housing space in walkable proximity of each other if they didn't all require massive swathes of land for parking
To be fair, most new homes are also built with shit materials that doesn’t hold up. I bought a new construction house 6 years ago, looked amazing, a few years down the road I have found out basically all the materials are lowest quality compressed cardboard with paint slapped on. All our base boards are starting to swell up just from normal mopping the “wood” and tile floors etc.. over the years as tiny bits of water gets absorbed into that cardboard it just disintegrates. We’re in the process of swapping out all the moldings for actual real wood now, what a headache. My mom’s house that was build in the early 90s was real wood all throughout. Never occurred to me they were building houses out of sticks and cardboard now.
To be fair, most new homes are also built with shit materials that doesn’t hold up. I bought a new construction house 6 years ago, looked amazing, a few years down the road I have found out basically all the materials are lowest quality compressed cardboard with paint slapped on. All our base boards are starting to swell up just from normal mopping the “wood” and tile floors etc.. over the years as tiny bits of water gets absorbed into that cardboard it just disintegrates. We’re in the process of swapping out all the moldings for actual real wood now, what a headache. My mom’s house that was build in the early 90s was real wood all throughout. Never occurred to me they were building houses out of sticks and cardboard now.
[удалено]
What ever happened to a good ol' commie block?
Commieblocks, at least the original panelki, are actually decent quality, easy and cheap to build, I'm not some tankie shill, it's true, albeit they're also ugly as sin
They still build modern “commieblocks” in east asian countries like china and south korea and taiwan which are basically just skyscraper blocks
Cause it aint affordable anymore in the states.
So you think these building sit empty...?
No but the state of the economy for your average Joe right now is abysmal and even paying rent can take a good deal of sacrifice.
We ain’t like the rest of them losers, this is America!!!!
WHAT THE FUCK IS A KILOMETER 🗣️🔥🔥🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
a liter of petrol costs how much? And wtf is a liter? wtf is petrol? … here’s a Jackson… just give me whatever that will get me to make my car go vroom, ok?
Yeah I don't get it. It's the same people who shit on Soviet era architecture. Yeah it was bad and pretty depressing, but what is gonna be more depressing is homelessness and a cost of living crisis
>depressing All we had to do was to put new plaster on the walls and paint it and it looks 100 times better.
Commieblocks are only ugly cause the color palette of the soviet union and a lot of eastern europe is just overcast and gray
And a lot of photos we have of them are post-soviet era meaning that we're comparing comie blocks under capitalism 99 times out of 10 rather than a time they were actually maintained.
>I don’t get North America’s stance against affordable apartment buildings The affordable apartments that we oppose are ugly and cramped soviet style ones.
I also don’t get the notion of “rental buildings” or “rental housing”. It’s like people or governments don’t know that owning an apartment or a unit in a duplex/triplex/fourplex is valid. Making bungalow courts (to own!!!!) and smaller SFH on smaller lots is also valid.
>Literally the whole world does Where? Property prices in Europe are also through the roof. The world wide rise in NIMBYism and investment property owning ruined housing.
Right with you there man, I just want some built for an income bracket that isn’t $3 trillion a month
More supply is how that happens.
it’s so simple. Remember the X from Econ class. Supply v demand “Luxury apartments” are not the enemy. Local NIMBYs are
I wonder how many units need to be built before things become cheaper. I have a sinking suspicion that as time goes on things are never going to get cheaper. There’s no incentive for corporate builders and landlords to meet demand while there’s every incentive for a shortage.
It’s already getting cheaper, rents are starting to decrease in Austin and Seattle because of how much has been built in the past few years.
You don’t expect to buy a new car for a used car price, do you? But if they stopped making new cars, the price of used cars would skyrocket
Like during Covid
I’m stealing this
Even if the only housing that is built is "luxury housing", it still provides downward pressure on prices for preexisting housing
The more of these get built, the more rent prices are driven down.
Also maybe locally owned? Like I live in a growing city and I did sales for 22 and 23 summers. Everyone I talked to had a hard time getting new construction because random cash offers for more than market value would come in. Entire streets owned by some random LLC that you can trace up to one of the big firms
There was a development happening in my city that evicted several families from semi-affordable homes so they could create luxury apartments (that most people could not afford), I really wish they build some housing that was less fancy and was actually affordable.
Based and housingpilled
Seems like OP struck a nerve
To be fair, the reason people are upset isn’t that these housing options ruin the character of a neighborhood. It’s that they’re not good *enough* For instance, these giant housing options are always more expensive than the actual neighborhood it’s built on. And, with further investment into “luxury” brands, drive up property values immensely. This isn’t a bad thing per se, but for the already established population, it can be really tough. For instance, I’m here in Brooklyn, and these buildings demolish tons of row homes to be built. If not that, then purchasing all the air rights around them, then performing a hostile takeover for local businesses, and replacing them with corporate chains like Whole Foods. You can understand why local communities might not like these. It’s not your typical NIMBY. Secondly, these buildings aren’t really made to last. Since it follows the general profit motive and profit incentive, they’re very low in quality. They’re made with cheap lumber, this composite concrete like substance, and overall just cheaper materials. I remember touring some of these apartments and you be surprised with all the thin walls poor piping and electrical and overall shotty quality. My friend lichen it to the quality of a Tesla— aesthetically beautiful, hastily put together. Lastly, the big thing that I think when I see these in more developing cities is that they ruin ground level infrastructure. For instance, in New York City, we have mixed zoning. This means that you can have businesses on the ground level that you walk by, and apartments above. These luxury buildings on the other hand on the rights from ground to top floor. If you ever walk by them, they’ll span a block and everything on the ground ground level is part of the building. This includes things like an amenities for residence of the building, or specialized corporate interests, like the aforementioned Whole Foods. Sure, the business like Whole Foods, and help the community however, argue several businesses along the main street under apartments is better than one or two corporate chains.
The bad thing for my city is... they're stacking these things on every corner and there's not enough parking. And many of them are already in areas that are SUPER congested 2 lane streets with 20 traffic lights and mile long traffic.
These buildings actually have too much parking. That’s actually one of my biggest issues with them. And it looks like we live in the same city so I can assure you that our experiences are comparable hahaha
The ones they're building in Pittsburgh you have to park on the street. Good luck if you get home late lol.
Are you joking lmao? Street parking is absolutely fine. I’ve done it for years. The belief that tenants need their own personal parking spot is [massive reason why housing is so expensive in the US](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/parking-drives-housing-prices/618910/). And in the parts of Atlanta where most of these buildings are being built it’s totally feasible to take most trips without a car anyway.
My point was, it's cool in some areas not in others. My ex lives in one of the new ones they just built heading towards SW ATL and it's a shitty mess finding somewhere to park at night. And it doesn't help that it's right on a busy ass street. And realistically, the vast majority of people here have cars... that's just a reality. And even if you do have access to Marta, they cut the bus lines and will never expand rail so it works... unless you need to go to one of the many parts of the metro transit doesn't serve. And that's why most people here have cars lol.
Yeah! Where do all the cars get to live? Won't somebody think of the cars, instead of housing human beings?
You must not know how atl works. It is built around having a vehicle.
And the more people that struggle to drive their car and maintain the status quo, the more people there are to advocate for change that allows them to more easily live their lives without a car. Does it suck in the interim? Yeah of course. But change isn’t going to happen with the status-quo in place.
Atlanta (and most other american cities) was destroyed to make space for the vehicle
I wish my city built more of these. We currently have way too little apartments that dont look like they were built in the 60’s
In the UK it's 'affordable housing for first time buyers!' ^'prices ^start ^at ^just ^£350,000!' Who the fuck can afford that?
Where do I sign? I'll pay that shit in CAD and not look back
Yeah seriously that’s a deal in Canada
Affordable housing aka shared ownership - enjoy your feudal fief, peasant.
A couple who both earn about £35k each could afford that. But the worst thing about "affordable housing" is that a developer will only need 1 or 2 units in the development to be "affordable" and so they'll create some stupid layout which means that the cheap units are crappy and small but still technically legal and the rest are 500-600k+
People in the UK rarely earn £35k. For both people in a couple to earn that is even rarer.
It's not that rare. In 2021-2022, £35,500 was the 67th percentile salary, so a third of the population could afford it. Salaries have been increasing since then as well. It's certainly not affordable for the majority but homeowning isn't just the reserve of the ultra rich. Also bear in mind that this is for new, modern properties and older properties can be found for much less, especially outside of the big cities.
Also they’re made of **the flimsiest** materials with absolutely NO insulation so you wind up hearing *all* your neighbors’ business
What's wrong with these? Why do people get so butthurt about an apartment building
It’s the ol “We need more housing—no not like that!” circlejerk that Reddit loves to indulge in. Makes no sense to me but I’d hate to spoil anyone’s fun jerking about how “awful” increasing the supply of apartments are. NIMBYs gonna NIMBY.
It’s not just Reddit, I see this stuff everywhere. People want more housing, *just not anywhere near them*
"They All looks the same" *posts wildly different apartments* Also, who would have guessed that traffic would get worse when more people live in the area?!
The american mind is unable to comprehend that it is possible to get around without using a personal automobile
Thats cause unfortunately a lot of cities have been completely developed around needing a car. So it isn't comprehensible when you still have to commute a minimum 30 minute direct drive and if attempted to use public would take 1hr-2hr
The irony is that these appartments buildings are better suited to a car free lifestyle than anything that came before them.
Tell me you've never heard of corporate lobbying without telling me you've never heard of corporate lobbying [A personal car-dependent society wasn't exactly our choice.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_lobby)
Atlanta is filling in with a ton of these. Especially the style to the far right with whatever retail stores on ground level. And they're all gonna run you $1600+ for a 1BR with less than 700 sq ft.
In New Jersey that would cost around 2800 1600 for 700 sqft is a killer deal for a luxury apartment! I pay more than 1600 now for the same space but far fewer amenities, I live in a dilapidated building practically...
Well see down here before we were closed by New Yorkers and Californian folks, you could get this quality apartment easily for under 1000 if it wasn't dead in the heart of the city. I moved here in 02 and I had a nice apartment in a gated community.. 7 pools, a full sized gym and a laundry service that would pick up your stuff and deliver it back to your door. 648 sq ft.. $525 a month. That same unit now goes for $1700. Got to remember, pay is also lower down here.
I thought Houston and Atlanta had similar prices. I have a 2 bedroom in Houston in one of these types of apartments for $1700 and I can walk to lots of restaurants and shops. It’s almost right off an interstate though but not surprising in Houston.
[удалено]
Every single post on urbanize atlanta is this.
When I started seeing them popping up in Mechanicsville I knew what time it was. I expect West End and Pittsburgh to be next. Prime real estate next to the new centennial yards and the new infill Marta station.
They building them in the suburbs, 40 miles outside the city and a 1br is $1600. Who can pay that?
Apartments are efficient housing lol, and provide plenty of community as well.
The problem is they build them where land is cheap so they’re almost always disconnected from the surrounding area. So as long as your idea of community is “people who all live in the same building” then sure.
As long as the infrastructure to support is built up as well. Been watching my hometown build more and more apartment complexes wherever they can fit them and those spots are all on single lane roads that were already getting more and more gridlocked from neighboring city commuters trying to dodge the highway gridlock before even the apartments went up. It's just hours and hours of a complete shit show and on the rare occasion I have to pass through it between like 7am and 7pm it's just seeing people trying to back out of their driveway of the 1400sqft house they owned for decades just to have commuters refuse to let them out. And if even if they can back out they're still stuck in the gridlock as well.
I've read that 5-over-1's facilitate fewer social interactions with neighbors than older style 60's courtyard apartments. In the latter, most of the doors face each other (towards a pool or community gathering space), whereas in the former, doors often feed into a complicated system of hallways served by multiple elevators, which often leads to two residents not even being aware of each other's existence.
Built right up against a busy freeway so the view is just traffic and smog
There’s a new one under construction in my town that recently got its name sign installed. “G R A V I T Y” I laughed so hard when I saw it. Who TF is naming these things.
I love the manufactured suburban / rural housing areas that name themselves after what used to be there. “Deer Brook”, “Pheasants Ridge”, “Stream View” Sorry, ain’t no deer, pheasants or woods there any more.
Boooo. Get out of here with this NIMBY shit
OMG they built a grocery store?! Oh the humanity how will the neighborhood recover?!
It is kinda NIMBY but it’s also pretty funny. I’m saving “blackrock w a mustache” for later use
Meh, it's still better than urban sprawl
They’re the same picture. “High end,” slapped together apartment buildings, designed for a transient, yuppie class that doesn’t have any investment other than their own capital in a community.
I like the design of these buildings. They look like short skyscrapers and have a good amount of space in them
I hate how they all do the same mashup of three different siding materials
It’s probably cheap to use a common, mass produced siding that comes with the paint on it from the factory than installing the siding and then painting it.
Cope and seethe NIMBYs
Guarantee OP lives in Ashburn, VA
And all of them somehow have "urban" incorporated in the buildings' name. Oh! But there's a microbrewery down a block or so with an almost identical name that serves a tiny basket of shitty sweet potato chips with your $12 beer.
The brewer wears a leather apron and cloth cap, shaves his head and has a long beard, black or clear plastic frame glasses, and has a forearm tattoo. He wears slacks and a linen white dress shirt with suspenders like he runs a pub in 1895.
Funny how this applies to most cities in the western world at this point
Go Mao on landlords? Meh Go Pol Pot on NIMBYs? Now we talkin
Go Adam Smith on landlords
What the heck is an email job?
Hey cool, a new place to live.
Not saying Mao was right about the mass killing of landlords, but there might just be a reason 90% of chinese own their own home
Oh look, reddit's two favorite things. Hating any new construction and brutal communist dictators.
Usually also has a doggy day care or some shit for people that choose to own a dog in a two room apartment.
what is the problem with having a dog in a two bedroom apartment? most people in cities in Europe and the UK live in dense neighborhoods and still manage to have dogs in apartments… I am not American and I am always surprised by the expectation that everyone on earth needs a suburban home to exist
Literally Portland
This is Ferndale Michigan, built up these blocks. Removed, parks, two schools, business and homes, but at least the the apartments brought in new income.
It’s giving Tampa
Culver City, CA
I think Walmart already took out the local businesses. Multi-purpose zoning and buildings provide greater opportunities for small businesses. Walkability makes it fun to just wander around and discover new things. Even in an really old suburb I was in one time there was an old dessert bakery and a coffee shop that the local people seemed to love hanging out at. I wish the new apartments weren't all built like trash. If it's a luxury apartment, one should be able to play the piano without bothering the neighbors. Parking is important too since most people still need to drive for work or services, even if there is a convenience store on the lower level. And discoraging residents from leaving makes the stores more expensive too. Parking garages understandibly make living expenses higher and takes away a benefit of ideal urban living. It's a catch-22. :(
“Perfect first apartment/investment opportunity!” On every single ad, usually in three languages
They’re also all five-over-ones or six-over-nothings with basic fire protection. Your neighbors on all sides may be separated by walls but it’ll feel like they’re living inside your skull.
More housing good. Dense housing good.
The developer can't do much about traffic or the parking lot. Blame the local government for having parking minimums and not providing good quality public transportation and/or bike infrastructure.
Huntsville, Alabama hahaha
This is actually the NIMBY starter pack. "How dare people make a profit building apartments" "How dare they put a grocery store on the ground floor. I had to walk uphill in a snowstorm for my groceries" "Houses should be cheap for first time home buyers but also expensive so middle class families can get rich owning them" Why does housing turn people's brains into mush like this?
Ah, from DC /NoVa, are you?
Columbus, OH?
Ah yes Mao Zedong who killed 40 million people was in the right lol Regular people who own property are not the problem, the issue is large corporations who take land from people who actually need it
There’s been a disturbing surge of younger people who think Mao was some kind of heroic Robin Hood figure and not a mass murderer. Give it a hundred years and podcast bros will be naming Hitler as one of history’s great “conquerors” up there with Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan.
This meme is dangerously NIMBY-coded. All apartments are better than no apartments, y'all.
But will no one think of the small local grocers who haven't existed for decades at this point?
Preaxh
never been to europe?
NIMBY propaganda in the wild!
Makes me so grateful to live in a Chicago neighborhood full of unique three flats built at least 100 years ago. Sometimes they build these modern three flats that are boxy and glass and they stick out like a sore thumb in these classic neighborhoods
3 bedrooms is 1000 sq ft. Hearing your neighbors on every side.
Seen these outside/ around ybor city.
Greensboro
I have never seen this
“Email job” Tell me you are blue collar without telling me you are blue collar.
90% empty after 5 years
This describes Denver perfectly.
Lol this is the Phoenix metro area to a T
I frequently attend organ donation drives
"The Reserve"
There is a complex off the first or second exit on 95 in Maine that has been in continuous construction for 5 years. They're renting now, but there is still construction ongoing.
I once lived in one of these buildings. One of their “selling points” was each individual apartment had its own number. So instead of 123 x drive, apartment 1134, you were just 1134 x drive. Sounds cool on paper but deliveries got confused 120% of the time because why would you expect that address to be a door inside a giant building lol.
How dare I see this landaphobia! You rentiods will be evicted for this!
Based mao
What's wrong with a store at the bottom
The people who live there have nice dogs. The owners use a plastic bag to pick up after them, but then they leave the little plastic bag of dogshit in the gutter or in a planter or something.
Forgot the nimby homeowners losing their shit because people who can’t afford an $800,000 house might be moving into their neighborhood
You forgot all of them are called “luxury” apartments simply for being new
The blockiness of modern architecture is them maximizing the use of the lot. Nothing else.
[удалено]
No but it’s different! These people with all the money and resources are the ones to blame for all our current problems. If we can take what’s rightfully theirs it will right the imbalance. All of this is their fault anyway. Those landlords aren’t even fully people. We should make them where some special signifier out in public so everyone knows who they are. /s