Except this goes against American individualism on every front. Americans really only fit one sort of mold in terms of what they want: single family home, owned outright (usually mortgaged though). You can extrapolate that out to cities as well: young urban professionals pine for polished condos or lofts with nice views and located in trendy neighborhoods, but their "unit" is still theirs totally, with no shared primary amenities (by that I mean kitchens and bathrooms, not features like pools or gyms).

It just so happens that America is luckily predisposed to this kind of living, with an abundance of space to accommodate lots of people in their own non-shared living spaces. The problem with that though is that you limit the opportunities for business, because space is cheap, so you have to implement regulations and zoning to create opportunities for moneymaking and before you know it you can't actually build housing anymore, despite the abundance of space sitting right there.

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adjejmxbdjdn 6 days ago | parent [-]

This is historically incomplete.

American cities were replete with dorm room style housing. These were especially popular with new migrants to the city.

An incredibly large percentage of apartments in cities like NYC are used as multi family housing with several housemates sharing them to save on rent.

The reality is that the reason such housing doesn’t exist/isn’t more widespread is because cities have passed laws eliminating them. Before the white flight to the suburbs, the attempt was to keep the poor out of cities where the rich lived by eliminating housing of this sort since the poor couldn’t afford single family housing.

This led to a proliferation of laws that required bathrooms and kitchens in every unit, etc.

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evklein 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's easy to live in shareable spaces when you're young and unattached - it becomes a lot more difficult as you age and want to grow a family. I'm not sure I want the kind of life where I have to share a kitchen or a bathroom, spaces I consider very private, with people I'm not related to. Maybe this is a uniquely midwestern/American sentiment, I'm not sure. But I am confident that there are more people like me than there aren't. The picture of the American dream is familiar, it's a house with a car in the driveway. I feel that may just be who we are now, regardless of any way we used to be.

Edit cause I had more thoughts: Honestly, probably one of the biggest mistakes we've made as a country have been not putting up enough resistance to RTO. The single family home is, I believe, probably one of the nicest standards of living in the world. Plenty of space for hobbies and activities, privacy, usually some community among neighbors. The only problem is that it's hard to square the circle when it comes to single family living and living close to an economic hub. To afford this standard you have to live close enough to a hub that you can afford one of the well-paying jobs that exist there, but not so far that your commute significantly eats into your life. With RTO, I think we lost a pretty good opportunity to weaken our dependency on the geographic economic hub. We could have had a diaspora of knowledge workers which gave people the opportunity to pursue a better life at a lower cost, and we sorta just threw all of that away.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		> The picture of the American dream is familiar, it's a house with a car in the driveway Note that this is a very modern familiarity. One that basically goes lockstep with our housing crisis.

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mono442 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn't it also the fact the almost no one wants to live like that? The expectations has changed and there's probably little demand for such type of housing.

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triceratops 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

People rent bedrooms in single-family homes all the time. The only difference between that and dorm-style housing is the size of the building.

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mothballed 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes and there is fierce competition for that in many larger cities, with sky-high prices to rent out a room. But they can't be offered at scale commercially because you'll never get the permits, and the only reason why you can rent these is usually because they're either operating completely under the table or via some carveouts that let property owner rent to 1 or 2 persons.

The pent up demand for this is obvious to anyone who's tried to secure a room only to have a gazillion people competing with them to pay $1000+ to rent an oversized closet to sleep in.

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mono442 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Studio apartments seem like a better option. Also, from a property manager’s perspective, you generally want to minimize shared spaces because they’re a pain and annoying to deal with.

	▲	triceratops 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		I was responding to your argument that no one wants to live like that.

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Sam713 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I absolutely disagree. Renting a room in a single family home vastly limits the number of people you have to share those intimate spaces like a kitchen or bathroom with. You also get the option to interview and pick who you’re sharing those spaces with. I lived with housemates for many years, and in dorms during university, and dorms are not even remotely the same from a social safety and privacy perspective.

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5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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supertrope 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

When the choice is between $3000/mo for a proper apartment and $2000 for a flophouse room some people will take the flophouse. Right now the only choice we offer those priced out is a painfully long commute (with has its own time and car expenses that reduce the savings).

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6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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