Amidst the housing crisis I am told that new unit, a 2 bed room apartment, built today in public housing costs over $300,000! How can that be? The number excludes land costs and assumes no profit. Gad?
Yes BUT … I am a boater.
Go the the Seattle Boat Show. You can buy a rather wonderful, newly built yacht with diesel engines, electronics, sleeps four, two heads for under $600,000. And, it meets all codes and comes with bilge pumps, its own generator, and radar!
Moreover, that $600,000 includes a huge profit. Depreciation is a big issue for new boats since new boats lose a 1/3 of their value immediately on sale. The cost of a boat vs. a house needs to be adjusted since housing appreciates!
If that is possible, it is hard to understand why we couldn’t build affordable (not necessarily) homeless housing for a lot less than the current $300,000. Look at the costs of RVs!
No doubt this would require careful changes to codes but why can’t we produce very nice housing modules for use on public land or even sale as “mother in law” units for folks like me who would gladly add such a unit over my garage?
Who the hell can afford a $600,000 boat after paying for Seattle housing?
Live on the boat silly. People do that. A sizeable part of Hong Kong’s population lives on boats. Would appear the city could buy some boats that would provide housing for less than $300,ooo a unit. Contractors should be able to build a two bedroom apartment for much less than $300,000 could they be doing things in their best interest like inflating the cost of building low rent units so they can concentrate on building profitable condos, ect for folks moving in from Hong Kong and the rest of China or looking for a place to park their cash. All depends on the methods used by administrators to determine the cost of building an apartment. Perhaps they should go to Lowes and look at hardware, do a works project to put unemployed or homeless people to work to build apartments. That would definitely cause a howl from the building community. So socialist. At least the East Germans were able to build lots of housing….cheaply. Sure it’s boring housing, but it put a roof over the heads of workers.
The pint is that the cost of bulding that biat includes a lot of stuff an apt does not need plus a profit. Deduct the cost of the engines, the fuel tanks, the gneset, andthe glass hull and it si a lot less than the 300 to 400 k,