13 ms·

Mass timber is great, but it will not solve the housing shortage

184 points by taion 3y ago

nazgulnarsil 3y ago
'democracy can only last until a majority coalition realizes they can simply vote themselves largesse'
h2odragon 3y ago
> the mass timber framing uses four to five times the volume of wood as the light-framed wood framing. I recall helping nail 2x6's together into big composite beams, in the 80s in Florida. something like a 32 foot clear roof span was needed and I think we were doing 3 layers for a 6in x 6in final profile. Good job for a kid: "Here's a box of 150 nails. put them all in these boards" I've seen a meeting hall floor that was made by laying 2x4's up side by side and nailing them together. They were knotted, warped, reject pile boards and someone collected a big pile and planed one side straight then laminated them into a 20ft or so floor over the basement of a church building. Big massive center beam under it and no other supports but the walls. 3+ in thick and that heavily nailed; no worries. It was fine finished and lovely from the top; the bottom was moreso to my eye: you could see how woven together it was and how far from perfect the individual boards were. In both cases the design was inefficient and used profligate amounts of wood compared to what could have been done with steel or other methods. In both cases the wood was extra cheap or free and someone was making expedient use of it.
- xattt 3y ago
  > It was fine finished and lovely from the top; the bottom was moreso to my eye: you could see how woven together it was and how far from perfect the individual boards were. This seems like a fitting description of society in general.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  I had an addition done where they had to bolt LVL and steel plate together for a rather large span with cantilever. That bit of support isn't ever moving.
mikece 3y ago
> the mass timber framing uses four to five times the volume of wood as the light-framed wood framing. So... basically "buy more wood?" I think I'll pass.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  It's a false equivalence, light-wood framing is typically used in single-family homes or shorter (<5 stories) multi-family homes. Steel and concrete is typically used for 10-20 story multifamily housing. Mass timber is being pushed by the timber manufacturers as an alternative to steel and concrete, no one's seriously proposing you build your 2-story 2500 sqft home out of laminated beams instead of studs, trusses, and joists.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  You can do things with it that you can't do otherwise. For instance, you can create extremely large spans that weren't otherwise possible in wood framed construction. This creates really cool opportunities when designing the interior of a home. Framing can be done with LVL as well and the benefit is that it's very stiff. This means a better frame when you have high ceilings and the ability to go 24" off center so you can have more insulation. Can do this with 2x6 as well.
jeffbee 3y ago
Not a very convincing article. The fact that mass timber uses more wood is right there in the name. Everyone knows this. The point is you get a better building. The cavities in a wood-framed building cause all manner of problems with respect to heat, draft, cold, damp, and noise. Filling the cavity with solid wood variously solves such problems. All the stuff about the capital cost of making laminated wood is irrelevant. Only the marginal cost of the assembly matters.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  Mass timber isn’t meant to replace stick built buildings that are 5 stories or less, it’s meant to replace reinforced concrete for buildings over 5 stories, up to around ~25 stories [0] [0] https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/apply/worlds-tallest-timber-building-opens https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/apply/w...
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    There are plenty of smaller ones. There's a 5-story one in downtown Oakland, for example.
    - quickthrowman 3y ago
      I suppose there are certain locations (Bay Area, for one) where the property values are high enough to include 5x the cost for framing and still net a nice profit, but a ‘typical’ developer maximizing their margins will almost inevitably stick build a 5-over-1 due to cost savings.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > Filling the cavity with solid wood variously solves such problems. Solves some problems, sure, but not heat/cold. Wood has just over a third the R-value of fiberglass batting, IIRC. Better to increase the cavity size and uncouple the inner and outer studs.
bell-cot 3y ago
The article says it's trying to rebut a recent FAS article - which starts with: > Mass timber can help solve the housing shortage, yet the building material is not widely adopted because old building codes ... > Mass timber can help with housing abundance and the climate transition. And the FAS article's call to action seems to be "Congress needs to increase the USDA's budget". So, yes. Easier than rebutting "warm water is dry and crumbly". One wonders whether the Federation of American Scientists has ever heard of "NIMBY", "zoning", or "environmental impact". Let alone "house-poor" or "local government".
marssaxman 3y ago
Here in Seattle, an eight-story mass-timber apartment building was recently finished, claimed to be the first of its kind in the US: https://timberlab.com/projects/heartwood https://timberlab.com/projects/heartwood This was built close to my house, so I got to watch the frame rise. It was an interesting process, and it makes a certain amount of sense to emphasize timber construction in this heavily-forested region. I have to agree with the headline, though.
- ducttapecrown 3y ago
  There's also a completed mass timber building on UW campus, on a grass field adjacent to the cherry groves that will be in bloom March 20th.
cpursley 3y ago
To solve the housing crisis you have to build up like the Soviets and Chinese have. They housed a lot of people, quickly. It’s really not difficult; just takes some brave people to change the zoning laws and rethink some of the building codes combined with financing it.
- cpursley 3y ago
  But not like the UK and US social housing / projects. They need to be in master planned, well thought out and connected communities.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Mixed use. And also mixing all types of social, free-market rental and owner occupied. Quality for later two could be better, but it should still be next to each other using same services.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    I cannot upvote this enough. We ruined today through decades of car centric planning, we have to give the future something better.
    - psychlops 3y ago
      This whole chain is a series of ideas that will never happen.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        These are not the vibes I am looking for. If you don’t have hope, what are you even doing?
        psychlops 3y ago
        Apologies, I hope our next generation of leaders are master planners.
giantg2 3y ago
Of course timber won't fix the housing shortage. The housing shortage is artificial. There are plenty of empty units across the country. It's a distribution issue of: owners holding vacant units, people wanting/needing to live in specific locations, and individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes. With an almost stagnate population growth this isn't really a building issue even if it is a supply side issue.
- throwitaway222 3y ago
  Raise prop taxes for non-rented vacation units by 150% Raise prop taxes for rentals by %350. Raise prop taxes for airbnbs by %500. Everyone will own a home, and home prices will plummet as people try to unload extremely expensive property taxes. And if it doesn't work, double my percentages. Or just make it 100k per year. Those people crazy enough to keep holding them, will fund the creation of homeless housing. DV's are just landlords and other types of bottom feeders.
  - louthy 3y ago
    Everybody will be paying more rent
    - throwitaway222 3y ago
      If that happens, just raise prop taxes to 100k per year (for rental units).
      - adam_arthur 3y ago
        Raising property taxes on rentals increases cost to renters. Raising taxes on vacant units is a good idea though (but perhaps hard to enforce). Remote work is solving the housing shortage already though, through opening up living to much wider geography (and locales that don't impede building, such as TX and FL). It will just take a decade or so to normalize. In-person work forced people to compete over limited housing in small areas
deleted 3y ago
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tempsy 3y ago
There's a shortage of detached single family homes in desirable cities and suburbs. If you just want to rent an apartment there's an oversupply from overbuilding during the pandemic.
- CrazyStat 3y ago
  There’s generally not room to build the desired number of detached single family homes (with desirable lot sizes) in desirable cities and suburbs. Which is why you end up with exurbs and hour long commutes. We need to build higher density housing in the desirable areas, which is often disallowed by zoning.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I think you're operating on maybe 5+ year old thinking on this problem. Post-COVID, the "exurbs with hour long commutes" have become significantly more desirable, as people have gone fully or partially remote. The "penalty" of the long commute has gone down while the benefits of space, affordability, and community type have gone up. The world is obviously figuring out the Return to Office thing but overall the commute is a less big deal than it once was. This dynamic means that folks who own what you correctly categorize as owning "detached single family homes in (or close) to desirable cities" who no longer care about the commute might be overall willing to sell these homes in favor of larger/more affordable homes further out, freeing up these homes to those for whom city proximity still matters. I think there are really two core demographics at play with a small middle. There are those who are all about the city life - don't want a car, don't want a house, want to walk to work and to the tinder date, be around a large number of diverse people and experiences, etc. Then there are those who primarily orient their life around home/family and want the space/affordability. Distance to city mainly matters as a factor of the commute, which itself is less relevant than it was before. Then there's the relatively smaller group that both wants a house and needs to be close to the city life. This group will continue to pay the highest costs because they have the highest demand but I think that's reasonable.
    - CrazyStat 3y ago
buildbot 3y ago
It’s not mentioned in the article, but the Brock Commons that was the tallest timber building is at UBC! I was there as it was built and finished. It’s an 18 story dorm building one of several nearly equally sized dorms (!!) on campus. It went up fast - it was started and done between the 2 years I was there. UBC is huge for specifically timber engineering research, they claimed at one point to be the best in the world.
romwell 3y ago
Of course mass timber won't solve the housing shortage. The housing shortage is entirely a self-inflicted problem arising chiefly from insanely restrictive zoning laws that prevent construction of high-density walkable neighborhoods. It's not only about NIMBYism, though that alone is enough to cause the current crisis. Building an apartment complex in an area fille with single-family units is nearly impossible. Building a high-rise? Forget about it. It's also the fact that mixed-use buildings are still a taboo in the US (God forbid people could work and shop where they live, just look at the hell that is Brooklyn, the EU, and Japan, and ..!). And sticking a high-rise in the middle of a suburban sprawl immediately faces the classic opposition of "but what about traffic and parking", because we can't build public transportation networks either (the opposition to those, of course, is "but nobody uses public transport"). That's why the article misses the point: housing shortage is not a problem about houses.
partiallypro 3y ago
The housing shortage is so straightforward to solve, but government officials and citizens alike block most measures that would easily solve it. It's very frustrating. Rents in Austin are down double digits, and the reason? They changed zoning laws and built more housing. Seems like every major city should be doing that, but apparently, it's too complex.
dubcanada 3y ago
If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago. Saying a bunch of glulam will solve the issue is just incorrect. Wood is fantastic material. But using half a forest to build a 2000sqft house is certainly not the direction we should be going, we should be finding ways to build with 1/2 the amount of wood we currently use. Or perhaps melt down all of that trash and form it into a house somehow...
- jcgrillo 3y ago
  "The house gotta breathe" is something you still hear people uncritically parroting, to the point where it's become a trope in net zero construction.
- foofie 3y ago
  > If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago. I think your comment is misguided and lacks reflection. Change for the sake of change is never good because by definition there is no upside. Construction technology is also expected to be reliable and have long service life, and traditional techniques ensure that by the fact that the are tried and true.
  - dubcanada 3y ago
    Just the comments on my comment alone justify my comment. I never said it was negative, it just is a fact. There are plenty of good new and old methods for everything. But it is resistant to change because it has to have a long service life.
- tnel77 3y ago
  I’m not sure if this is entirely fair. I know people in the trades that have updated their technique and tools every few years the same way a software engineer would. They may be more resistant to change, but local building codes and such inherently force tradesmen to adapt at a certain point.
renewiltord 3y ago
Obviously someone who is familiar with the field but it's kind of strange that they compare these two technologies since they aren't used for the same construction. You've not going to use glulam and CLT to build your one story house. It's about building taller places.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I bet there are some single story houses with glulams. Certainly plenty of two-story houses do. I have a 30 inch tall glulam that spans 35 feet across my garage holding up a good chunk of the second floor.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Fair point. If you want wide spans with fewer supports.
- shortsunblack 3y ago
  Actually CLT is wonderful for one story house. The foundation becomes much cheaper because of walls being low weight. This can massively reduce home cost (as concrete is expensive). The bad thing is that CLT itself is more expensive. The costs need to go down. Edit: I realize I made a mistake here. Americans use stick framing, which already is low weight. This was in reference to bricks and concrete (cast on site or pre-cast) construction. CLT allows to use its members much like concrete (slabs get mounted exactly same way as concrete slabs, etc). In such sense CLT is much better than stick framing.
KaiserPro 3y ago
I would argue that the mateiral is not the pinchpoint of the housing crisis. Its the lack of land, or permits to build on said land. Edit I should say _affordable_ land. Or land that isn't blocked by nimbys
- spankalee 3y ago
  There's plenty of land if it were legal to build on it, and the permitting process didn't take forever.
- dangus 3y ago
  There’s plenty of land, it’s just typically zoned and used poorly, designed to accommodate cars instead of people. 49% of San Bernidino’s central city area is dedicated to parking.
- bombcar 3y ago
  There's plenty of land, it's just not where people want to be. Around here houses are going up, land is being subdivided, everything is moving.
croes 3y ago
How about converting offices to apartments? Thanks to home office there should be many otherwise useless offices.
- dangus 3y ago
  This can work but many buildings are unsuitable. Office buildings tend to have too much interior space where it’s difficult to give all residential units access to natural light. There are also differences in building code for safety issues.
- hinkley 3y ago
  We’ve heard from people in construction that this is often a tear down situation. The needs of office space and apartments are very different. Somehow they see this as different from the old warehouse-loft conversion process.
- Althuns 3y ago
  The common argument against this is that these buildings were not built for residential units (plumbing, electrical, building codes) and bringing them up to residential code is prohibitively expensive. This is not untrue, but I think this is a cop-out. What we need to do is create the systems that allow us to develop office spaces into residential spaces instead of complaining they don't exist. Create building technologies that safely convert these spaces into residential. Create the building codes that allow these conversions to be done safely but also economically. The demand is there, the supply is there, and our downtowns need this.
briantakita 3y ago
Aircrete, Hempcrete, & foam housing are alternatives. All are inexpensive, have good insulation, & can form interesting single story houses.
rybosworld 3y ago
Every single major population center that has distorted (high) housing costs relative to income, also has very strong protections for the existing home owners (NIMBY). "There are no coincidences..." The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer functions as intended.
- foofie 3y ago
  > The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. I think that most jurisdictions already have the legal tools they need to put the public good in front of special interest groups, in the form of eminent domain laws. It's just that the policial will is just not there.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. Really this is a case where states should pre-empt localities.
    - foofie 3y ago
      > Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. I don't understand what point you tried to make. Fair market value is what you expect to pay anyway, and the point of eminent domain is not to fleece property owners. Legal disputes are also not a problem, and quite expectable. It's part of the checks and balances of not having corrupt government officials just steal property to hand it over to the highest bidder. The key factor is political will. Government officials need to fight to get this sort of project through, and be able to invest their time and effort to navigate political chicanery.
  - carbocation 3y ago
    My impression is that you don't need eminent domain takings for this, you just need higher level government (e.g., states) to set more rules around how restrictive local residential zoning is allowed to be.
stephc_int13 3y ago
I think that construction timber benefit as a Carbon sequester is too often downplayed or simply ignored while it could be significant. Timber has many advantages compared to concrete, including longevity. The housing shortage won’t last forever thanks to demography, but we’ll need to replace many badly aging buildings anyway, and it takes time to grow trees and build the whole infrastructure around this construction technique, we should try to not sit and wait for a change.
- MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  Wood does not last longer than concrete. We’ve got concrete around from thousands of years ago and you can make it self-healing.
  - shortsunblack 3y ago
    It is to be said though that rebar in concrete does not last. It is also to be said concrete industry is highly innovative and there are alternatives in the market and in R&D to steel reinforcement. Fiber-reinforced concrete for example. All the old structures that still are here used concrete without steel reinforcement. We also have such structures today. Dams are made out of roller compacted concrete that don't use steel. Those structures last hundreds of years. There's also shotcrete which is used to stabilize soil.
- shortsunblack 3y ago
  Ability for timber to sequester carbon is really complicated. Most studies that arrive at positive conclusions for industry ignore land-use change associated emissions. I.e razing an old-growth forest only to plant plantation trees. Old growth forests sequester carbon in the soil and their roots. They also allow for an ecosystems that itself sequester carbon (various bacteria). Forestry IS not currently sustainable managed. All the IKEA and FSC scandals attest to that. European old growth forests are for some reason disappearing. It's really irresponsible to gesture at this vague idealist future when the present is anything but. Yes, technically wood sequesters carbon. Yes, when trees rot and decompose they release carbon. Yes, if you turn the tree into timber or furniture that carbon will be then locked for very least couple decades. No, forestry is not sustainably managed. Nowhere close. Europeans are razing down their old growth forests for heating. And wood pellets have higher carbon emissions than coal per unit of energy produced. See NYTimes coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/07/world/europe/eu-logging-wood-pellets.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/07/world/europe/...
ReptileMan 3y ago
Why not bricks - they are eco friendly, we are not running out of clay soon, amazing thermal buffers and isolation, while energy intensive to produce you could fire them with renewables eventually. Change the shape a bit so they are easier to lay fill the cavities and we are in the business.
- ducttapecrown 3y ago
  Bricks are a nonstarter on the West coast because of earthquake safety is what I was told as a kid in California.
maxglute 3y ago
Why would it? You can solve the housing problem with corrugated shanty towns and plastic tarps if right regulations eased enough.
- tacocataco 3y ago
  Homelessness > shanty towns apparently
adversaryIdiot 3y ago
I will take a house made out of mud at this point
- tacocataco 3y ago
  3d printed houses exist. Why not crank out a ton of em in the middle of nowhere and build dedicated passenger rail into a metro location?
kingkawn 3y ago
I don’t get the impression that materials are the rate limiting element of the housing crisis
foxyv 3y ago
It takes significantly less materials to build a multi-dwelling apartment/condo/townhouse structure than a single family home. In addition, the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars. We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are not met by their community. Everyone has their own bar, restaurant, theatre, and community center. There are 8 unit apartment buildings that are smaller than some of these houses. The housing crisis is an urban planning crisis.
- nightski 3y ago
  I know it's hard to believe that many people are simply happier living in their own single family home and have little desire for the urban lifestyle.
  - shortsunblack 3y ago
    which is fine, if they are willing to pay the full cost of it. suburbia is massively subsidized.
    - gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
      Is it? Those same people work and pay taxes. If they couldn’t live in a city due to cost that city would have less revenue as a result of fewer employed people buying goods and services.
      - NullPrefix 3y ago
        >work and pay taxes Implying that particular city job isn't subsidized. Bullshit jobs are mostly city jobs
      - KerrAvon 3y ago
        Are you seriously suggesting that everyone in the USA should be forced to live in apartment blocks, or am I misreading you?
ilamont 3y ago
I am building a house in a rural area, where land is cheap. Building is not. Timber is certainly expensive, but you know what else costs a lot? All the other stuff, much of it subject to state building codes that get more restrictive every year. Asbestos survey, assessment, abatement: $10k Asbestos air monitoring: $1k Tipping fees: 20k Spray foam insulation: $27k Foundation $50k Solar: 40k (not including rebates/incentives) Requirements for outlets. Requirements for windows. Setbacks from a utility pole on our property, 50 yards/meters from the nearest road. We have to deal with that mess and pay extra to site the foundation, not National Grid! Even if we were getting a manufactured home (built to looser FEMA standards) we would still have to deal with some of these costs, such as asbestos, tipping fees and foundation. And the cheapest double wide is $300k.
- jghn 3y ago
  > Tipping fees What is a tipping fee
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    Waste disposal. Construction and remodeling both produce huge amounts of waste and it needs to be disposed of in specific ways.
    - jghn 3y ago
      Huh. Have never heard that called a tipping fee. When we've had work done there's just a line item for dumpster/removal/etc
      - kevingadd 3y ago
        Yeah, I had to look the term up to make sure I was right. The terminology probably depends on where you live.
  - shawabawa3 3y ago
    You need to tip the builder 20% of constructions costs in the US (Just kidding, it's the fee for taking the waste to the tip)
deleted 3y ago
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dogman144 3y ago
I hope large scale timber construction doesn’t occur exclusively because of the impact on our forests. Between the pine beetles, fires, the many many stumps from the last round of serious logging years… our national forests and surrounding un-designated forests could use a break from a possible sharp uptick in demand. If you support ideas like this which help largely sub/urban areas by using out of sight out of mind rural resources, and you also go out to Yellowstone and the West once in a while and see/wish how our forests weren’t in such bad shape, then consider not supporting this.
- ducttapecrown 3y ago
  I wonder what the impact of the production of concrete and steel has on the environments where it takes place. I like the part of the article where they point out that mass timber would be better for carbon sequestration. I also think that buildings should mostly be built with a death period in mind because everything in this world requires maintenance and can be upgraded lol. So why not use a building material that literally grows itself? I agree with your point that destroying all the forests to build housing would be a bad idea, but we can and do sustainably log---all you have to do is plant some trees and wait!
  - dogman144 3y ago
    Sustainable logging at its current levels makes the logged-out areas in the West look like it does now (stumps, new growth forests which aren’t 1:1 replacements, etc). To get back to “how it’s supposed to be” as sustainable logging promises, we’re talking 100 yr+ timeframes to even make solid progress, not a full easy replacement. So, the environment is still degraded under that approach. I’ve lived rural and urban coastal, and your view highlights a perspective I started to notice only when I lived rural West, and it’s frustrating: To support pro-environmental needs of the densely populated and often coastal urban centers, the last remaining near/wild environments bear the cost and get carved out under the banner of pragmatic sustainable use - logged out, REM mines, wind farms on mountains, etc. For instance, if every rural wind farm was met with a wind farm in SF Bay or Cape Cod or… I’d be ok with it, but the reality is it’s not done this way, and in fact heavily resisted due to vacation home views and so on. Bitteroots and Bighorn ranges have massive REM deposits discovered. This was spun as a positive env news story vs a massive mining threat to some of the best un-impacted/well managed areas of the Rockies. On and on. So let’s raid our mountains and last wild places to support environmentally unsustainable lifestyles in the dense areas, who get to avoid none of the tradeoffs I describe that the actually wild areas now face. Doesn’t sit well with me. What’s the point of environmentalism if we destroy the last best parts of the environment.
shawn-butler 3y ago
There are actual mass timber projects to look at. The article mentions one in Milwaukee. I am familiar with the T3 project [0]. It was delivered ahead of schedule and below cost relative to a traditional steel/concrete plan. No huge issues of which I am aware in the 5 or so years since occupancy, but someone else may know better. [0]: https://structurecraft.com/projects/t3-minneapolis https://structurecraft.com/projects/t3-minneapolis
creer 3y ago
Much of the conversation here derails the original post: we desperately need less expensive construction processes (overall, including permitting etc). Even when the local community makes it not-worthwhile to build affordable housing.
- gertlex 3y ago
  Not sure the article ("original post") makes that claim either. It just asserts that mass timber is (probably) not in fact cheaper, and has not been/is not going to accelerate building of more housing. A solution, i.e. what "we desperately need", is not covered in the article.
- creer 3y ago
  The article points out a range of tradeoffs for mass timber (and I'm not arguing that mass timber should by itself solve the construction cost issue - it's more interesting as one more very different direction). More directions will be helpful for finding more cost effective solutions for different buildings. For one thing mass timber allows far more floors than current "5 over 1" construction - because of better fire behavior. In current cities that is certainly a useful feature. At least in cities that do grant construction permits... That should be helpful even in cities that grant ENOUGH construction permits for that to influence unit affordability.
throwway120385 3y ago
I bet it's less expensive in the PNW and more expensive in the midwest and southwest. There is a LOT of timber here and a lot of mills to take advantage of plantation-grown trees that don't exist elsewhere.
turtlebits 3y ago
Isn't this obvious? I thought it is well known that zoning is the biggest problem. Add to the fact that land values in cities are out of control. For example, I'd like to rebuild my old house, but it doesn't make financial sense to build under 4000sf as I'd be losing out to potential value as well as matching the neighborhood. I can't build a duplex or detached ADU. I don't want to spend 2 million on giant house I can't use.
advael 3y ago
I think this article is a great example of how technical people have become so intoxicated by the relatively few instances in which an advance in technology has genuinely solved an entrenched social or power problem by making a new thing possible or reducing costs that they basically only argue in those terms The fact is, the housing crisis is and always was a policy failure and a "distributional outcomes" issue, and and no amount of improving housing construction's speed, costs, or legality will fix it if we don't both change policy and reduce inequality There are tons of building that are or could be residential housing that are owned by massive investment firms as a speculative asset. The FTC's recently published brief mentioned that keeping units empty rather than lowering prices is common practice among landlords. Even among individuals, an incredible amount of older, wealthy people own multiple homes and view most of them as a source of passive income. When I talk to people in that category, if they are doing well, they are often thinking about buying more homes to generate more income directly from renters or as a speculative investment (IE to hold and sell later) As it stands, people are not homeless because there is nowhere they could live. Not even close. Increasing housing supply without making any significant dent in the financial and regulatory situation surrounding housing will more likely just put more real estate in the hands of the entrenched winners, who have already demonstrated the willingness and ability to hoard housing
- nateglims 3y ago
  Vacancy rates are misleading and includes things like being unoccupied briefly between owners or houses that are unlivable in areas with no buyers. The number of homes where people want them is quite low, there is simply a shortage. Houses as an asset is a major contributor for sure. It's long been a rival to stocks or exceeded it as an investment and makes a powerful political base. But it also includes a lot of people who view their primary residence as one and aren't landlording other properties. It's hard to find solutions to this that are politically and socially viable. To create more homes requires capital and doing so will lower the value of existing assets. I think people reach for easy solutions because they don't want to face some deep contradictions in our way of life.
  - bombcar 3y ago
psychlops 3y ago
What exactly is the housing shortage being discussed?
rmbyrro 3y ago
The "Legal Mumbo Jumbo" page in one of the linked websites is epic! LOL [1] https://www.woodtechsystems.com/legal-mumbo-jumbo/ https://www.woodtechsystems.com/legal-mumbo-jumbo/
cellinaabram 3y ago
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nox101 3y ago
Los Angeles has a housing shortage. It also has a car traffic problem a d argubly needs 40 train/subway lines, tons of bike infra, and re-zoning so more small business can open in walking distance to people. building twice ssany homes won't work if we can move around twice as many people
patrickhogan1 3y ago
More building, less talking
imgabe 3y ago
All of the construction related solutions to housing problems are missing the point. Housing is not expensive because it's difficult to physically build. We are pretty good at construction. A single family home could probably be put up in two weeks or less if all that mattered was doing the actual construction. The problem is zoning and all the red tape and NIMBYism that prevents the construction from taking place.
lispisok 3y ago
People debating about what kind of housing to build are getting ahead of themselves. The housing crisis is intentional. Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. They way to do that is to keep supply lower than demand. The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis that needs fixing.
- Clubber 3y ago
  Another problem is a vast majority of people want to / have to live in a very few select places. We could alleviate housing costs by changing that as well; back to supply and demand. I hope that StarLink and WFH are big pieces of the puzzle that will move people away from mega-dense population centers. We certainly have the acreage.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    >Another problem is a vast majority of people want to / have to live in a very few select places. It's been like this since the dawn of civilization, and it isn't going to change. There's no substitute for physical proximity, unless you can invent the teleporter. >We could alleviate housing costs by changing that as well; back to supply and demand. No, you can't. You can't force people to want to live in the sticks. >I hope that StarLink and WFH are big pieces of the puzzle that will move people away from mega-dense population centers. We certainly have the acreage. Maybe you like staying at home all the time and never leaving your 40 acres, but other people actually like to go places, socialize, go out to eat, see cultural events, etc. You can't do that over a satellite internet connection.
    - Stephen_0xFF 3y ago
      I think the biggest factor that decides where you live is work. You move where the work is, that’s how you survive. You don’t have to use a hyperbole like living on 40 acres. There’s many cities and towns that have social events but aren’t as crammed as SF or NY.
    - 3y ago
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
We learned from the great fire of London not to build all your tall houses out of wood
- foxyv 3y ago
  Wood framing can be just as fireproof as steel and concrete. This is why drywall is so popular for interior finishing.
nojvek 3y ago
Playing devil's advocate here. What causes housing shortage - more demand than supply. What causes more demand? - more people. IMO an ever increasing population isn't a good thing if the economy can't absorb them at an equilibrium of demand and supply. Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move. Great for house prices but it takes it's toll.
- opo 3y ago
  >...Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move. Do you have a citation for that number? Most sources say Canada takes in about 1/2 that: >...Currently, annual immigration in Canada amounts to almost 500,000 new immigrants – one of the highest rates per population of any country in the world. As of 2023, there were more than eight million immigrants with permanent residence living in Canada - roughly 20 percent of the total Canadian population. https://www.statista.com/topics/2917/immigration-in-canada/#topicOverview https://www.statista.com/topics/2917/immigration-in-canada/#...
  - wstrange 3y ago
    BMO Economics: The government of Canada has overshot its immigration targets by 300% https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/comments/1at7nbq/bmo_economics_the_government_of_canada_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/comments/1at7nbq/bmo...
  - nojvek 3y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/world/canada/canada-record-population-growth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/world/canada/canada-recor...
- tmnvix 3y ago
  > What causes more demand? - more people. Also, a speculative boom, cheap credit, and a burgeoning short term rental market among other things.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  the problem isn't the people, is that most of the country ranges from "fairly uninhabitable" to "dangerously uninhabitable". foreigners aren't moving to rural Manitoba, they're all going to a handful of areas, most of which are in the furthers south parts of the country (e.g. Vancouver, and Greater Toronto), which also happen to have the mildest weather. Australia is seeing a similar trend -- influx of people, not much (viable) land. also keep in mind this demand is simply to keep up with population loss, and demand on the system for pensions, healthcare, and support for the Boomers. the Liberal party is ultimately still pro-capitalism, and they need to balance out these dying old people; "stonks only go up", so we need more consumption.
kkfx 3y ago
European here, I recently build my home in wood-frame with thick enough elements I suppose they fall in this "mass timber" category, well... It was NOT cheaper than concrete, I choose wood for various reasons but well, cheapness was not one of them at least not in France where this tech is not much widespread. I have some advantages: - much more personal future changes are possible, it's far easier posing new wires/pipes and so on since all I need are small tools, I do not made much dust with them and so on; - thinner perimeters walls (with good insulation), in some cases they are a nice thing; and some disadvantages: - exterior exposed wood last far less than concrete and demand more regular upkeep work (though it's relatively easy); - eventual water spills might be more impacting; - last but not least, noise insulation from the ground floor and the second one are far LESS good than concrete. So well, I'm happy of my choice for various reasons, but I do agree with the author, only adding a point: homes need to change as tech change. Having homes we can "recycle" an create again after let's say 50-70 years means having a kind-of industrial home evolution path that allow for well performant and well designed homes in the long terms, a thing we can't much have with concrete. At a certain rates trees re-grow, rocks do as well, but in a sooooooo large timeframe we can't count as "renewable", so potentially a wood based civilization might be nearly circular, a concrete based one can't (at least, seen the actual known tech). Aside while light buildings suffer more extreme weather, they suffer less some kind of hydro-geological problems like soil stability, earthquakes and so on, all demanding far simpler foundations.

184 points by taion 3y ago

'democracy can only last until a majority coalition realizes they can simply vote themselves largesse'

> the mass timber framing uses four to five times the volume of wood as the light-framed wood framing. I recall helping nail 2x6's together into big composite beams, in the 80s in Florida. something like a 32 foot clear roof span was needed and I think we were doing 3 layers for a 6in x 6in final profile. Good job for a kid: "Here's a box of 150 nails. put them all in these boards" I've seen a meeting hall floor that was made by laying 2x4's up side by side and nailing them together. They were knotted, warped, reject pile boards and someone collected a big pile and planed one side straight then laminated them into a 20ft or so floor over the basement of a church building. Big massive center beam under it and no other supports but the walls. 3+ in thick and that heavily nailed; no worries. It was fine finished and lovely from the top; the bottom was moreso to my eye: you could see how woven together it was and how far from perfect the individual boards were. In both cases the design was inefficient and used profligate amounts of wood compared to what could have been done with steel or other methods. In both cases the wood was extra cheap or free and someone was making expedient use of it.

xattt 3y ago
> It was fine finished and lovely from the top; the bottom was moreso to my eye: you could see how woven together it was and how far from perfect the individual boards were. This seems like a fitting description of society in general.
nemo44x 3y ago
I had an addition done where they had to bolt LVL and steel plate together for a rather large span with cantilever. That bit of support isn't ever moving.

mikece 3y ago

> the mass timber framing uses four to five times the volume of wood as the light-framed wood framing. So... basically "buy more wood?" I think I'll pass.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago
It's a false equivalence, light-wood framing is typically used in single-family homes or shorter (<5 stories) multi-family homes. Steel and concrete is typically used for 10-20 story multifamily housing. Mass timber is being pushed by the timber manufacturers as an alternative to steel and concrete, no one's seriously proposing you build your 2-story 2500 sqft home out of laminated beams instead of studs, trusses, and joists.
nemo44x 3y ago
You can do things with it that you can't do otherwise. For instance, you can create extremely large spans that weren't otherwise possible in wood framed construction. This creates really cool opportunities when designing the interior of a home. Framing can be done with LVL as well and the benefit is that it's very stiff. This means a better frame when you have high ceilings and the ability to go 24" off center so you can have more insulation. Can do this with 2x6 as well.

jeffbee 3y ago

Not a very convincing article. The fact that mass timber uses more wood is right there in the name. Everyone knows this. The point is you get a better building. The cavities in a wood-framed building cause all manner of problems with respect to heat, draft, cold, damp, and noise. Filling the cavity with solid wood variously solves such problems. All the stuff about the capital cost of making laminated wood is irrelevant. Only the marginal cost of the assembly matters.

deleted 3y ago
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quickthrowman 3y ago
Mass timber isn’t meant to replace stick built buildings that are 5 stories or less, it’s meant to replace reinforced concrete for buildings over 5 stories, up to around ~25 stories [0] [0] https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/apply/worlds-tallest-timber-building-opens https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/apply/w...
- jeffbee 3y ago
  There are plenty of smaller ones. There's a 5-story one in downtown Oakland, for example.
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    I suppose there are certain locations (Bay Area, for one) where the property values are high enough to include 5x the cost for framing and still net a nice profit, but a ‘typical’ developer maximizing their margins will almost inevitably stick build a 5-over-1 due to cost savings.
rootusrootus 3y ago
> Filling the cavity with solid wood variously solves such problems. Solves some problems, sure, but not heat/cold. Wood has just over a third the R-value of fiberglass batting, IIRC. Better to increase the cavity size and uncouple the inner and outer studs.

bell-cot 3y ago

The article says it's trying to rebut a recent FAS article - which starts with: > Mass timber can help solve the housing shortage, yet the building material is not widely adopted because old building codes ... > Mass timber can help with housing abundance and the climate transition. And the FAS article's call to action seems to be "Congress needs to increase the USDA's budget". So, yes. Easier than rebutting "warm water is dry and crumbly". One wonders whether the Federation of American Scientists has ever heard of "NIMBY", "zoning", or "environmental impact". Let alone "house-poor" or "local government".

marssaxman 3y ago

Here in Seattle, an eight-story mass-timber apartment building was recently finished, claimed to be the first of its kind in the US: https://timberlab.com/projects/heartwood https://timberlab.com/projects/heartwood This was built close to my house, so I got to watch the frame rise. It was an interesting process, and it makes a certain amount of sense to emphasize timber construction in this heavily-forested region. I have to agree with the headline, though.

ducttapecrown 3y ago
There's also a completed mass timber building on UW campus, on a grass field adjacent to the cherry groves that will be in bloom March 20th.

cpursley 3y ago

To solve the housing crisis you have to build up like the Soviets and Chinese have. They housed a lot of people, quickly. It’s really not difficult; just takes some brave people to change the zoning laws and rethink some of the building codes combined with financing it.

cpursley 3y ago
But not like the UK and US social housing / projects. They need to be in master planned, well thought out and connected communities.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Mixed use. And also mixing all types of social, free-market rental and owner occupied. Quality for later two could be better, but it should still be next to each other using same services.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  I cannot upvote this enough. We ruined today through decades of car centric planning, we have to give the future something better.
  - psychlops 3y ago
    This whole chain is a series of ideas that will never happen.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      These are not the vibes I am looking for. If you don’t have hope, what are you even doing?
      - psychlops 3y ago
        Apologies, I hope our next generation of leaders are master planners.

giantg2 3y ago

Of course timber won't fix the housing shortage. The housing shortage is artificial. There are plenty of empty units across the country. It's a distribution issue of: owners holding vacant units, people wanting/needing to live in specific locations, and individual preferences for bigger, fancier, better school, sfh, etc attributes. With an almost stagnate population growth this isn't really a building issue even if it is a supply side issue.

throwitaway222 3y ago
Raise prop taxes for non-rented vacation units by 150% Raise prop taxes for rentals by %350. Raise prop taxes for airbnbs by %500. Everyone will own a home, and home prices will plummet as people try to unload extremely expensive property taxes. And if it doesn't work, double my percentages. Or just make it 100k per year. Those people crazy enough to keep holding them, will fund the creation of homeless housing. DV's are just landlords and other types of bottom feeders.
- louthy 3y ago
  Everybody will be paying more rent
  - throwitaway222 3y ago
    If that happens, just raise prop taxes to 100k per year (for rental units).
    - adam_arthur 3y ago
      Raising property taxes on rentals increases cost to renters. Raising taxes on vacant units is a good idea though (but perhaps hard to enforce). Remote work is solving the housing shortage already though, through opening up living to much wider geography (and locales that don't impede building, such as TX and FL). It will just take a decade or so to normalize. In-person work forced people to compete over limited housing in small areas

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tempsy 3y ago

There's a shortage of detached single family homes in desirable cities and suburbs. If you just want to rent an apartment there's an oversupply from overbuilding during the pandemic.

CrazyStat 3y ago
There’s generally not room to build the desired number of detached single family homes (with desirable lot sizes) in desirable cities and suburbs. Which is why you end up with exurbs and hour long commutes. We need to build higher density housing in the desirable areas, which is often disallowed by zoning.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I think you're operating on maybe 5+ year old thinking on this problem. Post-COVID, the "exurbs with hour long commutes" have become significantly more desirable, as people have gone fully or partially remote. The "penalty" of the long commute has gone down while the benefits of space, affordability, and community type have gone up. The world is obviously figuring out the Return to Office thing but overall the commute is a less big deal than it once was. This dynamic means that folks who own what you correctly categorize as owning "detached single family homes in (or close) to desirable cities" who no longer care about the commute might be overall willing to sell these homes in favor of larger/more affordable homes further out, freeing up these homes to those for whom city proximity still matters. I think there are really two core demographics at play with a small middle. There are those who are all about the city life - don't want a car, don't want a house, want to walk to work and to the tinder date, be around a large number of diverse people and experiences, etc. Then there are those who primarily orient their life around home/family and want the space/affordability. Distance to city mainly matters as a factor of the commute, which itself is less relevant than it was before. Then there's the relatively smaller group that both wants a house and needs to be close to the city life. This group will continue to pay the highest costs because they have the highest demand but I think that's reasonable.
  - CrazyStat 3y ago

buildbot 3y ago

It’s not mentioned in the article, but the Brock Commons that was the tallest timber building is at UBC! I was there as it was built and finished. It’s an 18 story dorm building one of several nearly equally sized dorms (!!) on campus. It went up fast - it was started and done between the 2 years I was there. UBC is huge for specifically timber engineering research, they claimed at one point to be the best in the world.

romwell 3y ago

Of course mass timber won't solve the housing shortage. The housing shortage is entirely a self-inflicted problem arising chiefly from insanely restrictive zoning laws that prevent construction of high-density walkable neighborhoods. It's not only about NIMBYism, though that alone is enough to cause the current crisis. Building an apartment complex in an area fille with single-family units is nearly impossible. Building a high-rise? Forget about it. It's also the fact that mixed-use buildings are still a taboo in the US (God forbid people could work and shop where they live, just look at the hell that is Brooklyn, the EU, and Japan, and ..!). And sticking a high-rise in the middle of a suburban sprawl immediately faces the classic opposition of "but what about traffic and parking", because we can't build public transportation networks either (the opposition to those, of course, is "but nobody uses public transport"). That's why the article misses the point: housing shortage is not a problem about houses.

partiallypro 3y ago

The housing shortage is so straightforward to solve, but government officials and citizens alike block most measures that would easily solve it. It's very frustrating. Rents in Austin are down double digits, and the reason? They changed zoning laws and built more housing. Seems like every major city should be doing that, but apparently, it's too complex.

dubcanada 3y ago

If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago. Saying a bunch of glulam will solve the issue is just incorrect. Wood is fantastic material. But using half a forest to build a 2000sqft house is certainly not the direction we should be going, we should be finding ways to build with 1/2 the amount of wood we currently use. Or perhaps melt down all of that trash and form it into a house somehow...

jcgrillo 3y ago
"The house gotta breathe" is something you still hear people uncritically parroting, to the point where it's become a trope in net zero construction.
foofie 3y ago
> If there is one industry that is the most resistant to change, it's the construction industry. There are still people who have been roofing for 50 years and refuse to change a single thing they do and learned 50 years ago. I think your comment is misguided and lacks reflection. Change for the sake of change is never good because by definition there is no upside. Construction technology is also expected to be reliable and have long service life, and traditional techniques ensure that by the fact that the are tried and true.
- dubcanada 3y ago
  Just the comments on my comment alone justify my comment. I never said it was negative, it just is a fact. There are plenty of good new and old methods for everything. But it is resistant to change because it has to have a long service life.
tnel77 3y ago
I’m not sure if this is entirely fair. I know people in the trades that have updated their technique and tools every few years the same way a software engineer would. They may be more resistant to change, but local building codes and such inherently force tradesmen to adapt at a certain point.

renewiltord 3y ago

Obviously someone who is familiar with the field but it's kind of strange that they compare these two technologies since they aren't used for the same construction. You've not going to use glulam and CLT to build your one story house. It's about building taller places.

rootusrootus 3y ago
I bet there are some single story houses with glulams. Certainly plenty of two-story houses do. I have a 30 inch tall glulam that spans 35 feet across my garage holding up a good chunk of the second floor.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  Fair point. If you want wide spans with fewer supports.
shortsunblack 3y ago
Actually CLT is wonderful for one story house. The foundation becomes much cheaper because of walls being low weight. This can massively reduce home cost (as concrete is expensive). The bad thing is that CLT itself is more expensive. The costs need to go down. Edit: I realize I made a mistake here. Americans use stick framing, which already is low weight. This was in reference to bricks and concrete (cast on site or pre-cast) construction. CLT allows to use its members much like concrete (slabs get mounted exactly same way as concrete slabs, etc). In such sense CLT is much better than stick framing.

KaiserPro 3y ago

I would argue that the mateiral is not the pinchpoint of the housing crisis. Its the lack of land, or permits to build on said land. Edit I should say _affordable_ land. Or land that isn't blocked by nimbys

spankalee 3y ago
There's plenty of land if it were legal to build on it, and the permitting process didn't take forever.
dangus 3y ago
There’s plenty of land, it’s just typically zoned and used poorly, designed to accommodate cars instead of people. 49% of San Bernidino’s central city area is dedicated to parking.
bombcar 3y ago
There's plenty of land, it's just not where people want to be. Around here houses are going up, land is being subdivided, everything is moving.

croes 3y ago

How about converting offices to apartments? Thanks to home office there should be many otherwise useless offices.

dangus 3y ago
This can work but many buildings are unsuitable. Office buildings tend to have too much interior space where it’s difficult to give all residential units access to natural light. There are also differences in building code for safety issues.
hinkley 3y ago
We’ve heard from people in construction that this is often a tear down situation. The needs of office space and apartments are very different. Somehow they see this as different from the old warehouse-loft conversion process.
Althuns 3y ago
The common argument against this is that these buildings were not built for residential units (plumbing, electrical, building codes) and bringing them up to residential code is prohibitively expensive. This is not untrue, but I think this is a cop-out. What we need to do is create the systems that allow us to develop office spaces into residential spaces instead of complaining they don't exist. Create building technologies that safely convert these spaces into residential. Create the building codes that allow these conversions to be done safely but also economically. The demand is there, the supply is there, and our downtowns need this.

briantakita 3y ago

Aircrete, Hempcrete, & foam housing are alternatives. All are inexpensive, have good insulation, & can form interesting single story houses.

rybosworld 3y ago

Every single major population center that has distorted (high) housing costs relative to income, also has very strong protections for the existing home owners (NIMBY). "There are no coincidences..." The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer functions as intended.

foofie 3y ago
> The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. I think that most jurisdictions already have the legal tools they need to put the public good in front of special interest groups, in the form of eminent domain laws. It's just that the policial will is just not there.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. Really this is a case where states should pre-empt localities.
  - foofie 3y ago
    > Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. I don't understand what point you tried to make. Fair market value is what you expect to pay anyway, and the point of eminent domain is not to fleece property owners. Legal disputes are also not a problem, and quite expectable. It's part of the checks and balances of not having corrupt government officials just steal property to hand it over to the highest bidder. The key factor is political will. Government officials need to fight to get this sort of project through, and be able to invest their time and effort to navigate political chicanery.
- carbocation 3y ago
  My impression is that you don't need eminent domain takings for this, you just need higher level government (e.g., states) to set more rules around how restrictive local residential zoning is allowed to be.

stephc_int13 3y ago

I think that construction timber benefit as a Carbon sequester is too often downplayed or simply ignored while it could be significant. Timber has many advantages compared to concrete, including longevity. The housing shortage won’t last forever thanks to demography, but we’ll need to replace many badly aging buildings anyway, and it takes time to grow trees and build the whole infrastructure around this construction technique, we should try to not sit and wait for a change.

MagicMoonlight 3y ago
Wood does not last longer than concrete. We’ve got concrete around from thousands of years ago and you can make it self-healing.
- shortsunblack 3y ago
  It is to be said though that rebar in concrete does not last. It is also to be said concrete industry is highly innovative and there are alternatives in the market and in R&D to steel reinforcement. Fiber-reinforced concrete for example. All the old structures that still are here used concrete without steel reinforcement. We also have such structures today. Dams are made out of roller compacted concrete that don't use steel. Those structures last hundreds of years. There's also shotcrete which is used to stabilize soil.
shortsunblack 3y ago
Ability for timber to sequester carbon is really complicated. Most studies that arrive at positive conclusions for industry ignore land-use change associated emissions. I.e razing an old-growth forest only to plant plantation trees. Old growth forests sequester carbon in the soil and their roots. They also allow for an ecosystems that itself sequester carbon (various bacteria). Forestry IS not currently sustainable managed. All the IKEA and FSC scandals attest to that. European old growth forests are for some reason disappearing. It's really irresponsible to gesture at this vague idealist future when the present is anything but. Yes, technically wood sequesters carbon. Yes, when trees rot and decompose they release carbon. Yes, if you turn the tree into timber or furniture that carbon will be then locked for very least couple decades. No, forestry is not sustainably managed. Nowhere close. Europeans are razing down their old growth forests for heating. And wood pellets have higher carbon emissions than coal per unit of energy produced. See NYTimes coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/07/world/europe/eu-logging-wood-pellets.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/07/world/europe/...

ReptileMan 3y ago

Why not bricks - they are eco friendly, we are not running out of clay soon, amazing thermal buffers and isolation, while energy intensive to produce you could fire them with renewables eventually. Change the shape a bit so they are easier to lay fill the cavities and we are in the business.

ducttapecrown 3y ago
Bricks are a nonstarter on the West coast because of earthquake safety is what I was told as a kid in California.

maxglute 3y ago

Why would it? You can solve the housing problem with corrugated shanty towns and plastic tarps if right regulations eased enough.

tacocataco 3y ago
Homelessness > shanty towns apparently

adversaryIdiot 3y ago

I will take a house made out of mud at this point

tacocataco 3y ago
3d printed houses exist. Why not crank out a ton of em in the middle of nowhere and build dedicated passenger rail into a metro location?

kingkawn 3y ago

I don’t get the impression that materials are the rate limiting element of the housing crisis

foxyv 3y ago

It takes significantly less materials to build a multi-dwelling apartment/condo/townhouse structure than a single family home. In addition, the required square footage per person drops by huge amounts when people can walk to nearby community centers, restaurants, kitchens, theaters, and bars. We are building massive 3-4k sq. ft. homes for families of four because all of their food, entertainment, and social needs are not met by their community. Everyone has their own bar, restaurant, theatre, and community center. There are 8 unit apartment buildings that are smaller than some of these houses. The housing crisis is an urban planning crisis.

nightski 3y ago
I know it's hard to believe that many people are simply happier living in their own single family home and have little desire for the urban lifestyle.
- shortsunblack 3y ago
  which is fine, if they are willing to pay the full cost of it. suburbia is massively subsidized.
  - gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
    Is it? Those same people work and pay taxes. If they couldn’t live in a city due to cost that city would have less revenue as a result of fewer employed people buying goods and services.
    - NullPrefix 3y ago
      >work and pay taxes Implying that particular city job isn't subsidized. Bullshit jobs are mostly city jobs
    - KerrAvon 3y ago
      Are you seriously suggesting that everyone in the USA should be forced to live in apartment blocks, or am I misreading you?

ilamont 3y ago

I am building a house in a rural area, where land is cheap. Building is not. Timber is certainly expensive, but you know what else costs a lot? All the other stuff, much of it subject to state building codes that get more restrictive every year. Asbestos survey, assessment, abatement: $10k Asbestos air monitoring: $1k Tipping fees: 20k Spray foam insulation: $27k Foundation $50k Solar: 40k (not including rebates/incentives) Requirements for outlets. Requirements for windows. Setbacks from a utility pole on our property, 50 yards/meters from the nearest road. We have to deal with that mess and pay extra to site the foundation, not National Grid! Even if we were getting a manufactured home (built to looser FEMA standards) we would still have to deal with some of these costs, such as asbestos, tipping fees and foundation. And the cheapest double wide is $300k.

jghn 3y ago
> Tipping fees What is a tipping fee
- kevingadd 3y ago
  Waste disposal. Construction and remodeling both produce huge amounts of waste and it needs to be disposed of in specific ways.
  - jghn 3y ago
    Huh. Have never heard that called a tipping fee. When we've had work done there's just a line item for dumpster/removal/etc
    - kevingadd 3y ago
      Yeah, I had to look the term up to make sure I was right. The terminology probably depends on where you live.
- shawabawa3 3y ago
  You need to tip the builder 20% of constructions costs in the US (Just kidding, it's the fee for taking the waste to the tip)

deleted 3y ago

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dogman144 3y ago

I hope large scale timber construction doesn’t occur exclusively because of the impact on our forests. Between the pine beetles, fires, the many many stumps from the last round of serious logging years… our national forests and surrounding un-designated forests could use a break from a possible sharp uptick in demand. If you support ideas like this which help largely sub/urban areas by using out of sight out of mind rural resources, and you also go out to Yellowstone and the West once in a while and see/wish how our forests weren’t in such bad shape, then consider not supporting this.

ducttapecrown 3y ago
I wonder what the impact of the production of concrete and steel has on the environments where it takes place. I like the part of the article where they point out that mass timber would be better for carbon sequestration. I also think that buildings should mostly be built with a death period in mind because everything in this world requires maintenance and can be upgraded lol. So why not use a building material that literally grows itself? I agree with your point that destroying all the forests to build housing would be a bad idea, but we can and do sustainably log---all you have to do is plant some trees and wait!
- dogman144 3y ago
  Sustainable logging at its current levels makes the logged-out areas in the West look like it does now (stumps, new growth forests which aren’t 1:1 replacements, etc). To get back to “how it’s supposed to be” as sustainable logging promises, we’re talking 100 yr+ timeframes to even make solid progress, not a full easy replacement. So, the environment is still degraded under that approach. I’ve lived rural and urban coastal, and your view highlights a perspective I started to notice only when I lived rural West, and it’s frustrating: To support pro-environmental needs of the densely populated and often coastal urban centers, the last remaining near/wild environments bear the cost and get carved out under the banner of pragmatic sustainable use - logged out, REM mines, wind farms on mountains, etc. For instance, if every rural wind farm was met with a wind farm in SF Bay or Cape Cod or… I’d be ok with it, but the reality is it’s not done this way, and in fact heavily resisted due to vacation home views and so on. Bitteroots and Bighorn ranges have massive REM deposits discovered. This was spun as a positive env news story vs a massive mining threat to some of the best un-impacted/well managed areas of the Rockies. On and on. So let’s raid our mountains and last wild places to support environmentally unsustainable lifestyles in the dense areas, who get to avoid none of the tradeoffs I describe that the actually wild areas now face. Doesn’t sit well with me. What’s the point of environmentalism if we destroy the last best parts of the environment.

shawn-butler 3y ago

There are actual mass timber projects to look at. The article mentions one in Milwaukee. I am familiar with the T3 project [0]. It was delivered ahead of schedule and below cost relative to a traditional steel/concrete plan. No huge issues of which I am aware in the 5 or so years since occupancy, but someone else may know better. [0]: https://structurecraft.com/projects/t3-minneapolis https://structurecraft.com/projects/t3-minneapolis

creer 3y ago

Much of the conversation here derails the original post: we desperately need less expensive construction processes (overall, including permitting etc). Even when the local community makes it not-worthwhile to build affordable housing.

gertlex 3y ago
Not sure the article ("original post") makes that claim either. It just asserts that mass timber is (probably) not in fact cheaper, and has not been/is not going to accelerate building of more housing. A solution, i.e. what "we desperately need", is not covered in the article.
creer 3y ago
The article points out a range of tradeoffs for mass timber (and I'm not arguing that mass timber should by itself solve the construction cost issue - it's more interesting as one more very different direction). More directions will be helpful for finding more cost effective solutions for different buildings. For one thing mass timber allows far more floors than current "5 over 1" construction - because of better fire behavior. In current cities that is certainly a useful feature. At least in cities that do grant construction permits... That should be helpful even in cities that grant ENOUGH construction permits for that to influence unit affordability.

throwway120385 3y ago

I bet it's less expensive in the PNW and more expensive in the midwest and southwest. There is a LOT of timber here and a lot of mills to take advantage of plantation-grown trees that don't exist elsewhere.

turtlebits 3y ago

Isn't this obvious? I thought it is well known that zoning is the biggest problem. Add to the fact that land values in cities are out of control. For example, I'd like to rebuild my old house, but it doesn't make financial sense to build under 4000sf as I'd be losing out to potential value as well as matching the neighborhood. I can't build a duplex or detached ADU. I don't want to spend 2 million on giant house I can't use.

advael 3y ago

I think this article is a great example of how technical people have become so intoxicated by the relatively few instances in which an advance in technology has genuinely solved an entrenched social or power problem by making a new thing possible or reducing costs that they basically only argue in those terms The fact is, the housing crisis is and always was a policy failure and a "distributional outcomes" issue, and and no amount of improving housing construction's speed, costs, or legality will fix it if we don't both change policy and reduce inequality There are tons of building that are or could be residential housing that are owned by massive investment firms as a speculative asset. The FTC's recently published brief mentioned that keeping units empty rather than lowering prices is common practice among landlords. Even among individuals, an incredible amount of older, wealthy people own multiple homes and view most of them as a source of passive income. When I talk to people in that category, if they are doing well, they are often thinking about buying more homes to generate more income directly from renters or as a speculative investment (IE to hold and sell later) As it stands, people are not homeless because there is nowhere they could live. Not even close. Increasing housing supply without making any significant dent in the financial and regulatory situation surrounding housing will more likely just put more real estate in the hands of the entrenched winners, who have already demonstrated the willingness and ability to hoard housing

nateglims 3y ago
Vacancy rates are misleading and includes things like being unoccupied briefly between owners or houses that are unlivable in areas with no buyers. The number of homes where people want them is quite low, there is simply a shortage. Houses as an asset is a major contributor for sure. It's long been a rival to stocks or exceeded it as an investment and makes a powerful political base. But it also includes a lot of people who view their primary residence as one and aren't landlording other properties. It's hard to find solutions to this that are politically and socially viable. To create more homes requires capital and doing so will lower the value of existing assets. I think people reach for easy solutions because they don't want to face some deep contradictions in our way of life.
- bombcar 3y ago

psychlops 3y ago

What exactly is the housing shortage being discussed?

rmbyrro 3y ago

The "Legal Mumbo Jumbo" page in one of the linked websites is epic! LOL [1] https://www.woodtechsystems.com/legal-mumbo-jumbo/ https://www.woodtechsystems.com/legal-mumbo-jumbo/

cellinaabram 3y ago

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nox101 3y ago

Los Angeles has a housing shortage. It also has a car traffic problem a d argubly needs 40 train/subway lines, tons of bike infra, and re-zoning so more small business can open in walking distance to people. building twice ssany homes won't work if we can move around twice as many people

patrickhogan1 3y ago

More building, less talking

imgabe 3y ago

All of the construction related solutions to housing problems are missing the point. Housing is not expensive because it's difficult to physically build. We are pretty good at construction. A single family home could probably be put up in two weeks or less if all that mattered was doing the actual construction. The problem is zoning and all the red tape and NIMBYism that prevents the construction from taking place.

lispisok 3y ago

People debating about what kind of housing to build are getting ahead of themselves. The housing crisis is intentional. Homeowners demand the value of their home keep going up and they vote. They way to do that is to keep supply lower than demand. The first step to fixing the housing crisis isnt to figure out what kind of housing to build, it's to convince enough of the voting population there is a housing crisis that needs fixing.

Clubber 3y ago
Another problem is a vast majority of people want to / have to live in a very few select places. We could alleviate housing costs by changing that as well; back to supply and demand. I hope that StarLink and WFH are big pieces of the puzzle that will move people away from mega-dense population centers. We certainly have the acreage.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  >Another problem is a vast majority of people want to / have to live in a very few select places. It's been like this since the dawn of civilization, and it isn't going to change. There's no substitute for physical proximity, unless you can invent the teleporter. >We could alleviate housing costs by changing that as well; back to supply and demand. No, you can't. You can't force people to want to live in the sticks. >I hope that StarLink and WFH are big pieces of the puzzle that will move people away from mega-dense population centers. We certainly have the acreage. Maybe you like staying at home all the time and never leaving your 40 acres, but other people actually like to go places, socialize, go out to eat, see cultural events, etc. You can't do that over a satellite internet connection.
  - Stephen_0xFF 3y ago
    I think the biggest factor that decides where you live is work. You move where the work is, that’s how you survive. You don’t have to use a hyperbole like living on 40 acres. There’s many cities and towns that have social events but aren’t as crammed as SF or NY.
  - 3y ago

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

We learned from the great fire of London not to build all your tall houses out of wood

foxyv 3y ago
Wood framing can be just as fireproof as steel and concrete. This is why drywall is so popular for interior finishing.

nojvek 3y ago

Playing devil's advocate here. What causes housing shortage - more demand than supply. What causes more demand? - more people. IMO an ever increasing population isn't a good thing if the economy can't absorb them at an equilibrium of demand and supply. Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move. Great for house prices but it takes it's toll.

opo 3y ago
>...Canada a population of 40M bringing in 1M population in an year was a terrible move. Do you have a citation for that number? Most sources say Canada takes in about 1/2 that: >...Currently, annual immigration in Canada amounts to almost 500,000 new immigrants – one of the highest rates per population of any country in the world. As of 2023, there were more than eight million immigrants with permanent residence living in Canada - roughly 20 percent of the total Canadian population. https://www.statista.com/topics/2917/immigration-in-canada/#topicOverview https://www.statista.com/topics/2917/immigration-in-canada/#...
- wstrange 3y ago
  BMO Economics: The government of Canada has overshot its immigration targets by 300% https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/comments/1at7nbq/bmo_economics_the_government_of_canada_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaHousing2/comments/1at7nbq/bmo...
- nojvek 3y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/world/canada/canada-record-population-growth.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/world/canada/canada-recor...
tmnvix 3y ago
> What causes more demand? - more people. Also, a speculative boom, cheap credit, and a burgeoning short term rental market among other things.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
the problem isn't the people, is that most of the country ranges from "fairly uninhabitable" to "dangerously uninhabitable". foreigners aren't moving to rural Manitoba, they're all going to a handful of areas, most of which are in the furthers south parts of the country (e.g. Vancouver, and Greater Toronto), which also happen to have the mildest weather. Australia is seeing a similar trend -- influx of people, not much (viable) land. also keep in mind this demand is simply to keep up with population loss, and demand on the system for pensions, healthcare, and support for the Boomers. the Liberal party is ultimately still pro-capitalism, and they need to balance out these dying old people; "stonks only go up", so we need more consumption.

kkfx 3y ago

European here, I recently build my home in wood-frame with thick enough elements I suppose they fall in this "mass timber" category, well... It was NOT cheaper than concrete, I choose wood for various reasons but well, cheapness was not one of them at least not in France where this tech is not much widespread. I have some advantages: - much more personal future changes are possible, it's far easier posing new wires/pipes and so on since all I need are small tools, I do not made much dust with them and so on; - thinner perimeters walls (with good insulation), in some cases they are a nice thing; and some disadvantages: - exterior exposed wood last far less than concrete and demand more regular upkeep work (though it's relatively easy); - eventual water spills might be more impacting; - last but not least, noise insulation from the ground floor and the second one are far LESS good than concrete. So well, I'm happy of my choice for various reasons, but I do agree with the author, only adding a point: homes need to change as tech change. Having homes we can "recycle" an create again after let's say 50-70 years means having a kind-of industrial home evolution path that allow for well performant and well designed homes in the long terms, a thing we can't much have with concrete. At a certain rates trees re-grow, rocks do as well, but in a sooooooo large timeframe we can't count as "renewable", so potentially a wood based civilization might be nearly circular, a concrete based one can't (at least, seen the actual known tech). Aside while light buildings suffer more extreme weather, they suffer less some kind of hydro-geological problems like soil stability, earthquakes and so on, all demanding far simpler foundations.