This Twitter thread hits the nail on the head. Imagine this process in California, where just working with PG&E to get utilities to the site may be a six figure adventure, then another $40-60k for an electrician to wire the house. That could be close to $200k for electrical alone. This could be for a 1,000 square foot shed in Oakland, not somewhere around Malibu.
Add on the planning costs that the Twitter author goes on about, and your "affordable housing" is now near a million dollars. Is that really affordable?
I can build the entire house with everything included. And not from those pesky woodsticks, but from a real concrete and bricks. For around $40k. Something in US is seriously wrong. I understand that labour cost difference is huge, but it can’t be the only factor.
I was just thinking the same thing. I was involved with a development project in Colombia, a three-story tract of 3b/2b apartments. The total construction cost was about $40k each. Permits and fees was maybe $1000 plus a year of waiting and a few bottles of gift-wrapped tequila. Selling prices were $50–70k, some rented at $250/month.
There are a lot of articles out there covering the basics on everything from environmental review to open space requirements to labor, but they can be summed up by just saying that local government in most American cities has never not been somewhat corrupt all through the past and going on to this day, and politically connected people stand to make a lot of money from this status quo that doesn't take an expert to see hurts the average working person. I think the FBI has indicted three sitting LA city councilmembers within the last couple of years now? It's amazing how the headlines don't seem to stick though, uncanny really.
This is an example that I just found. It’s almost ready and without internal decoration. Cost is $50k but keep in mind that it includes 1800 sq.m. of land. Electricity, water seems to be done. Internal decoration with good materials I’d estimate to $10-20k. House is 160 sq.m.
The old world associates US construction with 'houses made of paper', where anyone can break into your house just by kicking in a hollow wooden door.
Even in UK it was shocking to find out that walls between apartments are just plaster, that's totally unacceptable in continental europe, When i tell my folks that I could break through to the neighboirs with a kitchen knife, their brain implodes (It would take a while)
That's weird. Living in Ireland I found the houses to be crap, with blown bricks, no insulation, terrible draughts, and no eaves (encouraging water ingress). I was delighted to build myself a proper stud frame home insulated with 200mm rockwool throughout.
And that's why you pour the concrete directly into walls with rebars inside. Much stronger than cinder blocks and 10 times cheaper. But hey, nobody wants to actually do quality work, let's just fuck around with lego.
Don't know where "here" is in your case but do you have skyscrapers? Because if you look at any documentary how a skyscraper is build, it's with pouring cement over rebars, not with stacking cinder blocks. Do you think those guys would not rather prefer stacking cinder blocks over rebars instead of pouring if would've been cheaper?
Skyscrapers have to hold the weight of the skyscraper, cinder blocks wouldn't work. Cinder blocks probably max out at two or three stories unless you do brick on concrete frame like you see in some countries.
Wood also maxes out at some point, and even poured concrete - which is why the tallest skyscrapers are glass on steel.
Do you think they build skyscrapers and two-story houses the same? That's like saying Honda Civics and Abrahams tanks are built the same because they're both vehicles.
Both have engines, and both have crankshafts. So, yeah, at least partially, they are built the same. Now, translating that to our comparison of 2-story house vs. skyscraper, both have floors. Do you see on skyscrapers, when doing said floors, using concrete pouring or cinder blocks? Because if cinder blocks are cheaper, they would've been used for decking/ceiling a floor, but they always use concrete pouring.
Unfortunately for most Americans who are building a house, a primary concern is the eventual sale, and anything that is not the standard house is a harder sell.
Which means that if you're willing to stray from the beaten path you can find some deals, and some disasters.
Many of the trades can make good money. Especially in areas that forbid owners to work on their own homes, even to replace an existing water heater (like NYC).
Well, I think NYC made it law that hardware stores can only sell hot water heaters to licensed contractors. Not sure what other restrictions there are.
Very true. Depending on the modifications (like electrical), insurance could deny claims if they find unapproved/unpermitted work, even if it wasn't the cause, or the cause was unknown (depends on the policy).
Around here, if you don’t want to buy a house with un-permitted work, it’s no problem; there’s another buyer standing right behind you (often literally) who will.
Around here they make about $150 an hour if they are contractors and work for themselves. So I would guess 80-100 for an electrician with 5+ years experience. About the same as most other semi-specialized trades.
I’m a slow as hell perfectionist DIYer and I can’t see any way I could take even 2 months of full-time work to wire a small, simple new construction house. How can it take a pro 4 months? (Or 2 months solo and 1 month with a journeyman electrician?)
My parents place was new, custom construction (not small, but only 3BR/3Ba) and there were 2 sparkies there for 1 day to set the temporary power, 4 or 5 days to rough the house in and, after drywall, they were back for 3 or 4 days to trim everything out.
I watched my house being built. We'd visit the site pretty much once a week or every other week.
One day we showed up, and all of the electrical had been done. Power, internet, pre-wired home alarm, panels, the whole kit. Plumbing was the same way. One day, plumbing. (It uses that flexible plastic tubing internally, that has to go up fast.)
Did I see it being done? No. For all I know 50 folks showed up and wired it in a day. "2 man months". But, I'm guessing that's not what happened.
The most interesting anecdote from this is that I actually met one of the guys that did the work. He did, at least part of, the internet wiring.
Know how I met him? He was driving a dump truck delivering landscaping material. He liked the work better, I guess his family owned the hauling business.
I don't know what he was getting paid to route CAT 6 cable, but, apparently, all told, driving a dump truck is better.
You pay $300/hr for electrical work, and by the time it trickles down to the actual apprentices doing the grunt work it’s $20-40/hr. Even the electrician officially in charge is $100/hr at best unless he owns the company (and then it’s often lower due to bad accounting).
Wiring a simple / small home, it takes well over four electrician months, minimum.
It’s hard to take these numbers seriously - they don’t pass the sniff test for anyone who has had it done. Wiring a 1000sq ft home is a job that is measured in days, not months. While I only have experience of the UK, it is difficult to see any possible regulation which would mean installation being quite literally an order of magnitude slower.
But let’s use some Fermi estimation. California builds around 100,000 new houses a year, give or take. This suggests we’d need an absolute minimum of 400,000 electrician-months a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks there are 70,000 electricians in California in total. Assuming they have an availability of 90%, then we could say that California has about 750,000 available electrician-months a year in total.
This would mean that over half of all available electrician time in California would be spent wiring new-build houses, if we assumed they were all small properties. It seems clear this can’t be a credible result.
I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong, but it’s hard to swallow without some idea of what possible thing could cause this betone vague hints about “code being insane“
He may just have gotten bad contractors. A friend of mine lives in a council run appartment in the UK and some simple jobs that have been carried out on his building have run into years, with multiple people on site every day (mostly doing nothing or doing stuff so badly that it needs another team to come in and rectify).
Recent example, upgrade to fire doors in corridors on 3 floors. Halfway into the job they realise each corridor is a different height and the doors they have already bought are the wrong size. Some levels of incompetance are hard to imagine until you see it happening in real time.
I’m a little skeptical. California code is not that dissimilar to the national code in terms of labor and materials. I’ve had extensive work done to my California house by electricians for a (fully-permitted) remodel and it’s been pricey but not that slow or pricey.
That's probably the cheapest upgrade in the history of the state. PG&E claims the average service upgrade in California is costing somewhere between $8k to $25k.
You also have situations like my friend - his current 100 amp service is arial, but if he wants to upgrade to 200 amp service he will have to pay for buried line.
Amusingly enough you can add a separate 100 amp service arial if you convert to a duplex even if just on paper ...
Personally I think they are exaggerating how long the actual work takes. However trades are in high demand due to significant remodels and commercial construction so it might long time to find someone.
On an unclad, sanely sized house that's still like two days for the apprentice to install and pull cable, tops. $200 for the poor sod doing the work, $80p for his boss, and $2k for the company is still nowhere near 2 electrician months of labour.
Every state requires pipe in many places, industrial, most commercial, large multi-unit buldings. The only place in the USA that I know requires pipe in resi is Chicago.
That seems... not true? The wiring in my 12-year-old home in CA does not seem to be particularly complicated, and I doubt code has changed much in the past decade. With all the drywall off, I can't imagine it taking more than a few days (for 2-3 people) to completely wire my (~1900 sqft) home.
I worked some construction. It was 15 years ago, but I, me, nobody else, wired up the whole small house in a couple days. The walls were open. It was fast, easy work. The only thing I didn't touch was the service panel and the connection to the pole.
Materials are not a "small percentage of the cost". Wire and switchgear are painfully expensive these days. On the other hand, two guys with hustle can rough in a typical house in 2-3 days.
> but that was never actually an economically viable product
There are clearly lots of these buildings. And have been for decades. It may not work "forever" but it has worked.
Your argument reminds me of the economist who steps over the $100 bill on the ground since it couldn't possibly be there because if it was, someone would have picked it up by now.
>but that was never actually an economically viable product
It is the most economically viable product, which is why they dominate.
>for four to sixteen units that seems like it could be fine?
Those costs have also skyrocketed because now you have additional requirements like fire, egress, additional structural when going over two stories, etc.
It's why most new apartments are "luxury" apartments. The costs have grown so out of control that the only way to break even is to make them outrageously priced.
>It is the most economically viable product, which is why they dominate.
Only because they are the only thing that most zoning codes in the U.S permit to build. With U.S zoning being what it is, there's literally no honest discussion to be made on what type of housing is most economically viable.
I think it’s quite viable if we look back to when it started. Back then hones we’re 800sq feet. Even 100 years ago an average home was about there. Today they are 2400 so feet on average.
So if we go back to smaller places it’s viable. The only reason it’s not viable in places like Europe is because there are so many people in a small space. In the USA we could get adequate population density with 1200 sq foot homes and 1/8 acre plots.
The land has gotten so expensive that the kind of people who can afford a SFH lot for their personal use, not to become a duplex or quadplex or whatever, can also afford to build a 2400 sqft house without it really mattering. Now a quadplex in the same spot could split that lot cost across 4 families.
In places where land is cheap, infrastructure is expensive. Roads, electricity, water, sewers, internet. Higher commute cost is also a cost in productivity.
This is often touted, but I just doubt that electricity, water, and sewers are more expensive outside of the city.
My father managed several factories in the LA area. Upgrading the electrical for new equipment in the close to downtown factory was going to cost something like a 6 to 7 figure sum. The factory in the boondocks upgrade was a quarter of the price.
Factories are themselves dense in resource usage, so it's different. It's a matter of scale.
A suburban neighborhood that hosts a few dozens of families requires more infrastructure, but can be replaced by a single 10 to 20-story building. An large apartment complex can serve hundreds of families.
Now, it doesn't have to be a dichotomy. It should be even more cost effective to build tall apartment buildings in the suburbs near the city. City-nations tend to expand capacity by creating new towns in suburban areas and extensive planning. That's much more efficient than US-style suburban sprawl.
> It is the most economically viable product, which is why they dominate.
It's the only legal product.
Very different.
If you ban shoes that aren't made of gold, everyone is going to have terrible, expensive shoes. This would not be evidence that gold shoes were economically viable. Especially if every locale that adopted this rule was deeply in debt.
Where’d this nonsense that the only thing you can build in the US is SFH come from? All over the US, in the same areas where there are SFH, there are apartment complexes, condos, and townhouses. The reason there’s so much SFH in the US is because, believe it or not, many people prefer living in a detached home with some semblance of a yard.
>Where’d this nonsense that the only thing you can build in the US is SFH come from? All over the US, in the same areas where there are SFH, there are apartment complexes, condos, and townhouses.
Because it's very often true. Many neighborhoods that have apartments and townhomes mixed with SFH are full of grandfathered-in buildings that would be illegal to build under current zoning codes, due to setback/lot-fill/height/unit-count requirements etc. In fact, one reform idea I'm particularly fond of is allowing (e.g. at state level) any property to be rebuilt to the existing use (so that people aren't living in decaying, unhealthy buildings).
Sorry to sound cynical but it's a question of priorities. Michigan just gave General Motors $2 billion to build two EV battery plants, one in Lansing and the other in Detroit which will create 3,000 jobs.
The billions are coming from Federal COVID money. The state caused Flint's problem by discontinuing water from Detroit and pulling from a local river without adding a required chemical.
This decision was made by an emergency manager appointed by the then governor to save money. This manager took power away from the elected mayor and city council.
I can't believe paying 750 000$ for a job is ever considered a good idea. If your goal really is only to provide jobs you might as well start a public works program instead of shoveling money to the private sector.
If it is a one-time sum, it may actually make economic sense over some reasonable time period. Consider:
1 industrial job may lead to :
- 1-2 jobs in private services in the same area
- 1-2 jobs in public services in the same area
- industrial activity that can be taxed later
- in the case of electric batteries, there may even be some environmental benefits that have value
- once the facility is located to some location, it may be expected to grow over time, creating even more jobs and taxable corporate profits
In other words, each direct job can easily be around 4 jobs total. Future taxes from 4 jobs + corporate profits (and other taxes) + expected growth + the value environmental benefits may very well be worth the $750 up front investment.
Sorry to sound cynical but it's a question of funding. Flint city council (Democrats) almost unanimously voted to switch the water source to the Flint River to cut costs because they did not have funding for a renegotiated contract with the original water source. The city was effectively bankrupt.
>Michigan just gave General Motors $2 billion to build two EV battery plants, one in Lansing and the other in Detroit which will create 3,000 jobs.
This is fake news, Michigan state did not give money out to GM.
>The state caused Flint's problem by discontinuing water from Detroit and pulling from a local river without adding a required chemical.
>This decision was made by an emergency manager appointed by the then governor to save money.
Voted almost unanimously by the city council. Everyone loves to leave that detail out.
The United States is still the richest country in the world. There is plenty of money, they just don't want to give it to people because capitalism.
It's ironic as well given how they spend a trillion in the military which seems like an unprofitable investment. They coax kids into joining the army to get or pay for an education, instead of the much cheaper and more profitable option, just pay the kids' education directly.
>There is plenty of money, they just don't want to give it to people because capitalism.
Capitalism is the best system ever invented to get money into the hands of people. It's done more to take people out of poverty than any other system in human existence. Capitalism isn't to blame here.
>It's ironic as well given how they spend a trillion in the military which seems like an unprofitable investment.
Military is federal, Flint water is municipal. This is basic civics. The military is not designed to be a profitable investment.
>They coax kids into joining the army to get or pay for an education, instead of the much cheaper and more profitable option, just pay the kids' education directly.
They do both, federal government backs student loans, grants, etc. that literally pay for kids' education directly. And again, most education is State, not federal.
> Capitalism is the best system ever invented to get money into the hands of people.
I would like some citation for this one. Pretty large claim. For example China brought out 2/3rds of their population from poverty to middle class, pretty large number. Now there can be a debate on whether Chinese system is communism or not, but it definitely is not capitalism the way people in US like to define it.
>I would like some citation for this one. Pretty large claim. For example China brought out 2/3rds of their population from poverty to middle class, pretty large number.
Yes... Thanks to capitalism. Communismn killed tens of millions in China when they attempted to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people's communes.
>Now there can be a debate on whether Chinese system is communism or not,
There is no debate. There are billionaire capitalists in China.
>but it definitely is not capitalism the way people in US like to define it.
It is 100% the way people in the US define capitalism. Sure it has it's Chinese spin, but it is undoubtedly capitalism.
I would think technology did far more work pulling people out of poverty than capitalism. And capitalism is only like 250 years old. You could have made your same argument 500-1000 years ago about feudalism pulling people out of poverty, and yet I doubt anybody would be all that happy to switch to a feudalist system and would heavily criticize any claims that feudalism was the main driving factor behind improvements in technology and living standards.
>I would think technology did far more work pulling people out of poverty
Thanks to capitalism!
>And capitalism is only like 250 years old.
And the rate of humanity leaving poverty in that time span is greater than any other time in history.
>You could have made your same argument 500-1000 years ago about feudalism pulling people out of poverty
Err, no? If anything, that pushed even MORE people into poverty. No one sane would ever make that argument.
>yet I doubt anybody would be all that happy to switch to a feudalist system and would heavily criticize any claims that feudalism was the main driving factor behind improvements in technology and living standards.
Because you're inventing a fictional strawman. Feudalism did the opposite of your claim.
It seems like you think all of history was complete garbage for people until the last 200 years and neither technology nor living standards ever improved until then. Serfs worked an average of 40 or less hours per week. The luddites came about because capitalism made their lives worse instead of better. How much of our world is now polluted with heavy metals and toxic chemicals because of unfettered growth at all costs? Capitalism didn't give people public schooling or public infrastructure, and most important technological breakthroughs have come from the military, university grants, and government programs. Without those, capitalism wouldn't have managed jack. You can look at all the areas of the world with little to no government interference within business or economic matters. They haven't sprung to the forefront of technology and living standards because of free enterprise, in many of those places their lives have gotten worse. Russia was industrialized under a communist model, and no matter what flaws the corruption and struggles from within their government brought, the fact that they went from subsidence peasant farms to an industrial power in less than a generation is proof that capitalism isn't the only way forward nor the source of all economic gains.
Richest country in the world, and yet life spans have been stagnant and recently been dropping, infrastructure has been crumbling, and American lives have become completely dependent on abusive labor practices and dirty industry of foreign countries to keep the bottom of their economy from collapsing.
China and Malaysia are capitalist, and none of those aforementioned countries are in the top 25 for life expectancy. China isn't even in the top 50, and Cuba is ranked below the US. Swing and a miss.
US gained a lot of world power after WW2 when other western countries were rebuilding. Do we know for certain it because of capitalism and not that US had lots of virgin resources to exploit in relative isolation while the other powers rebuilt.
All the major powers are capatilistic now. There is a spectrum but it is capitalism. In some governments will push their weight around to get what they want but it's still capitalism
Good luck trying to get five 9s when you're limited to a single DC. Cross-DC SYSPLEXing (GDPS) got us to five 9s and beyond without breaking a sweat. Our systems can never go down, ever.
I love when self-deluding yourself into believing that men who get cosmetic genital surgery and wear women's clothing are magically women is liberal gospel.
Seen RV build-outs with an induction cook-stove (and solar). I think the issue has more to do with battery capacity/current-delivery than with your solar capacity.
Maybe a home however is lacking the battery intermediary.
That’s still enough for a peak of 2kw for an average induction range. Granted you can’t probably run a heater and a vacuum on full power at the same time.
2kw per element is plenty of power, though you could definitely find more powerful ones. In my 3 years of owning an induction cooktop, I don't think I've ever had more than 1 element at full power at one time, it's really only useful for bringing water to boil, waaaaaaaay to much heat for anything else.
I'm not even sure if my entire house has a breaker for more than 32A.
Yeah, indeed, this is not esoteric physics. If you have a 10 kW electric induction stove (you can see the rating from the specs) and you want to operate purely on solar panels, you need at least 10 kW of solar panels and inverter etc.
Also maybe you want to use the oven and AC and charge the car at the same time etc. As far as I understand, it's a plus and minus calculation. It's not any kind of compatibility issue...
Naturally big electric power sinks need bigger voltages, otherwise the current and thus the cabling would get very thick.
If you want to run it just on solar, use one that can be legally fed with DC (almost all work fine, anyways), and hook a battery with suitable voltage between it and the solar panels.
If you are running the burners flat out. Which you only do when getting water to boil or preheating cookware. Once up to temp, induction requires far less energy to cook with since it is way more efficient - directly heating the pan.
So yeah, if you are in the habit of routinely maintaining four pots of water at a furiously rolling boil you probably will have problems. The rest of us are likely to be pretty safe.
Phone support is a good example. You may have 20 support reps that have unique numbers, but when they call out to you, the number that shows up is the support dispatch number.
Support dispatch may be subcontracted out to an entirely different company (that may change over the months/years), so you'd still need to ability to spoof numbers you technically don't own.
I agree there needs to be more controls and regulations in place though. The status quo is unsustainable.
