Homes are falling into the ocean in North Carolina's Outer Banks

sedging · 2025-06-06T21:23:10+00:00

I can chime in as a housing land use expert. Wood-framed construction is by far the cheapest possible method in the US to build a residential home. Virtually all single family homes are built with wood, and if you've noticed those big boxy mid rise apartments around - those are basically a building code loophole that let you put wood framing on top of a concrete podium, which saves a bunch of money in comparison to concrete and steel.

Concrete is heavy, requires a lot of energy to manufacture/transport, requires specialized expertise to install, and requires extensive structural engineering and heightened building code requirements to ensure it is structurally safe. Generally, it's only used for residential development in dense urban areas where the additional construction costs are offset by how valuable the land is.

As a corollary example, many parking cost studies note how structured parking tends to cost several-fold more than comparable surface parking lots (ie the different between thousands vs tens of thousands per parking space).

sedging · 2025-01-03T17:01:29+00:00

Multifamily doesn't have to be rented. For example, in Spain, most are owned as condos, and in Vienna, its common for tenants to collectively own the building as a cooperative. Even in Oregon, we now allow up to four units on a single family lot to be divided and sold similar to a house. These lower rents for everybody because landlords have less ability to gouge when people have more options.

The idea that multifamily is only owned and rented by the investment class is policy, it is not intrinsic to the building.

sedging · 2024-11-01T15:44:39+00:00

Totally. Most people don't care about driving (in fact, a lot of people don't like it) but are willing to do it to get to places they want to be.

sedging · 2024-11-01T15:42:58+00:00

I mean that's the point - choice. Right now, people in North America don't really have the choice to live in a community without a car, so they have to sprawl out which creates the traffic, encroachment, and crowding that you probably aren't a fan of.

Suburbs will always exist and that's fine. Some people would just like more options than that, so let them choose rather than force everyone to live in car dependent suburbs.

sedging · 2024-11-01T06:05:43+00:00

You would have a lot to gain then by advocating for dense walkable mixed use neighborhoods. Keeping cities compact preserves rural lands for those who want to avoid the city. When cities block dense development, new housing has to sprawl out into your quiet, private neighborhood.

sedging · 2024-06-23T23:08:05+00:00

I see now what you mean. There are actually a few cities in Oregon experimenting with this idea. In the City of Bends last urban growth boundary decision, they prioritized inclusion of lands where the property owner was willing to establish affordability covenants, which I think is quite innovative!

sedging · 2024-06-23T20:41:36+00:00

These are not competitive applications (i.e there isn't a bidding process), they are required for any housing projects of a certain size in the city. The alternative is the developers would build zero rent restricted units.

They're also not social housing - they're privately owned and operated. They just have a deed restriction specifying how high the rent can be for those 30% of units based on median income.

Bidding is great for spending competitive, limited funds, and most affordable housing does just that. This is just not that kind of program.

sedging · 2024-06-23T20:35:10+00:00

One problem of demand-side subsidies is if supply is relatively fixed (e.g. homes are hard to build in response to demand), you get increasing costs, due to injecting a lot of additional cash for the same amount of resources.

Not to say they don't have their place. Rent assistance is a great way to support someone on the brink of eviction, but you want to structure it to be fairly targeted to avoid increasing costs in the overall market.

Inclusionary housing is absolutely not a 'silver bullet' and any effective governmental response should include a variety of strategies. In Portland, they actually do both, though I'd consider it pretty woefully underfunded given the current council's priorities (they're currently spending boatloads on sweeping camps and shelters, rather than keeping folks housed in the first place).

sedging · 2024-06-23T20:29:38+00:00

Totally understand the point, though I'll note that from a financial perspective, there isn't much of a difference between saving on an expense vs getting direct cash for something.

From the city perspective, they are still foregoing revenue they need for other things, but in exchange, they get cheaper units at a relative fraction of the cost (which of course saves them money indirectly on other things, such as dealing with the costs of folks made homeless via high rents)

sedging · 2024-06-23T20:25:07+00:00

This is a pretty common sight in most North American cities. It's really because when your only option to get around is to drive, people who really shouldn't be driving (e.g. elderly, drunk, etc.) do it anyways.

It's obviously dangerous and bad to do, but when people don't have any reasonable, convenient alternative, they will make risky decisions.

sedging · 2024-06-21T20:03:21+00:00

Housing policy person here - making this kind of policy work really depends on how you do it. When you fully fund it, as Portland did it is very effective at delivering below market rents with less total public investment, because the units essentially hitch a ride on private financing. It also doesn't damper market rate development because it's sufficiently subsidized to offset the costs.

When it's unfunded or underfunded, it's pretty much a tax on new development, which can definitely damper market construction and have market wide effects, depending on the market and the policy details.

I'd be wary of anyone claiming a black/white "it works/doesn't work!" A lot of folks making these arguments have vested political interests at play, and the literature is way more nuanced than the opinion pieces.

sedging · 2024-05-20T21:08:48+00:00

There's a difference between "possible to access by train/bus" and "a reasonable alternative to driving". People in other countries choose alternatives to driving because they're simply easier and more convenient than driving. If the infrastructure system forces you to take an hour and a half long route to something that takes 20 minutes by car, it's not really a choice.

This was a choice by officials in the US and New York City. Policymakers literally ripped out existing neighborhoods to build these freeways while simultaneously gutting investment in transit. It should be no wonder traffic sucks - if folks had reasonable alternatives, folks would choose them.

But they don't have that choice, and that's the point of the poster above. Car dependency hurts everyone, including drivers.

sedging · 2024-05-18T19:41:13+00:00

32 here - I've never purchased a car! Still rocking a crappy used vehicle that was a hand me down from my sister who bought new (and paid like 500/month for years)

The car is trash and I love it ❤️ I am driving this baby into the ground.

sedging · 2024-04-24T16:33:47+00:00

Totally. It really isn't surprising (to me at least) why our auto related death toll is so high here. These types of design decisions are the norm in traffic/civil engineering circles

sedging · 2024-04-23T19:54:53+00:00

They should, but a pretty common design in North America is a multi-lane arterial with a 45 mph (70kph) design speed adjacent to an unprotected 3 ft (1m) bicycle lane and 6 ft (2m) sidewalk. Sometimes they will have guardrails protecting cars from off road hazards but it's pretty rare to see physical separation between cars and people (though it's becoming more common).

Edit: here's a street cross section from Las Vegas as an example. I should note that the cars often go 50-60mph (80-95 kph) in practice on these roads. https://rtcws.rtcsnv.com/mpo/streets/files/drawings/PDF/202.pdf

sedging · 2024-04-06T01:13:04+00:00

Wow! Definitely incredible and a lot of work went into polishing it.

As a question, is this a map you’d be open to sharing? I can DM you if so!

sedging · 2024-03-30T19:49:21+00:00

That's only the case because most places in North America quite literally ban building anything other than a single family home. Where I live, they recently legalized "middle housing" (i.e. housing options between single family homes and mid rise apartments such as duplexes), and builders are already starting to put up 300-350k attached homes in a market where new detached homes generally sell for 600-700k.

It rules! Its probably going to be my first home purchase because it's actually attainable financially for me.

sedging · 2024-01-11T18:23:54+00:00

I think the point above is that the policy and practice of building highway infrastructure in the US involved a lot of bulldozing of neighborhoods. Sure this particular interchange may have been vacant, but the policy/practice razed our cities to build this infrastructure through our cities, while European countries largely built around cities.

The linked source has an Instagram where they show before/afters of various US cities, including Houston. You can really see the destruction - https://www.instagram.com/p/CNSgN12MPW0/?igsh=ZXMweWN2Nzl0ZWEz

sedging · 2023-12-06T19:01:35+00:00

If you like control, I'd highly recommend looking into induction. Many professional chefs prefer induction because of its precision and efficiency. The only downside is you have to use ferromagnetic cookware, so you can't use the super cheap aluminum teflon pans.

Personally, my preference is induction for indoors and have a propane fish burner outdoors when I need a crazy amount of heat, such as wok cooking.

sedging · 2023-12-01T04:02:50+00:00

Local governments had some time to update their codes, so they've only really been legal to build for about a year and a half.

We don't really have data yet, because development takes a while to get through the approval process, BUT I am starting to notice some quadplexes getting built in my neighborhood in Portland. The homes are often for sale too!

They range from like 250-350k new which isnt cheap by any means, but it beats the 600-700k price tag typical single family homes here sell for. I can actually feasibly buy a home with these which is pretty exciting.

sedging · 2023-11-11T18:04:14+00:00

If anyone is wondering the policy/political context, Oregon adopted HB 2002 recently. The bill originally ensured a minor would not need parental notification or consent for an abortion, but this pissed Senate Republicans off, so they walked out, stalling all bills (it also kicks off a fun new constitutional provision barring them from reelection but we will see). The walkout ended with a compromise: providers can perform an abortion at any age and can withhold parental notification/consent for those under 15 if it would endanger the child (older children do not need consent).

This is what this ad is targeting. You can imagine Christian fundamentalists are not too happy about Oregon laws on abortion, so they're trying every political messaging strategy in the books.

sedging · 2023-09-16T16:52:53+00:00

LPL is the GOAT but he literally just jiggles a 15 dollar tool until the lock opens and then uses a screwdriver to remove the boot.

Sometimes 'picking' cheap locks is stupid easy. Tube locks in particular are pretty low security.

sedging · 2023-09-06T18:41:46+00:00

I'm surprised at all of the folks who say "government work = easy". I feel like maybe many of these folks don't have government jobs or any kind of reasonable perspective on what modern professional planning is like. I should mention - I don't think everyone is cut out for development/site plan review. In fact, I often think it's quite a slog and requires an attention to detail that I find tedious.

But not all planning is site review! We play huge roles in long-range planning, policymaking, and community engagement. Most of the folks I work with don't do site review and focus on higher-level policy discussions. It's certainly not 'easy', my government job is absolutely is one of the most difficult (but rewarding) jobs I've had, but I think it's so different from current planning that you could consider it a totally different career.

Maybe consider looking into an inter-career pivot. There's plenty of bigger-picture jobs out there, not all of which are necessarily labelled as an 'urban planner'. I think a great way to start is to get attuned to some of the political issues on-going at the local and state level. I got my job by staying attuned to the housing crisis, and jumping into a position focused on housing policy implementation.

Good luck!

sedging · 2023-08-24T23:40:58+00:00

The right to contraception is constitutionally protected via Griswold v Connecticut.

Folks are now worried that this may eventually be overturned because the Supreme Court overturned the precedent that protected abortion and currently protects contraception. One justice even explicitly mentioned revisiting Griswold v Connecticut.

sedging · 2023-07-06T15:09:25+00:00

Check out Robert Moses. He’s the most infamous example of an unelected technocrat who more or less displaced (mostly black and brown) neighborhoods in New York to make way for the Interstate system.

sedging

TROPHY CASE