They cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.
-Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness
Nature's approach to growing a brain relies on receiving a vast set of experiences such as social interaction, conversation, play, exposure to the world and the rest of the landscape of normal human affairs. This strategy of interaction with the world allows the colossal machinery of the brain to take shape from a relatively small set of instructions.
-David Eagleman, Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain
I would love to see a situation where politicians make housing their entire platform. Tear up all of the red tape. Incentive homebuilders to build more homes. Offer first-time homebuyers low mortgage rates they missed out on.
-Ben Carlson, from this post
The affordability problems in our current housing market is being caused by that pesky law of supply and demand. The supply has been constrained for the past thirteen years for multiple reasons.* Demand was unleashed seven or eight years ago by absurdly low interest rates and by a generation that ignored the experts that said they would be "urbanized." Left to their own devices, our kids said "screw the big cities, we want a single-family house with a two-car garage and a yard." When overheated demand meets constrained supply, you get doubling of prices in a very short time frame—and an affordability problem. Slowly but surely, supply is picking up—but it will likely take another five years before the supply actually meets the demand. Be very careful of offering subsidies to buyers in a market like this. Those subsidies will just end up in the pockets of sellers. Stoking demand in a tight housing market is a recipe for higher home prices.
If you want to solve the affordability problem, subsidize homebuilders and developers. They will then do what they always do when incentivized—over build. Then, and only then, will affordability stand a chance.
*The supply of housing has been constrained by a combination of factors that include, but is not limited to, the following:
1. The Great Recession of 2008ish was caused in part by super-heated housing construction. After the dot.com bubble burst, the construction industry became a major engine for keeping the economy perky. By 2003 more homes were being built than could be sold to traditional home buyers. Not wanting to stop the gravy train, politicians decided we should sell those new homes to buyers who could not afford them. This was cleverly done by fiddling with the requirements for securing a mortgage. 2004-05 was the wild west of mortgage lending. All you needed to get a loan was to be able to fog a mirror.
2. The Great Recession caused multiple defaults on those non-traditional mortgages. All of a sudden there was a massive supply of available homes and no demand. Naturally, prices fell. Homebuilders could not compete with prices of this surplus inventory, so they did the sensible thing and left the industry.
3. About the same time all this was going on, our society decided that everyone needed a four-year liberal arts college experience. We suffered a collective amnesia about the importance of training the next generation of plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, carpenters, roofers, etc.
4. In 2003 there were probably 15 home building companies in our community (of about 80,000 folks). By 2013 there were only three remaining.
5. Guess what happens when there are only a handful of tradespeople in a market that needs a bushelful? Those trades people, for the first time in memory, had pricing power. All of a sudden, construction labor prices started rising—quickly.
6. The onset of Covid led to the snarling of supply lines and the interruption of the production of building materials. The just-in-time theory of inventory doesn't work very well when there are disruptions. Those building product suppliers, for the first time in memory, also had pricing power. Prices for plywood, concrete, drywall, etc. all shot through the roof.
7. Increasing governmental regulations (zoning and NIMBY opposition to change, density restrictions, subdivision regulations, green space requirements, turn lanes and deacceleration lanes, impact fees, sewer/water tap fees, and a myriad of other useful improvements) confronting developers of subdivisions has made the development process more expensive and more time consuming—a tough combination which impacts affordability,
8. We should not forget that residential real estate markets are local in nature, and while your results may vary, the affordability problem is a supple and demand problem, and it will take time to resolve.
Sometimes, those focused on remaining calm and contained are not always learning the skills necessary to perform, to function in the world. They may be stable and not raise their voice in the kitchen, but they don't know how to make salad dressing. They may meditate steadfastly but not develop their communication skills. While busy generating calm, beautiful states of mind, they are not developing the skills, capacities, and practices that could actually and realistically manifest delicious food or wholesome relationships.
-Edward Espe Brown, No Recipe: cooking as a spiritual practice
.....................................interesting stuff. Always good to remember to be careful around the "isms".
Me thinks the project came first and then they rationalized it. Or, maybe they're correct. In my limited experience though, it seems more than a few retiring baby boomers are following their kids (and grandkids).
Back story here. Wee excerpt here:
Many developers are betting that over the coming decades, more seniors will shun traditional suburban retirement communities and demand to live where there are lots of dining, entertainment and shopping choices nearby. As a result, a plethora of projects, many with rooftop pools, celebrity chefs and spa-style wellness centers, are planned for major U.S. cities.
.........of a subdivision: Episode 27: Progress Report
From time to time one should check one's work. We started this project in early Spring of 2021 when we purchased, annexed, re-zoned, and planned out a 55 acre tract of land in the north end of Newark, Ohio.
Development work, bulldozers dozing, actually started on the first phase of Conor's Pass (49 building lots) at the end of the first week of August in 2021. Thanks to the dedication (read: a lot of overtime) of the nice people at Layton, Inc., the construction of the infrastructure (water lines, sanitary sewer lines, storm water lines an outlets, curbs, gutters and paving) was completed in the second week of November, 2021. The weather man also helped, the weather last summer and fall was perfect for building roads. We recorded the final plat (which actually creates the individual lots according to the County Auditor) in early December, 2021. D. R. Horton, the home builder who is buying all of the individual lots, purchased their first thirty lots just in time for those sales proceeds to be included as income on our 2021 federal tax return,
Sometime in late spring of 2022, construction of the second phase of Conor's Pass (64 building lots) started. All the pipe is now underground and the concrete curbs and gutters are poured. Weather permitting (spoiler alert: weather people are calling for rain) the asphalt paving will start late this week. Hopefully, Horton will be buying more lots in 2022.
Feels like we have made pretty good progress.
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| The subject land in 2020 |
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| As of 9/1/22: At the top, 44 houses coming out of the ground in Phase 1. At the bottom, part of Phase 2 with the curbs and gutters in. |
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| Phase 2 of Conor's Pass awaiting asphalt paving |
...........................with Bertrand Russell:
He could not, in any case, have succeeded in politics, because of his very exceptional intellectual integrity; he was always willing to admit the weak points on his own side and the strong points on that of his opponents. (Russell talking about his father)
She had that indifference to money which is only possible to those who have always had enough of it. (Russell talking about his grandmother)
My grandfather’s library, which became my schoolroom, stimulated me in a different way. There were books of history, some of them very old; I remember in particular a sixteenth-century Guicciardini. There were three huge folio volumes called L’Art de vérifier les dates. They were too heavy for me to move, and I speculated as to their contents; I imagined something like the tables for finding Easter in the Prayer Book. At last I became old enough to lift one of the volumes out of the shelf, and I found, to my disgust, that the only ‘art’ involved was that of looking up the date in the book. Then there were The Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters, in which I read about the men who went to Ireland before the Flood and were drowned in it; I wondered how the Four Masters knew about them, and read no further. There were also more ordinary books, such as Machiavelli and Gibbon and Swift, and a book in four my mental development 11 volumes that I never opened: The Works of Andrew Marvell Esq. M.P. It was not till I grew up that I discovered Marvell was a poet rather than a politician. I was not supposed to read any of these books; otherwise I should probably not have read any of them.
William Lord Russell, who was executed under Charles II, was held up for special admiration, and the inference was encouraged that rebellion is often praiseworthy.
In 1895, when in Berlin, I made a study of German Social Democracy, which I liked as being opposed to the Kaiser, and disliked as (at that time) embodying Marxist orthodoxy. For a time, under the influence of Sidney Webb, I became an imperialist, and even supported the Boer War. This point of view, however, I abandoned completely in 1901; from that time onwards, I felt an intense dislike of the use of force in human relations, though I always admitted that it is sometimes necessary.
But China did one thing for me that the East is apt to do for Europeans who study it with sensitive sympathy: it taught me to think in long stretches of time, and not to be reduced to despair by the badness of the present.
The question of discipline in childhood, like all other practical questions, is one of degree.
History has always interested me more than anything else except philosophy and mathematics. I have never been able to accept any general schema of historical development, such as that of Hegel or that of Marx. Nevertheless, general trends can be studied, and the study is profitable in relation to the present.
The relation of philosophy to social conditions has usually been ignored by professional philosophers. Marxists are interested in philosophy as an effect, but do not recognize it as a cause. Yet plainly every important philosophy is both.
. I have always ardently desired to find some justification for the emotions inspired by certain things that seemed to stand outside human life and to deserve feelings of awe. I am thinking in part of very obvious things, such as the starry heavens and a stormy sea on a rocky coast; in part of the vastness of the scientific universe, both in space and time, as compared to the life of mankind; in part of the edifice of impersonal truth, especially truth which, like that of mathematics, does not merely describe the world that happens to exist.
-All excerpts from his essay, "My Mental Development"
.........................of a sub-division:
Episode 25: Phase Two water line installation.
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| The blue pipe is the water main. All that pipe will be in the ground today, we hope. |
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| One pipe at a time |
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| Making a solid, leak-proof connection between pipes |
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| Beginning the tap for the service lateral |
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| Unrolling the 3/4" copper water service line |
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| setting the shut-off valve |
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| One water lateral installed. Next...... |
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| Phase One from a distance. Houses sprouting everywhere |
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| All this since February |
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| Your basic new house. Awaiting the drywallers |
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| "Sold". My favorite sign |
....................of a sub-division: Episode 24
Oops....... Not every day is perfect and works exactly the way you want it to. While preparing to install the laterals from the main sanitary sewer line to the individual building lots, we broke the main line. The system just won't work with a broken main. Repairs are in order—now completed.
................of a subdivision: Episode 23:
We have had a rainy spring. Hard to put pipe in the ground when it is soaking wet. Having said that, progress is being made. The sanitary sewer main lines have been installed and we are about halfway through the installation of the storm sewer system. Nothing wrong here that a few dry weeks won't cure.
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| Preparing the ground for a storm structure |
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| Work completed about an hour ago |
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| Lifting the storm structure |
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| Attention to detail: cleaning mud off the bottom of the structure |
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| Put it right about there |
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| Right where it belongs |
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| D. R. Horton building out the 49 first phase lots |
...................of a subdivision: Episode 22
Faithful readers will recall that we completed developed the 49 lots in Phase 1 of Conor's Pass sub-division late last fall. This past April we sold all of the lots to D. R. Horton, who is busily constructing houses on those lots. Horton asked us to start the 64 lot Phase 2 as soon as possible. While the weather could have been more cooperative, we are making progress. In a perfect world, we will be done laying the sanitary sewer mains next week.
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| The top of the photo shows the houses coming out of the ground in Phase 1. Phase 2 work is at the bottom of the photo |
..............of a sub-division: Episode 21
Having sold all 49 of the lots in Phase 1 of Conor's Pass sub-division, we responded by beginning the 64 lot Phase 2. The weather has been iffy and wet, but it's April in Ohio, expecting anything different would be silly. Still progress is being made:
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| Topsoil stripped and building pads being created |
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| Different soil types needed in different places |
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| A borrow pit, source of compactible soil |
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| this non-compactible topsoil will fill the borrow pit |
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| Next step is to connect to the main sanitary sewer trunk line |
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| The sewer trunk line is near the Licking River. Need to lose the water before we can connect. |
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| Getting there |
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| No supply chain issues for the sewer structures this year |
...............of a sub-division: Episode 20
Our production builder, D. R. Horton, continues to make great progress in increasing housing availability in Newark and Licking County. These houses hit the market last week. Sources say that three are already sold.
The construction business is trying its hardest to catch up to the demand for housing. In our market, anyway, most of the existing available building lots are either under contract or have recently sold. Faithful readers may remember we had a whole passel of wondrous, wooded building lots available - seemed like for years. Thankfully, over the past twelve months, almost all of them have sold.
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