Frugalism for housing

Main goals here

• Lower the cost of living / housing
  1. For people: So that the average person won't have to work as much to afford a place to live.
  2. For the planet: True cost reduction should mean less energy/materials involved.

Main targets

• Assuming a capitalist society: This page is directed at:
  • Landlords and real-estate companies that own apartment complexes
  • Simple homeowners

Housing is a major part of the high cost of living in some places.

1. Part of this is because of location, shortages and price gouging. ^{[new page needed]} [TODO]Need pages to cover: 1- how walkable areas (such as downtowns) get expensive when there aren't enough of them; 2- how single people vastly outnumber single-person units; 3- it's true that vacant homes outnumber homeless people, but the housing shortage is still real; 4- maybe most of this shortage could be dealt with by subdividing some units^{[ELABORATION needed]} rather than new construction.
2. Another part is because the construction & maintenance are done expensively (labor, energy, materials).
   • This page deals with this second part.

To what extent can housing be cheaper without sacrificing basic livability?

Construction

This section has not been filled in yet.

Maintenance

Discourage frivolous renovations

In countries such as Canada/US, the vast majority of renovations are cosmetic, not essential(...)( of course you can argue about the proper definition of the word "essential" (or that no one should dictate what's essential or not), but I'm using it to mean something specific for this section ). For example:

• redoing a kitchen even though it's still functional as-is
• rebuilding a deck even though it's still structurally okay
• ripping up carpets to install hardwood floors, or vice versa

Landlords probably do this type of thing the most. For example, if kitchen countertops are stained from the previous tenant, just rip them up and replace them. Even though there are plenty of potential tenants who just want a place to live - and have no problem with stained countertops(...)( in fact, they might even prefer it since they don't have to be as uptight when cooking ) - the landlord is trying to find high-income tenants who will pay more if the place looks really clean & new. Landlords are also known for ripping up perfectly livable floors & walls for the same reason. Countless resources are wasted by landlords in hopes of reaching a higher market - and this raises the cost of living for everyone who rents.

It's tempting to say that what someone does with their private property is no one's business but their own. But we live in a society(...)( sorry for the cliche but I can't think of a better way to say it )where both materials and labor(...)( especially in the trades ) are measurably scarce - and so is housing. We can't let rich people's choices divert resources from everyone else's basic needs.

If we ignore market incentives, here are some heuristics that housing owners should live by:

• Fix things that actually matter to livability (for example: broken toilets, broken faucets, broken pipes).
• Don't replace finishes (i.e. tiles, floors, countertops, kitchen cabinets) unless they're actually broken or hazardous. Don't replace them if they're just stained or scratched.
• This section probably needs something regarding heating/cooling/insulation.

Economics

Developers (i.e. condo building owners) often don't like these ideas because they don't appeal to their existing upper-middle-class customer base.

Most average/poor people just want a place that's livable and doesn't cost half their income - but corporations often overlook this(...)( because they prioritize the most profitable demographic they can reach ). In a housing shortage, businesses only have to pander to rich buyers; everyone else is priced out. In a more housing-abundant market (rare today), businesses might have more incentive to actually care about the needs of average or poor people.

What could be done about this?

• Approach 1: "Trickle down" economics?
  • Let developers keep building expensive housing and eventually they'll run out of rich customers. Their next market will be us (the average person), and they can start choosing inexpensive solutions like the ones on this page.
    • ⚠ Note: This can only work under very specific economic conditions.^{[ELABORATION needed]} It rests heavily on the neoliberal assumption that extravagant inefficient resource usage(...)( in this case, the lifestyles of rich people ) will pave the way for efficient resource usage(...)( in this case, basic livable housing that involves a more modest amount of materials & labor per capita ) within a reasonable amount of time(...)( i.e. not waiting decades for the market to balance itself out, especially since economics is a soft science and there's no proof that it ever will ) and before the resources are depleted(...)( materials can become scarce due to depletion of natural resources. We don't want a wasteful economy that only becomes frugal after things have already mostly run out ).
• Approach 2: Market regulation?
  • Government mandates & incentives for low-cost construction/maintenance.^{[ELABORATION needed]} This still requires that zoning laws make enough space for enough housing in the first place.
• Approach 3: Communism?
  • Overthrow capitalism, apply frugal housing solutions in the new system.^{[ELABORATION needed]}

FAQ

Why are you trying to lower the quality of everything? Just force the government to subsidize everything instead!

Even in a full socialist system with enough taxpayer money to subsidize it all, we still can't ignore the fact that the status quo(...)( in developed countries, for the scope of this talk ) of housing construction/maintenance involves too much labor and materials. This labor still has to come from somewhere. We don't want a society where people are overworked. So we have to reduce the labor footprint of essential things like housing. We also have to reduce the environmental footprint. This means doing things cheaper in certain ways (i.e. maybe more homes will have old tiles instead of brand-new good quality ones), but at everyone would have a place to live and not constantly worry about affording bills.

See also

• Frugalism - generally focused on consumer goods

Page issues

Maybe this page should be split up.

• Maintenance could be its own page (maybe called "minimizing housing maintenance"?).
• Construction could be multiple pages, each for a different kind of frugal construction (i.e. simple mid-rise complexes, shipping-container homes, etc).

Do we really need to group all this into (what would now be a parent page called) "frugalism in housing"?
How about instead, have a fuller parent page that covers all the main causes of high housing costs, such as:

• Shortages & price gouging (i.e. locations in high demand(...)( such as walkable areas, which are too scarce in North America ) and not enough units(...)( or in some cases, just not enough single-person units ))
• High construction costs
• Excessive maintenance