Housing/footprint

How many resources does it take for people to have housing?

This is a page for some estimates.

Single-detached home

Labor

We could estimate labor by looking at some costs:

• labor costs, obviously
• material costs, because these generally reflect the labor that goes into producing the materials

We don't want to count other costs:

• zoning permits and other bureaucracy - maybe these exist in our current society but they don't have to exist fundamentally - there are probably much more efficient & fair ways to make decisions about housing (or at least, the process could do without bullshit jobs) - so we leave this out.
• land value - this depends on the location and it isn't a reflection of labor requirements. Also we will calculate land in another section anyway. So here we leave this out too.

Housing costs have gone up recently, but this is more a function of demand rather than any inherent increase in the amount of labor needed to build a house.

Quick estimate: How many labor hours go into a house:

house.typical_price_before_covid

400000 $

typical_wages_before_covid

18 $/hour

Average wage of workers in construction, materials production, and other relevant trades

what_fraction_of_costs_reflect_labor

70%

The percentage of costs that fit into the categories we care about (mentioned above)

house.typical_price_before_covid * what_fraction_of_costs_reflect_labor / typical_wages_before_covid hours house.rq_labor (calculation loading)

How about labor over time:

family.size

4 people

house.lifespan

80 years

house.rq_labor / house.lifespan / family.size hours/week per capita (calculation loading)

Shockingly low. Did I get something wrong?

Land

For one, there's the land that the house sits on: Quick estimate:

house.lot_size

7200 square(feet)

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-size-of-a-lot-in-suburbia-If-you-dont-know-the-average-what-is-the-size-of-a-lot-where-you-lived-or-live-in-a-suburban-setting

house.size

2600 square(feet)

house.lot_size (calculation loading)

But also the land that it takes to grow the wood for the house:

boardfoot

(1/12) cubic(foot)

Weird unit but ok.

house.wood_volume

16380 boardfoot

Amount of wood in a typical house

wood.density

0.8 g/cm^3

For converting between wood mass and wood volume

tree_farm.productivity

20 tons/hectare/year

Wood yield of a typical "tree farm" forest

Agroforestry Carbon Sequestrationhttps://www.sustainably.run/co2-verification
tree plantations of pine and eucalyptus can sequester an average of 10 tons of carbon per hectare per year.

Assuming that 50% of the mass of wood is carbon atoms, this means 20 tons of wood per hectare per year.

house.wood_volume * wood.density / house.lifespan / tree_farm.productivity (calculation loading) Note: this last answer is wrong because we don't actually have the numbers yet!

If you have some idea how to estimate the land footprint of other materials, please start the discussion. For now, let's hopefully assume it's small enough to ignore.