Thoughts on Flexibility in Housing

Some Housing Related Issues

When talking about housing in this little post, I will state this is entirely Canada based and mostly rooted in my own opinion. Like many countries since 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, housing prices shot up, which are currently slowly dropping, while incomes did not increase to match. There are many factors that contributed to this, some of which are mentioned here, but it really just comes down to supply and demand. I feel as though there is an inherent rigidity to what both the population and the builders demand, the latter of which is understandable as what is demanded by the former is more lucrative per build... strictly speaking of individuals houses.

Average new build home sizes have increased substantially since the 1950s, which naturally comes at an increased cost to develop, not to mention maintain which most buyers seem to completely overlook when it comes to affordability. I believe this issue has obvious knock on effects to all areas of the market:

• Older smaller homes are "starter homes", of which there is a fixed supply to an increasing population
• This limited supply pushes some buyers into the "larger/newer" home market which causes prices to increase due to limited supply
• This trend continues as each product segment is unable to meet the needs of the market.

This is a rudimentary analysis which does not take into account the renters market, which is not faring much better, but before I move on to that I have to mention a new family that bought a home down the road.

A fairly large home was being worked on for about 5 years, from 2016-2021, with the front facade being left in shambles until it went up for sale and a family bought it. Since the purchase, the front facade, lawn, and driveway have all been repaired to a befit a lovely old home. The family in question is an middle eastern immigrant family, a fairly recent one, and it has something that does not occur readily with native Canadians, it is multi-generational home. There are children, parents, and grandparents under one roof, and I would guess about 12 people live in the home, the home is not massive but it is sizable enough to house that amount of people.

Why do we so adamantly want to focus on small family units living in large homes in this country? I ponder this often, a few points about myself to make my point less negative about others and more revelatory of myself:

• I do not like cleaning that much
• I do not own many physical objects
• I do not have children, yet
• I do not want to spend copious amounts on utilities
• I do not want to spend copious amounts on maintenance

All of these issues are less of an issue with a smaller home and I, for a time, was enthralled with Tiny Homes. This has faded, for a few reasons, which I will talk about now.

Tiny Homes, a possibility, but a niche.

I will first state this, if you want to buy a tiny home... in my opinion it would be better to buy or design a plan yourself and seek out a local contractor to build it for you... or do it yourself? You may see the problem that Tiny Homes have at the outset, it is a large mental load to take on to make a home that is small, and by small I mean 200-400 square feet. The reasoning to do as I mentioned is that if you were to buy a Tiny Home that is prefabricated, then you are looking at, at a bare minimum, $70,000 with some going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is not a knock on these options, as they are less than a full sized home and a mortgage for a couple hundred thousands seems so do- oh wait you cannot get a mortgage for a tiny home. It makes total sense as a tiny home is more like a fancy motor home, you could get a loan to fund the building, but the term and rates will make the payments comparable, or worse, than renting an apartment that has more space and conveniences.

Lets talk about those conveniences like running water, electricity, and heating. I personally would say that electricity is a simple solution as a reasonable solar setup would be able to power most peoples power needs if they were careful, but heating and water, which I tie plumbing to, is difficult for many to wrap their heads around.

Tiny Home living is conceptually, not a housing alternative, but more-so an alternative way of life.

It takes a special type of person to make Tiny Home living work long term, and as such it is not a broadly applicable solution. It has been used as a solution to, more safely, house the homeless but it is not something that most would want to choose.

As an aside, the term Tiny Home has come to mean two separate things:

• A small move-able dwelling not hardwired into the utility grid
• A small static home wired into the utility grid

The latter is, somewhat, a mischaracterization of the idea of a tiny home. Some are also well above what would be considered a tiny home in size, they are just tiny in relation to new builds. I personally know of someone building a 850 square foot static tiny home, which is about the size of a war time home.

Merging the previous point and this point about tiny homes, individuals seemingly want 2000 square foot homes to live alone, or with their partner and one child, in. Individuals complain about the price of all levels of homes, but being adamant about needing abundant square footage. The notion that what was previously an adequately sized home, 800 to 1000 square feet is simple too small, is preposterous in my opinion. We need these kinds of homes, it is evident now that the decades where they were not built had delayed effects on the housing market which we find ourselves dealing with in a painful manner now.

Renting & Japan

Japan is a declining population, the birthrate is not replacing those that die. That needed to be said, as a shrinking population makes the housing market a perpetual buyers market. And as an aside, lets look at the Akiya House program.

Are you a person who can work remotely anywhere in the world? Are you someone who loves older houses? Are you someone who would like to buy a home but they are very expensive around you? Then, again, look at the Akiya house program.

I will not give an extensive rundown of the program as there are limitations, but the basics are:

• Buy the house & land for as little as $22,000 CAD (as of May 2024 exchange rates).
• Renovate the house, as they are often not fit for habitation, there is no danger of it burning down or falling apart, but there are issues... like next to no insulation!
• Live there when the renovations are done.

Downsides:

• I mentioned needing to work remotely, as these houses are in the rural areas of Japan with little job opportunities.
• There are others, but honestly if you expected to NOT be required to do renovations for a $22,000 house then I do not know what to say.

Lets just say, it would not be unheard of to buy a house and have it renovated to spec for $250,000. Far less than any home I could possible find in Canada, in my area that is.

The options to rent in Japan are flexible as well, admittedly the average size of homes and apartments are smaller than Canada, but the price reflects that and as such is able to suit more needs than a rigid and high prices market.

The average price of a 1 bedroom apartment is $1922 in Canada, Ranging from $1150 to $2700 depending on location. Japan itself ranges from $610 to $900, depending on location for a 1 bedroom, again the likely size of these apartments is smaller, as Japan gets quite "creative" with layouts and really does trim out unnecessary space. To be fair, Japan is a country with 3x the population and 1/10th the land mass, although much of Canada is inhospitable. So lets just say that Japan, the country, has 3x the population of all Canada in 1/3rd the space of Ontario.

Some questions I ponder are: 

• Why do we want large(r) spaces?
• Why do we want strict independence?
• Why do we not want to assess our true needs?

This does tie back to buying a home, in a way, I believe. Besides the obvious that all who leave their parents home likely are renting, more on this in a moment, but the notion of size seems to crop up all the time. As the size of apartments are larger in Canada, we can fit fewer into an area, just like home sizes over time.

But about the leaving the home bit, why do we so force this in the west? Youth crave it, and parents are, more often than not, wanting to push babies out of the nest. It works in a negative manner in both directions. Why do we not negotiate with our parents to make the situation work for both parties. Going back to the multi-generational immigrant family down the road, all adults in the household likely contribute financially to the house, the cost is dispersed among the family allowing more money to be kept within the family. We Canadians strive for independence, and in doing so destroy our financial resources.

This problem does not apply to renting, or looking for a home in Japan, as much as the prices are far lower than Canada. Our inflexibility and desire for certain things has led us to a point where so few of the population can realistically afford any home at the age of those that came before us.

I hope that some malleability arrives in the public psyche.

Tie to my Design thoughts:

For my future reference to remind myself, these are a few points on how this has impacted my thought process.

• Communicating to individuals (users) value and addressing their direct needs may take the form of reducing what they feel they need. This will drive user satisfaction and profits in the long run, instead of seeking to draw everything from the person now.
• Flexibility in providing solutions to varied needs is important.