Tbh I would hate to own a condo/townhouse/duplex. The idea of “owning” just part of a building while still having your property at the whims of whoever youre attached to… no thanks. Would much rather rent those spaces, pay more for less liability and to not be locked down to one location if you get lousy neighbors (which are a lot worse when you share a wall…).
Did townhouses go somewhere?
I think they’re not being built in most US (and maybe Canadian?) cities because nimbys only want single-family detached houses to be built to preserve their home’s value
least that’s what I’ve gathered from watching youtube videos on urban planning and reading articles
Why should you own the place you live in? Something like a housing cooperative is great. Also having single family housing in villages is fine. They are somewhat needed to run agricultural businesses and the like. Cities are great as a concentration of resources and talent lowers transport costs a lot and that makes everything more efficent. However they are mostly good at producing fresh produce and they can produce all they need realisticly. However we still need rural areas to produce other agricultural products.
Why should you own the place you live in? Something like a housing cooperative is great.
In housing cooperatives, don’t the residents own the building jointly?
I think the original source specifies owning, not renting, because in American capitalism, if you don’t own the place you live, the owner has a lot of power over you and a lot of ways to abuse that power. Renting sucks.
It depends on the cooperative, but the most common one, is that the cooperative owns the building and only residents can own shares. Those shares are only for sale to future residents and can only be bought and sold from and to the cooperative. Hence no free trading. Generally for older ones they tend to be rather cheap.
So yes the building is somewhat owned by the residents, but in many cases it is deliberatly turned into an awfull asset, which is unprofitable for the owners.
It sometimes feel like some people would rather force others to become homeowners than accept the fact that landlords (in any shape or form) might be necessary…
I’m not going to purchase a house if I know I don’t have the means to maintain it or if I know I’m moving temporarily.
Housing cooperatives quickly turn into unmaintained garbage. When everyone owns something, nobody cares for it.
Own your own living space.
Research in Canada found that housing cooperatives had residents rate themselves as having the highest quality of life and housing satisfaction of any housing organization in the city.[8] Other research among older residents from the rural United States found that those living in housing cooperatives felt much safer, independent, satisfied with life, had more friends, had more privacy, were healthier and had things repaired faster.[9] Australian researchers found that cooperative housing built stronger social networks and support, as well as better relationships with neighbours compared to other forms of housing.[10] They cost 14% less for residents and had lower rates of debt and vacancy. Other US research has found that housing cooperatives tended to have higher rates of building quality, building safety, feelings of security among residents, lower crime rates, stable access to housing and significantly lower costs compared to conventional housing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_cooperative#Research_on_housing_cooperatives
The residents own the building indirectly. That means all of them look out for it. Unlike a commercial rent, the people who own it also live in it, which means they actually care about the quality. The cooperative has an actual structure to organize repairs, upkeep of shared spaces like floors and a way to collect money to pay for those. A private residence especially the later part can be a problem. Not having the money to pay for repairs or upgrades is rather common, especially for the retired.
Social studies are worth fuck all. This kind of research is pointless and has barely if any basis in reality.
Not all decommodified / cooperatively owned housing needs to be the sort of social housing that tend to come to mind when thinking of a “housing co-op.”
Check out the work that the Beverly Vermont Community Land Trust is doing in Los Angeles: https://laecovillage.org/community-land-trust/. The “eco village” operates in this more crunchy, housing co-op sort of way, but then there are also lots of tenants and home-owners alike who live on the land owned by the land trust, without owning their homes in the standard sense.
That’s just not true. As long as you have a defined structure and responsibilities
What’s yhe difference between condo and apartment?
afaik it’s essentially an apartment but you own your domicile, and have a stake in the building as a whole along with the other “tenants” who are also co-owners.
And in addition to the mortgage there’s usually a monthly condo/HOA fee to pay for upkeep of common areas and roofs etc
An apartment is a structural classification (one of many separate dwellings within the same building, usually flats); a condo is a legal classification for how ownership of a dwelling works (collective ownership of parts of a property, individual ownership of other parts). If a home is both, it’s usually referred to as a condo, so “apartment” usually implies that it’s rented.
That’s an odd distinction to make isn’t it? I’ve only ever heard people refer to apartments as condos or vice versa. Nobody would ever call a townhouse a condo even though I think you’re saying they could/should?
So. The oversimplification is you own a condo and you rent an apartment, however, you’ll also run into definitions about where the front door gets you. Think of the difference between a motel and a hotel. With an apartment there’s a hallway that you enter through one door, and then enter your apartment through a door along that hallway. A condo, there will be an open air coveted stairwell that your door will be accessed from. Which is another layer of oversimplification since in a lot of old developments you’ll have a bottom floor commercial property and an upper floor apartment accessed from an open air door at ground level with a set of stairs reaching the apartment (imagine bobs burgers).
Point is. From living conditions perspective, they’re very similar. The important thing is ownership models and that’s the thing you should be looking into. You can rent a condo, you can own an apartment. It all just depends on local laws and definitions
It sounds like they’re describing Solarpunk basically!
Solarpunk is when affordable housing is near a garden and some stores, apparently.
Are the water and power for this community provided by a sustainable source that does not deplete the surrounding environment?
Is the community itself integrated into nature as much as possible, as opposed to disrupting it?
Is it capable of providing locally sourced food for its inhabitants? Does it support eco-friendly forms of personal transportation and utilize eco-friendly public transit as much as possible? Is this a utopian/post-dystopian society with advanced technology and a post-capitalist, communal social and economic paradigm?
…Does it even involve solar power?
Who knows!
15 minute city? No, no, that’s solarpunk.
