The thing that really sucks about the North American housing market besides all of the lack of affordability everywhere that’s not the middle of an abandoned corn field is that there’s no in between options.
In most of the US and Canada there’s detached single family homes with a yard and there’s high rise to mid rise apartments. Very little in between.
Row houses, duplexes, large family sized apartments, etc. do exist but outside of a few locations they’re unusual or only seen as something that poor people live in.
Thing is though that there’s a market for these in between types of housing and they could really help with our density problems where cities are so spread out due to all the detached single family houses that it becomes expensive and environmentally problematic to get utilities to all of them.
I know that I would very much like a cute duplex or row house when I feel financially ready to have kids. Walking distance to a school and a bus stop, tiny yard for an herb garden and citrus tree but not so big that it’s a pain to maintain it, neighbors nearby, easy walking and biking access to the road, hopefully a playground nearby for my kids to use.
But that sort of thing doesn’t really exist where I live and doesn’t exist in a lot of North America. You either live in a small apartment or you live in a house and either way you’re probably forced to own a car.
Anyways our zoning laws in this part of the world are terrible and probably racist and I hate them.
snowghoul
2087
prguitarman
titsay
jbbartram-illu
