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idreamofchickpea t1_j8ms5uo wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in How Vermont’s Housing Crisis Got So Bad by punkthesystem

This is really good insight, thanks for sharing. Do you object to multi-unit dwellings generally or just the aesthetics of the ones that have been built? They seem like a logical option for people who don’t want a big house (elderly, young).

I’ve never seen a beautiful suburb myself, even when the houses are pretty. Not being a snob at all. It’s just a really inefficient allocation of space.

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[deleted] t1_j8mtv75 wrote

I have absolutely no objection to multi-unit dwellings and even multi-purpose dwellings, which help make suburbs more pleasing and efficient. The neighborhoods I grew up here in VT used to have a lot of houses with multiple apartments and some even with "Mom and Pop" stores in them, mixed right in between the single family unit homes. You could walk around the corner for basic groceries and household supplies instead of having to drive across town. Those places also provided the much missed and necessary "third places" for folks to hang out front and socialize... Those are the things that create neighborhoods instead of suburbs. I would love to see housing development in Vermont based on those aesthetics again!

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mojitz t1_j8n65fc wrote

One of my favorite apartments ever was actually a big, grey Maoist apartment block in China. It wasn't much to look at, and obviously didn't have any sort of high end fit and finish, but there were little shops and hole-in-the-wall restaurants and the like on the street-facing side of the bottom level and the whole thing was built to enclose a central courtyard on 3 sides where people would hang out or bump into each other and shoot the shit or whatever. It really felt in a lot of ways like a proper neighborhood in spite of being right in the middle of a massive city.

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mrgrey772 t1_j8niaz0 wrote

There is a middle ground to this I promise you. Doesn’t have to be the elites in their Single families versus massive commie blocks.

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mojitz t1_j8nk448 wrote

Sure. Nobody here is suggesting we, like, demolish all existing housing and force everyone to move into apartment blocks constructed exactly with the architecture they used under the Soviet Union or Maoist China. I'm just pointing out that people tend to write off those housing units because they don't look pretty, when the reality is that there are some significant upsides to actually living in them.

Fact of the matter is that social housing can and does work and has been an extremely effective tool for alleviating housing shortages all over the world (including quite a few capitalist nations in the modern day, by the way). You just have to do it right and build with the intention of fostering diverse communities rather than warehousing the poor out of sight as we did here in the States in a prior era.

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[deleted] t1_j8nbgij wrote

It sounds delightful! Almost like an oasis within the "desert" of the city. :)

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mojitz t1_j8nckz5 wrote

That's definitely going a bit too far haha, but it's not totally off the mark and a little tiny bit more spent on maintenance and some greenery could have really pushed it over the edge.

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