After selling his software business for millions, Marcel Lebrun decided to pour his time and money into an affordable housing project in Fredericton. CBC’s Harry Forestell takes a closer look at the 12 Neighbours community and its impact on the people who live there.
Larger homes cost more to build for obvious reasons, so with any given amount of money, you have to balance the amount of individual units you can build with the size of the units.
Which is to say that you can provide homes for more people if you make them tiny and not regular
Most of the cost of a home comes from the land sale itself, unless if you’re building somewhere nobody wants the land (in which case there’s nothing nearby to earn a living by as well). Considering that, building larger will only marginally increase the price. Doubly so if the larger building is for more than one resident.
A pair of townhouses can be built for almost the same cost of a single typical single family house, yet house two families on the same plot of land. A condo or apartment can house dozens for the cost of less than 10 normal houses.
Not to mention the reduced cost of plumbing and heating if you build one large building for a community rather than having dozens of separate systems for individual shacks.
This is true, yeah. I didn’t know they were standalone units, which would be counterproductive with regards to saving money.
Maybe there’s some zoning issue at hand, though.
Zoning is generally the #1 problem in regards to housing, though mostly as a result. It’s the NIMBY movement as a root cause and the reason why such strict zoning is even a thing.