When you type “how much” in Google, the second choice is “how much house can I afford”.
It made me think about sustainable housing, I’m reading fascinating stuff about it. I realized how much it was a huge game changer thing.
A rent @ 1500 a month for 6 years equals 108 000. That’s a lot of money. It bothers me that people pay rents for years for shitty places they will never own and that for the exact same amount of money they could afford to finance and build in a few months, a highly efficient passive house providing a really good quality of life for their family. Today.
We need to spend more time on this problem. Now.
The game changer thing is that for the first in history, we’re disconnecting Quality of Life from income even for something as definitive as owning a house. Before, only people working like crazy and making a ton of money could afford nice and comfortable places we all deserve. Now with cheap material, highly efficient designs and technology costs going down all the time, there is no scarcity about it. It’s actually the opposite.
What I envision is that young people will at some point have mortgage to pay for owning their sustainable space. Instead of paying for education –which is going to be soon all online, anytime, anywhere, for almost free- people will pay for their future home, maybe design and assemble it too.
What would it be to work two jobs to pay the mortgage and going back home confident, to a durable nice shelter of yours instead of working two jobs, pay for education and huge rent for a poor place while not knowing if all that is going to make you live decently later? Why later again?
I think the difference is mindblowing. I think it’s going to make people so much less stressed out. At a big scale it might change the world in a way I can’t even really imagine now.
Meet Fincube, a sustainable modular small house (47m² 505 sq/feet).
Anyway for now the focus is to get the price down and there’s a lot of room for it: local, natural, recycle materials, new design, better efficiency… Sustainable housing requires a lot of customization on site and that’s another big plus: it drives small businesses, you know, 99.7% of employer firms and usually around half or more of the economy of a country.
By the way America, you lag very hard on the subject: as today there’s around 25 000 certified passive structures already built in Europe. There are 13 in the United States.
9 replies on “Sustain now”
Thank you for the interesting figures at the end.
But there is something necessary for your vision to become true: people need to access credit. Huge point… there would be so much to say about how banks are runned and how they should be.
From France, I’d think that well made public policies may be a good incentive to sustainable housing.
Why do you think there is such a gap between Europe and the USA on this subject?
hahaha! I just tried with "combien"!
First answer is "combien de temps garder les papiers", third is "combien de trimestres pour la retraite", fourth "combien coute un mariage"…
What a great description of France……
You should check out the tiny house movement! Google "tiny house".
I’m new to this blog so forgive any gross misuse of terminology.
Really interesting optimistic thinking, thank you. I love the insight about education costs and I hope you’re right.
However the pessimist in me says that it’s not houses or rent that are expensive, it’s land. And affordable land isn’t in sustainable places. If I buy a 100k passive home where do I put it? And how does my food, water and power get there? Really interested in your thoughts on the complete picture, for the whole population. I don’t think any other kind of sustainability matters.
Hey Tom, thanks for reading.
Land is overly expensive in cities but the less you are close to one, the less it’s a problem. For the price of an apartment in NYC you can buy a house with land in many nice location. Overcrowded cities with shitty living spaces are overrated and I’m sure a lot of people will realize that and try something else (don’t forget the all communication technology trend that will make it easier and easier to be in contact with your people wherever you live).
It means that sustainable housing might redefine the space on territory we’re living in and as we’re not efficient at all for now, there’s some progress to do. Also, if the market demand goes toward sustainable houses which I know it will because Quality of Life is better and cheaper, real estate might have to start over new houses and replace old ones to keep up with the market.
This trend is not going to change things over the night ;) and there will be some grey areas for a time but I think it will worth it.
Erica, I saw that and it’s pretty cool but it’s not clean, it’s basically wooded RVs…
L,
Yes to get a loan is a problem in France, but here it’s trivial: even me, non US citizen can get a 10 000$ loan really fast, with almost no question asked. This is not an issue in the USA.
To answer your question, there’s such a gap because:
-the culture here is not based on sustainability, it’s based on comfort. The culture is not to live with less or try to adjust your needs (why Europe is like that? Two WW). It’s to live life at its fullest, with diamonds pearls and cars. Money is the question and the answer here. Sustainabiliwhat?
-passive houses and the like require certification coming from the state. If there’s something US people really don’t like is the state being involved in business. They fucking don’t like it at all and if it goes to the Fed level, it’s even worse. Europe is used to that but here, it goes against freedom.
-there are huge lobbies of course. For example growing hemp for insulation is not allowed in the USA because hemp is so good at it, so inexpensive, so natural that it would kill a LOT of businesses selling chemical products to insulate with less efficiency. During that time pot is pretty much allowed here… Showing that it’s really just a money problem.
And for France, well yeah ^^’
thanks for your answer :-)