Plus one thing that gets forgotten in dense housing is that most of them are infested (1) with HOAs (home owner associations) and associated 'management companies' that work hard to suck up the residents hard-earned funds. They, like political systems that don't have mandatory voting, take advantage of resident indifference to perpetuate astounding pilfering, malpractice, and incompetence. Most newer single family homes are also infested with these parasites so you are never safe but they almost seem to be mandatory in higher density housing; the best reason I can think of why newer homes have these is so the builder can milk the hapless buyers one last time as they usually maintain complete control of the HOA while the project is in the building phase. I pine for the old-school townhomes that were not thus infested - I suppose it is too much to hope that builders will build neighborhoods without encumbering them with this atrocity.
1: I use this term deliberately and with intention plus restraint, having suffered through these for years now. I hope you never experience the misery that is an HOA.
Even in a single family detached home my last neighbor was a nightmare. He was a drunk and would be loud and throw bottles into my yard and start arguments any time anyone said anything. He was a renter so eventually he got into bad terms with his landlord and she booted him. I would dread the thought of loving even closer to someone. At least I had a fence and some concept of space from him. I could only imagine the harassment living wall to wall with this guy. For me single family detached homes are not wasted space but the minimum people should strive for.
There is a large difference between a preference and a mandate. The city of San Francisco requires this development pattern. It is not known whether the owners prefer it or not. The existence of pre-down-zoning apartment buildings in this area of town suggests that the preference is not universal.
But they are! It's truly bizarre. Somehow the accepted narrative is that prices are high because greedy developers focus only on luxury condos.
I often see new buildings criticized because they will raise the average rent in the area. And people accept that argument. Think about that for a moment.
It is what happened in several neighborhoods that I used to live in or work near.
New construction was expensive, so they geared the apartments towards the upper end of the market. Rents at existing places didn't go down; if anything, it gave them an incentive to go up since they wouldn't be the most expensive place anymore if they did.
Loans and what not put a price floor on the rents of new units; given how hard it is to evict bad tenants (especially with the current backlog), and how hard it is to bring prices back up in rent controlled cities, they're just as well off leaving units empty at full price as they are renting below cost just to stop the bleed.
> Americans overwhelmingly prefer single-family detached homes when given other options. How is choosing a higher-quality of life option “wasted”?
It's not. But it's wasteful in an urban core, where that lack of density forgoes real economic opportunity. It also creates an easily-identified cause for the lack of housing supply.
No, it's one reason why some US cities are becoming increasingly unlivable for anyone outside the upper-middle class - those who sell your groceries, make your lunch or deliver your packages (to name only a handful of occupations).
> An easily identified excuse. Now do suburban Tennessee.
I think if people were given the choice - particularly somewhere like San Francisco - they'd would much prefer to live in an apartment they could reasonably afford vs a detached home they could only afford if they travelled back in time 30+ years.
Very clever, but there is more than one city in the USA and, in fact, the world. Current trend is for people to choose to move from towns and villages - where detached housing is the norm - to cities where apartments are more common.
