I dare them to move in themselves
(Grist) At the bus stop one day, Molly noticed a building of “aPodments†— a trademarked brand of microhousing that has sprung up in Seattle over the last year like mushrooms after a rainstorm. (One local blog counts at least 15 projects constructed or in the works in just one neighborhood.) She called to inquire on a Friday and moved in on Monday. She has a three-month lease and pays $595 per month (utilities and internet included) for a furnished, dorm-sized room with a private bathroom, refrigerator, and access to a full-sized common kitchen.
Microhousing — a catch-all term for ultra-compact apartments that sometimes share common spaces — offers a way to reconcile rising urban housing prices with a financially struggling generation’s preference for city living. It’s proliferating in cities where the tension between those contradictory trends is most acute: Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Vancouver. San Francisco updated its city code to allow developers to build smaller individual units (a minimum of 150 square feet), and New York is reviewing design proposals for a pilot microhousing project of apartments around 275 to 300 square feet. Seattle’s approach has been a bit messier.
Good grief. Altogether, I pay around $800 a month for mortgage and utilities for a 1,200 square foot townhouse with a view of the Neuse River here in Raleigh. I even have my own kitchen! These crazies pay approaching that for a tiny dwelling. Of course, this is what Warmists want for Other People, to live tiny lives. It’s also easier to control and monitor people if you get them all living in the cities.
Rural people have been moving to the cities to live for a long long time. They do so for their own self interest not because they are being forced to do so by the 80% of Americans that believe global warming is a serious problem.