Photo below - can you think of any reason modest housing like this should cost nearly twice as much to build (per square foot) than traditional single-family homes?

How can it possibly cost MORE per square foot to build a low-rise apartment in America than a single-family home? This blew my mind. (see link below: hidden double standards in housing)

Shouldn’t there be huge savings on plumbing, electrical, HVAC? Even the building’s shell and roof area in for apartments or rowhouses are smaller in proportion to a single-family home. (High School math – useable volume will increase as the cube of exterior dimensions. See CK12 homework link below)

These jacked up multifamily housing costs apparently ONLY happen in the USA, and Canada. Europe seems to have escaped this fiasco.

So, it’s a legal/zoning problem, for sure. And simply re-zoning random plots of land from “single family only” to become multi-family housing apparently makes the problem even worse.

The reason given by MSN/Vox is: “the last century-plus of urban planning has added over time thousands of little rules that stack the deck against denser, more affordable homes.”

Most US towns and cities adopt their building codes from “The International Code Council". Despite its misleading name, this is primarily a US outfit. There’s nothing wrong relying on experts. It may be safer using someone else's regulations instead of having your village elders concoct their building safety codes. If you invite your city council – perhaps a police officer, bank executive, schoolteacher, political gadfly, and some real estate salesperson - to ponder building codes over coffee and donuts then you could be asking for trouble.

Still, adopting your local building codes from someone out of state without reading and understanding them could be fraught with danger. The ICC building code experts sublet space from the National Association of Realtors (surprised?), in a 12 story Washington DC glass skyscraper adjacent to both Union Station and the US Capitol. Neither of these are outfits seem likely to embrace affordability.

I have NOT read the entire encyclopedia of building codes which were drafted, endorsed, and marketed by the ICC. But if you go the ICC website, there are dozens of hardcopy and online products for sale. Consulting services are also available. You will also learn that the ICC just celebrated “World Plumbing Day” on March 11th., and that there was a special jingle just for the occasion.

Okay, enough of this hilarity. The bottom line is that standards for plumbing, sprinkler systems, electrical grid connect, natural gas, and even “bird strikes” in even the most modest apartment are astonishingly more stringent than for the average 1,800 SF single family home.

Because if those standards were NOT more stringent, then NGO’s like the International Code Council would have a difficult time justifying why they exist, and why they get government money. Remember, the ICC is right next door to Capitol Hill . . .

I’m just sayin’ . . .

The hidden double standards driving our housing crisis

Flexi answers - Why does volume increase faster than surface area? | CK-12

zoning and land use