Just the basics

We all know that housing is expensive to build, but there are ways to help bring those costs down. For instance, the high cost of land can be mitigated by packing more housing units onto a given property. While a parcel’s dimensions and applicable height limits restrict the number of units, shrinking those units allows the developer to squeeze in more of them, and thereby lower the per-unit cost of land.

Making units smaller does reduce material costs somewhat, although I don’t believe doing so has a proportionate impact on labor costs. Significantly lower labor costs can be achieved by constructing as much of the development as possible — up to entire units, if not entire buildings — off site, in assembly-line fashion.

Simplifying the design can go a long way toward making units more affordable, especially when one considers what amenities don’t need to be within the units themselves. Most commonly, shared laundry facilities, rather than in-unit washer/dryers, are employed to help keep costs down. But particularly at the extremely low end, kitchens and even bathrooms can also be taken out of individual units and instead provided as common facilities.

While the thought of living in an apartment without a private kitchen or bath isn’t all that appealing to me at this point in my life, there was a time when I happily lived in just such a situation. Back in the late 1970s I went to an out-of-state college, which in my case meant living in the on-campus dormitories. For my first two years there I had to go down the hall to use the kitchen or bathroom. Plus, I had to share my dorm room with a roommate. It may not have been the height of luxury, but it worked out fine — and it certainly was cheap.

The county is thinking along these lines as it plans the short-term housing project destined for Maple Street, east of Highway 101. There, it is looking at using a large number of prefabricated housing modules to make up the facility. Within each module, four residents would each have a single room, about 8 feet deep and 10 feet wide, with a bed, a bit of storage, electrical outlets and some measure of individual temperature control. Each room would have its own exterior door, which, being largely made of glass, would double as the room’s window. And a lock on the door would provide what may be the most important amenity of all: security.

Kitchens, bathrooms and laundry facilities would all be located elsewhere on the county’s site. Centralizing those facilities eliminates the need for appliances and plumbing hookups in each room, lowering costs considerably. Indeed, the units that San Mateo County is considering can be had for as little as $20,000 per bedroom.

The county’s units, of course, are at the extreme end of the housing ladder. One step up, residential developments are starting to include some number of “micro-studios” into their mix. The large affordable housing building planned for the American Legion site on El Camino Real, for instance, calls for a number of such units that are just over 300 square feet in size. These for-rent apartments, though small, would also include a basic kitchen, a bathroom and a closet. As well, they have what appears to be a stacked washer/dryer, which would be a particularly nice amenity for what otherwise is a basic, but clearly functional, unit.

As for the one-bedroom, presumably market-rate, units included in the new Redwood Square proposal, those clearly are far more than just basic living. At around 1,000 square feet in size, they’re designed with dining rooms and second bathrooms. Why those second bathrooms need bathtubs, I’ll probably never know. But I do know that, unlike the smallest units in the American Legion project, these Redwood Square units won’t come cheap.

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.