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“Driving through a neighborhood, I’m like, ‘Oh my god, this is a beautiful home, I know I can afford it,’” Ms. Ellis said. Then she pulls out her phone in the hopeful ritual of the first-time home buyer. The answer in the listing, more often than not, is that, in fact, she can’t afford it.
“And I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” she said. “‘This house is $425,000.’”
‘It’s flexible, it’s malleable’
The starter home has always done a lot of work. It builds equity, creates stability, gives shelter from landlords and inflation. It has been an incubator of small businesses and community institutions like day care centers. And in an earlier form and time, it was more adaptable. Just add a bathroom when indoor plumbing arrived, a second unit to collect rental income, a garage once cars became common.
“It’s flexible, it’s malleable, and it allows for improvement, investment and change over time,” said Marta Gutman, dean of the City College of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture.
In the early 20th century, communities were effectively using all kinds of models to solve for affordable, entry-level housing. But the arrival of the car enabled people to move further out, and new planning ideas declared what would be built there.
“That allowed us to say, ‘Forget all those other typologies — a starter home is going to be a two-bedroom detached house on a 7,500-square-foot lot,’” said Nolan Gray, the research director at California YIMBY, as in the opposite of NIMBY.
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This article was originally published by a www.nytimes.com . Read the Original article here. .