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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Most people have a hard enough time getting their car close enough to the window to get the food or to handle the card reader. I doubt many people would enjoy the toucn screen ordering as the would struggle tk get close enough and may have to lean way out of their window to order. The touch screen would also have to work reliably while wet or freezing cold.

    Then you’ve got the issue of someone has to clean it and even with regular cleaning it has a huge potential to spread germs. Ultimately with all the disadvantages i think it would be too slow, too inconvenient, and add extra real estate to the drive thru.


  • Some places literally build cookie cutter subdivisions on a chunk of land in the middle of farms they bought so the classification may not be that far fetched depending on the circumstances. My parents house is technically zoned as agricultural yet the recent sprawl of nearby cities means there is now a mcdonalds less than 1km away and suburbs creep closer each year.


  • In my area it means you can rent something out thats had nothing but the bare minimums of renovations for the past 40-60 years and still get a decent market price for the unit. The stuff that is farther out is newer, more spacious, and often considered in a safer area, so they can ask for more. You are getting a better unit farther out but you gotta pay for it vs living in something run down but saving on rent and transportation.

    There exceptions of course, it really depends on the age and desirability of the neighborhood


  • It depends on the city. Smaller non touristy cities. Your cheapest rents are near downtown core with all the old buildings and the only place density has been allowed to be built for the past 60 years. Bigger cities the central downtown is defintely expensive, i guess in those cities im more so refering to anywhere with apartment buildings density, which can give a downtown feel if older buildings are still preserved nearby. Although a lot of the time they’ve been paved over and thats how we get apartments that stand 20 stories high surrounded by a sea of single story strip malls and box stores.


  • FireRetardant@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldA conundrum
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    10 days ago

    The cost of owning vs renting can be very different depending on where you live and work and the amenities you want access to. Renting somewhere centrally located with good access to high quality transit and other amenities would likely be cheaper than owning. Unless we can start normalizing owning apartments again. You could own for cheaper on the outskirts of downtown, but you’ll likely be sacraficing access to some amenities by doing so.


  • FireRetardant@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldA conundrum
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    10 days ago

    Whats going on is decades of mismanagement of property taxes and city zoning. People fight tooth and nail to keep their property taxes low, and eventually the city has to do a big increase because they failed to increase incrementally. The bigger issue is how poorly we zone and design most north american cities.

    The average car dependant suburb costs more to maintain than it generates in tax revenue. A denser area like mixed use neighbourhoods and “missing middle” housing fares far better and generates enough that it often ends up subsidizing the rest of the city, the same is usually true for denser downtowns. That trend is dying off as those denser areas demolish tax revenue generating businesses and homes to pave parking lots that don’t generate taxes to park cars from the suburbs that don’t generate enough taxes.

    You can’t afford a home because for decades suburbs were given a massive tax break while denser downtowns (guess where the poors have to rent and ultimately fund the property taxes) have to subsidize car dependant expensive to maintain subdivisions (which is usually for middle class or wealthier people, especially when built new). Add in some racial demographics and we’ve basically engineered every city to have secret tax cuts for anyone rich enough to get into the suburbs.

    The best part is, many cities are keeping the cycle going because the only way they are paying for maintaince of an old subdivision is by using the devleopment taxes and fees from a new subdivision. This is not sustainable and ultimately equates to kicking the can down the road to let a future generation figure it out (which is literally as simple as building cities densely again, as they had been built for 100s of years).

    This hasn’t even touched yet on the urban sprawl, energy ineffeciency, and secondary effects of car dependancy that have all spawned from “the american dream” of suburbia. We seriously need to reconsider how we zone, build, and get around our urban spaces.



  • FireRetardant@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldA conundrum
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    10 days ago

    To be the devil’s advocate here. Rental payments vs mortgage payments is not an accurate comparison of the true financial burdens.

    With many rentals some if not all utilities are included in the price of rent, whereas homeowners must pay the full cost of utilities. There is also the additional cost of home insurance and property taxes. Most rentals have the majority of their maintaince covered whereas the homeowner is responsible for lawn cutting, gutter cleanings etc. The cost of repairs and maintaince is not negligible. While renting if the heat quits or an appliance breaks, the landlord is supposed to cover the cost but owning means you must take that full cost.

    In the posted example, having double the mortage payment in rent payment is probably adequate to cover the additonal costs but the comparison of renting vs owning is not black and white. Several financial managers have even studied that depending on your needs and income, you can actually be getting ahead financially by renting if you don’t actually need the full benefits of owning and are able to maintain a store of wealth through other investments. This is especially true if you are in a rent controlled unit.