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America is so dumb on so many levels.
American suburbanism is truly wild. When you see how people live outside of the U.S., it’s startling what we’re putting up with here for the wonders of spending hours in a car every week.
It’s technically against the law in my state to make a new neighborhood that doesn’t have an HOA. I live in a neighborhood without an HOA because it was built before the law was passed. No one’s running a tavern but we’ve got one neighbor who grows vegetables in a patch of their front yard. Another neighbor has a bunch of chickens and also a rooster. We’re technically not allowed to have roosters but who’s going to tell on them? Not me, for sure.
HOA truly scares me about American living. That a group of people can dictate what you can and can’t do with your own house is absolutely wild. How is that home ownership?
In Canada the only real rule is don’t leave your yard in disrepair.
It’s worth mentioning that in the majority of residential neighborhoods, either they do not have HOA enforcement or the HOA is entirely optional, in that you can pay to belong to the HOA and gain benefits like access to community centers and pools, but then have to abide by guidelines.
In these places, you can ignore HOA rules if you’re not interested in joining. I’ve greatly enjoyed telling their offended members that no, I will trim my shrubs when I feel like it, thank you very much.
There is still going to be a lot of regulations against like, turning your house into a tavern or something, but there is a little more freedom here in most places than people talk about. But it’s still pretty bad and getting worse, there are more and more “master planned” communities that turn entire countrysides into oceans of rooftops in these homogeneous people hatcheries where you have to get approval to grow flowers in your yard.
don’t leave your yard in disrepair
Even that should be your own business, unless you’re endangering anyone
Freedom \TM
Also no chickens (usually)
Yeah depends on the municipality my area it’s fine but depends on yard size
Newer suburban housing often depresses me. You have these large, lovely homes, but they’re crammed together so tightly that you could reach out of your kitchen window to turn on your neighbour’s sink. The front yard is often just a strip of dry grass with a single crabapple sapling, and the back yard is a box the size of a small bathroom, devoid of both foliage and privacy from the eight other houses overlooking it, and serves largely as a box with air to place your dog in. This could be remedied if the developers weren’t complete cunts and sacrificed a house or two per block to space the homes out a bit. But they can’t waste an inch.
I certainly don’t mean to throw shade at anyone who has purchased a home like this and enjoys living there. Everyone deserves a place to feel happy and comfortable. It just sucks that anything built in the last twenty years is erected with no privacy or quality of life in mind. It’s just housebox. As long as you don’t peer outside, you won’t notice you’re trapped in housebox. This is extremely common here in Alberta, and it’s the reason my wife and I wound up buying an older home (1960s-70s) in a mature neighborhood. Most newer places we looked at felt as though they were missing a soul.
Just kind of gets to a point where the whole “detached home” thing doesn’t really mean anything. May as well connect the walls into row housing and drop the price 100k.
Why do I feel like living in an apartment would be better in that case (if u can’t find an older house)
A lot of higher-density residential areas are actually more enjoyable to live in if you’re a people person and like walking to places. Areas of apartment blocks tend to be placed closer to shopping and bars and restaurants.
Meanwhile, a lot of the newer, cleaner “master planned” communities are just sterile oceans of identical rooftops miles and miles from anything but schools and fire departments, forcing all residents to drive if they want to so much as pick up a carton of milk.
May as well connect the walls into row housing and drop the price 100k.
Sorry, best I can offer is row housing that is $100k more expensive.
In my Eu country, and also the neighbouring countries, the general rule for a detached building is that it has to be build 3 to 5 meters (depending on the local rules) from the terrain boundary. If the builder wants to build closer, then they have to build a blind wall on the boundary with certain minimum fire + insulation requirements. If then someone else builds against that blind wall, that someone else is expected to buy “half” of the existing wall, ie: pay the first builder some money.
So we fortunately don’t get those dystopian tightly packed detached housing neighbourhoods.
The shared wall between a home and any other building is also required by law to have certain minimum acoustic insulation values. But there’s plenty of old buildings where this isn’t the case yet. Living in an apartment building without proper acoustic isolation is horrible, I’d rather live in a dystopian detached house, so maybe that’s why those houses are still popular in North America and Australia: guaranteed proper acoustic insulation.
When I had the opportunity to buy a house I was elated. Now, 10 years in? Yeah, I despise it. Neighbors that don’t give a shit that you can’t get away from, no privacy, no ability to do anything without the worry someone will report you for some HoA shit you’re not aware of, etc. I was raised on a country house on 7 acres, now I dream of ever being able to escape and have something like that.
Come to Brazil!
Joking, but also not that much. If you work remotely for some American company and choose your city well, chances are you’ll probably be making enough money to be able to ignore all of Brazil’s problems. $60k per year should be more than enough for that.
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There’s a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
My own property is being extensively reworked to produce a majority of our vegetables. We have already put about 185m² 2,000ft²) under direct cultivation in the back yard, and intend to wrap that garden around the entire property to the full 400m² (4.300ft²) available.
In the end, I don’t expect to have a single blade of grass on the property. It’ll all be flowers, fruiting trees and canes and bushes, and vegetables. All done in a modified Ruth Stout method, with a variation of flat-ground Hügelkultur thrown in.
Let’s just say that Bylaw is already pissed off with me, and I’m not even halfway done yet.
Ruth Stout
You had me excited to find a better method. Then it was “find a cheap source of hay”. Then you need a method to spread hay- which ain’t easy. I’ll stick with my cultivar which makes mulch in place.
Then it was “find a cheap source of hay”.
Many hay farmers will sell spoiled hay (unfit for animal consumption) for 50-25% of what you would pay for clean hay. Get evangelical about permaculture and the Ruth Stout method and some will just let you have spoiled hay for free.
Stables will frequently give spoiled hay away for free, except here you need to fork it up and pack it off by yourself, it won’t be baled for your convenience. Plus, a lot of bedding wasn’t meant to be eaten by the animals in the first place, and comes with embedded manure.
Remember, spoiled hay is spoiled. it’s not fit for feeding animals, and it’s not gonna be displayed in the Smithsonian as an example of premium hay. Many places that produce or consume hay just want to get rid of it, as it’s wholly undesirable for their main operations and just gets in the way.
Then you need a method to spread hay- which ain’t easy.
Gesundheit? If you are complaining about spreading hay - and I can cover my existing 185m² in a single afternoon with ease - then gardening in general is not going to be up your alley. Spreading hay is not supposed to be difficult or laborious. If it’s baled, unbale it and use your hands to break off chunks and crush it to floof it up and simply drop it in place. If it isn’t baled, get a fork, spear the hay, walk over to the garden with the fork full, then just shake the fork to loosen the clumps and let them fall.
Like, you are doing this while standing upright, some time between October and March, long before the first plant gets planted. If your plants are already in the ground, you’re doing it the hard and needlessly difficult way.
You have any helpful links that assisted you with setup? I’ve been toying the idea but the soil here is horrible. Basically 6 inches of crap soil on top of bedrock. Any help is appreciated as I’m brand new to the idea. I do have some bucket planters that were gifted but other than that not much to start with.
You are starting way behind here, but I strongly recommend you hit up YouTube to get the basics on the Ruth Stout method and the Hügelkultur method.
I have modified both in the following ways:
First, I stripped away all topsoil. Whether you use or dispose of yours will depend on the availability of good topsoil in your area, and how good the current topsoil actually is. Then I dug down to provide myself with about 50cm (2-3ft) of vertical space to work with (accounting for the maximum height of the final soil level that I don’t want to exceed). If you aren’t doing this near a foundation, or you can still rework the soil to slope away from any foundation, you might be able to ignore this.
For the Hügelkultur method, I went with a flat layout instead of creating humps, and I used wood chips instead of logs and branches. I was aiming for a dense woody later that is laid down about a foot thick, and has about 8-12 inches of soil on top of it. This is meant far more as a decomposing layer that holds onto moisture, as I am in an area with sand and rocks further down that water just drains straight through. Bedrock might have this method as a good idea as well, just lay down an inch or two of sand before you put down the wood chips as a way of water running off if it gets saturated. And if possible, pack down the chips using a powered soil compactor, so you minimize the subsidence as the wood decomposes.
Once the topsoil is down, I finish the soil itself by bringing in several tons of horse manure, and rototilling it in. Horse manure because it doesn’t “burn” roots like steer/cow manure does. This is also why I went with an 8-12in layer of soil - so there is no chance of the rototiller reaching the wood chips. Also: June bugs and other root-sucking grubs love horse manure, be sure to spray with beneficial nematodes every year you supplement with manure.
For Ruth Stout (the soil cover), I have access to several acres of herbicide-free grass via a family orchard. I mow this through the year and pack it into a 8×4×4ft bin (this is fine for up to 1,000ft² of bedding cover, make it commensurately larger for larger gardens). Because I cut and pack when the grass is completely fresh and green, this starts the composting process that kills off any seeds, but the heat of the composting process also stops the process after a short while because I’m not turning over the pile to cool it off and introduce oxygen. This leaves me with lots of barely-composted grass clippings to use as an initial layer (about 60% of the total) when laying down the hay bedding. This suppresses weeds and holds in moisture much better than just hay alone.
You are likely to find green areas which are not treated with herbicide where the owners might permit you to mow and collect the grass clippings. Pretty much any green material, including heavily weed-filled areas, will suffice, as the seeds will be killed off during the composting stage. You want to avoid treated lawns because the herbicide will VERY negatively impact any vegetables you plant. In the end, you will be planting your garden through about a foot of thick hay and grass clippings; separate them by pushing them aside and plant directly into the soil. The grass and hay can also be considered as soil for bulbs and so forth, things like garlic can just be placed directly on top of the soil and re-covered. You will also have to recharge this layer every year by just putting more on top, do so in the early fall once you start shutting down your garden so you don’t disturb any beneficial insects that are bedding down for the winter.
Good luck.
Fruit trees. It’s the way to go. So much less work in the log run.
Kill that lawn! Let’s fucking go!
That’s amazing to hear! If it’s possible and doesn’t doxx you, I’d love to see a picture or two
This person is like the only one with those kinds of plants, an AI can Geogeuser them already.
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As a kid I would play street hockey with my friends although nowadays I don’t see kids outside much. Sometimes kids are unlikely and live in an area with no other kids their age around.
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Yes. Lobbying by oil and car companies
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see above.
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See above.
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See above.
A lot of it also has to do with racism, and these days, people don’t even know why zoning ordinances are the way they are. They can’t defend them. They just assume that it’s what people want and there must be some good reason for the zoning being the way it is (spoiler alert: nope, actually). This is one of the ripest, and probably lowest-hanging fruits in terms of achieving QOL improvements in North America.
I don’t even like zoning in city builder games, can’t even imagine living in a zoned area.
I currently live in a single family apartment on top of a bakery; within one block of my house I also have two small family markets, two restaurants, a barber, a bicycle repair shop, two clothing stores, a pet shop, a small languages school and a few other stuff, with several houses and apartment buildings in-between.
I’m jealous, and convinced that the only reason people most folks like suburban deserts is because it’s all they’ve ever known.
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tbf I do know many suburban families that grow a lot in their backyard, although I’m sure there are places with more strict rules around that.
otherwise very valid questions.
Land of freedom:
Can I grow potato in my own garden?
-No.
Is this true? You can’t grow vegetables in your backyard? Why tho? If true it sounds dumb to me.
A lot of houses are subject to a Home Owners Association (HOA). They often can make ridiculous rules, including kicking you out of your own home for violating whatever rules they made. They can tell you how your garden looks like, which color your house is allowed to have, can fine you for parking on the road…
The rules are usually designed around keeping up the “value” of the neighborhood by forbidding any sort of individuality in how your garden and house looks from the outside. Sterile and boring is what investors want, to evaluate a neighborhood with a high price.
These kind of organizations make sense for apartment buildings, where you need to organize the upkeep of the overall building, but for suburbs they seem to be mostly an investor too and then a tool for whoever wants to keep themselves busy, terrorizing their neighbors.
I get the front garden but the back garden too?
These kind of organizations make sense for apartment buildings, where you need to organize the upkeep of the overall building
Yeah this makes sense, but, in my country, this only applies to common areas of the building, and there’s civil law around what can/can not be agreed in assembly.
Are those HOS an assembly with equal voting rights? Or is there weight on shareholders votes based on amount of squares owned? Or something else completely? I’m genuinely interested if you can enlighten me. Or I can research it when I get more time.
Since I found out about the neighborhood association, I’ve been rather suspicious of this land of the free.
I moved to a suburb in a country with unbearable heat yet because of how the suburbs are designed, I still walk more than when I did in the US. Everything from barbershops and grocery stores, to pharmacies and bakeries are within a 10 minute walk. Though I usually wait until night fall to do so.
Sounds like the Philippines. Hell, sounds like just about every other sane place on the planet.
I didn’t know heat until I went to Kuwait in summer
The front and back yards are there to increase pervious cover. That’s it.
I work in municipal development and have worked in dense areas, suburbs, and now work in an enclave for the ultra-rich (average new house is about 7 million dollars in the city where I work). Every single developer wants to level all the trees and build as much on the lot as possible with zero pervious cover anywhere, and they don’t give the smallest fuck about flooding the downhill neighbors.
So, you guys are tearing out parking lots and removing parking minimums, right?
Turf is barely previous
StormTech under the parking lot is all the rage now.
It’s never, ever maintained properly and the inlets or “permeable” pavement gets plugged up and effectively gets turned into 100% IC almost every installation. My last city’s engineering team went from encouraging it to recommending it be banned when they saw what happens when it isn’t maintained.
There’s some pervious asphalt at my office that has over 10 years of fines in it and infiltrates <1”/hr. If you hit it with a vacuum it quickly clears to >50”/hr.
As a non driving eastern European, living a few months in a Colorado suburb was literally one of the most depressing times of my life.
I drive but i wasn’t going to stay working in Texas long enough to justify the costs of buying my own car and transferring my license there, but same situation.
I was in Houston which has some buses and decided to use them. To do a 10-15 ish km ride, it took over 2 hours because there was just one bus that way and it stopped in every street corner. An uber took the same route in about 20 minutes.
I really disliked the way Texas looked, too much sprawl, cheap falling apart houses and whole blocks of abandoned houses and businesses. Definitely not enough trees. Also how it’s organized, but the people were fairly nice. Like 60% of the time.
There’s a lot of racism but i already was expecting that. I thought the racism would be whites vs everyone else, but honestly I’ve witnessed and experienced racism there from every race, towards everyone else. People also treat you better when they think you’re their own race, so being Mediterranean i had random acts of kindness from Arabs, Latinos and white people who thought i was from their respective race. I also met some Brazilian people who hated Europeans for some reason and were not shy to show it.
If the bus was that slow I would take my bike instead. Where I live it is and I do.
In Houston? Only in the center and even then, have you ever seen Texans drive ? They have a total disregard for any speed limits, despise cyclists and will pull a gun on you if they feel slighly uncomfortable with the road situation. I barely felt safe walking on the sidewalks.
The answer to all questions is racism. We don’t have public transportation because it became illegal to forbid African Americans access, we don’t have public parks and services, because you can no longer have ‘‘whites only’’ signs up, we don’t have stores in these areas because you can’t stop immigrants from owning stores that whites see as ‘beneath them’ to work in, farming your own yard is trashy, because slaves were only allowed to farm food for themselves in small plots right next to the shacks they were allowed to sleep in, and why do we have remote single housing areas you can only access with cars that are over priced? To get away from the black people they could no longer red line to prevent living near them, and to create school districts non whites couldn’t be zoned for as they were priced out of the districts, and then they adjusted school funding so it was based on land value effectively creating whites only schools with high funding. As the white racist mom in the 70s who was upset about bussing said ‘‘if you let your kids grow up around theirs, eventually they’ll all start to mix’’
America spent so long cutting off its own nose to spite its face that it’s no wonder it believes today that its shit doesn’t stink.
For fucks sake why can’t there be a place that’s basically identical to america EXCEPT without the racism, homophobia, transphobia, and fascism. What the fuck is humanity doing, god damn.
For fucks sake why can’t there be a place that’s basically identical to america EXCEPT without the racism, homophobia, transphobia, and fascism.
Because such a place would be very, very, very different from America.
Spain looks pretty good. Their sociological statistics at least paint a good picture, and many parts of Spain have been multi ethnic for centuries, and they are open to immigration.
Idk Central Europe sounds pretty good
Imagine thinking there is no racism and homophobia in central Europe
Racist people dosen’t always mean racist systems and principalities.
So many mixed feelings.
It’s less of an option for me and my ilk because of language barrier. But Americans’ inability to speak the various languages of Europe are a personal failing on the part of basically all Americans; our “education” system made us dependent, and our arrogance made us unwilling to accept both that we are stupid and that it is incumbent upon us to fix our own stupidity.
And now that I can’t afford groceries, medical care, AND utility bills at the same time, I neither have the time to learn a new language nor the mental space to do so.
Maybe it’s for the best that Americans can’t just casually flee to Europe. Europe is already struggling to suppress a resurgence of fascism even WITHOUT a massive influx of braindead center-right neoliberal mouth-breathers from Jesusland.
Well the lack of second language is not just a usa. In other mostly English as a first language countries you have the lowest rates of bilingualism
Isn’t that basically Canada?
Yeah, but like Australia and NZ, they REALLY don’t want immigrants.
I grew in a town with lots of parks. Yes the smallest and shitest used to be black only. Basically just look for park in lower area. And we started building suburbs with redlines on day one the raciam didn’t need to wait for redlines to go away. The school district thing. That’s a bit more region based. Up North they mosrohad mono ethnic neighborhoods so they was less need to make seperate racial schools. The south although they had redlines and other housings policy creating black and white neighborhoods they also just went fully into making blackand white only schools.
Of course, racism is the source of every problem.
Let’s forget the power that oil conglomerates and the automotive industry have on the government.
Yes "what’s good for GM is good for America. " and so on. The runaway neoliberal capitalism is a huge problem, but racism is the true heart and soul of America.
Racism, like a bunch of other biogtry, is an important tool these oligarchs exploit to stay in power and gain support from ignorant and under-educated poor people.
Why was there white flight? Racism. Why did they want to build freeways? For white flight. Don’t get cause and effect mixed up.
All these things are true and well documented. US housing policy is very much steeped in racism. Here’s a video that sums it up pretty well:
You can’t ![] videos.
So how do I videos?
I think you should put a text description:
Housing Discrimination: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Ok, changed it.
https://youtu.be/_-0J49_9lwc?si=LvvFx4upaSCdETy0
Or https://youtu.be/_-0J49_9lwc without trackers.
Or video
Fossil capitalism filled the niche that resulted from racial segregation.
I am interested in the replies
The more resources you waste publicly, the better. It indicates that you can afford it and brag about it.
Think about jewelry, expensive purses, sneakers, flashy cars, unused lawns, Halloween/Christmas/whatever decorations, etc.
Can’t grow anything but grass because they stripped off all the topsoil from the land that used to be a farm.
If you want a garden you need to buy soil
Grass (the trimmed always green lawn type) is more demanding than many other crops. If the grass is growing there, then the topsoil is good enough for some other things too. Also the topsoil is something you can develop, especially on such small scale as personal garden. Make compost, grow less demanding plants first nad your soil will get better. You can grow things on sand mixed with a bit of compost.
edit: looks like I’m wrong.
Do people in this thread really think the developer took the topsoil and sold it to someone else?
Bitch, please. Topsoil isn’t valuable enough to strip and truck somewhere. The tiny layer we humans can grow food in is just that thin in a large part of North America.
Deal with it.
They do though. They rip it all up and sell it off when they’re doing construction.
Source: used to work in commercial landscaping. Which on new jobsites involves bringing in new soil to replace the soil that’s gone.
That being said, there are places in the US where there isn’t much topsoil to begin with, it’s true.
Yeah but they don’t cart it off as part of some nefarious scheme to deprive home owners of the ability to grow their own produce.
Construction regulations dictate requirements for hardness and consistency. They test these metrics before construction can begin. The regulations have these requirements so peoples houses don’t… you know… fall over?
If you just bulldoze whatever and make the ground flat it’s going to be full of organic material that will decay and slump over time.
They have to remove that top soil, and of course it has some value so it can be sold rather than dumped.
Well, you’re not supposed to just plop houses on the ground, you should dig foundations on a stable substrate, and then build the house. It might require a bit more work of course.
Euuuh when you build a house fondation yes. But we’re talking about the garden next to it, right?
For a one off house yes, for developments of multiple blocks they just strip the lot.
jokes on you, here in the south the top soil is old swap and sometimes actual farm top soil, it is indeed bagged and sold off sometimes
Exactly. When I resodded our front lawn I kept finding building materials. I guess it’s common for construction workers to bury the trash when building a house rather than dispose of it correctly.
Every time I dig on my land I get two maybe three inches of topsoil and then the hardest goddamn clay I’ve ever encountered
Unfortunately you may need someone with a disc harrow or tiller to help the first time. It’s not preferred but I’ve no other ideas. Maybe Solar Punk does?
Which I would totally do if I had more than a 1/4 acre, most of which is taken up with a house and other structures. Getting a tractor and harrow out here for an 800 sq ft garden doesn’t make sense. I’ll probably do raised beds this year.
I can’t wait until I can move back to the country. The suburbs are the absolute worst.
Straw bale gardening sounds nifty, too. I’d try it if the previous owners of my place hadn’t already put in a couple of raised beds.
Alternate take, fix your 1/4 acre the natural way if you’re gonna be there a while.
Start a compost pile.
Aerate, plant clover, spread compost every year, plant a native tree or two and native plants underneath.
No need to till, just slowly amend.
I’m not planning on being here in four years so it doesn’t make sense to do anything that would make the house look “weird” and make it harder to sell.
it doesn’t make sense to do anything that would make the house look “weird” and make it harder to sell.
My guy you’re complaining about a problem you’re part of the cause of then.
Trees are weird? A healthy lawn is weird?
Why complain if you have the environment you want 🤷
I mean paying someone to borrow their/ till may be less expensive? That said, I like raised bed too. Easier to manage. Right now I’m looking at permaculture but not sure if I’m cut out for it.
Even if you have soil, in a whole lot of cities/municipalities/counties… there are zoning restrictions on growing certain amounts and kinds of plants/vegetables.
And HOAs. They all have their own restrictions as well.
Wanna collect rainwater?
Regulations on that too.
Wanna start a compost bin?
Well your neighbor can complain it smells bad in the summer. Might attract dangerous critters.
Hell, probably just laying down a sufficient amount of top soil might be enough to get a visit from an HOA rep or a county zoning wonk.
I’m not denying this happens in some places, but it’s not universal. I live in the suburbs and grow veggies during the summer. The state I live in has “right to garden” laws that prevent a lot of HOA restrictions. My city also has a rain barrel program to encourage their use and offers discounts on barrels.
As a German this amount of regulations, rules and bureaucracy astonishes me :D
Im Germany, there might be similar regulations for collecting rain water or having a compost depending on your commune.
Yes, but everybody ignores them
Bad smells are a reasonable point though.
Imissions of all kind (noise, smell) should be regulated. If you put a compost bin at the edge of your property, your neighbor should have a right to demand its removal.
That’s just a common law tort called nuisance.
Compost helps, storage is the issue. I’m ok with it open but not okay with the timber rattlers, cotton mouths and copperheads different scavengers would attract.
raised beds, kinda silly like a fridge in a heated house in a snow storm kinda way but they do work
Compost helps but you need at least a year to get good compost and you need way more than an individual household can supply.
Once you start growing plants, you’ll have much more compostable material than just the kitchen waste. You can also compost grass and tree leaves.
Yes, I’ve been discussing it with a neighbor. Storage is the current challenge. We need an old freezer with the coils gutted (snakes love coils, anyone with a boa or python for any length of time and a sofa can tell you!) or something. We’re looking.
snakes love coils, anyone with a boa or python for any length of time and a sofa can tell you!
That’s actually adorable (when it’s not wild/poisonous) and reminds me of how Odo’s quarters had interesting objects he liked to take the form of
I miss my snake.
I figured they took the soil from digging the foundation and spread it around the yard in order to grade it and that’s why the street is lower than the yard.
They do, but after they strip most of the good stuff off the top. Which kind of makes sense because it’s gonna be ruined by the construction. Top soil is only about 5-10 inches deep in most places and pretty compressible so any foundation is going to be deeper.
The real crime is plowing up farmland for tract housing.
Out where I live there are whole neighborhoods built and owned by rental companies. Rows of duplexes, blocks of single family residences built through the 70s and 80s. All rentals for decades, with some houses being sold off variously. And even then many of the buyers in the last 20 odd years were landlords themselves.
The guy I bought my house off of still owned 150 some houses in his direct name in my county, not counting what his business owned or his partners and associates owned directly in their network.
Tenants don’t exactly have a whole lot of choices of what they can do on the property, and many can only stay a year or so. It isn’t like they invest in the land: so grass.
