_portrait.jpg){kind=link}
"Emmitsburg Mayor Frank Davis voted for Donald Trump in hopes he would cut federal spending. Now Davis hopes those cuts don't include the permanent cancellation of classes at the National Fire Academy, which is part of the town's identity and helps drive its economy. Davis is also a chief at Emmitsburg's firehouse, known as the Vigilant Hose Company."
Trump killed the Fema training academy. It's not coming back.
Wooden structures are easier and cheaper, if you build out of brick, housing prices in the US will go up even more. Also, wood has some other advantages over bricks, such as being more resilient against earthquakes.
How much of the US is over a fault line?
Just about all houses in Europe are made of brick.
They're no more expensive than houses in the US.
Not saying which is better (frankly I don't know), just pointing out that it really isn't as straightforward as using brick rather than wood making US house prices go up - maybe in the past, but nowadays land prices, manpower costs and speculation are what drives the realestate prices.
(After all, brick is basically baked clay, so hardly expensive stuff)
Also as somebody else pointed out brick houses last significantly longer than wood houses.
I googled and it said most homes in Germany are timber framed. Almost all house in cities in the US are brick. Fires burn the stuff inside. The outer shell doesn't matter.
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/3-firefighters-killed-1-in-serious-condition-following-baltimore-rowhouse-fire
How much of the prizes are really material costs vs. investor gains?
On a quick search, it seems wood houses are even more expensive to build in Europe (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352710222001012). This is probably not true in the US (which has a very different infrastructure). But if one takes resale value or long time reinvestments into account, I don't think wood houses are that much cheaper, even in the US, as a percentage of the overall investment.