Big Houses Are Not Green: America’s McMansion Problem

The recent mansion boom produced millions of energy-wasting homes with thousands of square feet that Americans don’t need — not the behavior of a society that’s thinking about a sustainable future.

In Los Gatos, Calif., controversy has raged this summer over the city planning commission

The just-popped housing bubble has left behind a couple of million families in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. It has also spawned a new generation of big, deluxe, under-occupied houses bulked up on low-interest steroids.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) estimates that 42 percent of newly built houses now have more than 2,400 square feet of floorspace, compared with only 10 percent in 1970. In 1970 there were so few three-bathroom houses that they didn’t even to show up in NAHB statistics. By 2005, one out of every four new houses had at least three bathrooms.

AlterNet