Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
Austin on Thursday became the largest city in the country to stop requiring new developments to have a set amount of parking — a move aimed at both fighting climate change and spurring more housing construction amid the city’s affordability crisis. The Austin City Council voted 8-2 Thursday to wipe out minimum parking requirements for virtually every kind of property citywide. That includes single-family homes, apartment buildings, offices and shopping malls. — The Texas Tribune
As noted by The Texas Tribune, housing advocates, developers, and climate activists have increasingly advocated for the erasure of parking requirements, which have been found to drive up housing costs and fuels a dependency on cars. Cities across the country in recent years, including Portland... View full entry
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a major reform to homebuilding in the state. The Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act, signed on September 28th, will override local zoning codes to allow for more affordable housing units to be built on land previously zoned for commercial... View full entry
The disappearance of such affordable homes is central to the American housing crisis. The nation has a deepening shortage of housing. But, more specifically, there isn’t enough of this housing: small, no-frills homes that would give a family new to the country or a young couple with student debt a foothold to build equity. [...]
At the root is the math problem of putting — or keeping — a low-cost home on increasingly pricey land.
— The New York Times
America has a long history of gradually siphoning away architecture made for predominantly middle-class people (think pre-war buildings in Manhattan or Levittown tract housing on Long Island) and is now simply under-delivering what could otherwise be an equalizing force as a result of prevailing... View full entry
A new Silicon Valley startup is taking the charge put forth by the recent expansion of ADUs and other non-traditional forms of accommodation in the uphill battle to provide affordable housing to the millions of Californians struggling to find a way forward. Business Insider recently took a closeup... View full entry
Authorities in San Francisco are making moves to bring a $600 million affordable housing bond to voters later this year. The bond, according a recent press release, would allow the city to "fund the creation, preservation, and rehabilitation of affordable housing in San Francisco." City officials... View full entry
The damage from the housing crisis — a toxic combination of frenzied buying, rampant construction, predatory lending and investment excess — was extensive. Of the 23,000 single-family homes in the 89031 ZIP code, more than 7,500 have had at least one foreclosure since 2006, according to Attom Data Solutions. — NYT
A team including; Matthew Goldstein, Robert Gebeloff, Ross Mantle and Matt Ruby released a deep dive into the community of North Las Vegas. The global financial crisis of 2008 impacted it greatly and though the local housing market has strengthened and it is today one of the fastest-growing cities... View full entry
The billboard suggested the rapid rise in home values between 2008 and 2017 necessitates a steep tax aimed at speculative flipping. The proposed tax would grab as much as 100 per cent of the profit from a home resale during the first year of ownership, then decline by increments of 10 per cent over 10 years. It would target non-resident and resident buyers alike, including primary residences [...] the goal is to keep Toronto’s popular neighbourhoods affordable for all income levels. — The Globe and Mail
The number of apartments deemed affordable for very low-income families across the United States fell by more than 60 percent between 2010 and 2016, according to a new report by Freddie Mac.
The report by the government-backed mortgage financier is the first to compare rent increases in specific units over time. It examined loans that the corporation had financed twice between 2010 and 2016, allowing a comparison of the exact same rental units and how their affordability changed.
— The Washington Post
The Washington Post reports about a new report by Freddie Mac: "More renters flooded the market after people lost their homes in the housing crisis. The apartment vacancy rate was 8 percent in 2009, compared to 4 percent in 2017. That trend, coupled with a stagnant supply of apartments, resulted... View full entry
New York City is in the throes of a humanitarian emergency, a term defined by the Humanitarian Coalition of large international aid organizations as “an event or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people.” New York’s is [...] a “complex emergency”: man-made and shaped by a combination of forces that have led to a large-scale “displacement of populations” from their homes. — The New York Review of Books
"What makes the crisis especially startling," author Michael Greenberg continues in his latest piece for The New York Review of Books, "is that New York has the most progressive housing laws in the country and a mayor who has made tenants’ rights and affordable housing a central focus of his... View full entry
The average price of building a garage parking space (as much as $34,000 in 2012) is passed on to people whether they own a car or not, and distort the true demand for urban parking. — Quartz
According to the 2011 National American Housing Survey data of the US census, about 16% of a housing unit’s monthly rental cost is attributable to the expense of building an urban parking spot. For the average renter that amounts to to $1,700 per year, or $142 per month. Parking mandates... View full entry
The standard yardstick for judging housing affordability is to look at the median level of rents or home prices. As we all remember from statistics, the median is the observation in the middle of the distribution. And while for many purposes, it’s a reliable indicator of typical prices, in some neighborhoods, particularly those with a mix of expensive and cheap housing, the median is actually a weak indicator of affordability. — City Observatory
"For an illustration of this problem, imagine two neighborhoods. In both places, the median home costs $300,000. But in the first neighborhood, every home costs exactly $300,000, while in the second, there are a range of homes from $100,000 to $500,000. Although both neighborhoods have the same... View full entry
Lenders often give special treatment to the wealthy, of course, but the tech industry has created a particularly ripe crop of clients who are rich or on their way. [...]
“Lenders get so caught up trying to stay competitive and finding a market edge, they basically allow greed to overcome common sense ... Easy money does fuel and accelerate the inevitable bubble.”
— bloomberg.com
Related on Archinect:Facebook enters the housing market – and it's probably not a good thingGoogle acquires LinkedIn's HQ in huge, unexpected property swapWhat's the newest project for Silicon Valley investors? Building citiesSilicon Valley is set to get over 10K more housing units – is this... View full entry
my research shows that longtime residents aren’t more likely to move when their neighborhood gentrifies; sometimes they’re actually less likely to leave [...]
In a 2009 study, I found that gentrifying neighborhoods are more racially diverse than non-gentrifying ones. [...]
To be sure, market forces help change commerce in gentrifying neighborhoods. But often lurking behind the “invisible hand” are activists and policymakers who wish to nudge the market to produce certain outcomes.
— washingtonpost.com
Lance Freeman's research at GSAPP focuses on issues related to gentrification, affordable housing, and race. Watch the Washington Post's video below, summing up the myths:Related on Archinect:A tale of two parks: debate rages over a new plan for a "Maker Park" in BrooklynA telltale sign of... View full entry
We’re growing faster than any other metropolitan area in the country, and we have been for the last five years...And the challenges are, with all the growth that we’re having, we’re going to stop being the city that we imagine that we are, that we remember being. We have to grow to be the city that we still recognize. So those challenges are not optional challenges for us to deal with, they’re the challenges for us to deal with. — Metropolis Magazine
As Austin rapidly becomes an "it" city, how will the city keep its character? Metropolis talks with Austin Mayor Steve Adler about the multiple challenges ahead.More on Archinect:Seven U.S. cities competing to be the "smartest" in urban transit systemsGuns in the Studio: Texas' new campus carry... View full entry
when media outlets report cost of materials as being some $13,000, I want to know what was donated in terms of materials, too. Were permit fees waived? There are many times when you need a licensed architect or engineer for certain permits, and that’s not likely in these totals.
It is completely fine to get around having to do that stuff, but it’s not truthful to report the results without the real numbers as a part of the story. These kinds of things get shared around...
— Jordan Pollard – metropolismag.com
Related on Archinect:Michael Kimmelman on the state of affordable housing in NYCLessons learned: The complex realities when designing communal social housingThe Guardian reveals how developers play the planning system to get around affordable housingDevelopers in California can be required to... View full entry