Archinect - News

Barack Obama calls for a housing revolution at the 2024 Democratic National Convention

2024-08-21T15:54:00-04:00

Calling on lawmakers to do away with the "outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people," former U.S. President Barack Obama thrilled audience members with an impassioned plea for mass-scale housing production at the 2024 Democratic National Convention last night in Chicago. One comment ("Right now, we are building housing this big. But we need to start building housing this big") has earned him a new viral reputation as a "YIMBY."

The rallying cry echoes remarks made two years ago at the 2022 AIA Conference on Architecture, namely about the intersection between housing justice, social inequality, and government policy that architects inhabit being intractable. Both the embattled single-family and expanding multi-family markets shrank by 6% and 14.4%, respectively, last year, according to Census Bureau data.

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris' plan to build three million new homes in four years faces a considerable amount of obstacles related...

NYC approved zero new housing starts for Manhattan last month despite glaring crisis

2023-08-14T18:18:00-04:00

The borough of Manhattan, home to 1.7 million people, approved no new units of housing last month and just 10 buildings with 279 units in total were approved last month in the other four boroughs combined. City leaders are raising the alarm about the anemic pace of development.

The lack of new housing starts mirrors a nationwide dip that was recorded at 24% for the month of June, according to the latest Dodge Construction Network report. Manhattan has seen ruinous housing cost increases since the pandemic abated, irking those in power who feel the need to end a citywide crisis is being blocked by a lack of tax incentive support and prohibitive zoning measures. By way of comparison,1,208 new units were approved in the Borough in July of 2013.

In May, the city's chief Housing Officer, Jessica Katz, resigned in frustration over the ineptitude. Some 560,000 units are needed to meet demands by the end of the decade, a scant 14% of which is currently under development according to statistics released by the city in December along with its "moonshot" plan for 500,000 new affordable units within the same timeframe. One now has to question what happened to the "quantum leap in the creation of new homes" called for at the time by Department of City Planning Director...

Liv-Connected launches a modular approach to home design and a solution to the growing housing shortage

2022-08-22T16:09:00-04:00

New York startup Liv-Connected has released a modular approach to housing that tackles the homebuilding market's material and skilled labor shortages and limited housing inventory.

Cofounded by architects Jordan Rogove, Wayne Norbeck, Joe Wheeler, and healthcare professional Dr. Herb Rogove in 2019 (Jordan Rogove and Wayne Norbeck are also cofounders of NYC-based architecture firm DXA Studio), the endeavor aimed to seek a solution to disaster-relief housing that embodied a sense of permanence and resulted in an affordable, sustainable, and high-quality, health-centered solution to homebuilding.

Image courtesy of Liv-Connected.

The emergence of Liv-Connected reflects the commitment to homeowners' health and wellness and their team of architects and healthcare providers. "We started with the assumption that disaster housing could be so thoughtful that it might become permanent," shared Norbeck during a conversation with Forbes' Jennifer Castenson. "We were interested in the possibil...

New homes made from repurposed train containers are heading to Chicago's South Side

2022-08-16T18:11:00-04:00

A team of investors has joined forces to bring luxury, energy-efficient container homes to the South Side — and neighbors could move in as soon as this winter. Vincennes Village, a collection of 12 40-foot-long modern, eco-friendly container homes, will be built at 7231 S. Vincennes Ave.

The Vincennes Village initiative, led by project manager Darryl Burton and developer Anthony Casboni, is reportedly the first to bring single-family container homes to Chicago.

Rendering: Vincennes Village

The structures will be built from 8-foot-long train shipping containers, with ceilings spanning nearly 10 feet high. Residences will be 1,200–1,800 square feet in size and two stories tall, including between three to four bedrooms. The new homes are advertised as energy-efficient, featuring motion-activated lights and faucets.

Onyx Architectural Services, a minority-owned Chicago firm, is the lead developer and aims to offer the homes at a starting price of $270,000.

Vacant jewels: a closer look at Boston's empty buildings

2019-06-17T14:40:00-04:00

All over town, buildings sit empty, somehow unused despite a fierce shortage of housing and a long-running development boom that has transformed long-quiet patches of the city into hot property. [...] Some are better kept than others. Some have more prestigious addresses. But each is a puzzle unto its own.

Boston Globe reporter Tim Logan investigates the factors behind Boston's many vacant buildings — despite a booming real estate market. "Even crumbling and empty buildings serve a purpose in a new Boston where so much is shiny and fresh," writes Logan.

The rise of the micro-apartment

2019-05-02T19:29:00-04:00

Even in less densely populated cities, there is a palpable sense that space is squeezed. “City populations are growing; space is finite. We need a solution to that,” says Reza Merchant, chief executive of The Collective, a UK co-living apartment operator.

Rather than building up, two popular responses to the housing shortage proposed by building owners have been to densify and to promote cohabitation. For consumers, escalating prices and population growth make subscribing to micro apartments and co-living situations appealing options, while for building owners, the opportunity for a significant increase in rental income without constructing additional square footage is almost too good to pass up.

A studio apartment in Greenwich Village, New York, selling for over $1.4 million.

Yet this tendency poses a problem; George Hammond of the Financial Times begs the question: "how can city planners accommodate growth without compromising quality of life; and how can they house those attracted to cities without destroying the attraction?" While density is a key factor in reducing the carbon footprints of city-dwellers, the loss of privacy and a proper respite from the cities in which they're placed suggest that there could be more thoughtful so...

To tackle Honolulu's housing shortage, lawmakers take inspiration from Singapore

2019-05-01T13:12:00-04:00

Hawaii and Honolulu laws require most new developments to set aside a certain percentage of units as affordable rental housing, but it’s not enough. In five years, Honolulu will still need thousands of additional new units. That has elected officials looking for other solutions to the problem, and some think they’ve found one in Singapore.

The housing proposal put forward by Hawaii State Senator Stanley Chang is called Affordable Locally Owned Homes for All, or ALOHA, and looks to replicate the public housing program of Singapore which has a comparable median household income.

Marketplace's Ryan Finnerty reports that the "vast majority of Singaporeans live in flats built by the government — [...] between 80% and 85% of the island nation’s 5.6 million residents. Singapore residents can purchase a two-bedroom flat on the resale market for less than $300,000."

Examining the Housing Crisis—a book and a film

2017-09-01T15:46:00-04:00

Housing has instead become one of the primary drivers of global capitalism, through commodification and financialization, making its function as real estate more important than its use as lived, space. It is the result of spatial developments being market-driven. Madden and Marcuse: “housing is not produced and distributed for dwelling at all,” but “as a commodity to enrich the few.”

The German documentary City for Sale that came out last year and the recently released book In Defense of Housing are the perfect match for anyone who wants to learn about the broken nature of housing markets, the crisis currently happening in all big cities worldwide.

City for Sale consists of interviews taken over a course of 4 years, where the author, Andreas Wilcke, accompanies real estate agents and investors during their daily routine and films tenants struggling to cope with the situation, providing the viewers with an opportunity to experience the turnaround of a whole city virtually at first hand.

In Defense of Housing by David Madden and Peter Marcuse, too, is full of examples from both sides of the story, where personal property are examined as both categories–shelter, safety, identity for the general population versus investment and a supplemental source of income for the lucky few. The book also demonstrates examples of numerous cities and countries, detailing destructi...

Housing shortage statistics demonstrate the cities that are still building

2017-08-29T15:03:00-04:00

Trulia isolated the markets in which building permits for residential construction are being issued at rates above historical averages, which have been calculated by looking at the number of permits issued each year between 1980 and 2016. The study also shows that Austin, Dallas and Houston, issued over 10% of all permits in the nation in 2017.These cities are projected to add about 130,000 new homes by the end of the year, their growth driven by abundant jobs and rising incomes and home prices.

According to the real estate website Trulia, the number of homes available for sale decreased 8.9 percent in the second quarter of 2017 compared to a year earlier, which follows decreases every quarter for the two past years.

The projected number of new building permits in 2017 grew the most in the following cities:

Austin, TX (+107.7% higher than historical average)
Charleston, SC (+72.8%)
Nashville, TN (+65.8%)
Philadelphia, PA (+62.3%)
Boston, MA (+61%)

Decreasing the most in:

Worcester, MA (-85.5%)
Allentown, PA (-85.0%)
New Haven, CT (-80.8%)
Akron, OH (-77.1%)
Syracuse, NY (-70.8%)

Los Angeles and Honolulu are the toughest cities to build in

2017-07-27T17:15:00-04:00

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on the housing shortage in Venice Beach. As one of Los Angeles' hottest neighborhoods—in large part due to the influx of tech companies that have made it their home and lent it the new nickname, Silicon Beach—it might come as a surprise to learn that the zip code has not added a single new housing unit in 15 years. In fact, Venice Beach had roughly 700 fewer housing units in 2015 than it did in 2000 and despite adding 4,000 new jobs, lost 3,800 residents.

According to Issi Romem, a chief economist at BuildZoom who conducted the analysis of data for the publication, the lack of new housing accommodations is a result of overly strict building and zoning restrictions as well as stiff community opposition that has caused the precinct to become the "Toughest Zip Code in America to Build In." When we expand from zip code to city limit, Romem's data found that Los Angeles, in general, sits right behind Honolulu to take second place in terms of t...

Four out of five of small-scale developers in the UK have gone out of business, contributing to the housing crisis

2017-03-06T13:17:00-05:00

A new report by the online property marketplace LendInvest reveals that four out of five of Britain’s housebuilders have gone out of business in the last 30 months. This is largely due to the dominance of the eight largest builders—responsible for constructing more than 50% of the country’s new houses. This lack of competition contributes to the UK’s massive housing shortage, which, in turn, drives up the price of homes.

According to the report, the UK government could help spur new development by making a percentage of land available exclusively for small and medium businesses, as well as simplifying tax burdens.

“"80% of small-scale developers have gone out of business since the last housebuilding boom. That’s an appalling statistic,” states the CEO of LendInvest Christian Faes. “It’s meant less employment, less entrepreneurialism and fewer new homes on British streets where large-scale housebuilders didn’t pick up the slack.”

H/T Business Insider

...

How to put an end to housing bubbles once and for all

2017-02-10T17:17:00-05:00

Suppose there were a way to pump up the economy, reduce inequality and put an end to destructive housing bubbles like the one that contributed to the Great Recession. The idea would be simple, but not easy, requiring a wholesale reframing of the United States economy and housing market. The solution: Americans, together and all at once, would have to stop thinking about their homes as an investment.

In Hong Kong, a housing shortage is leading people to live in 25 sq. ft. "space capsule pods"

2017-01-18T14:08:00-05:00

Hong Kong is a crowded city. According to census figures reported by Quartz, 57,100 households live in spaces between 75 and 140 sq ft. And, for the most part, the conditions of these tiny homes aren’t exactly great. Enter Sandy Wong, the inventor of a “space capsule pod”, a 25 sq. ft., ventilated, room rents for about $400-650 per month.

Space capsule-type dwellings aren’t exactly new. In Japan, for example, capsule hotels have been around for ages. These ones are pretty nice—they come replete with a computer, a TV, a bed, and a fire extinguisher. Residents share a kitchen and bathroom, which is already a norm in Hong Kong.

And, apparently, they’re a hit. Wong reports renting out the first ten capsules in a mere 15 days. Now he plans to build 1,000 more.

Almost half of Londoners support limits on building height

2016-08-29T19:24:00-04:00

Most Londoners think tall buildings should only be built in areas like the City and Canary Wharf, and that there should be limits on how high they can be, according to a survey for the Skyline Campaign published today. The findings come after Westminster Council controversially gave the green light for a 30 storey tower to be built in Paddington, and show stark differences in the views of Londoners in the inner and outer boroughs...

While 49% of those living in inner London think that the 270 proposed, planned, or under construction towers set to go up in London is too many, only 34% of people from the outer boroughs agree. Additionally, the study found that Londoners are, by and large, skeptical that tall buildings will solve the city's housing shortage.

For more on housing in London, follow these links:

Why cities need to expand their idea of who is a "local"

2016-08-10T15:10:00-04:00

Part of the challenge throughout California and plenty of other communities...is that we tend to make local policy — and housing policy in particular — as if the only people who matter in a community are the ones who go to bed there at night. We don't think of people who work but don't "live" there, or who'd like to live there but can't afford to, or who once lived there but had to leave, or who could access better jobs if only they could move there, or who commute through there...

You may effectively live your life within, say, San Francisco or Washington, D.C., going to school there, working there, dropping your children at day care there, spending your money and your waking time there. But if, at the end of the day, you go sleep somewhere else, you are invisible to the process of how we decide what's right for that city.

Check out some related articles:

California lawmakers turn to "granny flats" to help ease housing shortage

2016-07-27T14:52:00-04:00

To help ease California’s housing crisis, Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers are turning to people’s backyards. Multiple bills with the endorsement of Brown are moving through the Legislature to make it easier for homeowners to build small units on their properties, whether in their garages, as additions to existing homes or as new, freestanding structures. [Mayor] Eric Garcetti and other supporters hope the relaxed rules will spur backyard home building to combat a housing shortage..

For more on Los Angeles' major housing crisis, check out these links:

Silicon Valley is set to get over 10K more housing units – is this the beginning of the end of its housing crisis?

2016-03-08T21:03:00-05:00

Last week the city council in Mountain View, California, took a significant step toward addressing Silicon Valley's housing affordability crisis. The city approved a new planning document for its North Bayshore district that envisions the creation of up to 10,250 units of high-density housing. Mountain View only has about 32,000 households total, so that would be a substantial 32 percent increase [...]

"The big question is whether this represents an isolated victory for housing advocates or whether it's the start of a trend toward denser development in Silicon Valley more broadly."

For more on the housing woes of the world's tech capital, check out these links:

Encroaching on the green belt: UK loosens protections on rural land

2015-12-16T17:46:00-05:00

If there is one thing Britons dislike more than their country’s housing shortage, it is the idea of building more houses. Even as a lack of homes has sent prices through the roof... cities have remained ringed by protected “green belts” of land that are off-limits to developers. Attempts to build on them provoke outcry. But on December 7th the government published a consultation on letting councils allocate “appropriate small-scale sites in the green belt specifically for starter homes”...

Kevin Daly's Backyard BI(h)OME provides affordable housing for humans and wildlife

2015-06-18T15:40:00-04:00

Fittingly, Poolside’s version of “Harvest Moon” echoed off the wooden planks of the Broad Arts Center at UCLA on June 10th as a crowd of optimists, architects, and Ira-Glass lookalikes drank their way in and out of the opening reception for BI(h)OME, Kevin Daly Architects’ proposed “granny flat” solution to the L.A. Housing Crisis. The music was fitting because it was a laid-back cover of a much older tune: instead of raw passion, a more pragmatic vision of affordable housing was being unveiled, a 350-square foot, EFTE-enveloped, recyclable component-laden dwelling with wall cavities for bats, birds, and bugs. The students from cityLAB who manually assembled the mock-up of the BI(h)ome formed a lab-coat wearing cluster of “house doctors” as they stood behind Dana Cuff, Frances Anderton of KCRW, and Kevin Daly for a twenty-minute panel-style discussion about the future of housing in Los Angeles.

Part sales-pitch, part design lecture, the discussion encompassed the difficulties that Lo...