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Developer MP Los Angeles has announced plans to construct Hollywood Center, a $1-billion mixed-use complex near the Capitol Records Building in Hollywood.
According to MP Los Angeles, the project - which was filed today with the City of Los Angeles - will feature the largest on-site affordable housing component of any market-rate development in the history of the city.
— urbanize.la
The landmark Capitol Records building sits right adjacent to the proposed Hollywood Center development. Image: MP Los Angeles.Handel Architects and James Corner Field Operations will be in charge of designing the two 35 and 46-story high-rise towers, two 11-story mid-rise buildings, and two civic... View full entry
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has asked for public comments on the current and planned standards for manufactured housing. This action is taken following an executive directive to reduce the U.S. government’s overall regulatory complexity. — fluxus-prefab.com
In January HUD announced a review of manufactured housing rules seeking public comments on identifying regulations which stifle affordable housing. Fluxus LLC, a prefabricated building technology platform, has submitted the following comment for the HUD Regulations Division’s consideration... View full entry
Though he's called New York home for decades, Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind has yet to see a NYC building to completion. But it appears that will soon change with his first ground-up building, a 197-unit affordable housing project on the Sumner Houses in Bed-Stuy. A January press release credits Studio Daniel Libeskind as the designer of the 10-story building-to-be, and a rendering shows an angular white-colored building done in the firm’s signature un-orthogonal style. — 6sqft
The "Future of the American City" initiative led by Harvard Graduate University School of Design will begin in Miami with $1 million in support from the Knight Foundation. The project will engage Miami residents in creating new approaches to address pressing urban issues including affordable... View full entry
The City quietly told developers this week that it will no longer fund a 150-unit affordable senior housing project proposed in the wealthy Forest Hill neighborhood, citing rising costs and neighborhood pushback. [...]
Neighbors have also railed against the project at community meetings since 2016 when the project was first funded, claiming impoverished tenants at the affordable housing project would endanger their neighborhood.
— San Francisco Examiner
Local multidisciplinary creative firm DFA has come up with a concept for the rehabilitation of Chelsea's rapidly disintegrating Pier 40 that would provide housing and other services but would also adapt to the predicted rising sea levels of future NYC. The future-proof housing, commercial, and recreation complex would rise from the Hudson River and be able to remain above water in the event of rising sea levels while addressing the city’s dire need for affordable housing. — 6sqft
Renderings courtesy of DFA Renderings courtesy of DFA View full entry
The number of those living in the streets and shelters of the city of L.A. and most of the county surged 75% — to roughly 55,000 from about 32,000 — in the last six years.
But the crisis has been decades in the making. If homelessness continues to escalate at current rates, it will swamp even the best efforts.
— Los Angeles Times
Despite declaring homelessness in the city an 'emergency' and committing drastically increased funds to housing and services, Los Angeles is failing to improve the lives of its unsheltered citizens. View full entry
A company in Colombia is tackling plastic waste issues and affordable housing with a single ingenious solution: interlocking LEGO-like bricks that can be used to build houses for a few thousand dollars per structure. Walls are formed using a slim slotted brick then framed using a thicker module used for beams and columns, locking the smaller units into place and providing rigid vertical and lateral support. — weburbanist.com
What to do with the heaps and mounds of plastic piling up all over our planet? Build LEGO's. Conceptos Plásticos' technological innovations make their plastic block homes cost only $5,000. The company is also using this new method to build emergency shelters, community and educational... View full entry
Stacker was one of 188,000 people who applied for 20,000 spots in the voucher waiting line for the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles. And that line won’t be moving quickly. The Housing Authority’s Section 8 director, Carlos VanNatter, said only about 200 vouchers become available here every month, basically when a pay raise makes someone ineligible or someone dies. — marketplace.org
While the national average wait time for Section 8 vouchers is currently more than two years (with nearly half of all housing authorities having closed their lists to new applicants), the situation in big cities like New York and Los Angeles is so dire that residents have to apply for a coveted... View full entry
The savvy emphasis on escape and disconnectedness and repose has resonated among the millennials Getaway aims to reach. In each of its markets, outside New York, Boston and Washington, Getaway’s houses are booked solid on weekends, and in early 2017, the company, founded by two Harvard graduates, raised $15 million in venture capital funding, which suggests that a tiny house campground may soon be coming to a forest near you. — The Washington Post
Getaway positions its retreats just outside major cities where individuals are encouraged to recharge and reconnect in nature. Tapping into the tiny house phenomena that rapidly gained popularity among millennials after the 2008 housing crisis, Getaway houses can be rented at just over $160 a... View full entry
In the 1970s, a state agency tapped some of the best young architects in the country for an ambitious affordable housing effort that—despite its flaws—could not be matched today.
Twin Parks, an affordable housing project in the Bronx, does not comport with expectations. [...]
Overall, it provides palpably better affordable housing than what’s typically offered in the U.S., and maintains an engaged community.
— CityLab
CityLab writer Anthony Paletta looks back at the origins of the 1970s Twin Parks affordable housing development in the Bronx and its (now) famous architects who were then just gaining traction in their young careers, most notably Richard Meier, James Polshek (and this year's winner of the AIA Gold... View full entry
Four walls and a roof, a basic bathroom and a kitchen sink. Basic access to electricity (a couple of sockets "here and there") and no flooring or wall coverings. This is what the non-for profit developers Naked House – created by a London-based startup – is proposing as an alternative to the £484,000 standard cost of a home for fellow members of generation rent. — Independent
If you thought coming home with Ikea boxes made for an exciting afternoon of assembly, a London based startup, Naked House, is thinking of you. The concept of the startup is to allow the owner to have full control of the interior creation of their homes. With the current thread of DIY reaching... View full entry
How do you raise the standard of living in the poorest neighborhoods in the country?
That’s what community developers, typically nonprofits that build and finance affordable housing, have tried to do over the last few decades. And yet [...] many of these communities remain stuck in poverty. [...]
This problem has stumped community developers for decades. But two local nonprofits think they’ve hit on something: They’ve created a private equity fund.
— marketplace.org
A real estate developer in Hawaii is under scrutiny for its plans to build a residential high-rise that has two separate entrances: one for high-income residents and another for low-income earners.
[...] will include 78 affordable rental units for people earning 80 percent or less of the area median income, as required by Honolulu’s affordable housing strategy. The other 351 units will be market-priced condominiums. If things go as ProsPac plans, the units will be separated with two entrances.
— huffingtonpost.com
Various examples of so-called "poor doors" in New York City, London, and Vancouver made the headlines in previous years, sparking heated debate across a number of Archinect comment sections. View full entry
It was a Levittown moment for Mexico — a test of the increasingly prosperous nation’s first-world ambitions. But Mexico fell disastrously short of creating that orderly suburbia. The program has devolved into a slow-motion social and financial catastrophe, inflicting daily hardships and hazards on millions in troubled developments across the country. — Los Angeles Times
The Mexican government collaborated with private developers to undertake the largest residential construction program in all of Latin America. From 2001 to 2012, an estimated 20 million people moved into newly built developments. The program cost more than $100 billion promising affordable housing... View full entry