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A City Council committee could take the first steps Tuesday toward mandating that developers include affordable units in new housing complexes to be built in several East Austin neighborhoods.
The proposal by Council Member Greg Casar, who chairs the council’s Planning and Neighborhoods Committee, comes as soaring rents have pushed poorer and minority residents out of the city.
— My Statesman
The plan would mark a significant shift in direction from the current, incentive-based approach that allows developers to build larger buildings in exchange for including affordable housing units. As it stands now, developers can also pay a fee to the city's housing fund in order to build... View full entry
OK, so this would mean the way to make San Francisco as affordable as (say) Portland would be to either cut everybody’s salary in half, or fire half of them, or allow the city’s population to rapidly grow about 50 percent, to about 1.2 million, while the number of housing units increased even faster. — Michael Andersen, on Medium
In discussing San Francisco's rising housing costs over the years, journalist Michael Andersen re-emphasizes some points in this recent blogpost by a man named Eric Fischer, who took his own approach in analyzing the city's housing prices before 1979, when SF's rent-control rates began being... View full entry
We inhabit a lampoon of capitalism. Marx would certainly get a laugh out of the view: the mountain of capital left to rust unused, and just beyond, a second mountain, still alive with fire and action and thriving alongside the corpse of its former rival. — Numéro Cinq
Canadian writer Shawn Selway provides an intimate and critical view of the urbanization—and subsequent decline—of Hamilton, Ontario. The issues he raises can be found around the globe. Hamilton is one more piece in the puzzle we're all trying to live in—and solve.Another quotation from the... View full entry
“How can you morally and ethically justify in your own mind working on a project that would take people accustomed to living on the ground, of having their gardens, chickens, and their little animals in their yards, having space around them, having flowers, to live in these twenty-four... View full entry
In addition to housing for low- and moderate-income households, the mixed-use and mixed-income development will include a supermarket with healthy food options, a charter school, a medical facility, cultural and community spaces, a social services facility, and a rehabilitated playground that is currently closed. [...]
The 24-story building is expected to be the largest residential Passive House built in New York City and use 70% less energy than conventional buildings.
— housingfinance.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Michael Kimmelman on the state of affordable housing in NYCLessons learned: The complex realities when designing communal social housingThe Bronx’s once celebrated Lambert Houses face an unclear fate View full entry
Under the new law, the city would be able to relax some of the rules that often stop such [bootlegged] apartments from being legalized, allowing more density and loosening parking requirements.
In return, landlords who seek to legalize bootlegged units will have to provide some affordable apartments at those buildings — and guarantee that they remain affordable for at least 55 years, under a legal covenant documented with the county recorder.
— latimes.com
Related on Archinect:Clickbait is making affordable housing even more of an uphill battleHomes of the homeless, seized: L.A. cracks down on free housingCalifornia to decrease parking requirements for affordable housingDevelopers in California can be required to include low-income housing, courts... 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
Escalating their battle to stamp out an unprecedented spread of street encampments, city officials have begun seizing tiny houses from homeless people living on freeway overpasses in South Los Angeles.
Three of the gaily painted wooden houses, which come with solar-powered lights and American flags, were confiscated earlier this month and seven more are planned for impound Thursday, a Bureau of Sanitation spokeswoman said.
— The Los Angeles Times
Does providing homes for the homeless solve the problem? Studies would indicate that it does, based on our coverage of the development of programs across the globe to help provide permanent, individualized shelter for the homeless, including those in Utah, Seattle, and London.Here's a... View full entry
“The combination of the course offerings on a regular basis in subject-area courses, housing studios, design-build, as well as programs for both students and the primary faculty involved—that we feel is unique,” says UO architecture professor Michael Fifield. — Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, American Institute of Architecture
The University of Oregon Department of Architecture was recognized in January as among the finest in the country for its housing design education.UO architecture faculty members Michael Fifield, Peter Keyes, and Rob Thallon, who spearhead the UO Housing Specialization Program, received the... View full entry
[Healthabitat, the non-profit Paul Pholeros co-founded,] developed a model called Housing for Health...working with Aboriginal communities, conducting a survey of all housing and completing urgent repairs using mainly local Indigenous contractors, and adding whatever upgrades or repairs they can afford until the money runs out.
The organisation has improved more than 8,000 houses – a third of Australia’s Indigenous-controlled housing stock – and with them the lives of 55,000 people.
— The Guardian
More on Archinect: New study suggests Aboriginal collective memory reaches back more than 7,000 years Mindscraper: high-rise educational facility renderings in Sydney unveiled by Grimshaw & BVN An illustrated history of Canberra, the Australian capital designed by American architects Peter... View full entry
New York City once set the standard for subsidized housing. The city started out building and maintaining tens of thousands of apartments for working families, sponsoring job training and social programs. It ran a budget surplus. [...] Now the Village is like a gated playground for runaway wealth. Subsidized apartments all across town are converting to market-rate rentals and condos faster than City Hall can build affordable units or preserve old ones. — nytimes.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:NYC's public-housing woesThe promising affordable housing of Hunters Point SouthMy Micro NYC Apartment Complex Is Officially Renting View full entry
What went wrong in Winnipeg was not just about architecture, and 5468796 were stuck trying to make the best of a bad situation. The pulling out of government support to make Centre Village an actual co-operative changed the [project's direction]...'It’s time to get the peanut butter off our fingers,' said Ross McGowan, former chief executive and president of CentreVenture...He admits that a failure to understand the needs of the community took a considerable toll on the project. — The Guardian
Despite good intentions to help families in need, perhaps the worst nightmare an architect can face when designing affordable housing is realizing that the project — which would of course already be fully built — doesn't meet the actual demands of the community, and then some. That's basically... View full entry
Carmel Place (formerly known as My Micro NY), the city’s much-talked-about first micro apartment complex, began accepting applications for its affordable studios back in September. And now, a press release from developer Monadnock has announced that listings for 12 of the market-rate units will go live today in anticipation of the February opening date. Along with the launch comes news of Ollie, “an innovative housing model that delivers an all-inclusive living experience.” — 6sqft
There will be 55 micro studios; 22 of which will be affordable and priced at $950 and $1,500, while the rest are going for $2,540 a month. Mind you, units average only 300 square feet. View full entry
good architecture can survive budgetary rigors — at Hunters Point South, for instance, where a pair of hulking towers designed by SHoP and Ismael Levya Architects expresses de Blasio’s urgency even though it’s a holdover from the era of the allegedly Nero-like Michael Bloomberg. [...]
SHoP’s new towers are not world-beating architecture, but they’re more than good enough to plug into an evolving network of ferries, parks, schools, shops, all of which foster more investment.
— nymag.com
More on affordable housing in New York:New York's "poor doors" are no moreNYC's public-housing woesThe Chinese government is building affordable housing in BrooklynArchitecture vs. Housing: The Case of Sugar Hill View full entry
Late in the day on Friday [Governor Jerry Brown] signed Assembly Bill 744, which allows affordable housing developers to build less parking than many local zoning regulations currently permit.
The bill is a victory for affordable housing advocates, who have been saying for a number of years that the burden of building more parking than tenants use has made affordable housing too expensive to build.
— cal.streetsblog.org
More on the politics of parking:Los Angeles has Created the Perfect Parking SignFlexible Parking Structures as Civic CatalystsTrading Parking Lots for Affordable HousingBuy Condo, Then Add Parking Spot for $1 Million"Graphing Parking" charts out of whack U.S. minimum parking regulations View full entry