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Calling on lawmakers to do away with the "outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people," former U.S. President Barack Obama thrilled audience members with an impassioned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... View full entry
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. — Business Insider
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — Block Club Chicago
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... View full entry
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
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. View full entry
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. — Financial Times
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... View full entry
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. — Marketplace
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... View full entry
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.” — Failed Architecture
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... View full entry
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. — The New York Times
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— New York Times
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... View full entry
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... — Ipsos Mori
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... View full entry
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...
— the Washington Post
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... View full entry
