While President Trump talks repeatedly about fixing America’s inner cities, it’s a good bet that in the coming years, New York and other large metropolitan areas will need to be more self-reliant in solving pressing problems, especially low-income housing. [...]

Fortunately, there’s an already tested alternative: an annual luxury housing tax, levied on new high-end condos and rentals, which would feed a self-sustaining fund dedicated to develop truly affordable units. — New York Times Op-Ed by Eric Uhlfelder

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

From a self-sustaining city to refurbished-shipping containers, private sector real-estate developers are offering both big and small solutions — BBC News

Isn’t Ilfracombe already a town?

Yes, but Hirst was deeply involved in the application process for an eco-friendly, 750-home development known as the Southern Extension.

That’s a terrible name for a town.

Which is probably why the scheme was known as Hirst-on-Sea until recently.

Until recently?

Hirst, who lives nearby, has now withdrawn from the project. His company, Resign, says it could not find a developer to build houses “in keeping with our vision”. — The Guardian

Park Plaza is a mobile home park, or what industry calls a manufactured housing community. Five years ago, the residents banded together, formed a nonprofit co-op and bought their entire neighborhood from the company that owned it. Today, these residents exert democratic control over almost 9 acres of prime suburbs, with 80 manufactured houses sited on them. — npr.org

LMN Architects [...] wants the tower to survive 50 to 100 years. “If that’s the case, we do need to make sure—I feel we do have have the responsibility—that if the parking uses do change, we design to be able to adapt to that change,” [...] the coming transformation to a car-free-ish future. With rideshare, bikeshare, carshare, increasing transit options, and fully automated vehicles on the horizon, cities are less eager to allocate precious space for empty, parked cars. — wired.com

Housing must now be recognised as a human right, no different than the right to vote or express yourself freely. This means understanding that housing cannot be viewed first and foremost as an economic driver or a commodity to add to an investment portfolio; that forced eviction is not development; that land has more than monetary value; and that the private market must be regulated. — the Guardian

There is a city which is suffering a worse property bubble than Sydney, whose residents are more priced-out than Londoners, and where there is a greater divide between the housing haves and have-nots than even San Francisco.

That city is Vancouver, and in response to these mounting challenges, the west-coast Canadian metropolis recently imposed an extraordinary new tax on foreign buyers – whose impact is now being watched closely by other cities grappling with bloated property markets. — theguardian.com

Manifestos serve a purpose. They make quick, abrupt statement, clear the air, and get attention. This manifesto is no different, except it has nothing theoretical to state nor anything specific to propose. It only has one maxim: there are no good ideas. Its only corollary, which necessarily follows, is that there are no good designs. — Numéro Cinq

Housing is under attack today. It is caught within a number of simultaneous social conflicts. Most immediately, there is a conflict between housing as lived, social space and housing as an instrument for profit-making — a conflict between housing as home and as real estate. More broadly, housing is the subject of contestation between different ideologies, economic interests, & political projects. More broadly still, the housing crisis stems from the inequalities and antagonisms of class society. — Jacobin

London mayor Sadiq Khan is to launch the UK’s most comprehensive inquiry into the impact of foreign investment flooding London’s housing market, amid growing fears about the scale of gentrification and spiralling housing costs in the capital.

Khan said there are “real concerns” about the surge in the number of homes being bought by overseas investors, adding that the inquiry would map the scale of the problem for the first time. — the Guardian

A year ago, former England captain Rio Ferdinand, West Ham United skipper Mark Noble and ex-Brighton striker Bobby Zamora [unveiled] their Legacy Foundation – a regeneration charity with a plan to build a series of social and privately rentable housing schemes, backed by private investors.

The stars (all three of whom have played for West Ham) are coming back to present their first project, worth £400m, to build 1,300 homes on a 22-hectare site in a run-down area in Houghton Regis near Luton. — the Guardian