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Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has announced a proposal to raise rents for low-income Americans relying on federal housing subsidies. Currently, families and individuals living in subsidized housing are traditionally asked to spend 30% of their adjusted income on rent, with a... View full entry
Over the last few months, the team at Forensic Architecture, housed at London’s Goldsmiths University in Lewisham, has been working to piece together data and footage from the event using a mixture of video and imagery from Youtube, Periscope and other forms of social media, as well as footage from Sky News, which is a partner on the project. — Wired
In June of 2017 the Grenfell Tower fire killed 71 in the London public housing block. Criminal investigations are still ongoing with no one yet held accountable. Forensic Architecture has taken on the case in order to piece together how the fire spread within minutes throughout the building. By... View full entry
Portland's urban renewal agency has named three finalists to shape the redevelopment of the soon-to-be-vacated downtown post office blocks.
Not among them: a headline-grabbing but unlikely proposal for two massive skyscrapers, the taller of which would be nearly twice the height of any existing building in Portland.
— oregonlive.com
Prosper Portland has selected 3 finalists for the 14 acre post office site located in the heart of the city: McWhinney, Related Cos., and Continuum Partners. It comes as no surprise that William Kaven's two tower proposal was not selected. Broadway Corridor total development site of 32 acres... View full entry
The council housing designed 50 years ago for a progressive London borough remains a potent symbol of the achievements of postwar social democracy. — Places Journal
Prompted by Mark Swenarton's recent book, Cook's Camden, Douglas Murphy looks at the radically experimental public housing estates built by the London borough from 1966 to 1975, and the reevaluation of these extraordinary projects currently underway in our own era of unaffordable cities and... View full entry
Eighty-two buildings have failed a new fire safety test set up in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, ministers say.
The test examines the safety of building cladding and insulation in combination.
It comes as an independent review of building regulations and fire safety has also been announced by the government.
It will look at current building regulations and fire safety, focusing on high-rise residential buildings.
— BBC
"The new fire safety test is the first of a wave of more comprehensive assessments, which come after previous tests were carried out on hundreds of cladding samples in recent months - many of these failed standards for flammability," the BBC reports and outlines key examination goals of the... View full entry
Britain said 34 high-rise apartment blocks had failed fire safety checks carried out after the deadly Grenfell Tower blaze, including several in north London where residents were forced to evacuate amid chaotic scenes. — Reuters
Two weeks ago, a low-income residential tower in London tragically caught fire resulting in the death of at least 79 occupants. The incident has sparked a national (and even international) conversation about the safety standards set by London officials for low-income residents as it has been... View full entry
There are tens of thousands of buildings in more than 87 tower blocks across the United Kingdom clad in the same aluminum composite that experts claim was largely responsible for the severity of the blaze that erupted on Grenfell Tower in Kensington and claimed at least 79 lives. The material... View full entry
As he toured facilities for the poor in Ohio last week, Mr. Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-housing secretary, joked that a relatively well-appointed apartment complex for veterans lacked “only pool tables.” He inquired at one stop whether animals were allowed. At yet another, he nodded, plainly happy, as officials explained how they had stacked dozens of bunk beds inside a homeless shelter and purposefully did not provide televisions. — The New York Times
In a recent visit to a public housing facility in Columbus, Ohio, HUD head Ben Carson reiterated his stance that anyone receiving Section 8 housing vouchers or federal assistance should not get too comfortable, as this would lead them to simply want to stay in their federally provided digs... View full entry
With limited funds, many American affordable housing projects aren’t in great shape. Their fate is ever more tenuous with the impending budget cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed by the Trump Administration. In an ironic twist of fate, the often-sorry state of... View full entry
Mike Ford, a lead architect for the Universal Hip Hop Museum, has studied and written about the relationship between disastrous urban planning/architecture and the rise of hip hop. Essentially, Ford's argument is that the ghettoization of African Americans in the 20th century via ill-conceived... View full entry
Private property developers are outmanoeuvring councils in housing negotiations and routinely delivering fewer affordable homes than town halls want, an industry analysis has revealed.
Amid growing anger at the sale to foreign buyers of almost two-thirds of London’s tallest residential skyscraper, which includes no affordable housing, it has emerged that not one London borough which set targets met them in the last six years.
— the Guardian
For more on the increasingly dire state of housing in London, take a look at some past coverage:London's Bleak Housing£950 for a mouldy 'central' flat? Welcome to London.The root of London's housing crisis lies beyond its bordersLondon's housing crisis is creating a chasm... View full entry
Back in 2004, Elio Ciampanella was evicted from his apartment of three decades...So he applied for an apartment in Rome’s public housing. And he waited. More than a decade passed.
Then, in February, [Ciampanella] unexpectedly had his choice of several apartments. His tale might be considered one of patience rewarded, but there was a twist: It turned out Rome’s municipal government never really had a shortage of properties.
— the New York Times
"Instead, the government actually owned so many thousands of apartments and buildings that no one was quite certain how many there were, who lived in them or where they were. That was, until staff members for Rome’s new interim administrator, Francesco Paolo Tronca, discovered nine boxes... 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
As Chicago prepares to enter a new era of ramped-up affordable-housing development, a key question is whether private developers will go along with the city’s new guidances. A lawsuit filed... last Thursday shows signs of possible peril for the city’s low-income housing agenda.
At the heart of the lawsuit is the Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO), which is part of Chicago’s five-year “Bouncing Back” plan for increasing affordable housing. [...]
— City Lab
Accepted wisdom has it that the continuing social unrest in the banlieues, as these suburbs are called, is a direct result of their built form: repetitive slabs and blocks of modern housing, often in large isolated estates. [...]
In fact, environmental determinism accompanied the very making of the French suburbs in the postwar period and the development of modern urbanism more generally.
Why is it that we assign so much power to buildings?
— blog.oup.com
