With the number of cost-burdened renters again on the rise, local governments are increasingly on the front lines of a rental affordability crisis. Earlier this year, Minneapolis became the first large American city to end single-family zoning, a bold and decisive move which has the potential to greatly expand the rental supply and improve affordability.
Over the last few decades, the share of older homeowners with mortgage debt has doubled, while the typical amount of outstanding debt relative to home values has tripled.
As neighborhoods across Boston face enormous development pressure, there is a risk that low-income residents will be forced out of the city. Social disruption due to gentrification, shifting government policies and programs, and the challenges of climate change make the future of affordable housing in Boston precarious.
Despite robust demand across the country for affordable starter homes and rental units, stringent land-use regulations, high construction costs, and an ongoing shortage of skilled laborers have made it difficult, if not impossible, to profitably produce middle-market housing. Innovative strategies to overcome these challenges will be the focus of this half-day symposium, which will feature the finalists from the inaugural Ivory Prize in Housing Affordability.
By the 1980s the Dudley Square neighborhood of Roxbury was facing significant challenges. Absentee landlords had allowed property to deteriorate, left units vacant, or had used arson to raze buildings and make insurance claims. Facing what many considered insurmountable obstacles, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative was formed to create a comprehensive plan for “development without displacement.”
Today, cities are no longer constrained by local time zones. For millions of people in the Philippines, the work day now happens at night, due to changing patterns of labor caused by globalization. What are the local implications of this nocturnalization of work?
Alloy Development is a real estate development company that has built residential buildings along the Highline, in Hudson Yards, and in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. Its website states: “Our belief in making great architecture guides our practice,” and adds “we have a responsibility to make the experience and quality of our work meaningful.”
In recent years, Buenos Aires has set out to become more inclusive and sustainable, and city government has made serving its most vulnerable populations a priority. To that end, the Housing Authority of the City of Buenos Aires has designed an innovative Socio-Urban Integration Plan which seeks to involve the relevant actors in the decision-making of the slum-upgrading intervention.
Within the context of the sharing economy, populations of today are increasingly mobile, urban, and less inclined to ownership.Collaborative consumption has molded expectations of sharing, and along comes a shifting demographic of urban and non-family householders. A new form of co-housing has emerged: co-living, that is a formalized version of room-sharing, straddles the hospitality and residential sectors.
