Design and Affordable American Housing
AbstractAmericans have experimented with new models for affordable housing for more than two centuries. The private sector, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations have all played a role. Architecture and site planning have been crucial elements in these efforts, yet they have received scant attention. In arguing that the design of good housing is neither elusive nor subjective, this article explores some of the best practices-and a few mistakes. The article begins with a historical background of diverse endeavors to provide better, more affordable housing for single women, workers, public housing tenants, immigrants, homeless individuals, and low-income families. It then relates this legacy to recent efforts to integrate housing with community development.IntroductionGiven the U.S. history of housing booms and busts and a penchant for novelty, Americans have experimented for more than two centuries with innovations and reforms that promised to produce less expensive, better quality housing for more people. These promises were sometimes marketing ploys or political rhetoric. Public programs have never provided more than 5 percent of total U.S. housing production, and the poorest citizens have often been left out. Nonetheless, the goal of expanding affordable housing has been resonant in the public and private realms, including the fields of architecture and construction.Builders have pursued ways to economize since the late 19th century. Private philanthropists constructed "model tenements," hoping to elevate a deplorable building type with simplified designs, public health, and moral uplift. Experiments with neoteric building materials and construction systems sought to reduce production costs. States and municipalities funded cooperatives. The federal government created the first public housing for the unemployed "deserving poor" during the Great Depression-although the main concerns were job creation and support for the private sector.1The Federal Housing Administration's (FHA's) financial supports for suburbanization joined postWorld War II (WWII) shelter magazines in promoting small, visibly modern "economy houses" for suburban workingand middle-class families-if they lived in White neighborhoods (Harris, 2013).2 Addressing the assisted low-income housing stock, President Lyndon Johnson's 1968 task forces on urban poverty and violence lambasted the shortage of good subsidized housing, yet resolutely condemned modern highrises (NCUP, 1968).These efforts ground to a halt with President Richard Nixon's 1973 moratorium on housing and community development assistance. When federal funding for housing was reinstated, it focused principally on vouchers for private developers. New assisted housing production never again approached the level of the early 1970s. Design innovations persisted in very local and transgressive ways, however, as religious groups and community design corporations built small-scale "contextual" enclaves. By the 1980s and 1990s, urban activists had formed coalitions based on housing issues as varied as gentrification, job training, and historic preservation.Architecture is a crucial element in achieving good housing, yet it usually plays at best a minor role in deliberations about cost and value.3 This contradiction stems in part from fundamental misconceptions. Architecture is not a matter of taste or mere aesthetics. Design quality is crucial to good affordable housing. The skillful organization of interiors, views, public areas, outdoor spaces, and even facades is especially important when budgets and square footage are at a premium (Davis, 2004; Feldman and Koch, 2004; KEA, 2006).As many practitioners and scholars have documented, good design is not elusive or subjective.4 Four themes characterize the best practices, whatever the era, scale, aesthetic, or auspices.1. The direct involvement of residents encourages better design. Diverse groups have asserted their distinctive needs and preferences, sometimes challenging the architects' priorities and the power of cultural norms. …
A Decent Home: Planning, Building, and Preserving Affordable Housing
As more and more families lose their homes to foreclosure, affordable housing is very much in the public eye. Across the country, lawmakers and community development organizations scramble to create affordable, decent places to live for the millions in need. Yet affordable housing remains poorly understood and widely controversial, with even experienced professionals finding it difficult to navigate the maze of legal and financial complications that surround it. With "A Decent Home", housing expert Alan Mallach disentangles the issues and breaks down the jargon, offering professionals and educated laypersons a comprehensive picture of what affordable housing is, how it works, and how it is planned and developed. Mallach examines the most important issues and controversies surrounding affordable housing - including social, economic, and political considerations - and provides readers with the information and insight to develop thoughtful, responsible opinions about an issue that is hotly contested both nationally and in individual communities around the nation.
Windfall Gains on the Swedish Housing Market: The Effects of Queueing for a Cooperative Dwelling
The cooperative housing sector in Sweden consists of one market for new dwellings where the downpayment and rent is fixed, and where the dwellings are allocated through a queue, and one market for used dwellings, where all units are bought and sold freely with a transaction price determined by market conditions. As the transaction price usually exceeds the down-payment, substantial windfall gains accrue to those achieving a dwelling through the queue. Regression analysis reveals that this ratio is on average nearly three. The ratio varies, however, depending on the local housing market situation. It is argued that the ratio is a better indication on the demand situation in the local housing market than is provided through information on the length of the queue at the municipal exchequer.A logit analysis is used to find out which households receive these windfall gains. It is shown that the probability of acquiring a dwelling through the queue, and thus capturing the windfall gain, is positively correlated with income and family size. The conclusion is that the cooperative queues do not have a redistributive effect on wealth in society, quite opposite the housing policy intention upon which the Swedish cooperative movement was founded. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.