Affordability
Affordability Trade-offs
Strategies for increasing affordability often involved trade-offs between various goals and impacts. It is important to consider all of these factors when evaluating potential solutions to unaffordability.
San Diego Not Even Close to Meeting Permanent Housing Goals for Homeless
The city’s new $6.5 million "bridge shelters" are providing a place to stay, but not accomplishing what they set out to do.
California Getting Way More New Jobs Than New Housing
Even with tons of building permits already issued this year, the outlook for the state’s affordability crisis is pretty grim.
On the Do's and Don'ts of Housing Policy
Brookings has put together nine rules for more cohesive and effective housing policy, despite federalism's tendency to create near-infinite local variety.
Understanding Location-Efficient Affordability Impacts
A recent study suggests that families save little by moving to location-efficient neighborhoods. There are good reasons to be skeptical of that conclusion.
True Affordability: Critiquing the International Housing Affordability Survey
The International Housing Affordability Survey is biased in ways that make urban-fringe housing seem more affordable and infill seem less affordable. Anybody who uses this analysis should be warned.
True Affordability: Critiquing the International Housing Affordability Survey
The International Housing Affordability Survey rates affordability in selected urban regions. Although presented as objective research, the IHAS is actually propaganda. Users of this information should be warned about its biases
Atlanta BeltLine Raises the Specter of 'Environmental Gentrification'
Large-scale adaptive reuse projects like the BeltLine in Atlanta receive praise in many circles. But they can also release a flurry of speculation, severely threatening affordability.
Coming to Terms With the Bay Area's Housing 'Death Spiral'
Prospects for solving the Bay Area's severe housing shortage look far off. Action on the state level may be one way to approach this crippling collective action problem.
Houses Appreciate. Cars Depreciate. Walkable Urban Neighborhoods Help Families Build Wealth.
Walkable urban neighborhoods tend to have more expensive housing but cheaper transport. By shifting spending from vehicles to housing a typical household can build a million dollars in additional equity by choosing a Smart Growth location.
Multimodal Transportation for Economic Freedom, Opportunity, and Security
Motor vehicles are expensive to own and operate. Many lower-income households spend more on transportation than they can afford due to a lack of affordable mobility options. The solution is more multimodal planning.
Dan Savage: Doing Something Real About Gentrification and Displacement
Urbanites' complaints about gentrification have much in common with suburbanites' complaints about commutes. Scarcity due to the ridiculous amount of land zoned for single-family housing deserves as much blame for displacement as gentrification.
Op-Ed: Sacramento Drags Feet on Housing
Dan Walters has some harsh words for California state leaders. He says their approach to the housing shortage has been "tepid" and "lackadaisical."
A Path to Looser Land Use Regulations
Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser discusses the research on local land use controls, and why it makes sense to reevaluate them. Successful approaches may start at the state level.
Op-Ed: Affordability Depends on Market-Rate Housing
California State Senator Scott Wiener argues that advocating for subsidized affordable housing isn't enough. Anyone concerned with ending the state's housing crisis needs to get behind market-rate development.
Rent Control: Illegal in Seattle Since 1981
For a long time now, rent control hasn't been an option to control housing prices in Washington state. Whether rent control works is another question entirely.
Reduced and More Accurate Parking Requirements
For each dollar motorists spend on their vehicles somebody spends more than a dollar to park it. To reduce these costs many jurisdictions are eliminating or reducing parking requirements and encouraging more efficient parking management. You can too!
What If We Stopped Considering Housing an Investment?
If Americans viewed housing as what it essentially is, a consumable good, solutions to our ongoing affordability crisis might just present themselves. And we'd probably loosen a lot of land use regulations.
Unveiling Renters' Hidden NIMBYism
This research shows that renters in high-cost cities can be just as prone to NIMBYism as homeowners, even as they theoretically support more housing. This is housing supply's collective action problem.
Research: Gentrification Follows Falling Crime
It isn't exactly a surprising correlation: gentrification and decreases in crime. This research finds that falling crime often precedes gentrification, not the other way around.
City of Costa Mesa
Licking County
Barrett Planning Group LLC
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Universal City TX
ULI Northwest Arkansas
Town of Zionsville
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This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
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Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
