Affordability
When Costs of Living Outpace Housing Costs
Even when they qualify for affordable rents, tenants in high-cost neighborhoods find themselves shut out of essential amenities and services.
Thousands of Affordable Homes Threatened as 30-Year LIHTC Restrictions Expire
The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program has helped create more than 3 million affordable housing units across the country. But if something isn’t done soon, thousands of those homes could be lost forever as affordability periods expire.
San Diego Housing Costs Cresting San Francisco Prices
The notoriously pricy Bay Area city has been dethroned as the country's most expensive metropolis.
Study: Lifetime Cost Of Small Car $689,000; Society Subsidizes 40 Percent of This
Motor vehicles are costly, and every time somebody purchases a car they expect governments to provide roads and businesses to provide parking for its use. A new study totals these costs.
Building Up the 'Zoning Buffer' to Increase Housing Supply Without Raising Land Values
New research helps explain why urban housing prices are escalating and how communities can increase affordability. It emphasizes the need to upzone sufficient urban land to create a large competitive market for parcels ready for infill development.
The Housing Supply Debate: Evaluating the Evidence
Let's rely on science, not ideology and propaganda, when planning solutions to urban unaffordability. Look for credible evidence in the peer-reviewed publications referenced here.
Exporting California's Housing Challenges? Correcting the Record on Out-Migration
Michael Storper and Patrick Condon opine on what California's population demographics really reveal about housing, density, economic development, jobs, and affordability.
Automobile Dependency: An Unequal Burden
Automobile-dependent planning has changed automobiles from a luxury into a necessity. Excessive vehicle costs leave many households without money to purchase essential food, shelter and healthcare. They need more affordable transportation options.
The Right to the City: Planners’ Role in Creating Affordable and Inclusive Communities
In a modern, post-industrial society, economic opportunity depends on disadvantaged households’ ability to find suitable housing in an economically successful city. Planners can make that happen.
Houston More Expensive Than New York? Not So Fast
A recent study claiming that transportation costs in Houston, among other expenses, raise the cost of living almost to the same level as living in New York City. Some took exception to the study's methodology.
Houston Just as Expensive as New York City, Study Says
The extra costs of automobile dependency turn assumptions about affordability on their head, according to a recently published report by the Citizens Budget Commission.
Report: Low Housing Production Stymies Entry-Level Buyers
According to this report, the trends point to a "less diverse, older, higher-income" crop of homebuyers as low production locks out the young and many people of color.
How Housing Fared in 2019
Next City's Jared Brey reviews a year of developments in housing politics and policy, teasing out several big trends.
Duluth to Provide Free Land for Creative Housing Proposals
To address its housing shortage, the city of Duluth is giving away free parcels of land to developers with viable proposals for low-cost housing.
Renters More Likely to Be Cost-Burdened, Study Finds
A study by scholars at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University finds that renters around the country are more likely to pay a larger share of their income on housing than homeowners do.
Gentrification Enters Preservation Debate Surrounding NYC's Strand Bookstore
The Renaissance Revival building that houses New York City's beloved Strand Bookstore is under consideration by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission. The case has provoked debate between rival advocates.
Houston Gets a Handle on Homelessness While Dallas Struggles
Formerly playing host to almost double the homeless population of Dallas, Houston has addressed the problem with some success over the past decade. Meanwhile, rising costs have fueled a growing crisis in Dallas.
Bay Area Planners Acknowledge the Need for Regional Housing Solutions
While most Bay Area communities are pursuing housing solutions "individually," local planners acknowledge the need for strategies that address the regional as a unified whole.
Seven Ideas for Tackling the Housing Crisis
One expert's take on the housing crisis and which policy solutions might best counter it.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
City of Thousand Oaks
City of Wisconsin Rapids
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
