2016March
"Broken Promises: The Housing Market in San Francisco (And Ten Ideas to Fix It)"
San Francisco’s housing system is broken. The only way to fix it is through a radical change in our housing policy: a change that encourages (a lot of) building.
Failed public policy and political leadership has resulted in a massive imbalance between how much the city’s population has grown this century versus how much housing has been built. The last thirteen years worth of new housing units built is approximately equal to the population growth of the last two years.[0]
...More"Artist Designs Sleeping “Pod” to Afford Renting in San Francisco"
40-square-foot “room” goes for $400 a month
Bay Area artist Peter Berkowitz couldn’t afford a place in San Francisco. His solution was “the pod,” a sleeper box that’s roughly eight feet long, five feet wide, and four feet tall. It’s made out of plywood and neatly installed in the corner of his roommate’s living room, a space he’s now paying $400 a month to rent. (Bertkowitz lists his total housing expenses as $508 a month, factoring in the $1,300 he spent building it.)
...More"Santa Monica Lawmaker Takes Aim at California’s Housing Shortage"
California State Assemblymember Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) has set his sights on tackling the dire shortage of homes—and the resulting affordability crisis—currently facing the state.
Bloom, whose district includes Malibu, Santa Monica, West L.A., Brentwood, and Beverly Hills, currently has three bills pending—A.B. 2501, A.B. 2299, and A.B. 2522—that seek to lower barriers to new housing production in cities throughout California.
...More"High-Tech Millennial Lifestyle Inspires Micro Apartment Boom"
A new generation of tech millennials values location over square footage, and housing unit sizes are shrinking across the country.
Since the 1980s, cities around the country have been contracting serious cases of Silicon Valley envy. Everyone, it seemed, was looking for the magic formula to create their own high-tech incubators with educated, upwardly mobile work forces that would drive their cities to modernize and grow.
...More"Munich Is Building Affordable Housing Atop Parking Lots"
A new plan for low-rent apartments takes advantage of all that unused space devoted to cars.
In Munich, the days when parking space was allowed to gobble up large chunks of city land may be ending. Like most thriving Western metros, Germany’s third-largest city is desperate for new housing but doesn’t have a whole lot of undeveloped space left. The answer, say Munich’s governing Social Democrats, is to build above parking lots, burying the city’s land-hogging car spaces under buildings filled with affordable housing.
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