Our Homes: Ending the Housing Crisis

In this episode of Our Homes, Ellen Carson and Keith Webster (advocates for Faith Action for Community Equity, a nonprofit focusing on housing and homelessness solutions) speak about an empty homes tax under consideration by the Honolulu City Council. Modeled after Vancouver, Canada’s tax, Honolulu’s proposal would be levied on an empty home’s assessed value, on a graduated rate with a 3 year phas...

In this episode of Our Homes, Dr. Cameron Murray, Australian economist and author of “The Great Housing Hijack,” speaks about the myths surrounding housing markets in Australia and elsewhere. Murray believes that high housing cost jurisdictions suffer from inequitable distribution of housing, not mere supply shortage. These housing shortages have been observed over the centuries, meaning that regu...

In this episode of Our Homes, Kenzie Bok, the Administrator for the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), shares BHA’s plan to end the City’s housing shortage in part by building 3,000 mixed-income Faircloth units. This decision was spurred by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to almost triple the subsidy amount available for Faircloth units. The authority has currently identifi...

In this episode of Our Homes, Dan Rinzler, Associate Research Director with the California Housing Partnership, shares his evaluation of Tahanan, a recently constructed permanent supportive housing (PSH) project in San Francisco. Tahanan’s development utilized cost-saving measures in financing, design, and construction, reducing residential costs and development times by roughly 40 percent compare...

In this episode of Our Homes, Shreya Arakere, Liz Da Costa, and Alex Dayman from Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, Arizona's Medicaid program, discussed how Medicaid waivers are a new funding source for housing the homeless in Arizona. Arizona’s Medicaid will be able to provide six months of transitional housing for individuals moving from insecure environments like homeless shelter...

The Big Housing Build is a social housing plan to build 10,000 new and affordable homes across regional Victoria. Victoria’s population of 6.7 million in March 2023 is forecast to grow to 11.2 million by 2056. The state's exponential population growth coupled with issues of homelessness, the growing social housing waiting list, and rising costs of housing and living, act as the driving forces...

Initiative 135 (I-135), is a Seattle initiative that creates a new social housing developer to build, acquire and manage public, affordable housing in the city. Tiffany McCoy and Camille Gix believe that the key strategies that helped pass the initiative were centering the initiative around a positive vision, humanizing higher income renters (teachers/healthcare workers who may need affordable hou...

Since 2020, Covid-19 affected Hawaii’s housing market. At the beginning of the pandemic, housing prices dropped by an insignificant amount. As the pandemic continued into 2021, 2022, 2023, housing prices began increasing again, following the predicted trajectory of growth. Paul Brewbaker believes that the new wave of working from home plays a role in housing price increase. Paul Brewbaker is the p...

Social housing in San Francisco’s needs to meet two criterias: owned by the city, a nonprofit, residents, or a residents’ association that ensures permanent long term affordable housing and serves all income qualified households with a maximum average of not more than 80% of median income across all units. There are many new social housing developments underway in San Francisco including developin...

At Optico Design, Stefan Pellegrini works within the field of missing middle housing. Missing middle housing are house-scaled buildings with multiple units in walkable neighborhoods used to address shifting household demographics between baby boomers and millennials. Millennials are less likely to have children and are in need of affordable housing that comes in forms of duplexes, townhouses, live...

Bangladesh is considered the most vulnerable country to climate change with sea level rising threatening its coastal regions, Himalayan snow melts flooding its northern regions, and frequent natural disasters occurring (cyclones and hurricanes). On top of climate related issues, Bangladesh also faces major economic concerns as one of the poorest nations in the world. Both climate and economic matt...

Sanford Murata wants to build bigger and better. He is proposing a better way to use the land of the Ala Wai Golf Course. Drawing from the Chinese idea of a "Sponge City", this project will store and filter excess water in the canal and release it at opportune times. The project will have two developments: "Ala Wai Village" and "Ala Wai Green". The "Village"...

Assemblymember Alex Lee currently has Assembly Bill 2053 (AB 2053) pending before the California State Legislature that will help the state achieve social housing for all. Social housing is mixed income, publicly developed housing for all that avoids concentrated poverty. He hopes that AB 2053 creates a self sustaining neighborhood with equitable housing for all, no matter their economic status. A...

Edward Pinto and Tobias Peter discuss their research on housing and the housing crisis in Hawaii. Hawaii has the highest median home price in the country, second highest cost of rent, and second highest rate of homelessness per capita. The plunge in Hawaii’s housing market began in the early 1970s when the state passed environmental and land usage policies causing a housing shortage and increase i...

The Biden-Harris administration has made efforts to promote housing development. While the Build Back Better bill has stalled, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the American Rescue Plan passed last year have been essential in supporting American housing. Erika Poethig explains that at the heart of almost every issue from crime to poverty is related to a lack of housing stability. By investing...

America's investment on public housing has slowly shrunk over the past two decades. According to Paul Williams, this has led to housing being underbuilt and overpriced. But with this investment comes questions about how it will be paid for and what it will look like. Paul Williams is a social housing researcher whose work has been used by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Aff...

In 2009, Kirstin Downey published The Woman Behind the New Deal, a biography of path-breaking government official Frances Perkins, a book that was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book prize and named one of the top ten biographies of the year by the American Library Association. She discusses Perkins, her work, and her impact on American worker rights. As an award winning investigative journa...

Alfred Twu discusses 1000 homes per acre, a proposal used to address housing shortages. Supermarkets, convenience stores, banks, barber shops, etc., all need at least 1000 or more households nearby to support their businesses. Twu argues that the conveniences associated with the 1000 homes per acre proposal benefits everyone and helps mitigate the current housing shortages in the U.S. Alfred Twu i...

The Soviet Mass Housing project began in the late 1950s after Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin’s death. The Soviet Union was in need of mass housing due to a severe housing shortage so they developed a quick low cost way of building apartments. These apartments resolved the housing shortage and provided housing for those in need. Professor Philipp Meuser, an architect and publisher, planned and design...

Kim van Sparrentak and her colleagues in the European Union(EU) produced a report that gave recommendations on increasing accessibility to affordable housing. Housing is a human right and investors should not be able to take houses from local residents who need them. Sparrentak emphasizes that social cohesion and a greater supply of affordable housing is what is needed to combat the housing crisis...

Tyler Gomes, the Deputy Chair of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands (DHHL), discusses how housing issues impact Native Hawaiians in Hawaii. Residential land in Hawaii is land available for Native Hawaiians to lease at low costs. There is not enough land available to meet all residential lease applications. The waitlist will take around 182 years to meet the demand at the current rate and many Na...

As a professor at Rice University, Stephen Klineberg and his students began conducting an annual survey in 1982, now called the Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey, that tracks the area's demographics and attitudes. Professor Klineburg and Shelton discuss the results of the institute’s survey, Houston's zero zoning model, the affordability of housing in the region, and racial equity in Ho...

Professor Bo-Sin Tang discusses Hong Kong’s unique housing environment with a high population and limited space, the advantages and disadvantages of Hong Kong’s high density housing model, and the policies that have shaped its housing situation. Professor Tang teaches at the University of Hong Kong in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. He specializes in Land Use Planning, Property Develo...

In this episode, Conor Dougherty discusses the impact of California’s YIMBY–“Yes In My Backyard”–movement on the state’s housing availability, the high regulatory environments of large cities, transport oriented developments, and housing for future generations. Dougherty has covered economics and real estate for a decade at both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and is the author of “...

Sarah Karlinsky presents her findings from "From Copenhagen to Tokyo: Learning from International Housing Delivery Systems.” Karlinsky discusses the housing context in the Bay Area, while Christian Bevington explains what the US can learn from international housing models. Karlinsky is a Senior Policy Advisor at San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) and Bevingt...