Land Lines January 2018
From Stigma to Housing Fix
Today's factory-built abodes are comfortable and attractive, energy-efficient, and less than half the price of site-built houses. They're also permanently affordable when owners form cooperatives to buy the land around them.
Gentle Infill
As housing costs spike in tech hubs and other thriving U.S. markets, Portland, Boulder, and Cambridge are loosening regulations to allow more low- and moderate-income housing, foster growth, prevent displacement, and preserve the historic fabric of neighborhoods.
Landing Capital
Denver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have been conspiring to ease their local affordable housing shortages. By joining forces through "capital absorption workshops" stakeholders from housing, transit, planning, and economic development organizations are forging strategies to attract land, capital, and other resources, and achieving meaningful outcomes at scale.
This issue looks at the evolution of manufactured homes as a robust, desirable source of permanently affordable housing; innovative infill development in Portland, Boulder, Cambridge, and other hot-market cities; and capital absorption workshops that are helping to ease affordable housing shortages in Denver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.