The challenges of the affordable housing crisis are many and are brining many diverse stakeholders together to offer solutions. The Urban Land Institute (ULI) leaders feel that those solutions will lead to a promising future bringing more affordable housing to the masses. Here, ULI shares those solutions.
No single solution exists among the efforts to deliver attainable and affordable housing in a country where home prices continue to escalate significantly and the dream of homeownership is out of reach of millions of households, an expert panel told attendees at ULI’s 2019 Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C.
Casey Anderson, chair of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Planning Board; George E. Casey Jr., chief executive officer of Stockbridge Associates; Tony Pickett, chief executive officer of Grounded Solutions Network; and Hilary Goldfarb, senior vice president and regional development officer of the Rockefeller Group, addressed the multifaceted housing challenge during a session at the meeting.
The percentage of the population that can afford a typical home today has been shrinking as the average home size increases—trends that have been continuing for decades, said session moderator Adam Ducker, senior managing director at real estate advisory firm RCLCO.
A move toward more modular, factory-built housing could lower prices because it provides more efficient assembly and controls labor costs, said Casey, who is also the chair of the Housing Innovation Alliance. The common method of construction on a job site with multiple subcontractors assembling a house from materials delivered piecemeal is inefficient, said Casey, comparing the process to delivering auto parts to scattered assembly sites, rather than building cars at auto factories.
Read More
