Housing Brass Tacks

What Can Architects Do?

In the thorny thicket of housing problems, from cost to supply to quality, what roles can architects play? Architects Susanne Schindler, Jared Della Valle, and Deborah Gans offer possibilities.

Housing Brass Tacks

Housing Court

A housing court case can make the difference between safe at home and out on the street. Jenny Laurie of Housing Court Answers explains how it works and what throws the scales of housing justice out of balance.

Housing Brass Tacks

Limited-Equity Co-Ops

If owning a home means security, stability, and the American Dream, those remain out of reach for most apartment-dwelling New Yorkers. But can limited-equity co-ops provide another way?

Housing Brass Tacks

Community Land Trusts

These days, “CLT” is a watchword for affordable housing and anti-displacement activists nationwide, including the residents and organizers behind a South Bronx initiative that’s building steam.

Housing Brass Tacks

Illegal Hotels

Like many companies in the “sharing economy,” Airbnb prides itself on “disrupting” the traditional marketplace — but at what cost to New York’s affordable housing?

Housing Brass Tacks

Property Taxes

Confusing, reviled, unfair, arcane — and important. Explore the labyrinthine system of property taxes.

Typecast: Row House

The Endlessly Adaptable Row House

For the final installment of Typecast: Row House, architects Alex Gorlin and Jeff Murphy talk about the mutability of a simple box and the challenges and delights of designing the contemporary row house.

Typecast: Row House

The Bible and the Billionaire

Emily Schmidt spins the origin story of the affordable row house in the 1980s, when pastors and businessmen sowed scorched earth with rows of new homes.

Housing Brass Tacks

Development

For the season's ninth and final Housing Brass Tacks discussion, two developers — one for-profit, one not-for-proft — laid out the nitty-gritty of building affordable housing.

Housing Brass Tacks

Public Housing Transformed

Catherine Fennell and Crystal Palmer, two authorities on Chicago's public housing transformation, probed the problematic mythos of public housing—from the "failure" of tower complexes to the virtues of mixed-income redevelopment.