Green building has emerged over the past decade as a robust movement to create high-performance, energy-efficient structures that improve occupant comfort and well-being while minimizing environmental impacts. Supported by organizations such as the U.S. Green Building Council and its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, both public and private entities are increasingly pursuing green buildings in the institutional, commercial, and residential sectors. While this progress is impressive, for a number of reasons it has not included significant numbers of affordable housing projects. These reasons, several of which are unique to affordable housing, include: an almost exclusive focus on "first costs," the existence of per unit cost caps, regulatory rigidity that limits green innovation, and a finance system that fails to recognize the long-term value of green investments.

The United States has almost 90 million residential structures. While few have been built in a sustainable manner, we are nevertheless beginning to see more interest in green or environmentally sustainable housing. Most discussions of sustainable housing focus on the environmental and economic aspects, overlooking the social dimension. Achieving sustainable housing requires a holistic framework, incorporating the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability in equal parts. Planners must help ensure that social equity is given equal attention during discussions of sustainable housing.

The U.S. Green Building Council's new rating system for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design in neighborhood development, known as LEED-ND, is coming under fire for not putting a greater emphasis on affordable housing.

Search for sales statistics, real estate price trends, and real estate market activity in the United States by most popular real estate markets, by using our state map, or with our alphabetical directory of the United States cities. For the United States real estate market overview, see our chart of average sale prices and graph of real estate trends on each state page.

50th Percentile Rent Estimates Rent estimates at the 50th percentile (or median) are calculated for all Fair Market Rent areas. THESE ARE NOT FAIR MARKET RENTS.

Search for sales statistics, real estate price trends, and real estate market activity in the United States by most popular real estate markets, by using our state map, or with our alphabetical directory of the United States cities. For the United States real estate market overview, see our chart of average sale prices and graph of real estate trends on each state page.

Owner- and renter-occupied dwellings as a proportion of total dwellings, Canada, provinces, territories and health regions, 2001

File that explains what is captured.Add

The Kowloon Walled City (traditional Chinese: d9i> ee/(; simplified Chinese: d9i>ee/(; originally known as d9i> e/(e) was an anomaly in Hong Kong's colonial history. China's tiny exclave in the middle of British Hong Kong for decades, it had a colorful existence until it was torn down in 1993.

Housing profiles of Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Trading places A few weeks ago, I checked out the latest monument to Los Angeles' newfound urbanity: the Getty Oil Building at the intersection of Wilshire and Western. The 23-story Modernist structure, designed by Claude Beelman and built in the early 1960s, has been converted into condominiums. Across the street is the Wiltern Theater, and Koreatown stores and restaurants are a block or two away. A Red Line station catty-corner to the Getty building gives a condo resident access to Universal City, Hollywood and downtown. The building, rechristened "The Mercury" by its developer, represents the epitome of car-free urban living.

If you can afford it. The condos cost about $700 a square foot, meaning a nice two-bedroom condo -- with windows on two sides and great views -- runs about $1 million.

A few evenings later, I found myself in the cramped living room of a single-family home in a suburb of Ventura, one of about 180 houses built a decade ago for buyers with annual incomes of about $50,000. Because the original development was federally subsidized, the homeowners can sell their house only at a restricted sales price of $300,000 to $400,000, which is 20% to 40% below the market price.

The cap on the selling price, the homeowners told me, has brought some changes to their neighborhood. It allows the working poor to afford these houses by teaming up to buy them. Realtors say four, five, even six people are listed on mortgage titles to qualify for financing. Seven, eight, nine cars are parked in the driveways and on the streets in front of the houses.

What's going on here? For a century, people in Southern California moved to the suburbs as they got richer, leaving the more "urban" parts of town to poor people. Now that pattern has reversed itself. Affluent people are leaving the suburbs to live in the city, while the working poor -- people who have jobs but don't earn enough to exceed the poverty line -- are doubling and tripling up in the suburbs to buy houses.

The migration of the affluent to the inner city has gradually increased in the last three years. According to a study by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, the household median income of downtown residents with a least one earner was about $99,600 a year in 2006, roughly $28,000 higher than that of Beverly Hills. Nearly half of those surveyed reported annual income of $100,000 to above $250,000.

rom the Los Angeles Times
TIMES SPECIAL REPORT
A not-so-welcome mat
Antelope Valley neighbors are behind a crackdown on subsidized housing
By Jessica Garrison and Ted Rohrlich
Times Staff Writers

June 17, 2007

THE anonymous tip came in over a special hotline: Someone was smoking marijuana on the balcony of Rachel Baker's government-subsidized apartment.

On a recent morning, Lee D'Errico, a Los Angeles County Housing Authority investigator, bounded up the stairs of the sprawling two-story complex in Lancaster, half a dozen armed sheriff's deputies on his heels.

D'Errico rapped on the door of Baker, a 28-year-old single mother of three. She took one look at the group on her stairs, ordered her children into a bedroom and moved aside.

Then the officers, who had no warrant, searched the home. Within minutes, they discovered a half-smoked marijuana cigarette under a couch cushion - enough, D'Errico told Baker, to terminate her subsidy under the federal Section 8 program.

"What?" Baker said, sobbing. "I didn't know it was there. Otherwise, I wouldn't have let you in."

It was another fruitful investigation for the housing authority in the Antelope Valley, where officials have launched one of the most aggressive campaigns in the nation to stamp out unauthorized or illegal behavior in federally subsidized housing.

The Citizens Housing and Planning Council of New York announces:

The William R. Ginsberg Fellowships

Established in 2007, the William R. Ginsberg Fellowships are designed to
encourage public service and civic engagement for two key groups of
talented professionals: senior practitioners and policy makers, and recent
college graduates or graduate students.

The Fellowships provide support for original research and the opportunity
to explore new ideas and practices. Areas of research and empirical study
should be designed to improve the quality of life in NYC's neighborhoods
by focusing on housing, the urban environment and open space, education,
transportation, land use and zoning, or community development.

William R. Ginsberg was a pioneering environmental lawyer, NYC Parks
Commissioner, teacher, mentor, and tireless advocate on behalf of NYC's
civic life, the built environment, and the preservation of open space. He
served on the board of CHPC for more than four decades.

The Fellowship is supported by a generous gift from William R. Ginsberg
and his family.

Promoting a Prosperous and Livable City Since 1937 70th Anniversary 1937-2007

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT CHPC at info@chpcny.org or download applications
at www.chpcny.org

The Southland's hidden Third World slums
In the Coachella Valley, hundreds of trailer parks house desperately poor Latino workers amid burning trash, mud, contaminated water.
By David Kelly, Times Staff Writer
March 26, 2007

THERMAL, CALIF. - Like most of their neighbors in the sprawling, ramshackle Oasis Mobile Home Park, the Aguilars have no heat, no hot water. On cold nights, the family of eight stays warm by bundling up in layers of sweaters and sleeps packed together in two tiny rooms.

Bathing is a luxury that requires using valuable propane to boil gallons of water. So the farmworker clan spends a lot of time dirty.

Housing profiles of Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Center for Housing Policy Research: Housing America's Working Families 

* A Heavy Load: The combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families (October 2006) - This study of 28 major Metropolitan areas nationwide found that as working families move further from work to afford housing they end up spending as much, or more, on transportation costs than they save on housing.

 

November 20, 2006
The Hard Part
Evicted From a Blighted Street, Newark's Mayor Finds Another
By ANDREW JACOBS

NEWARK, Nov. 19 - The magenta "praise the Lord" throw pillows: trash. The Black Santa holiday tie: a keeper. The lime-green dress shirt:

"It's not mayoral," said an aide with unconcealed disdain. Into the charity pile it went.

On Mayor Cory A. Booker's final night at his bachelor-pad apartment in Brick Towers last Monday, there were important sartorial decisions to be made before the movers arrived. After living in one of the city's most notoriously troubled buildings - where heat, hot water and elevator service were often in short supply - since 1998, Mr. Booker and two dozen other holdouts were being evicted to make way for the bulldozers.

 

City Limits WEEKLY Week of: November 6, 2006 Number: 560 A NEW PLACE TO PARK THE FAMILY -- NOT THE CAR Over the next few years, residential buildings will replace open spaces at some public housing complexes. > By Tanveer Ali
Apartment buildings will sprout from parking lots at public housing projects around the city over the next few years, creating up to 600 new affordable housing units on what’s now underutilized land, according to a joint plan by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).

Posted on Sun, May. 21, 2006

BUILDING OUR CITY
The new downtowners
Market called ripe for condos
By JEFF WILKINSON

The building boom in downtown Columbia is nothing less than a wholesale remaking of the city center — creating a new urban core of homes with river views, Viking kitchens and short walks to work, the restaurant or the art museum.
About 4,000 units have been built or announced recently, and that doesn’t include 3,000 more expected to spring up around USC’s Innovista research district.
So who’s going to buy them?
Probably your neighbors.
Out-of-towners and investors will be a big part of the mix. But experts said most of the units will be snapped up by local baby boomers tired of the daily commute, the big yard and the big house in the suburbs.

Posted on Mon, Sep. 11, 2006
Mayor-Council unity fought blight in past; it can again
By John Kromer

Brooklyn's Trojan Horse
What's wrong with the buildings Frank Gehry wants to put in my neighborhood?
By Jonathan Lethem
Posted Monday, June 19, 2006, at 12:14 PM ET

Less Housing for Residents of Average Pay, Report Says
By JANNY SCOTT
Published: June 16, 2006

The report, to be released today, for the first time puts hard numbers on a cost squeeze that has intensified with the real estate boom. The researchers found that the number of apartments affordable to households earning about $32,000 a year, or 80 percent of the median household income in the city, has dropped by 205,000 in just three years.

Like the NIS in Philadelphia, this site provides lots of information about New York at various levels of geographic specificity.

Why public housing, once the scourge of the city, now is a vital part of its life and its future.

Second in a series of articles on public housing in philly.

Encyclopedia of housing / Willem Van Vliet--, editor. [0761913327 (cloth)] Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications, c1998.
Call#: Van Pelt Library Reference Stacks HD7287 .E53 1998

From Urban Studies Abstracts