The Future of Affordable Housing in the United States: Context-Specific Mechanisms to Address Housing Crisis

Julia A. Meyers, Gallatin '25

Bachelor of Arts: Individualized Study, Affordable Housing - Urban Planning, Architecture, Spatial Politics

Advised by Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Abstract

This paper considers the role that the culture of the American city and its social values play in crafting uniquely American barriers to affordable housing development. Through an examination of the history of United States public housing, interviews with practitioners and scholars in the affordable housing sector, and an exploration of alternative housing frameworks, this paper begins to frame the discussion about solutions to the housing crisis in the United States, which has reached unprecedented levels. The analysis includes the following observations: (a) housing reform must address racial equity explicitly (b) consider solutions within community-oriented owner-occupancy housing (c) act in lieu of federal support (d) local initiative is conducive to radical change and (e) we must educate practitioners.

“Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. There came a time when the discomfort and crowding below were so great, and the consequent upheavals so violent, that it was no longer an easy thing to do, and then the upper half fell to inquiring what was the matter.”

— Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890

Introduction

The housing crisis in the United States has been a defining struggle of this nation for more than a century. Housing as an entity interacts with every attribute of the human condition; it is not exclusively defined materially, physically, or spatially, but is itself social and institutional (Patillo, 2013). Housing has been used to define major national phenomena and ideology, underpinning the very ethos of U.S. culture and “The American Dream.” Understanding housing within this context is crucial to understanding how it behaves and interacts with larger social, political, and economic dynamics—this allows for the production of solution-oriented research that is cognizant of its nuance and context-specificity. In the context of the U.S., the housing sector has been shaped historically and parallel to the characteristics of American social and cultural values. Questions about the urban condition and its relationship to class and justice have been central themes to some of Western scholarship’s most foundational texts. Plato’s Republic (2009) explores this idea explicitly, “any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich,” (p. 256) with Marx and Engels (2012) implying these relationships more casually, “[the bourgeoisie] has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands,” (p. 78) each framing the city as a spatial manifestation of broader social conditions. Placing housing into the age long debate about urban life arose again during the late 19th and 20th century through the pivotal works of Jacob Riis and Jane Jacobs in New York City, and many others across other municipalities and nations, highlighting the state of urbanism through the lens of housing conditions of the poorest of the poor. Concerns about the health and safety of New York City's slums and tenements prompted some of the city’s first housing reform movements, and rising awareness of displacement, gentrification, and divestment has continued to shape contemporary conversations. Housing injustice in the U.S. is deeply tied to complex social and economic conditions, rooted in racism and classism, and done so explicitly (Rothstein, 2017). The history of public housing development in the U.S. is reflective of the country’s traditions of segregation and oppression and has shaped a legacy that remains prevalent. This history must be understood in detail so as to appropriately understand the context in which the current landscape has been shaped. Only then can proper solutions be explored.

We are now placed in a particularly unprecedented moment of housing crisis in the U.S., one that is clearly demonstrating its collective social values. It is no longer exclusive to America’s low-income (below 80% Area Median Income [AMI]) marginalized communities to be victims of housing insecurity and severe unaffordability, but increasingly middle-income (80-120% AMI) working families and individuals also cannot find decent or affordable housing. As referenced in the Riis quote in the epigraph, there is historical precedent for circumstances that call for the attention of those most fortunate, those upper-income groups not impacted by the housing crisis, to choose to care and choose to address the issue. Gaining the attention of this group is important given their political and economic power and the stronghold they have on the current market (Baker et al., 2024). Just as violent revolts once served as a way for those living in European slums to demand the attention of the upper-class, the expansion of the housing crisis to affect not only low-income groups, but middle and even upper-middle income workers and their families has grabbed the attention of the contemporary American upper-class. The numbers are unprecedented, and simply cannot be ignored any longer.

2024 was the worst year on record for rental affordability (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University [JCHS], 2024). This issue is witnessed at extremes in metropolises such as New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, cities that are paired with desperately low residential vacancy rates—but exists as a universal struggle across the United States today. Statistics from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University’s annual report, The State of the Nation’s Housing 2024, demonstrate the way in which the market is failing the affordable housing sector: Multifamily housing construction increased by 22% in 2023, the highest increase in production in over three decades, but low-rent units as a proportion of overall housing units have been steadily decreasing, a trend that continued in 2024. Decreases in low-rent units were recorded in 47 states and the District of Columbia between 2012 and 2022, with 24 states losing more than 20% of their low-rent stock, a trend that has been especially hard hitting in Southern states. The number of higher-rent units, however, increased nationally. The homeownership barriers faced by Generation Z and Millennials have caused a slow transition to tenantship preference among these groups, due to financial infeasibility of homeownership, but the new development is favoring high-cost rental units and the rental-stock is shifting to reflect this. In 2022, 83% of all renters making less than $30,000 a year were cost-burdened, paying more than 30% of their annual income of rent, and 65% were severely cost-burdened, spending more than 50% of their income. This trend of cost-burdened renters was maintained by all rental households, with 50% of them cost-burdened in 2022, an increase of 9.0 percentage points since 2001. The cost of a modest one-bedroom apartment based on HUD Fair Market Rent was $1,390 on average in 2024, but the rent affordable to someone working full-time and earning the national minimum wage is a mere $390 under affordability definitions that allocate 30% of income to housing costs (National Low Income Housing Coalition [NLIHC], 2024). It is true that many jurisdictions—in 30 states—feature higher minimum wages than the federal minimum wage, but even considering the higher national average renter’s wage this places the rent affordability at $1,205, still too low to afford the one-bedroom Fair Market Rent (NLIHC, 2024). Affordability is that much more unattainable for families, whose expenses are much higher and require larger living quarters and more than one bedroom. The numbers show just how acute this crisis is.

Economic conditions in the United States are racialized, as shown by contemporary wage and sectoral disparities—Black, Latinx, and Indigenous workers more likely to be employed in lower paying sectors, and those employed in the same sector as their White counterparts paid substantially lower wages for the same jobs (NLIHC, 2024). Given this, housing, when existing as a commodity, functions within the terms of systemic racism that shape the institutions in which it engages. The percentage of Black and Hispanic homeowners in the U.S., when compared against the percentage of White homeowners, is as clear a representation of this financial discrepancy as any. In 2024, the Black homeownership rate was 46.6%, contrasting with the White homeownership rate of 74.0% (JCHS, 2024). This difference in homeownership rates is directly tied to the historical context and the deeply economic repercussions of American systemic racism. Its contemporary impact is further demonstrated by data showing the dramatic wealth inequality between renters and homeowners in the U.S., with the median renter household’s net wealth being less than 3% of homeowners median wealth (JCHS, 2024). Housing in its current state acts as a mechanism to further deepen the US’ wealth inequality, in which the bottom 50% of Americans hold only 2.5% of the country’s wealth (The Federal Reserve, 2024). For those low-middle income households who are able to attain homeownership, it ends up being an imperative financial asset, accounting for approximately 45% of their net worth, on average, as opposed to the roughly 20% of upper-income homeowners’ net worth (Pew Research Center, 2012). The housing sector is severely financialized and deeply intertwined with the U.S. financial system, defining how many Americans participate in the economy—with wealth accumulation being a central goal in American culture. Housing commodification, where housing exists as an entity for profit, hosts detriments at two scales: at the individual level, the tenant of an investor-landlord faces risks such as eviction, rent-hikes, and ill-maintenanced projects; societally, it hosts austerity, deregulation, housing insecurity, displacement, and homelessness (Haberle & House, 2021).

Housing is distinct from the other two major asset groups in the U.S., which are business and stocks, as it serves a purpose tied directly to the physical health and safety of an individual—shelter is considered one of the 7 most basic human needs according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Housing—even exclusively in terms of shelter—must be a human right. The United Nations estimates that globally, one in five people lack access to “adequate housing,” which is not referring to those accounted for above as cost-burdened renters, and they expect this number to double by 2030 (United Nations Human Settlement Programme, 2025). Housing must exist as a right, sheltered from financialization and speculation, escaping the market in which it currently functions. How to do so is not clear however, and the answer will not be uniform. Housing serves a social purpose in addition to shelter that further suggests its role in human well-being and makes a stronger case for its standing as a human right. Its material presence adds complexity and proves difficult to address given the natural limitations of a fixed amount of land on earth. Scholars argue that “the impact of limited land resources is magnified when the winners in this upward redistribution themselves act to restrict the supply of housing,” (Baker et al., 2024, p. 25) demonstrating how income inequality exacerbates the issue, and how they must be willing to redistribute their share of land. Once we establish that housing is a human right, we can begin to understand the problems with its current function as a commodity with exchange value, as opposed to use value. This notion helps to frame the questions that must be asked in order to address these concerns within this framework, but it does not yet suggest an answer.

History of Public Housing in the United States

Public housing in the United States carries a stigma that is, in many ways, uniquely American. This stigma can be easily explained by an exploration of its history, which also demonstrates why affordable housing development in the U.S. is comparatively non-existent and highly contested. The first public housing projects in the United States—that is, the first public projects not created for service members—were developed through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933 (Rothstein, 2017). New Deal policy and programs were strategic in their exclusion of Black Americans as a mechanism of supporting the White working-class, in particular White veterans, and the creation of targeted housing programs and projects directly responded to these conditions (Katznelson, 2005). The program created publicly financed and managed housing for low-middle income White families who struggled to afford housing following the Great Depression and WWI, but was primarily developed for those who could afford it, but couldn’t find available units due to low housing production during these years. The legislation did little to address the housing crisis faced by Black Americans, and featured explicit segregation in its language and practice. Public housing was segregated nationally, with entire projects that allowed only White tenants, a select few developed only for Black tenants, and an even fewer number that were internally segregated (Rothstein, 2017; Trounstine, 2018). A forgotten history of public housing in the U.S. is recounted by Richard Rothstein in The Color of Law (2017), a book that, through examining the details of these programs, illustrates how public housing was used as a mechanism of segregation. Rothstein (2017) argues that, “the federal government’s housing rules pushed [cities] into a more rigid segregation than otherwise would have existed,” (p. 24) demonstrating how new housing authorities would create segregated housing in previously integrated neighborhoods. It is worth considering what the demographics of these neighborhoods might have looked like today had these federal public housing programs not interfered.

The siting of projects during the 20th century directly reflected segregational practices, with federal guidelines that suggested projects be racially segregated based on existing neighborhood makeup, or even designating new neighborhood demographics and using public housing to make them a reality (Rothstein, 2017). In 1937, Congress dissolved the Public Works Administration (PWA), which was the authority responsible for constructing federal public housing projects under The New Deal, and created the U.S. Housing Authority (USHA), which now acted as a federal loan granting agency to guide and fund newly localized public housing development (Rothstein, 2017). The USHA manual was full of explicitly racist guiding principles, including that projects for White families should not be placed in neighborhoods inhabited by Black people, and that “the aim of the [local housing] authority should be the preservation rather than the disruption of community social structures which best fit the desires of the groups concerned” (Rothstein, 2017, p. 23).

As the housing shortage eased, starting slowly in the 1950s and rapidly through the 1970s, demand for federally funded and developed housing lowered amongst White middle-income families (Rothstein, 2017). This enabled the real estate lobby to successfully diminish public housing production to subsidized projects for very low-income families, with the previous population of middle-income White families either opting out of public housing in favor of newly accessible homeownership, White flight, or even forcefully removed due to new policy that restricted tenantship in public projects exclusively to the poorest residents (Rothstein, 2017). High vacancy rates in White projects, and long waiting lists for Black projects, prompted a demographic shift, with many White projects being forced to integrate to meet the housing needs of Black families (Rothstein, 2017). It is noted by some residents of these projects that many White families chose to leave following this integration, seeking units in neighborhoods that maintained the segregated White makeup or entering the private housing market (Delz et al., 2020). A national trend followed, and the demographic makeup of public housing projects not only became very poor, but inhabited primarily by Black families. In 1984 investigative reporting from the Dallas Morning News found that nearly all of the nation’s public housing projects, housing ten million people at this point, were deeply segregated, with White projects hosting amenities, facilities, services, and upkeep that simply did not exist on predominantly Black projects (Rothstein, 2017).

The isolation of public housing tenants to the very poorest residents resulted in an immediate divestment from the projects and a steady decline in the production of new developments. This decline was steep in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, there was no funding for any new public housing development (Bratt, 2012). This was taken so far that an amendment to the United States Housing Act of 1937 was made, the Faircloth Amendment, capping the number of public housing units whose construction or operations are funded by Capital or Operating Funds, not allowing the net number of units to exceed those that existed on October 1, 1999 (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD], 2016). This hasn’t made particularly detrimental impacts on production today, as the number of units has continued to shrink and is significantly lower than the unit count in 1999; development would not presently be blocked on the basis of this Faircloth Limit (Fu & Velasco, 2023). However, not only does it have the power to do so in the long-term and therefore should be appealed, it also communicates the social and financial divestment in public housing models from the perspective of the federal government. Federal housing mechanisms have often functioned as short-term solutions, with the expiring use problem illustrating this most clearly. During the 20th century, federal interventions in affordable housing began to center public-private partnership, with subsidies for the private market to be responsible for developing new affordable units. These federal subsidies for private for-profit development of affordable housing units were (and are) held to low-rent requirements only until the mortgage was paid off or the HUD contract expired, a period of approximately 15 years on average (Baker et al., 2024). These previously low-rent units left the affordable housing sector—and current tenants were evicted—and became market-rate housing leading to the diminishing number of subsidized units nationwide. Consequences of public-private partnerships such as this have raised questions about the effectiveness of private-sector methods in the public sector, demonstrating how often they are often so different that they cannot be treated as interchangeable in terms of structure and procedure (Hedley, 1998).

The mid-late 20th century saw a rapid shift in public housing demographics as a direct result of explicit federal and local policy as well as social values and cultural attitudes that resulted in the use of public housing as a mechanism of segregation with Rothstein (2017) describing the public projects by the 1960s “a warehousing system for the poor” (p. 37). Public housing went through major changes in the 20th century, from a massive demographic shift, to changes of federal mechanisms within the sector itself. From the transition from PWA to USHA, to the passing of the Housing Act of 1949 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 framing federal responsibility, procedures, and perceptions, to the Faircloth Amendment, each of these governmental changes acted not just to redefine the need for housing, but to communicate its reinvented purpose and reflect the social values informing this (Vale, 2000).

Barriers to Improving U.S. Public Housing

Some arguments against investment into public housing models as they have functioned in the U.S. include that they have been unable to support upward mobility, and they can act as a temporary shelter, with tenants being forced to vacate if they are able to increase their income and exceed the maximum earnings allowed for tenants (Delz et al., 2020). While certain projects have been able to address these issues through cooperative models, such as Mitchell-Lama in New York City for example, the issue itself also makes a case for the benefit of mixed-income housing, showing how the isolation of public housing for the poorest Americans has resulted in detrimental outcomes for the sector as a whole. An examination of U.S. public housing history makes incredibly clear why such programs are essentially non-existent in terms of new development, and failing many of their remaining tenants. Some scholars believe that creating new public housing is not a public policy option in the U.S. and claim that we must now turn to alternative housing models, primarily non-profit development (Bratt, 2012; Patillo, 2013). Other scholars note that the crisis has become so acute that any local initiatives will be insufficient in solving affordability concerns, with expenditure so high that it demands increasingly tenuous federal support (Schwartz, 2019). What can likely be agreed upon amongst scholars is that the housing crisis will demand attention from all, and will require the involvement of many different sectors to address, blending and integrating proposals and positions into one another. Flexibility of proposed housing models, and the recognition that a diverse set of schemes need to be enacted at the same time is important in addressing these issues.

The United States has been politically polarized since its inception. In the same way that this demonstrated challenges in implementing federal housing programs at the start of the 20th century—with jurisdiction over public housing production turned over to localities in 1937, just 4 years after the first federal public housing project as part of The New Deal (Rothstein, 2017)—this presents challenges in contemporary political spaces as well. Exemplary cases of state-led affordable housing sectors—such as Vienna, Austria, most notably—make a strong case for this approach and ability to address housing needs at large scales. However, this top-down approach must assume that the government sees the value in models of this sort and has a desire to host permanently affordable housing programs for everyone. Although the housing crisis exists at a global scale, it is also true that many nations have been able to host programs that address it at appropriate scales, many of them in Europe. Why is it that the U.S. faces such uniquely American challenges in adopting solutions? Perhaps it is because the U.S. has suggested time and time again that it is not in search of permanent solutions.

“How society determines its needs depends primarily on its social values,” (1963, p. 158) says scholars Gordon D. Macdonald and Rosalind Tough. Looking to housing models such as that of Vienna, a city that is an icon for successful public housing programs, presents challenges when considering its reproducibility. One of the major features of Vienna’s housing market is an overwhelming percentage of renters, 77.2% in 2020, and 48.1% of all housing being “social” meaning either city or non-profit operated (Karlinsky, Peninger, & Bevington, 2020). Housing is paid for in collaboration with national and city government contributions, and the projects themselves are subsidized, as opposed to common practice in the U.S. where the individual tenant is subsidized through vouchers (Mari, 2023). This preference for renting is true of other European cities as well, with Leipzig, Germany, hosting 87% share of renters—this preference exists nationwide with 55% of all German households renting—and a different economic demographic of renters as compared to the U.S., where renters are a much smaller proportion of the population and have statistically lower incomes than homeowners, making renters less politically potent (Reynolds, 2018). A 2023 New York Times article written by Francesca Mari detailed the Austrian housing model using it as a case study to question reproducibility. Regarding Vienna’s supply-focused approach to housing subsidy, Mari (2023) writes, “Vienna’s choice illustrates a fundamental economic reality, which is that a large-enough supply of social housing offers a market alternative that improves housing for all.” (para. 15) While this notion itself has been challenged by scholars in favor of demand-side subsidies (see Zeidel, 2010), Vienna’s choice also illustrates something else: its social values.

The commodification of housing in the U.S. serves to benefit those who are already invested in it, hosting a population of people that are particularly politically potent. Ultimately, this is who shapes the housing market in the U.S., and as long as those with social and economic privilege continue to create demand for secondary residences, large properties, or luxury entertainment spaces, for example, supply will continue to be met, and prioritized (Baker et al., 2024). This is yet another demonstration of how income inequality is exacerbating these issues, giving immense amounts of power and influence to very few. It also acts to illustrate what cultural values exist in the U.S., and how wealth accumulation is produced and spent. Land ownership has been an incredibly important facet of American society since day one, a product of capitalism to be sure, but also responsive to the greater cultural context. Federal campaigns promoted homeownership, responding to fear of communism and the 1917 Russian revolution, believing that “those who owned property would be invested in the capitalist system,” (Rothstein, 2017, p. 60) and launching the “Own-Your-Own-Home” campaign in 1917. The campaign communicated ideas about homeownership as supreme to tenancy and the single-family unit a defining feature of modern American life and patriotism (Lands, 2008; Rothstein, 2017; Weiss, 1989). And it was successful—historically, land ownership was primarily concentrated amongst farming communities, with the homeownership rate being 37% in 1900, and rising up to 64% in 1989 (Weiss, 1989).

Understanding this shift in preference for homeownership also highlights another social function of housing, as it is not exclusively a financial incentive that causes over 80% of American renters to expect to transition to homeownership (McCabe, 2018). Scholar and sociologist Brian J. McCabe (2018) identifies five core reasons why Americans today hold a strong preference for ownership over tenantship: ontological security, social status, housing conditions, residential choice, and economic opportunity. Particularly important to the scope of this paper, is understanding how social status is perceived through and defined by homeownership in the U.S.. Campaigns such as “Own-Your-Own-Home” and other political messaging has made clear that homeownership is synonymous with political citizenship, representative of American ideals such as the American Dream, hard work, and social and personal achievement (McCabe, 2018). Owning a home has become a symbol of American success, a marker to society that one belongs, with this perception being particularly important to groups who have historically been exiled from homeownership and other citizenship rights (McCabe, 2018). Each of these five explanations demonstrates a function of housing as a sociological entity, showing how it interacts with psychological health, social belonging, autonomy and self-determination, as well as having a material and financial basis. Ownership as compared to tenantship interacts with these ideas differently, especially when informed by a broader socio-political proclivity for one over the other.

When considering a permanently affordable housing model for implementation in the U.S., this social condition must be considered, perhaps suggesting that ownership must somehow play a role in its definition. Alternatively, working outside of this framework requires that these social values must be shifted, and convincing the broader population of preference for tenantship models will play a significant role in large-scale implementation. Some scholars argue that a capitalist society that centers ownership of production (and space) will never be privy to people-centered policy and practice and will center profit (Brenner, Marcuse, & Mayer, 2012). Commodification is not intrinsically linked to housing, and was carefully crafted with intentional purpose. It acts to benefit those who are most invested in capitalism and those who are socially privileged within its institutions. Understanding the apparatuses in which these shifts within the housing market today have been generated can help to frame conversations about how to shift them again in new directions.

The Micro-political Framework

Framing the barriers to U.S. affordable housing development within the terms of social and cultural values can lead us to start identifying new ways of understanding its origins and framing solutions. Micro-politics, as notably explored through the philosophical works of Michael Foucault and his ideas of the “micro-physics of power,” suggests that power itself is shaped, defined, and exercised at the individual level, prescribing ideas about “subjectivity” through personal relationships, interactions, and other forms of self-governance, all of which have macro-scale societal manifestations and consequences (Foucault, 1977). This suggests not only an origin point for power and inequality, but also reshapes ideas about how to challenge them, suggesting a decentralized, small-scale framework more akin to the nature of the dynamics themselves. Understanding how social and cultural values perceive power and inequality and how this plays a role in the housing crisis suggests a point of consideration for how to use micro-political philosophy to shape action. Micro-politics within the context of housing acts to shift the focus away from high-level decision makers and engage in bottom-up solutions. Setting goals focused on shifting social and cultural values, done through micro-political interventions, has the ability to shift behaviors, desires, and perceptions, allowing for power dynamics to be redefined through the process in which they were defined initially. Attempting to do so through legal action, formal policy, or otherwise top-down approaches, has been proven difficult, and these theories suggest that this is because the intervention is supposing itself on a structure whose formation is wholly misunderstood. Micro-politics in action, beyond philosophical debate, faces reasonable criticism about its scalability and susceptibility to exclusivity or exploitation, ideas that will be elaborated.

Within the context of housing, micro-political action is small-scale intervention done by and for local interest, through community engagement and communal principles. This category of political action is able to shift and regulate individual perceptions and attitudes. Bottom-up approaches reflect micro-political action, and housing models that engage residents and grassroots organizations directly have inscribed micro-political action within them. They also consider the ways in which individual relationships are formulated within housing, whether that be between neighbors in single-family districts or multi-family projects. With consideration for the historical legacy that has shaped the present housing sector in the United States, a debate about how to redefine its mechanisms and benefactors can be engaged. There is an enormous amount of necessary housing infrastructure that is currently missing from the sector, and initiating development to address this at the scale of the demand calls for a macro-level intervention. However, the context in which housing historically and presently functions, and its relationship to power in the United States, demonstrates the difficulty of altering the social-values that inform this context at the macro-level. Whether it’s political polarization and instability, capitalism, or culture that prefers current market conditions, it is worth considering models and frameworks beyond the ones typical in the U.S. Housing the Co-op: A Micro-Political Manifesto (Delz et al., 2020) provides a perspective on alternative frameworks claiming that:

Housing production dominated by macro-economic interests and speculative markets must be countered by models based on co-ownership, co-production, and co-management of shared resources and capacities. By putting the focus on practices of co-operation and self-organization, the use value of local living environments is favored over the instrumentalization of housing as a commodity. [...] Moreover, engaging with co-operative practice by means of housing production can also serve as a role model and active tool for promoting political and urban change from within the system. [...] Housing the Co-op asserts that coordinated co-operative practice can ultimately effect broad systemic transformation by progressively inscribing micro-political action into macro-political frameworks and institutions (pp. 5-7).

These cooperative models exist as major defining features of the housing market in several countries across the world. Housing production of this type is not uncommon in countries such as Uruguay that have a major portion of the housing sector dominated by auto-construction, or Switzerland which hosts a number of cities whose housing supply is determined foremost by grassroots demands, but in an American context, these ideas are deeply radical and unfamiliar. However, this does not mean that implementation is entirely impossible, it just must be imagined differently—there is no precedent to copy. If it is assumed that micro-political action can in fact translate to macro-political change, the scope in which housing experts are working becomes much more manageable and equally impactful. Radical change becomes pragmatic when you consider its practice at small-scales. Micro-political action addresses many of the challenges we face in terms of not-so-radical solutions as well, allowing for hyper context-specific solutions that respond to the social and political conditions of small communities. American culture varies so dramatically across regions, whereas need might be comparable despite geographic differences, attitudes and values differ greatly from the Pacific Northwest, to the Midwest, to the Southern United States, and so on. Localized zoning control made it so that technical strategies that are uncontested in one municipality are limited legally in another, but it is also important to recognize that the desires and needs of community members differ greatly by region as well.

Returning to the foundation in which micro-politics is based, it is important to consider how these ideas exist differently when removed from philosophy and placed into practice. Micro-political action as understood above, faces serious challenges in its realization. It is imperative that these challenges be considered and understood, so as to work towards defining a model that can attempt resiliency towards them. Bottom-up organization has the ability to encourage collaboration and collective action that can better inform decision making, ensuring that voices who are otherwise often missing from decision making have autonomy in these important moments. It is true, however, that this can be weaponized if the group in which is given the space to have such autonomy uses it to establish discriminatory practices. If gone unchecked, this can challenge the prospect of desegregating the U.S. or increasing the prevalence of mixed-income housing, for example. This is a serious concern and one that needs to be considered when imagining how micro-political action is translated into the macro-political sphere. Questioning who and how micro-political action should be coordinated or scaled is one that is explored through the Social Housing Development Authority proposal which is elaborated on in the following section, and should be considered explicitly when defining new housing models, especially those acting at small scales.

Regarding scalability, the housing crisis is at a point of extremism that immediate, pragmatic solutions that produce recognizable change are of sensible importance. This is a question of timeline, and although it is not completely illogical to believe that these micro-political interventions cannot result in macro-political impact through major shifts in social value, it is not a practice that is easily recognizable over a short period of time. It is not necessarily true that this causes micro-politics to be stripped of its pragmatism, but suggests that action at multiple scales and through the use of many different frameworks and institutions is important, so as to address the immediacy of the crisis as well as the deep-seated roots it finds its basis in. This however still raises issues of its own, such as if their simultaneous action is plausible, or if solutions existing through macro-scale interventions will overshadow the ability or access to resources for bottom-up and grassroots interventions.

These issues do not have clear answers, but also do not discredit micro-political action as a whole. They also cannot be ignored, as precedent for the scaling of micro-political action in the housing sector does not exist in the U.S., and of course would function and react differently in this context. What the micro-political approach does however, is continue to inscribe the context-specificity of housing solutions, and acknowledge that there is no way to address the housing crisis through one model or scheme, as the needs and values of cities and people are so vastly different across the country. Micro-political action that centers the voices or needs of groups who already hold social or political power is again a tool to reestablish or confirm the segregated character of the urban landscape and racially exclusive housing sector as established by Rothstein’s (2017) account. Considering how these actions can be checked will be an important facet of any proposed model, but designing within this framework expands the realm of possibilities, not letting solutions be constrained by perceived social or political possibility.

Micro-political action is important when considering the need for a shift in social values, as this scale of intervention shapes attitudes, perceptions, and preferences of individuals, which is exactly the kind of intervention needed to redefine the cultural landscape that poses the uniquely American barriers. In this way, it has a sociological ability to form new desires and beliefs that can underpin a broader social movement that is crafted at the individual level, as opposed to relying on institutional or governmental action in redefining these behaviors. Framing work within the boundaries of micro-politics will have a much greater impact on the sociocultural landscape when observed over time, and can then be inscribed into macro-political function to carry out the scale of practice that is called for.

Alternative Housing Models

Assuming that the prospect of reinvigorating the U.S. public housing scheme to adequately and equitably address its housing needs is as grim as its skeptics believe, it is important to understand other models that exist and that can be implemented. This paper defines alternative housing as permanently affordable, participatory models excluding public housing (ex, community land trusts [CLTs]; limited-equity cooperatives [LECs]; community-led housing [CLH]; community development corporations [CDCs]; cohousing). Social housing is used to mean these models plus public housing, inscribing within them democratic and participatory functions, as well as permanent affordability. Alternative housing refers to these principles as well but does not consider public housing.. They each present strengths and limitations to consider when designing alternative solutions to the U.S. housing crisis.

Nonprofit Housing Development

There are several forms of non-speculative housing models that are practiced in the United States, each of them presenting solutions to the challenges presented by for-profit housing development and centralized government controlled public housing, each also facing unique challenges. In the nonprofit sector there are three dominant organization forms for housing development, CLTs, LECs, and CDCs. Many of these groups are formed by residents, local community members, or other stakeholders who have vested interest in the social wellbeing of a particular community. CLTs in particular own land and lease it out to building owners with equitable principles, enabling residents to have a financial stake in their home and combat displacement. LECs are defined by controlled resale values of collectively resident-owned housing, also featuring resident associations who make collective decisions. CDCs primarily address neighborhood revitalization concerns, using housing development to target underserved and suffering neighborhoods not served by the private sector (Bratt, 2012). Patillo (2013) states that the primary weakness in an argument in favor of these models and their anti-commodity stance “is that the production of housing would still require capital resources that few nonprofit organizations possess, thereby maintaining a need for a system of housing finance which would reignite the commodity character of housing” (p. 520). Financing alternative housing models is a primary concern that limits the scope of these apparatuses and the impact that they are able to make. Reynolds (2018) breaks down the uniquely American barriers to integrating cooperative housing models in particular, identifying five categories: the U.S. housing market as an investment vehicle, available financial products, the local tax structure, awareness and education, and development patterns and preferences. Especially interesting amongst Reynolds’ (2018) observations is the lack of education amongst lenders and affordable housing developers in cooperative and other alternative housing models, preventing the widening of the scope of policy and practice, and the tastes of Americans and their housing preferences that often don’t align with community-oriented and communal living. The latter of the two again reiterates the role that social value plays in preventing the success of alternative models, but particularly a barrier set by potential participants themselves, as opposed to those involved with development such as financial barriers (which are also complicated by broader social values). Community-oriented housing projects are ones that inscribe co-management, resident decision making processes, and an emphasis on collective action within a project. It also refers to a broader contextualization of the project within the neighborhood in which it is situated. Community-orientation can create a sense of belonging, affection, and attentiveness to collective values and goals established by the residents of a project. Nonprofit development does address some concerns that arise from bottom-up organizing and the targeted exclusion of marginalized voices. They maintain a need to retain public trust, and are held to high legal and ethical standards that provide some level of checks on their potential to abuse their resources.

Developer-Driven Cooperative Housing

Seattle has become an example of radical housing policy in the U.S., with social housing mechanisms inscribed in the Charter and their tax structure, as well as a breeding ground for grassroots housing development, and developer driven permanently affordable housing models. Seattle is among the first US cities to create a public development authority (PDA) dedicated to social housing, integrating state-led social housing strategies to centralized government bodies with overwhelming public support, but is also leading by example in terms of housing strategies that work outside of these formal government procedures. Architects for a new cooperative housing development in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, Corvidae Co-op, demonstrate how context-specificity has aided in the development of radical housing practice. Corvidae, developed and designed by the Seattle firm Allied8, responds to issues such as inequitable homeownership opportunity and exclusionary zoning, which has aided in Seattle’s history of redlining and predatory real estate practices (City of Seattle, n.d.). Exclusionary zoning, which has been a tool used by urban planners to establish single-family land use which is historically exclusive against marginalized groups and shaped segregation, centralizes resources and facilities in areas most accessible to wealthier, whiter, communities (Braver, 2024). Most cities address the issue of exclusionary zoning through rezoning procedures, which are tedious, lengthy, and challenging politically in most jurisdictions (New York City’s rezoning procedure, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure [ULURP], prevents and prolongs many initiated zoning changes). Seattle's zoning code, however, presented technical ambiguity about unit definitions that enabled the architects and developers at Allied8 to make creative design decisions that challenged the single-family nature of the neighborhood in which the project sits. With the inclusion of a single shared kitchen and two accessory dwelling units (ADU), a site that is presently zoned as single-family now hosts 10 individual units without the need for rezoning. Corvidae also demonstrates a financing model that enables down payments for residential ownership as low as $10,000, lowering the inequitable homeownership barriers to entry for racially marginalized groups. The project cooperated with local developer UrbanBlack, to serve in the role of community marketing through their Black Homeownership Initiative Projects. Their job was to bring awareness of the project to the Black community in Seattle, encouraging Black families and individuals to pursue homeownership within the Corvidae Co-op and supporting them in the application process. The co-op itself prioritized applicants of racially marginalized backgrounds through affirmative marketing in order to address the racial inequities in access to homeownership, and particularly within this neighborhood, and was able to ensure that these communities knew that this was an option for them through this community engagement and marketing from UrbanBlack. It will be important to observe how the demographics of Corvidae evolve over time, as they cannot be analyzed for long term effectiveness this early in the project's existence. However, part of Corvidae’s model is a future shift to co-op members, with the assistance of the project's steward, the emerging real-estate developer, Frolic, to make decisions on who can purchase any future available units and join the co-op. It will be important for Frolic to explicitly ensure that the project's equity goals continue to be met into the distant future, and that if the desires and values of the co-op members shift in a direction that excludes Black and Brown Seattle residents, that this preference doesn’t manifest in a demographic shift towards racially privileged groups. Affordability will be protected as it exists as a LEC, and features two subsidized units—but this alone would not prevent the future co-op from utilizing their collective power to build a wall of exclusivity, against the project’s initial objectives.

Head developer and architect, Leah Martin, explains that the biggest challenge in the development of Corvidae was securing financing, a process that demonstrates interesting limiting conditions even in the most progressive cities. It took the project two years of failed bank deals to secure construction funding—the first lesson was that this investment would only come from a local bank, those banks who had a pulse on the magnitude of the local housing crisis and vested interest in addressing it; the second lesson was that language was critical, and funding for a “cooperative” was far less likely to secure a deal than a project described as a primary dwelling plus two ADUs, which of Corvidae is both (L. Martin, personal communication, February 12, 2025). There are several lessons to be learned from the development process of Corvidae, some widely applicable to affordable housing development methodology across the U.S., and some enforcing notions that these solutions are not reproducible in alternative contexts. Understanding the critical role that careful language played in determining whether or not funding would be secured suggests that education around alternative housing models is critically important for practitioners to obtain. If the choice of words alone, not the actual housing scheme itself, has this large of an influence on the willingness of participation, alternative housing models will face severe challenges in macro-level intervention into the housing sector (Sazama, 2000). When considering the reproducibility of a co-op model such as Corvidae, it is important to understand the political scheme in which it is informed by. In terms of the technical policy and zoning resolutions it crafted, this is simply not reproducible from a legal perspective in other cities. New York City for example defines a “single-family unit” by specific “familial relationship” definitions, a contestable concept to be sure, but preventing creative zoning of this sort. In addition, the project required the vested social interest of several actors, with Martin herself supplying the 20% private equity used to cover soft costs, an investment that will remain in the project for 20 years with only half of return on investment (ROI) covered by unit purchases. Other investors covering construction costs, which came from these local banks and then additional funding from Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) loan funds, also had to assume vested interested, with the possibility that local banks in other municipalities may not be as willing to take a risk with a project of this sort, where ROI is significantly more complex and relies on a willingness to expand the timeline in which it is dispersed. Seattle has been experiencing the housing crisis acutely—with 70% of residents at 80% AMI or below being cost-burdened—and this has prompted coordinated efforts that are supported by local government initiatives to boost the housing stock and support alternative housing models. Perhaps it is a signal that producing the cultural buy-in to these models is prompted by the extremity of the crisis, where in Seattle there have been severe increases in homelessness, and displacement has become a serious risk even for those at 100% AMI. Pro-housing social values have been produced as a result of irreversible struggle faced by large proportions of the population, particularly impacting the majority White middle-income groups, but this hasn’t necessarily been proven to be universal across the country. Although Corvidae has implemented explicit anti-racist values into its development and aims to act as a counter to the racist zoning and homeownership practices of Seattle and the U.S. more broadly, post-occupancy evaluations to observe whether or not this will be successful and expose the weaknesses of this particular model will be illustrated only with more time. The project is very new, opening in the summer of 2024, and hadn’t sold all ten units as of the date of the Martin interview, but post-occupancy evaluations should be a part of the adaptability and sustainability plan of the project, with willingness and ability to change when the goals aren’t being met.

Considering how a project such as Corvidae could be reproduced must consider the social values of a particular city and its local financing opportunities, but most importantly, its zoning. Above all else, Corvidae is attempting to address issues of exclusionary zoning, a historically racist practice, introducing multi-family housing into single-family zones, without requiring a rezoning (City of Seattle, 2024). Rezoning processes are incredibly politically charged, and can be excruciatingly difficult in most scenarios. This political process provides an opportunity for social values that favor anti-housing development positioning to make their voices heard, and new affordable housing development is easily blocked in places where people don’t want it. Corvidae was able to do so by working closely within the guidelines of the Seattle building code, and making creative decisions that defined the housing model through the design of its physical form. To determine the replicability of this model in other jurisdictions, practitioners should closely examine the building and zoning codes of their respective localities, and codify small-scale multifamily and shared facilities as by-right forms. Policy makers should look at amending zoning codes, such as that of New York City, which defines housing units in terms of limiting factors such as archaic “family definitions,” so as to enable creative architectural solutions and housing models similar to that of Corvidae. Regardless of the reproducibility challenges of Corvidae and other social housing initiatives in Seattle, what the city represents is that radical projects and policy are possible at relatively smaller scales when considering localized social values and context-specific cultures. Focusing on these localized efforts, adapting to particular contexts, can make a big difference in municipalities, and perhaps act as a precedent for radicalism itself.

Community Control to Combat Financialization

Studies of the St. James Towers Mitchell-Lama development in Clinton-Hill, Brooklyn, have suggested that a strong sense of community could potentially prove more impactful than the prospect of financial gain. Mitchell-Lama, a program that has been critiqued for its lack of permanent affordability and little differentiation from private unsubsidized rental housing markets (DeSalvo, 1975), can suggest something beyond specific cooperative housing structures. St. James Towers remains primarily cooperatively owned by Black and Puerto Rican residents in a neighborhood that has faced rapid gentrification that has significantly changed its racial and economic demographics (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). St. James Towers originated as a majority White co-op, but experienced a demographic shift as Clinton Hill witnessed post-war White flight causing an influx of Black and Brown residents in the neighborhood as a whole, and to the co-op specifically. Clinton Hill has faced gentrification during the twenty first century that has again shifted neighborhood demographics to host a majority White population, but St. James Towers residents remain primarily Black and Brown. Though this neighborhood's racial shift is relatively new, the ownership status of these co-op residents has prevented them from facing displacement. The co-op has built a sense of community and camaraderie that has shaped a desire among residents to maintain its service to the Black and Brown community. This project provided homeownership opportunities for Black New Yorkers that had not previously been realized pre-WWII. The cooperative nature of St. James Towers has enabled its residents to engage in “long-term collective work and decision making” (Delz et al., 2020, p. 96), that produced a sense of belonging, autonomy, and social cohesion that has proved resilient against gentrification. These residents share common goals, one of these goals in St. James Towers is to remain a place of homeownership opportunity for Black people, who would otherwise have been displaced from this neighborhood.

This particular Mitchell-Lama project is an LEC, which is a model that restricts the resale value of shares (units). LEC resale caps aim to sustain affordability but under Mitchell-Lama, unless additional convents are added, the statutory buyout remains. Ethnographic research conducted by Kavita Kulkarni found that residents of the project were presented with the option to privatize and host market-rate housing or remain a cooperative, with many of these residents belonging to groups that have been systematically restricted from the private homeownership market. Kulkarni reflects:

I can imagine a long time resident of these towers [...] seeing the massive wealth accumulation taking place right outside their homes as the neighborhood was racially gentrified, and finding it unfair that they could not get a piece of the pie after having made their own investments in the neighborhood for so many decades, seeing it through quite rough times and massive disinvestment. (K. Kulkarni, personal communication, April 17, 2025)

However, these residents voted to maintain the cooperative, now having equally important social investment in its social structure and its purpose. This example counters some of the concerns raised by McCabe (2018) and suggests that the presence of strong communal sentiments, vested interest in a project's goals, and emphasis on the social role of housing can be of more social value than the prospect of financial gain. To be clear, McCabe’s (2018) research looks directly at differences in ownership preferences as opposed to tenantship, and the community-focused LEC presents an alternative perspective to the binary of homeowner versus renter. Also important to consider is the role that race may have played in the outcome of this vote. Another former Mitchell-Lama co-op, Southbridge Towers, was posed with the same vote, and ultimately its members decided to privatize. This event demonstrated a flaw in the Mitchell-Lama program as a whole, one that allows for residents to decide to privatize after the building's mortgage is paid off, removing any sense of permanent affordability. When looking at key differences between these two projects, both of whom were given the opportunity to vote on privatization around the same time, it’s important to note the racial makeup of its residents and surrounding neighborhood. Southbridge Towers is primarily composed of White residents, whereas St. James Towers is one of the only majority Black residences in Clinton Hill, and their reasons for remaining a co-op reflect how the members understand the way in which they are perceived within the housing market itself. For residents of St. James Towers, the prospect of entering the private housing market is not one that has historically promised to be profitable or welcoming, and the project had become deeply connected to the neighborhood in which it was situated. Rather than pursuing financial value through privatization, and the prospect of financial gain through homeownership (happening as a result of gentrification), the co-op reestablished a devotion to affordability, with a new appreciation for its need in this increasingly unaffordable and increasingly White neighborhood (US Census Bureau, 2020). The project remains a co-op, allowing its residents to maintain an affordable pathway to homeownership for other Black and Brown future residents, and working to prevent this community from being displaced from a neighborhood that they have been a part of for so long despite outside efforts to remove them. Southbridge Towers did not share the same context—its association with a public program in a neighborhood full of luxury residential towers may suggest a fear among residents that their ownership status could be stigmatized by its participation in Mitchell-Lama. The project simply didn’t feature community-orientation within its scheme or with its surrounding neighborhood in the same way that St. James Towers did. Southbridge Towers didn’t perceive the choice to privatize as a moral one, but simply as a smart financial decision, without their own social investment in the benefit of the LEC or affordable housing more broadly.

Additionally, it is likely an important feature of St. James Towers and its affinity to maintaining the co-op that its residents have made these investments, both financial and social, over generations, understanding that they are building something that they can share with future generations within their families or social circles. The belief in the project and the feeling of responsibility that likely played a role in residents collectively voting not to privatize is something that is produced over time, suggesting that projects of this nature only grow stronger as they age, but also that their benefits may not be obvious immediately. The timeline of observation must be expanded, with practices such as post-occupancy evaluation collecting evidence that can be used to evaluate a project’s success or failure, considering the factor of time critically.

It is reasonable to assume that the ownership model, in combination with the community focus of this project, contributed to the social value that was established amongst its residents. This project also demonstrates how blending two models, cohousing and cooperative housing, whereas the former refers to the sharing of resources, space, and general communal sentiment, and the latter collective decision making and co-ownership, complement and magnify each other’s strengths and create a model that proves of more social value to its residents than the prospect of wealth accumulation through the private real estate market. This principle helps to address some of the broader concerns that have been associated with the Mitchell-Lama program. This project in particular also demonstrates how a model can exist within an equitable framework, being practiced by a resident body primarily made up of racially marginalized groups.

Housing Tenure Preferences

When considering alternative housing models, one of the defining characteristics of a project is whether it exists on the basis of owner-occupancy or tenancy. It is important not to make an objective claim about the superiority of one over the other, but rather to acknowledge the conditions of each, and propose important nuances to consider when designing new housing models in a U.S. context. Cultural attitudes towards homeownership and tenantship have in many ways been shaped by government messaging in many countries, with the history of the U.S. promoting homeownership as the predominant status and a measure of social acceptance noted previously, which has contributed significantly to individual preferences informed by the culture in which they exist. Ownership superiority ideology, which in the U.S. was informed by sociopolitical contexts such as racism and capitalism, has not been as prevalent in other nations, whereas in Switzerland, a country in which buildable land is topographically limited, has not communicated or enforced a social preference for homeownership (Fuller, 2023). In fact, approximately 61% of all Swiss are renters, with one of the lowest homeownership rates in the world, and the lowest in Europe (Das Bundesamt für Statistik, 2023). However, ethnographic studies of rental attitudes in Switzerland reveal an interesting reality about the respective social values around renting. It is true that stigma around renting is absent from Swiss society, however this does not mean that ownership preference isn’t present, just that it is simply so far out of reach that people have collectively accepted that living in urban Switzerland is synonymous with a choice of tenantship. The wealth gap between homeowners and renters in Switzerland is severe—homeowners in their thirties make 6 times more yearly than renters the same age, and this wealth gap rises to 11 times amongst those in their seventies—and although Swiss people acknowledge the benefits of renting, they still admit feeling resentful and a desire for homeownership, but understand that it is beyond luxury (Fuller, 2023). This study begs the question of individual and cultural preferences and how important these should be in identifying proper solutions. However, it does not necessarily suggest that this is a global phenomenon or that ownership preference is somehow innate to the human condition. Viennese citizens would challenge this notion as well, where renting is a choice made not merely out of financial necessity, but a true preference for the services it provides under the Viennese programs.

When framing the goal of housing reform in terms of decommodification, tenantship is a sensible conclusion, centering public and nonprofit ownership of property with permanently affordable rental markets done through various mechanisms. When considering how to implement a program of this sort in a place that is so socially invested in the private housing market and, perhaps more importantly, has an overwhelming desire for homeownership, it is important to also consider ways in which social value and preference for tenantship can be produced. The desire to be a homeowner cannot be ignored when designing tenantship models. If the people who are expected to live in these projects will do so with an underlying desire to leave, it is reasonable to assume that they will be vulnerable to similar issues that they have faced historically such as divestment or stigma. That being said, the tenantship models themselves, when observed in a sociocultural vacuum, address the critical issues faced by the housing market presently in ways that many argue ownership models cannot, and it is worth asking what must be done in order to make them adoptable at the scale in which they are needed. Further research into how to produce this preference for tenantship should be explored.

However, some argue that these preferences should be both acknowledged and honored, and considering affordability within the framework of homeownership is worthy of more attention in housing scholarship (Saunders, 1990). It is true that homeownership has been a mechanism of discrimination and segregation, and is conducive to the ills of commodified housing systems; the ignorance of use value, homelessness, cost-burdening, inadequate housing, and disutility. Homeownership has also proven to have measurable benefits, beyond financial gain, some of which also discussed by McCabe (2018) as referenced above. It is also observed that renters themselves express little sense of belonging or responsibility to the physical space in which they call home, and homeowners experiencing something much different, a desire to continue to invest in their property, and not exclusively a financial investment, but a social desire to make their home function in the way that they so wish, and the self-determination to do so (Delz et al., 2020; Fuller, 2023; Saunders, 1990). It also has the ability to establish generational housing security, through models such as the LEC, providing some security to groups who have faced housing insecurity at higher rates, when they are designed within equitable terms. The way in which homeownership is presently perceived, communicated, and executed is not conducive to solving the housing crisis, nor is it just. In its present form, it causes more issues than it solves, and is dangerously adept at further deepening segregation and racist real estate practice. However, homeownership preference in the U.S. is so overwhelming, there is merit in exploring how it can be adapted to better address affordability and equitable access concerns. Additionally, the actions of the St. James Towers residents suggest that, when paired with community-oriented principles, co-ownership models can be incredibly resilient to the threat of the private financialized housing market.

Affordable Homeownership Still Out of Reach for Some

The St. James Towers and Corvidae projects both have in common their targeting of middle-class residents, unable to address unaffordability for America’s extremely low-income and homeless communities. This is a challenge with homeownership frameworks generally, as even the most affordable homeownership opportunities will still not be accessible to those who face homelessness or severe poverty. The prospect that an individual or a family in these situations would be able to secure the downpayment of even $10,000, Corvidae’s cheapest financial entry point, is still out of reach. Given the severity of housing insecurity that is now experienced by a substantial number of Americans, there is likely demand for an improved tenantship model that can provide permanent housing for these people as well. This should not be done through any temporary housing models, which have not proven effective at delivering long-term stability. Some studies of alternative housing models in other countries have enabled homeless or impoverished communities to eventually build up to homeownership; the history of Berlin’s squatters movement is a particularly important example of this. Berlin hosts a number of legalized squats—they now function as co-ops which legally own the building in which they live, but originated as illegal squats—these squatters were able to collectively purchase buildings they inhabited using unconventional ownership models. Some squatters had the financial capital to be able to put in the cash needed to purchase a building once the city made this option available to the squats, whereas other squatters in the same squat did not have this financial capability. Instead of disqualifying those squatters with limited economic capacity from participating in the legalized co-op, they instead were able to earn an ownership stake through sweat equity, making necessary improvements to the infrastructure of the squat, which were often abandoned and rundown buildings. Those who invested through sweat equity were equal owners to those who supplied cash investment, and this created equal opportunity regardless of economic background and a form of mixed-income housing that has informed cooperative housing movements internationally. Berlin squatters have set a precedent for decommodified housing that emphasizes its use-value, demonstrates the success of collective action, and shows how to make homeownership accessible to even the poorest communities. Exploring Berlin’s squats when considering the inequity of homeownership provides for an interesting counter to traditional purchasing strategies, but that does not mean it is reproducible. Berlin’s squatting culture is informed by its own broader sociocultural and political contexts, and it has been widely socially accepted as opposed to squatting culture in the U.S.. It would be interesting to examine how strategies such as sweat equity could be utilized to enable homeless or extremely low-income communities to participate in homeownership models, but there is no suggestion that this would be socially accepted or implemented at any impactful scale given the severe stigmatization and isolation of these groups in the U.S..

Any homeownership models that are considered as solutions to the housing crisis should be considering not only how to make homes accessible to racial minorities and low or middle-income groups, but also how they can be made accessible for the millions of Americans facing poverty or homelessness.

State-led Interventions

Financing alternative housing projects remains the primary barrier for their development and implementation at a broad scale. Identifying solutions to this has become a serious consideration for many housing experts, and it has brought about many questions and critiques of these models' practicality outside of formal government procedures and support. Especially considering the ways in which bottom-up interventions and micro-political action can and have been abused to continue the exclusion of historically racially marginalized groups in the U.S., it is crucial that there is a way to ensure equitable action and have mechanisms in store to prevent these models from only benefiting a select privileged few. Additionally, many of the referenced alternative housing models, such as LECs and CLTs, are partially funded by the government, that is at the state and local levels (Bratt, 2012). Corvidae received subsidies from the City of Seattle and St. James Towers was of course initially funded by the city and state of New York given its public programming. To expect any of these models to exist independent of this government funding and to be developed at the scale in which the crisis calls for, is arguably unrealistic. Identifying ways in which formal government structures can be utilized to enable these models and enforce all of the characteristics of permanent affordable housing that proves resilient to the private market can help address the weaknesses that they hold.

A proposal that is engaging with this work is The Social Housing Development Authority (SHDA), which is a public institution that acts to coordinate and support local decommodified housing initiatives (Baiocchi & Carlson, 2025). A thorough review of its complex and compelling proposed structure is outside the scope of this paper, but some relevant highlights follow. Through its responsibilities of acquisition, development, conveyance, and financial support, the SHDA enables the micro-political actors, whether they be non-profits, co-ops, or CLTs, or other public entities, to practice at an impactful scale while being held accountable to the risks these grassroots or community organizations sometimes face in not adequately addressing need or excluding some from their action, and providing the necessary support in scaling their impact. The SHDA would effectively function as a “national community land trust,” over time passing building ownership to the entity in which is managing the property, but maintaining land ownership (except concerning CLTs and Public Housing Authorities) (Baiocchi & Carlson, 2025, p. 23). The inscription of democratic processes in the SHDA is a particularly strong point, including a mandatory “resident council” within each project, and this council would have substantive managerial control over their homes, even in government-owned projects, although these powers would be fewer. This enables autonomy and self-determination, ensuring that the needs and interests of residents are not ignored or resources sacrificed in favor of new development. The proposal addresses concerns around this resident control by providing education through Technical Assistance Centers (TAC), removes limitations to voluntary participation, and connects board members at three levels, residents, labor, and public interest (as well as at the local, regional, and national levels), balancing the needs and interests of all participants. The SHDA also embraces a gradualist approach, working within existing governance and real estate structures that are difficult to disentangle. It achieves a radically different decommodified housing sector slowly over time, accounting for the political challenges in implementing these changes at once.

The SHDA proposal is one that can be practiced at multiple scales. The Homes Act of 2024, introduced to congress by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tina Smith, proposes how its mechanisms are used within a federal authority and budget, independent, but under HUD. This proposal addresses the issue of scale, demonstrating how this scheme can be used to properly address the extremity of the present housing crisis, and a possible solution that could make a real impact. One particular challenge in this proposal again comes back to concerns of social value, with Sec. 4 (2)(A) designating board appointee power to the President, which could result in questionable goals of the board given the current political landscape within the federal government. The proposal does demonstrate how its financial structure and therefore its practice is resilient to “hostile government” (Baiocchi & Carlson, 2025, p. 27), which is structurally impressive and important, however, the makeup of the board still appears to be particularly important and dependent on those participants subscribing to the value in which the authority poses to provide. It is possible that assuming this power to the President would be consequential and limit the ability of the SHDA to effectively serve its mission under the framework of the Homes Act of 2024 specifically.

However, this proposal is also explored at the state and municipal level, with it inspiring parts of the Seattle Social Housing Developer, and experimented with at the state level in New York, with a report done by a Hunter College Urban Policy and Planning Masters studio. The Hunter College report demonstrates how the flexibility of the SHDA is particularly effective in New York State, working with the diversity of Public Housing Authorities (PHA), and vast differences in municipalities needs and attitudes (UPP Hunter, 2023). The SHDA would be uniquely sustainable in the face of political shifts, a tradition that has proven a persistent challenge in maintaining successful housing programs in New York. A particularly interesting recommendation made by the report is a change in language, citing the politicized nature of the word “social” and “social housing” more broadly, and this is a concern that others would likely share when observing how language has impacted other projects and policy. Language was particularly challenging for Corvidae developers to secure funding, with the term “cooperative” being a trigger for banks to decline their involvement in the project based on concerns around their financial stability. In the long-term, this again calls for the education around housing typologies and alternative models, to ensure that language is not the barrier, but in the short-term it is suggested that being cognizant of these linguistic limitations and using less politicized language will remove some of these barriers.

The SHDA, when practiced at the state or municipal level, hosts fewer challenges than proposals for its federal scaling, but they are still present at these scales as well. Combating racial capitalism and considering racial equity are explicit goals of the SHDA. This is suggested to be done through giving first opportunity to those historically impacted by redlining and gentrification, as done in Berkeley, CA, as well as developing non speculative and land ownership models so as not to continue the extraction of wealth out of communities of color, and 40% of units devoted to those at 30% AMI or lower. Mixed-income housing has been difficult to do successfully and equitably in the U.S., so there needs to be mechanisms in place that actively integrate residents across income levels, making sure that all members have equal access to decision making, and that the stigmatization of housing under the program is actively combated and avoided. Any program that relies on centralized control and facilitation must assume that the governing body overseeing it holds a belief in and devotion to its cause. Further safeguards are needed that can protect the authority in the case that high-level individuals in charge or the body as a whole experience a shift in values that fail to meet the initial goals of the SHDA. These safeguards are to prevent the dismantling or redefining of the SHDA’s mechanisms in a way that strips permanent affordability or the providing of shelter and community.

Exploring ways in which the SHDA can be implemented at local and regional levels is a point of research and experimentation that should be engaged, as it attempts to address many of the issues laid out in this paper. However, they all require the shifting of social values in places that do not presently host pro-housing views, in order to make it politically feasible. Engaging in practices that produce this cultural buy-in must first be exercised. It will be important to observe how emerging models in these more progressive cities are able to implement these structures, and continue to develop them to be resilient to obstacles as they arise.

Analysis

The housing crisis is too pressing, too extreme, to center the debate in any way but towards solution-oriented discussions. Education about the reality of the housing sector and its history, the present crisis, and the ways in which different people interact with it in the United States is a crucial first step. It is important to be experimenting with potential housing models in practice and not just in theory. There is pressing demand for more housing units in the U.S., and the demand is only likely to grow. However, this new development, including those experimental projects, cannot be done carelessly, as the risk to further entrench U.S. culture and social values into its inequitable, unjust, NIMBY positioning is too plausible. Every practitioner in the affordable housing sector should be engaging in a dialogue toward the design of a framework or frameworks in which new development is conceived and executed. Key findings in my analysis have led me to identify a set of preliminary characteristics of important consideration in the development of affordable housing.

Housing Reform Must Address Racial Equity Explicitly

The United States housing sector has played a major role in shaping the demographics of American cities today, informed by segregationist practice and reinforcing material manifestations of racism. Housing reform cannot be passive to this, but must actively address the ways in which it informs current housing and urban demographics. Housing policy and development must tackle the unequal access to housing faced by marginalized groups as a direct result of past and present policies and practices, and ensure that models are prioritizing equitable access to those who have been historically disadvantaged by the housing sector. Without addressing these truths head on and exercising in a way that is neutral to them, they will only become more true, segregation more materialized, and inequality more stark. Proposed policies and models should be explicit about the ways in which they address racial inequalities, ensuring that access for Black people and other racially marginalized groups who have been systematically disadvantaged by the housing sector, is prioritized. These historical inequities must be addressed first, and only then can the crisis faced by other racial and economic groups—which is also critical—be addressed as well.

Equitable Mixed-Income Housing

It is important to consider how a project can make sure it is both addressing the systemic disparities that are present while not simultaneously or unintentionally reinforcing segregational practice in a new format. Mixed-income housing is one way to ensure that housing doesn’t function as a mechanism of segregation, potentially leading to divestment and stigmatization that has plagued the U.S. public housing sector. Developing mixed-income housing in a way that addresses equity explicitly is of equal importance under these observations. Housing access should be prioritized for those who don’t have it presently and those who have been left out for generations, but projects also shouldn’t isolate low-income communities.

Consider Solutions Within Owner-Occupancy Housing

It is worth considering models that address the issues of commodified housing while remaining within a homeownership framework, responding to existing individual and cultural preferences. Ownership structures that provide the social and psychological benefits of homeownership such as ontological security and belonging, that are also equitable, accessible, and offer permanent affordability should be identified. This may allow for more immediate responses to the housing crisis without relying on the necessary shift of social values towards tenantship which naturally will take time. That is not to say that this work shouldn’t also be done, but that it can be pursued concurrently.

Community-Oriented, Owner-Occupied

Homeownership structures should evolve. Owner-occupancy should not be assumed to be exclusively or even commonly single-family housing. Multi-family owner-occupied housing should become more commonplace. Projects should be considered which are both cohousing and cooperative, where residents have shared ownership, shared resources, collective management, and where an emphasis on the project as a social entity and residents as community members provide the ability to resist private financial interest. Owner-occupied projects will be stronger when they are informed by community-orientation. Again, equity must still be considered and addressed explicitly so as not to allow the interests of one community to become louder than another.

Acting in Lieu of Federal Support

It is important to imagine models that do not rely exclusively on government support, particularly at the federal level. Relying on the U.S. government for the supply of housing has, historically, been lacking or contingent in ways that leave people suffering, homeless, and underhoused. We see now in 2025 how this can be exacerbated in new political climates, with the current HUD Secretary, Scott Turner, framing the goals of the agency through this quote on HUD’s front webpage: “God blessed us with this great nation, and together, we can increase self-sufficiency and empower Americans to climb the economic ladder toward a brighter future,” (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2024). This one quote encapsulates the very framework in which the agency, under this leadership, understands its own responsibility and its measures for success. Under the Trump Administration, housing goals are not aligned with the demand, nor are they aligned with housing justice more broadly—the agency has communicated ethos through its public facing materials and language that is explicit about its favoring of commodified housing and financialized positioning. An alternative housing system that relies on federal government resources presents challenges when its goals do not align or the Administration does not find value or merit in its existence. This may be especially obvious to housing justice advocates and professionals in the present political landscape, but it is not an idea that is unique to this administration or even this century. This was a sentiment that was expressed explicitly from a spokesperson for HUD themselves back in 1981: “the whole attitude that the federal government can solve all the housing problems of this country—those days are over” (Shashaty, 1981). When the agency which is responsible for federal housing interventions is expressing themselves that they are not capable of—or more likely, interested in—addressing the housing crisis, that is as clear a sign as any that identifying alternative models independent of the federal government is worthwhile. Whereas precedent for State-led housing sectors may suggest several benefits of this model, whether that be public trust in the system or the ability to provide its resources to all people at a necessarily large scale, these benefits are not guaranteed to materialize in the United States.

Local Initiative Is Conducive to Radical Change

Embracing micro-political action can allow for more radical housing reform at smaller scales. There is benefit in these projects, not only their immediate response to housing demand, but also in the precedent that they can set for other practitioners and interest groups, and their ability to slowly shift social values, starting with the individual. In conversations with Leah Martin, she expressed that one difficulty of working in the affordable housing space is that the work is, by necessity, localized—that in executing her work she and others remain almost entirely unaware of projects and advancements happening elsewhere in the country. Although this suggests that it is also worth identifying ways to expand the reach of local housing initiatives to inform and inspire the national sector as a whole, it also suggests that radical change and projects that embrace housing reform and justice are possible at the local level without precedent. Corvidae Co-op is not the only imaginative affordable housing model to have been developed last year, it is unique of course, but there are interesting studios, firms, people, and organizations that are coming up with groundbreaking solutions at small scales that are tangible and in active use. Local initiative also approaches the issues with a level of context-specificity that is important socially, culturally, politically, and aesthetically. Observing how sociocultural shifts that can be produced in individuals through micro-political action is important. This is the first step in creating these sociocultural shifts at a greater scale and it is critical that social values be redefined in order to produce the necessary cultural buy-in to these alternative housing models. Designing mechanisms that rely on these micro-political actions can produce projects that align with broader housing goals, practitioners need to be educated on their existence and their legitimacy.

We Must Educate Practitioners

Even working inside the micro-political framework, there are still issues to address. One of these is the severe gap in education around alternative housing models in practicing fields. Cohousing and cooperative housing, for example, are models that are significantly misunderstood. It is statistically more difficult to obtain funding for cooperatives than it is for condominiums or rental properties, and terminology can impede policy passage. It is crucial that any actors or institutions that are involved with affordable housing development, whether that be investors, politicians, advocacy groups, developers, architects, and beyond are all educated on these topics in order to make informed decisions, and be aware of alternative models beyond those that are culturally assumed. Without this education, it will remain difficult to increase the scale at which local initiatives are developed.

Conclusion

There is no one correct strategy to implement permanently affordable housing in the United States and address the housing crisis. Interventions, both big and small, will be necessary and the manner in which they are executed will differ based on context. There are considerations in the broader American sociocultural context, and historical underpinnings that can help inform decisions and practice in housing policy and development in a way that is currently underappreciated. Considering how the social values that present uniquely American barriers to permanently affordable housing development can be redefined in the culture will be an important step in identifying pragmatic strategies to address the housing crisis in the United States.

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