No description available.

I began this investigation by asking a question. What is a possible design solutionthat can enable people who live-in or seek-out affordable housing to inhabit a structure that is more than a shelter, but a place they are proud to return to, bring friends to, and live in?The first portion of this thesis documents the need for affordable housing in the United States. Franklin Roosevelt, in 1944 before United States Congress, listed one of the economic rights of every citizen to be, "the right of every family to a decent home." Less money is being spent building new affordable housing or maintaining existing housing than at any other time in our history. The need for affordable housing continues to grow while the amount of available units continues to decline. There will always be a need for affordable housing in the United States. Some people will move out, but there will be new people with a need. I believe housing should be more than merely shelter. The rundown big box affordable housing we are all familiar with does not empower the people who occupy it to live their lives or easily better themselves. They are isolated in location and by negative connotation. There are a growing number of architects who have taken on the challenge to help people to better themselves, when they are unable to themselves. The four architectural precedents that are documented in the second portion of this thesis have dedicated their lives and abilities to creating better affordable housing that aids in allowing citizens, reguardless of race, ethnicity, or income (economic status), to benefit from their physical environment. Examples of each architectural firm's work are presented. I examine the design and participatory processes that enabled the architects to empower the people who live in their well-designed affordable housing.The final portion of this thesis focuses on stating and justifying seventeen design principles to enable people to create decent affordable housing based on the research and interviews. These principles investigate the ideas of being human, giving the sense of ownership to the people who live in affordable housing, being contextually respectful to one's neighborhood and community, being environmentally friendly, being modifiable or changeable for the different people who live in it over time, and respecting each family's specific story and enabling them to express their life and lifestyle. This thesis expresses the design principles of housing for empowerment. / Department of Architecture

Thesis (M.Arch.A.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Duck-soo Wohn. / M.Arch.A.S.

Thesis. 1978. M.Arch.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / M.Arch.

Thesis. 1975. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 422-431. / Ph.D.

No description available.

The past decade has witnessed both steep reductions in federal housing assistance and an intensification of local housing problems including homelessness. In light of these trends, this study explores alternative means available to municipalities of meeting the housing needs of low-income households. The methods chosen to accomplish this were two-fold: a literature review and a case study. The literature review revealed that in response to the Reagan administration's 1981 cutbacks to housing programs a new low-income housing delivery system, based largely on public-private partnerships, has emerged from the grass roots level in communities across the United States. In the new production system efforts have focused on preservation rather than new construction, and large for-profit developers have been replaced by nonprofit community-based development corporations and local public agencies. With the assurance of federal subsidies gone, local governments and nonprofit developers have sought to increase the effectiveness of current resources, direct more general revenue to housing activities and have raised new resources. Today, financing packages for low-income projects are usually built upon customized and creative financial packages that are difficult to replicate, and as a result, no definitive solutions have yet been found. Despite the hard work and creativity that has gone into developing low-income housing in the U.S. over the past decade local programs have been able to meet only a fraction of the country's housing needs. The case study method was chosen to focus on the City of Seattle, Washington's specific housing initiatives. The City's response has closely followed the national experience. A new delivery system has emerged which depends largely on the efforts of the City's municipal government, through its Department of Community Development, and the community's growing nonprofit sector. As a matter of policy Seattle has chosen to spend most of its low-income housing dollars on preserving the downtown's remaining 7,311 low-income units. The City does not. build housing itself, but instead, acts as a "bank" loaning money generated, for the most part, by off-budget strategies to nonprofit housing developers to rehabilitate existing low-income units to meet housing code standards. Seattle's housing programs have had mixed results. Despite their efforts, due to downtown's expansion, the City has continued to lose low-income units in the downtown to demolition and rent increases, no gain has been made on the City's overall housing need, and while the City has replaced the lost federal subsidies, it has not created significant ongoing revenue streams for future housing development. Results of this study indicate that, only the long term commitment of federal funds to a national housing strategy can stem the growing tide of homelessness across the U.S. and avert, a deepening of the country's housing crisis. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to (1) develop a statistical model that classifies the housing problems of affordability, quality and crowding as elements in a choice set facing low-income urban renters, (2) identify the demographic, socioeconomic and regional factors which influence housing outcomes, (3) use the resulting model to estimate the probability that an individual household faces a particular combination of housing problems, and (4) consider how the receipt of housing assistance alters those probabilities by addressing the question of targeting assistance. The study used data from the American Housing Survey of 1989 to estimate the model. These were low-income renters who both lived in an urban area and moved from one residence to another during the prior twelve month period. The mean income level of the final sample was $14,336. Sixty-one percent of the sample had affordability problems, twenty-eight percent had quality problems and six percent had crowding problems. The theoretical framework for the study is discrete choice analysis based on a random utility function. The conceptual framework included the development of seven, binary, logit models. These models represent a sequence of choices which the low-income renter makes when finding housing. The assumed choice hierarchy was affordability decisions followed by quality decisions and finally crowding decisions. The affordability and crowding models performed well; however, the quality model was somewhat disappointing. It appears that either quality is not easily modeled using a binary variable or households perceive quality differently than do the policy makers who establish quality guidelines. The models clearly show that affordability problems constitute the biggest hurdle for the low-income renter. Regional location is a significant factor in estimating the probability of having housing problems. Households in the western region of the United States are most likely to have multiple problems. A major contribution of this study is the focus on housing assistance and how receiving assistance alters the probability of low-income households finding basic shelter. / Ph. D.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1979 M27 / Master of Regional and Community Planning

This study is an investigation of the relationships between selected structural characteristics of the community and the quality of housing. It quantitatively examines the relationship between the following structural elements as independent variables and quality of housing as the dependent variable. The independent variables are city size, sex-age composition, socioeconomic status, racial-ethnic composition, age of the city, regional location, form of government, city type and occupancy status.