As the population continues to grow, the U.S. has failed to keep up with needed housing. Developers and cities see opportunities, but neighborhoods don’t always agree with the plan and want an avenue to block construction. What kind of an impact can everyday citizens have in their own backyard on housing and other types of development? Cincinnati’s Hyde Park To an outsider, a plan to […]
Religious organizations are some of the biggest landholders in the country and communities are increasingly looking to them to help solve the housing crisis. Some efforts are already underway but churches say they need zoning help to build on their property. Faith-based development can take many forms. Is it making a difference? How many churches are building and how many could be? The potential The […]
If the U.S. builds as many homes as it did last year, experts predict it will take an average of seven and a half years to close the housing gap. How do we speed up construction? One way might be to increase the production of 3D printed houses. This technology is starting to take off in Texas and a few other states. Could it make […]
The U.S. is short four to seven million units of housing. Vacant land owned by the government may be able to help ease the gap. Most of it near urban areas and transit lines, is controlled by local governments. And with the help of the Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS), communities are starting to realize they may have land to build more housing. In 2024 […]
More than half of Americans say they would consider living in a tiny home, mostly defined as between 100 and 600 square feet. And the interest is growing, especially as traditional homes get more expensive. Additionally, many see tiny homes as a possible solution to homelessness and local efforts are underway to create villages of them. What is a tiny house anyway? The average size […]
Thousands of people in Cincinnati and Dayton either can’t find a home they can afford or can’t afford the one they live in. Both cities are taking steps to address the housing crisis. What are they doing and is it enough? Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval says Cincinnati is “continuing to increase our commitments to….affordable housing.” In November’s State of the City address, He pointed to […]
Modular construction, built inside a climate-controlled factory and then trucked to a site for assembly, has been slow to catch on in the U.S. It makes up less than 4-percent of the housing stock, compared to 15-percent in Japan and 45-percent in Scandinavia. Is it the answer to increase the housing supply? And what about other ideas like container homes? For clarification, a modular home […]
A recent report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, The State of The Nation’s Housing 2024, finds homeowners and renters are still “struggling with high housing costs.” Both housing prices and the number of renters with cost burdens have hit all-time highs. And the number of households paying more than 30-percent of their income on housing in Greater Cincinnati is 244,000. For Greater Dayton […]
As the nation grapples with a lack of housing, interest is building in a concept already popular on the West Coast and parts of New England-Accessory Dwelling Units or ADUs. Think granny flat, carriage house, attic or basement apartment, tiny house, even a manufactured home on your property that has its own entrance, a kitchen with sink and stove, bathroom and a place to sleep […]
Vehicles spend most of their time parked. And because of that, for years cities have dictated how many parking spots developers should include based on sometimes arbitrary numbers. But do those numbers still make sense and could reducing them allow for more housing and development? An increasing number of cities are getting rid of those so-called parking mandates or parking minimums, including Cincinnati. Cincinnati changes […]
