| This is the best of times and the worst of times for architecture’s creative involvement with affordable housing. On the positive side, architects have over the last 40 years successfully partnered with community-based housing organisations to design and build landmark projects that combine human scale, outstanding design and affordability. Where the big bureaucracies that once dominated state-subsidised housing in Western countries had frequently marginalised architecture in favour of a single-minded quest to mass-produce the most units at the lowest cost, the smaller contemporary organisations have often welcomed architects as creative problem-solvers who could join them in transforming subsidised housing. Through these non-pro t organisations, architects have gained the important experience of working directly with communities and developing expertise in such dif cult areas as live-work facilities and housing for the formerly homeless or for people with disabilities. Affordable housing has thus emerged as one of the most creative areas of contemporary architecture, and one with the potential to redirect the profession towards more systematic social engagement. Yet this is also the worst of times, as even the best projects have been marginalised by the massive scale of the global housing crisis. Affordable housing – usually de ned in the US as decent and appropriate accommodation that costs no more than 30 per cent of a household’s income – is threatened everywhere from the informal settlements of the developing world to the most advanced and prosperous global cities. What unites the housing crisis in both the developed and developing world is the global rise in inequality and the failure of governments to intervene effectively in housing markets. In the developed world the ideology of neoliberalism or ‘market fundamentalism’ has decimated government investment in new affordable housing construction and rolled back the supply of affordable units from the postwar ‘social democratic’ era. Central to neoliberalism is the assertion that housing is a commodity like any other, and that the capitalist market, if freed from regulation, can provide this commodity more ef ciently than any government programme. |
