Make boarding houses legal again!!
America fails its lower-income citizens by pretending they don't (or shouldn't) exist when making zoning and building codes and such.
Mandate that housing needs to have individual bathrooms and kitchens for each unit, mandate that each unit needs a parking space or two, mandate a thousand other useless minutiae under the guise of safety or accessibility that don't actually matter but drive up costs, and then act surprised that only "luxury" housing gets built.
College students can happily and healthily live in dorms on campus, and yet we treat it as unthinkable that someone working at McDonalds lives in similar conditions. And so we don't build the infrastructure and the McDonalds worker ends up with a far worse outcome, but at least it's out of sight and out of mind that they're sleeping on a couch or staying in an overcrowded illegally-sublet apartment.
A college town is, really, only desirable to college students and the businesses that cater to them. Thus, the demand is very low, and almost nobody stays particularly long. The exceptions to this are colleges in or near very large towns, but even housing near the college tends to be much cheaper than housing in the city.
If McD's was a self-contained economy, it too would be surrounded by cheap housing.
I wish we could have conversations about things like this which are based in reality and not some fear of a macguffin enemy trying to "keep the poor from existing".
Historically, zoning laws were established to prevent cheaper forms of housing from being built in order to keep poor people out from a region. The existence of these laws is precisely because the lawmakers recognized that more dense forms of housing would be built and lived in by poorer residents unless it was made illegal.
It's hard to describe how little I care about why something was originally created, rather than how it plays out today.
It's also hard to describe how discouraging it is that social progressiveness is the only factor of any issue I see anyone have any knowledge on.
A. There is no more debate about it
B. Suppliers are motivated to catch up to where the supply chain needs to be at.
You may need a permit to build, but it’s not nearly as impossible as Reddit would have you think.
What are my odds of hitting at least 10 places where I'd get a permit?
There is no other explanation for what exclusive zoning is. By banning the only form of housing poor people can afford you are attempting to "keep the poor from existing". Sure, land prices follow supply and demand so land in expensive places is expensive. But it turns out that we can build many housing units on not much land and amortize the land cost so that even the poor can afford expensive areas, if only it were legal.
One to get you started: even the poor have a right to a home that isn’t infested with the fumes of manufacturing. You don’t need to be rich to see the benefit of not allowing slaughterhouses in the middle of section 8 housing, surely?
And no. I do not believe it is moral to ban certain types of housing, other than unsafe. If you want to build safe housing on your land and your neighbors stop you they are saying poor people are not allowed to exist in their neighborhood.
> Mandate that housing needs to have individual bathrooms and kitchens for each unit, mandate that each unit needs a parking space or two, mandate a thousand other useless minutiae under the guise of safety or accessibility that don't actually matter
Many of these mandates exist because retrofitting is impossible. Got three new tenants with cars? Get the backhoe; it's time to build the underground car park. Can't get to the crapper because the doors and bathroom are too small for your wheelchair, and you won't take a dump in diapers? No apartment for you! Low income, have kids and need 3 bedrooms? No room in the boarding house. Go somewhere else.
Universal design is not expensive and makes living spaces more inclusive.
The availability of boarding houses makes this far more possible. If single able bachelors without cars are living in massive accessible apartments with parking spots, that makes them unavailable for those who really need the accomodations.
> Universal Design is a concept that proposes the creation of spaces with democratic use, guaranteeing egalitarian conditions in terms of quality of service. The main goal of Universal Design is to allow everyone to use them to the fullest extent possible without the need for adaptations. Considered a concept that applies to architecture and other areas such as product design, Universal Design serves people considering their characteristics, age and individual abilities.
Notably, the design website that you linked doesn't mention anything about making housing cheaper or more affordable.
I think that the cost floor for housing (labor, land, materials) is high enough that "affordable housing" cannot be made without state funding. Helsinki is a good starting point.
I understand the exclusion problem. As you said, inclusive space excludes those who can not afford the space (ghetto by income). Non-inclusive space excludes by physical ability (ghetto by the degree of handicap).