One day we'll all be homeless.

The biggest concern our communities have is the housing crisis. It is not just affordable housing for lower income families but affordable housing for all levels excluding top income families. People can have decent jobs but still cannot afford housing in my area. There is nothing government supporting programs that can resolve the affordability issues. While homelessness population has been growing ever since. The last year the homeless population has increased by 14% (Platkin, 2020).

Although there are many solutions to homelessness and housing crisis, they are offering more affordable housing through edesign zoning. According to the article “We Asked Top Architects for Bold Solutions to L.A.’s Homeless Crisis. Here’s What They Came Up With”, the author pointed out that ‘we need to change the general—and misplaced—prejudice against affordable housing with housing that is smaller, targeted, and well-designed, and fits within the community’ (Young, 2020). There are also many similar solutions that offer to help develop within the community and provide connectivity to reduce substantial cost of developing housing (2020). However, all efforts did not reduce homelessness and housing affordability issues.

With ever increasing housing prices and lack of supply on housing, there are consequences that not only cost individuals but everyone eventually. Housing crisis will result of:

• Widening wealth gap cause of social unsettlement
• Increase homeless population 
• Less money for each family to afford substantial expanse such as food, clothing, child care and health care
• Increase commute distance that pollution per capita increase 
• It will cost more in the future that population migrate from other affordable areas while local economic will be negatively impacted

If the housing crisis can be resolved and help narrow the wealth gap, people will focus more on making their communities better. If people can afford houses from their salary, people will feel more comfortable living through their income. They will continue focusing on their jobs and the productivity will increase so that the local economy will continue to progress. People will be more willing to work and the society will be more harmonic. 

If housing can reduce homelessness, local communities will be more open for tourists so that it can expand its economy further. It can also attract more foreign business to invest into local communities. Housing can also help homeless people with their mental issues and provide further support from the government. It can provide shelter for homelessness and help them to restart their lives and re-enter the job market. 

If the housing can be affordable, families can spend other incomes on food, clothing, child care and health care to reduce their insecurity. Local economics can be more dynamic and progress. Communities can be more resilient to provide better services to families. People can live a happier and healthier lives.

If people can afford houses closer to their work, it can substantially reduce fuel consumption that reduces emissions of greenhouse gases. It can help prevent climate change that saves the government money to help people who need help. It can also reduce government spending on infrastructure repairing. People can have more time to do something else rather than spending time on traffic congestion. There will be less traffic accidents on the road and it can prevent traffic incidents that potentially people can lose their lives.

More affordable housing can attract more people to stay in the local area to help its economy. Local government will have more taxes to collect through local businesses and heavily increase local populations. Therefore, the government can provide more public services for local residents such as improving the education system. Residents are willing to work more to generate more economic growth to help local thrift.  

Therefore, all we need is to have an affordable housing system that can constantly provide residents affordable housing. The drivers of higher cost of housing are due to outdated techniques to build houses, complex bureaucratic processes to develop housing and middle agencies that charge substantial service fees. To accomplish these housing goals, we need uniformly permitting systems that precisely help developers to navigate on developing houses and new automatic machinery to reduce labor costs. We also need new technology to reduce middle agents costs and help people to purchase houses easily. From an economical perspective, we need more companies to provide alternative housing resources that can compete with the existing housing market. Thus, we need three milestones to hit and help provide affordable housing to local residents.

The first milestone is government housing reform. Governments need to adopt the new technology that helps their policies have more consistency. It can reduce human errors that delay housing development projects which can cost more to complete the housing project. Also, we need to have policies that can make it easier for housing to build but also meet safety requirements. We need automatic inspections that can easily implement and accurately determine what developers require to meet. 

The second milestone is building technology breakthroughs. While private companies will continue developing tools that can reduce costs of building houses, more people will accept houses that are constructed by robots and the products can compete with existing housing markets that eventually reduce the overall housing price. It can also help save time to have sufficient supply in the market. 

The third milestone is alternative housing that is constructed from different materials. It helps customers to have multiple selections of their house which eventually increase the competitiveness of the market to reduce price. Alternative housing can help each level of income residents to navigate their options while affording their housing costs. 

I think the vision is preferable because it democratizes the housing market that people can customize their preferences on housing selection while the cost is affordable. Also, technology can progress to further improve the cost of construction. It can help the local economy to thrift again. Everyone can eventually benefit from such a future and be able to own their houses.

Citation

25 Solutions From A Builder's Perspective To Fix The California Housing Crisis. (2020, March 24). Retrieved November 30, 2020, from https://urbanize.la/post/25-solutions-builder%E2%80%99s-perspective-fix-california-housing-crisis

Platkin, D. (2020, June 25). Why Los Angeles Cannot Solve its Housing Crisis. Retrieved November 30, 2020, from https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/19990-why-los-angeles-cannot-solve-its-housing-crisis

Young, E. (2020, October 01). We Asked Top Architects for Bold Solutions to L.A.'s Homeless Crisis. Here's What They Came Up With. Retrieved November 30, 2020, from https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/housing-solutions-los-angeles/