When we launched our program to study and promote solutions for affordability and green urbanism, we poked at the prevailing narratives about housing and it felt like stirring a hornet’s nest. It wasn’t just the euphemistic anti-renter, anti-density rhetoric about preserving “neighborhood character.” Dominant opposition messages menaced with imagery of bulldozers, chainsaws, and the end of your city as you know it. Finding better ways to talk about abundant housing felt daunting.
But, little by little, and arm in arm with a growing network of abundant housing advocates, we’re pushing out obstructionist narratives and making room for solutions ones. As we look ahead to housing solutions in 2020, the hornets are still around, but theirs is no longer the only buzz you hear.
You can get humming about sustainable, equitable solutions for affordable cities too! From granny flats to exclusionary zoning, click here to find the cache of resources that we’ve built up.