This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Residential Knowledge Community and Design for Aging .
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Michael Kephart AIA
Principal
Kephart Living
Denver CO
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I'm responding to the prior comment or question about housing vouchers for affordable housing, not to the "too big to fail" part or the other nonsense.
I sincerely wish we would all resist the urge to jump to subsidies as the solution to our housing problems. Vouchers are just another delivery system for subsidies and add nothing to the ideas that could contribute to real progress toward a more affordable housing stock. The fact is that most of the solutions are within the control of governments from local cities to the federal agencies and have little to do with design. Architects as citizens can exert their political influence to help control spiraling fees and other government taxing tools, things such as water tap fees that are often fixed at one cost for each home large or small, to impact fees which are levied in the same manner. I'm not advocating the eradication of fees, only their just dispersal, perhaps on a per square foot basis.
This and other methods of bringing costs down are beyond the profession of architecture or at least beyond design, the thing we can most help with. Architects already involved in the design of affordable housing are familiar with the design methods that can help but they aren't involved much in mass production processes that can have a real influence on hard construction costs. We need to follow the Henry Ford example and mass produce a limited choice of housing units in order to be able to deliver affordable housing.
Then there's those governments again, wanting their say about how these homes are built and what they look like. Sorry! that's not a choice we can afford. If architects could get behind something along these lines we could have an impact on affordable housing, but I fear we would argue too long on whose design to use.
Mike Kephart
-------------------------------------------
Michael Kephart AIA
Principal
Kephart Living
Denver CO
-------------------------------------------
I'm responding to the prior comment or question about housing vouchers for affordable housing, not to the "too big to fail" part or the other nonsense.
I sincerely wish we would all resist the urge to jump to subsidies as the solution to our housing problems. Vouchers are just another delivery system for subsidies and add nothing to the ideas that could contribute to real progress toward a more affordable housing stock. The fact is that most of the solutions are within the control of governments from local cities to the federal agencies and have little to do with design. Architects as citizens can exert their political influence to help control spiraling fees and other government taxing tools, things such as water tap fees that are often fixed at one cost for each home large or small, to impact fees which are levied in the same manner. I'm not advocating the eradication of fees, only their just dispersal, perhaps on a per square foot basis.
This and other methods of bringing costs down are beyond the profession of architecture or at least beyond design, the thing we can most help with. Architects already involved in the design of affordable housing are familiar with the design methods that can help but they aren't involved much in mass production processes that can have a real influence on hard construction costs. We need to follow the Henry Ford example and mass produce a limited choice of housing units in order to be able to deliver affordable housing.
Then there's those governments again, wanting their say about how these homes are built and what they look like. Sorry! that's not a choice we can afford. If architects could get behind something along these lines we could have an impact on affordable housing, but I fear we would argue too long on whose design to use.
Mike Kephart
------------------------------------------
Michael Kephart AIA
Principal
Kephart Living
Denver CO
-------------------------------------------
I'm responding to the prior comment or question about housing vouchers for affordable housing, not to the "too big to fail" part or the other nonsense.
I sincerely wish we would all resist the urge to jump to subsidies as the solution to our housing problems. Vouchers are just another delivery system for subsidies and add nothing to the ideas that could contribute to real progress toward a more affordable housing stock. The fact is that most of the solutions are within the control of governments from local cities to the federal agencies and have little to do with design. Architects as citizens can exert their political influence to help control spiraling fees and other government taxing tools, things such as water tap fees that are often fixed at one cost for each home large or small, to impact fees which are levied in the same manner. I'm not advocating the eradication of fees, only their just dispersal, perhaps on a per square foot basis.
This and other methods of bringing costs down are beyond the profession of architecture or at least beyond design, the thing we can most help with. Architects already involved in the design of affordable housing are familiar with the design methods that can help but they aren't involved much in mass production processes that can have a real influence on hard construction costs. We need to follow the Henry Ford example and mass produce a limited choice of housing units in order to be able to deliver affordable housing.
Then there's those governments again, wanting their say about how these homes are built and what they look like. Sorry! that's not a choice we can afford. If architects could get behind something along these lines we could have an impact on affordable housing, but I fear we would argue too long on whose design to use.
Mike Kephart