House Our Neighbors is an advocacy group that is based in Seattle. House Our Neighbors’ mission is to build social housing — non-market housing that will rent at affordable prices, even for people with very low incomes.
Social housing is a term with differing definitions that are in use around the world. In the United States, social housing is defined by having a mixed income model. The rents paid by people with very low incomes will be balanced out by higher rents paid by neighbours who have higher incomes.
House Our Neighbors is not alone. There are similar initiatives in California and Maryland and more are on the way. These are listed in a Fast Company article accessible at the end of this post.
The recent story of social housing in the United States is not new to affordablehousingaction.org1. We’re drawing attention to the article in Fast Company because it has an interview with Tiffani McCoy from House Our Neighbors.
Tiffani McCoy’s commitment to social housing grew out of her work direct supporting people who are homeless:
“I’d been . . . spending lots of time doing campaigns around public restrooms, shelters, putting more money into emergency housing. After doing that for a few years and sharing the stories of unhoused folks, it just really started to dawn on me that the homelessness crisis is going to continue until we start actually addressing the fact that housing is deeply unaffordable. And the fact that we have no plan. No level of government has any plan whatsoever, if we’re brutally honest about it.”
McCoy explains that it was the aspirations of people who are homeless that shaped the design of the social housing program in Seattle. As a member of House Our Neighbors, McCoy has been working to put the pieces together to make it happen.
McCoy’s interview reviews aspects of the social housing landscape that have been covered in other articles, but she brings a fresh perspective that draws from her experience.
Read more at Fast Company: Will the U.S. ever embrace social housing?
