After visiting the Making Room exhibition earlier this year,  Stephen Taul of the Georgia Institute of Technology was inspired that a design and research studio at the School of Architecture based on this initiative could be a great way to engage students as part of their interdisciplinary seminar: Net Zero Energy Housing.

Along with others at the Georgia Tech School of Architecture, he has put together a Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Design and Research Studio entitled  On Urban Dwelling: Making Room in the Contemporary City 

 The series of seminars and studios focuses on the design and construction of medium-scaled ecologically-sensitive residential developments.   Research into demographic change in sunbelt cities such as Atlanta is the basis from which the studio seeks intelligent design solutions to emerging housing typologies. Cities continue to move away from satellite single family bedroom communities towards center city, mid and high-rise housing blocks, creating the need for a sustained focus on what constitutes a viable public and affordable private realm.

CHPC is delighted to be offered the opportunity to visit the students who will be presenting their Fall semester work as part of a design review! Sarah Watson will be attending the school from December 4-5 and will report back with news of the students’ work.

Last Friday, October 25th, over 20 experts on homeless policy, government, finance, architecture, and the hospitality industry came together for an engaging roundtable discussion, “Places of Change: Transitional Shelter to Permanent Resource.” This was a unique opportunity for those assembled to draw across experience and industry to rethink shelter design.

Chef Christopher Bradley discusses shared dining options.

The question at the heart of the discussion was; “How can more flexible facilities be designed as resources to the city, those in need, and the communities where they are located?”

Inspired by CHPC’s Making Room project, DHS staff considered facility design ideas that are able to adapt to changing family sizes and changing demand. The discussion, which was over a year in the making, got the ball rolling on many new and exciting ideas for how to change shelter systems from perceived burden to community asset.

Many of the suggestions for re-imagining emergency shelters focused on creating, maintaining, and making community oriented spaces both more inviting and utilitarian. This was a great starting point, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

What do you think could change shelter facilities to better serve New Yorkers most in need? How can they be better integrated into the surrounding community? How can cost effectiveness also be improved?

Click here for the full report, and to see how the roundtable participants answered these questions.

CHPC’s Executive Director, Jerilyn Perine, participated today in the panel discussion following the presentation of Three-Quarter Houses: The View from the Inside at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. This report by Robert Riggs and Tasha Burnett analyzes the role of three-quarter houses in the recovery and reintegration process for people facing substance abuse or who have been recently released from prison. The report also sheds light on the poor conditions in many three-quarter houses and the requirements that operators commonly place on residents to participate in recovery programs. 

The panel discussion, which was moderated by Ann Jacobs from the Prisoner Reentry Institute, also featured Joanne Page from The Fortune Society and Tanya Kessler from MFY Legal Services. The panelists discussed the challenges to enforcing tenant protections in three-quarter houses and the need to ensure that residents can access the treatment programs and social services they need rather than those for which operators receive funding. Jerilyn Perine put three-quarter houses in the context of the many informal housing arrangements that have emerged in response to an outdated housing stock that no longer meets the needs of increasing numbers of single-person households.

Through its Making Room initiative, CHPC has been focused on exploring regulatory changes that would enable the development and legalization of smaller units to provide safe housing to the rising numbers of single-person households, such as those currently finding their only options in underground three-quarter houses.

CHPC’s Executive Director, Jerilyn Perine will take part in a discussion on “Three Quarter Houses: The View from Inside” at John Jay College.   The problem of housing New York City’s most vulnerable individuals has given rise to a growing market of privately operated, for-profit residences known as Three-Quarter Houses. For all intents and purposes, these houses have become an informal extension of the City’s apparatus for keeping vulnerable men and women off of the streets. Yet they lack any formal regulation or oversight, rendering the houses invisible to most citizens and policymakers.

The findings of PRI’s research on Three-Quarter Houses are troubling indications of what occurs when the city’s poorest and most marginalized individuals are left with no affordable or accessible housing options and must instead fend for themselves in an unregulated, informal housing market.

Executive Director of CHPC, Jerilyn Perine will moderate the panel discussion  “Shared Housing Meets Micro Real Estate: Mining a Multi-Billion Dollar Underground Market in Search of Game-Changing Insights”.  

Pioneering developers will discuss how they are re-imagining housing solutions for first-time urban renters and galvanizing participants in the multifamily sector to bring the shared housing model out of the shadows of the underground market. Hear about the powerful demographic, socioeconomic and psychographic trends behind the emergence of the multi-billion dollar room-share market facilitated by Craigslist and similar websites.