The housing shortage is an architecture story. How we design the homes and cities we need — and what stands in the way — reveals the gap between our aesthetic ideals and our practical failures.
For forty years, American cities and towns have known what to build and chosen not to build it. The shortage we are living with is not a mystery — it is a decision, made repeatedly, by specific people with specific interests.
Americans are not rejecting marriage. They are deferring it, reconsidering it, and, in growing numbers, simply not getting around to it. The causes are economic. The consequences are cultural and demographic.
When people cannot afford to live near where they work, near where they grew up, or near the people they love, the social fabric tears. The housing shortage has costs that cost-of-living statistics don't capture.