If the U.S. builds as many homes as it did last year, experts predict it will take an average of seven and a half years to close the housing gap. How do we speed up construction? One way might be to increase the production of 3D printed houses....

Vacant land owned by the government may be able to help ease the housing gap. Most of it near urban areas and transit lines, is controlled by local governments. And with the help of the Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS), communities are sta...

Responding to a study in 2023, Northern Kentucky is trying to increase their housing stock. Local leaders and non-profits collaborated to create a menu of options called Home for All: Northern Kentucky Housing Strategies. We look at so...

More than half of Americans say they would consider living in a tiny home, defined as large as 600 square feet. As traditional homes get more expensive the interest is increasing. Also, many see tiny homes as a possible solution to homelessness...

The federal government gives developers the equivalent of $10 billion a year to build low-income housing in the form of a tax credit. Without this government subsidy, known generally as Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), there would be a l...

An effort to improve one man’s suburban Dallas neighborhood is now spreading across the country, even touching South Bend, Indiana. Incremental developer Monte Anderson coined the term “gentlefication,” valuing people and buildings as he envisi...

The U.S. housing stock is old and getting older and its deterioration is causing health, safety and financial concerns. Saving it is cheaper and more sustainable than building new. But preservation is still expensive. How do we preserve housing...

Over time, property is almost guaranteed to go up in value. That’s a problem if you have a limited income and want to buy a house. Unless the house is in a community land trust (CLT) which retains ownership of the land and restricts the resale ...

Ask ten people what a thriving community looks like to them and you will likely get ten different answers. But usually at the top of the list is access to affordable housing and healthcare. With 2025 approaching, Brick by Brick went searching f...

Thousands of people in Cincinnati and Dayton either can’t find a home they can afford or can’t afford the one they live in. Both cities are taking steps to address the housing crisis. What are they doing and is it enough? Brick by Brick hosts t...

Modular construction, built inside a climate-controlled factory and then trucked to a site for assembly, has been slow to catch on in the U.S. It makes up less than 4-percent of the housing stock, compared to 15-percent in Japan and 45-percent ...

Old buildings make up an increasing share of the U.S. rental stock. Experts say a healthy supply of these aging apartments help cities and neighborhoods thrive. But fixing them up takes money and political will. Atlanta Developer Marjy Stagmeie...

Look around and you’ll see plenty of vacant buildings. Can they be turned into housing? Adaptive Reuse is on the rebound and estimates say ninety-p...

Cities that want to add hundreds of housing units at a time are embracing the addition of large-scale apartments alongside other types of housing. These big multifamily housing projects are on track to break national records this year and add a...

Housing Choice Vouchers are portable subsidies that low-income families can use to lower their rents in the private market. But is this 50-year old solution to the housing crisis working as well as it should? The Department of Housing and Urban...

Shane Phillips says we’re not building as much housing as we did in the 1960s when we had 120 million fewer people. He says the scarcity has caught up with us and offers up 54 ideas to tackle the housing crisis. In The Affordable City ...

Cincinnati’s South Cumminsville is a largely low-income African American neighborhood along the once polluted Mill Creek. Seventy-percent of people live within a block of property with possible contamination and asthma rates among children are ...

As evictions and the number of people experiencing homelessness remain high, keeping people in their homes could come down to an algorithm. If homeless prevention agencies got a heads up on who was at-risk and what types of bills they were havi...

Vacant and abandoned property accelerates the decline of neighborhoods. How can we make this land more productive? An increasing number of governments and non-profit organizations are turning to land banks as a partial solution. Int...

If we had an abundance of entry level units, there would be a lot of different opportunities,” says Charles Marohn. “A person who is in their first job, a person who’s just getting started with their family, a couple that has just gotten marrie...

We don’t have enough houses or apartments. However, plenty of people may have extra space in their house for a separate garage, attic or basement apartment. And they might even be able to build a separate structure in their backyard. California...

Vehicles spend most of their time parked. And because of that, for years cities have dictated how many parking spots developers should include based on sometimes arbitrary numbers. But do those numbers still make sense and could reducing them a...

We like to keep things as up to date as they can be here on Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community. This is a short update from host Ann Thompson regarding the next episode release date.

Cincinnati and Dayton have some of the highest rates of eviction filings in the nation. And with rents continuing to rise, it’s unclear when those evictions will start slowing down. On this episode of Brick by Brick we examine one possible solu...

In this special episode, known as a Solutions Sidebar, Brick by Brick interviews authors Richard and Leah Rothstein on what role the government played to segregate society and how to undo it. We get their insights on everything from ba...