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Unlocking Home Kindle Edition

by Alan Durning (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Award-winning author and leading green thinker Alan Durning takes a hard look at urban housing and sees what many others have missed. Hidden in city regulations is a set of simple but powerful barriers to affordable housing for all. These rules criminalize history’s answers to affordable dwellings: the rooming house, the roommate, the in-law apartment, and the backyard cottage. In effect, cities have banned what used to be the bottom end of the private housing market. They’ve made urban quarters expensive and scarce, especially for low-income people such as students, seniors, blue-collar workers, artists, and others who make our cities diverse and vibrant.

In Unlocking Home: Three Keys to Affordable Communities, Durning details how to revive inexpensive housing in walkable neighborhoods—at no cost to the public—by striking a few lines from municipal law books. The three keys, Durning argues, are re-legalizing rooming houses, uncapping the number of roommates who may share a dwelling, and welcoming accessory dwellings such as granny flats and garden cottages. If adopted, these keys would reap valuable benefits for cities far and wide.

Each would step up residential concentration organically, without big changes to architectural character, and would create new income-generating opportunities for property owners, especially in sought-after neighborhoods. These keys would alleviate the outward pressure of sprawl into our forests and farmland, while fostering the benefits of density for local prosperity, vibrancy, and sustainability. Above all else, each of these strategies would generate thousands and thousands of units of inexpensive housing across metropolitan areas, unlocking homes for the many people in our communities who need them.

Print length

73 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

July 12, 2013
File size

672 KB
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00DX5O2O4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sightline Institute (July 12, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 12, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 672 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 73 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #2,006,823 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #248 in Practical Guides to Real Estate
- #584 in Urban Planning & Development
- #963 in Practical Law Guides for Real Estate

Customer Reviews:
25 ratings

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4.7 out of 5

25 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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Jenny Nazak

Excellent summary of what's wrong & how to fix it

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 17, 2017

Verified Purchase

Very grateful for this book because I truly believe diversity is an essential component
of a livable city! This is a nationwide problem. I myself live in a charming historic neighborhood in a Florida beach city. I'm a year-round, working resident on the low end of the income scale, as are many of my friends and neighbors. Every time an apartment comes free in our neighborhood, it is instantly besieged by a hundred or more
applicants, all local workers like us who face the challengeof finding affordable housing near the stores, restaurants,
hotels, or other businesses where we work. (Most of us do
not have cars.) I'm spreading the idea in this book, sharing them with our local govt and resudents!

Helpful

SaraNoH

interesting and applicable ideas and arguments

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 30, 2014

Verified Purchase

I read this little book hoping to find an argument for protecting neighborhoods or stopping potentially gentrifying development and what I found was so much more interesting. I agree with the author's premise that we have rendered most affordable housing types illegal, which is the crux of the American shortage of affordable housing. I openly wonder if peoples tastes have changed to the point where they wouldn't be interested in the kinds of units Durning proposes -- however why not let the market decide that? I do wish Durning would have touched more on issues of demand and demand for certain kinds of housing, but overall I'm very pleased with my discovery.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Jake Antles

Simple and compelling read.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 11, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book is for both Housing Advocates and density skeptics. Alan provides the regulation history and modern day discussion around rooming houses, roommate caps, and in-law apartments throughout Cascadia (BC, WA, ID, OR) to outline major barriers to affordable housing. More than that, he dissects common arguments against these housing solutions and demonstrates how, to a large extent, moralistic arguments against these solutions (public health, parking, noise, decency, fairness, etc) are mostly veiled or unexamined classist perspectives.

Helpful

nick S

This should be required reading

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 28, 2013

Verified Purchase

This book is a stark reminder of how tragically our society can overlook a crisis if it doesn't affect the rich.

Durning gives one of the most devastating critiques of a system that has ever been put into print. One by one he tears down the feeble excuses that have justified blatantly racist and classist housing policies which have driven up prices and wasted precious resources.

Just one example: the restrictions on roommates, micro-apartments, and house dwellers, which has so long been touted as a safety measure... well they somehow never apply to servants...

This book will enrage you.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

PF

Good read for those interested in how and why zoning has locked so many out of affordable housing.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 22, 2014

Verified Purchase

Very readable and pertinent for those interested in the tiny house movement as well as those interested in the economic stratification in the USA known as zoning . The research in the book is primarily based on the northwest USA and British Columbia. Still, the information is pertenant to most of North America.

Helpful

bell

makes local politics sound interesting.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 12, 2016

Verified Purchase

I have always thought that city and local governments dealt with the most boring issues. This book made it clear to me that zoning rues affect climate change, economic mobility, racism and classism. Great book with great ideas. I loved it.

Helpful

Luke J. Nichols

Concise and informative

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 20, 2018

Verified Purchase

If you want a technical understanding of the laws that restrict housing, this easy-to-read book is for you. Worth the value.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 27, 2013

Verified Purchase

This is well written and full of good local history if you live in the Pacific Northwest. I'd like to see more people read this book!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Hank

Under appreciated sector of housing uncovered

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 12, 2017

Verified Purchase

Durning's book is increasingly relevant in a time of rising house proces and job insecurity.

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