what makes a house a home??
rethinking houses, homes, and homeownership via diana lind's "brave new home."
As a self-confessed introvert and homebody, I care a lot about the spaces I find myself and the spaces I make for myself. But it wasn’t until my junior year of college that I realized it’s not only about the look or feel of a space, but how that space enables and prevents certain behaviors and certain ways of thinking.
The summer of 2018, three friends and I moved into what is surely, objectively, and materially, the best place I’ve ever lived. There was a balcony that looked out over the neighborhood with a view of the Cathedral of learning to the south, all new appliances and granite countertops, and as the person with the smallest bedroom on the first floor, I got my own bathroom right next to the kitchen. All my furniture matched in that bedroom, everything a pristine white or grey.
But I was also Going Through It that entire year. I went to campus early and came home to my bedroom, muddling through classwork and books and sad journal entries and dicking around on the internet. I was sick, physically and mentally, and I gave myself no opportunity to reach out to my friends---who were also going through their own struggles that year. Surely we could have helped each other.
My room felt like a sanctuary, where I could curl up on my own and unwind, but looking back, I realize it was super unhealthy. The way the bedrooms were split by floors made it just a little bit harder for me to encounter my friends and housemates during the day. We didn’t have furniture in the living room, just a coffee table and a kitchen table, which did not invite cozy nights getting takeout and watching movies. We lived in Bloomfield, a neighborhood worlds away from the parties in South Oakland, so going out at night would always involve a long bus ride or an Uber (I don’t think I went out that entire year).
In short, the house made it much easier to be depressed because it was so isolating. It didn't matter that we had a balcony and granite countertops. I didn't make that house a home.
the once and future home.
In the book Brave New Home, Diana Lind dives into the past, present, and future of housing in America. The bulk of America's residential areas are zoned for single-family housing—one family, one building per plot of land. It wasn’t always this way. Lind writes that from colonial times to the 19th century, living alone was socially taboo. Many singles would stay with family or, if they were in a new city or didn’t have any ties, stay in a boarding house. Multi-family dwellings were common, as homeowners often rented out their spare bedrooms to boarders.
As the cities grew and became super dense, the social response was to condemn the squalor of the tenement building and call for single-family housing. Single-family housing and the white picket fence became images of health, prosperity, and even morality. Commentary at the time maintained that those who owned their homes would be inspired to take better care of it, and the space and fresh air of the country or suburbs was better for children than the density, pollution, and lack of play space in the city.
This informed post-war housing policy and development, which exploded the suburbs, financially incentivized homeownership, and grew the number of single-family homes. But over the years, I (and many others) have seen a kind of revolt against single-family housing and the housing, a wave of which Lind’s book is a part. Novels from Revolutionary Road to Little Fires Everywhere depict the suburban lifestyle as isolation, a way to hide a number of social ills, from marital strife to racism to murder. Alternatives like coliving, #vanlife, and microhouse communities are becoming more popular. Headlines like “Millenials are the loneliest generation ever” and also "Millenials just aren't buying houses" appear in the likes of The Atlantic and New York Times.
home beyond the house.
Despite being an introvert, I’ve come to realize that I am at my happiest when I am surrounded with friends, or even when there is someone around to keep me company. The thought of living alone sends chills down my spine. Now, I live in the top level of a duplex with two close friends, and my days are filled with delicious home cooked meals and late nights watching cartoons or silly YouTube videos. Our friends come over on a whim, and even the passing pre-breakfast chat with a bleary roommate does so much to start my day differently.
Around the same time that I realized the effect my living environment has on my mental health, I also became more invested in the way housing affects the wider dynamics of the city I now call home. Pittsburgh is notoriously segregated, thanks to a long history of policies that kept Black people renting and in underserved neighborhoods. Postwar housing policies that made homeownership affordable for so many middle class Americans were expressly kept from people of color---even as cities razed the slums that were condemned as hotbeds of disease and “moral corruption.”
In Pittsburgh, housing and development has long-been weaponized against poor and Black residents. In 1923, Pittsburgh’s first city-wide ordinance prioritized protecting home values rather than ensuring housing for everyone by limiting housing stock and where affordable housing could be built. Such zoning strategies are not uncommon in the US, and it is just another way that the rich get richer (as single-family housing gets scarcer and their property values go up) and the poor stay poor (as they struggle to find affordable housing and must live in the outskirts of the city, where it’s harder and more expensive to access important services). In the 40s through 60s, affordable housing was purposely placed on the cheapest land—the steep hillside, away from affluent communities in the city’s center. These racial and income patterns have persisted into today.
By the late 20th century, across America, housing was one of the main modes of wealth creation for all Americans, public housing was in shambles, and booming population combined with outdated policies made housing less and less affordable. Shit really hit the fan in 2008, when the market crashed and the housing bubble popped. The subsequent tightening of regulations on loans meant that those who recovered tended to be wealthier and whiter.
the problem of zoning.
For Lind, the foremost response to America’s current housing woes is zoning. Single-family zoning thwarts denser and more communal ways of living, such as apartment buildings, du/tri/quadplexes, and accessory dwellings units like microhouses sharing a property with a traditional home. Single family housing restricts that kind of buildings that multigenerational families can inhabit (for example, no second kitchen or separate floors for grandparents). It also drives up the space and building requirements that make individual dwellings more expensive.
At the same time, Lind is honest about the privilege wrapped up in many of the alternative housing she explores—for example, the often inaccessible rents of coliving communities. One health-focused community she visits encourages walking and active transport as much as possible within it, but with a lack of grocery store and pharmacy inside the community, everyone there has to own a car and drive weekly for necessities. Yet, she remains optimistic at the possibilities that such alternatives have to become more accessible and a net positive for society, as it means a smaller or gentler footprint on the planet. And I think I am, too.
Brave New Home was a great primer into the housing issues I’d only begun to dip my toes into. There are a few points that could be expanded more—for example, toward the end she advocates of subsidizing people, not housing, by replacing Section 8 vouchers with cash transfers, but the explanation and support for that recommendation is thin compared to the others. She notes that big investors are flipping houses, buying en masse, and price fixing, which seems to be a more alarming problem than the space she allots to touch on it. But overall, the systemic view she takes has helped contextualize the struggles I see in myself, in my neighborhood back home, and in my current city.
Now, when I move between Pittsburgh and my hometown, I feel the difference. My neighborhood in Pittsburgh is walkable, tree-lined, noisy, congested, but homey and convenient and alive. My neighborhood where I grew up is full of houses that are much too large and much too similar, and the nearest grocery store is a 40 minute walk away. For me, where I'd rather live is clear.
housing for people, not profits.
Ultimately, homeownership is not the best form of wealth creation, but it is the only one supported by policy and popular media. While our home (it’s stability, safety, and affordability) is one of the most influential factors in our wellbeing, and that is hardly considered by planners and elected officials.
These two factors need to flip. US housing policy needs to shift away from single-family zoning and support for homeownership (which only reinforces wealth inequality between families who live in homes their great-grandparents bought and those who can’t afford a down payment or get approved for a loan). Instead, policy needs to look into housing solutions that meet everyone’s needs for affordability, environmental sustainability, health, and social connection, regardless of the form that might take.
Housing seems like one of the most important facets of a community if we want to see any kind of social and environmental progress. Good housing policy can ensure that people have access to stability and safety no matter their income; it can cut down on greenhouse gas emissions by reducing utilities and the distance people must drive every day; it can create spaces where children can grow among ever more people who will love and take care of them; and it can integrate and strengthen community, whether that’s with the folks you share a kitchen with or with the folks on your block.