Events

The United States is an aging society where economic inequality is greater than in other aging societies. Age-associated disadvantages such as declining health overlap with social determinants of health that include structural inequalities experienced by some groups throughout life and into late life. As a result, there are vast differences in people’s experiences of later life.

In the 1960s and 1970s Boston struggled to stem urban flight and a landscape of deteriorating housing stock. Massive redevelopment projects, such as the razing of the West End, sent shockwaves through the city. By the mid-1960s, the South End found itself the focus of redevelopment plans. A group of mostly Puerto Rican residents began to meet and then incorporated as the Emergency Tenants’ Council, which became Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, Inc. (IBA).

As the number of households headed by those 65-74 reached an all-time high in the US last year, inequalities are becoming more evident among older adults, according to Housing America’s Older Adults 2019, a new report to be released Wednesday, October 16.

FullStack Modular is a “fully integrated modular solution for design, manufacturing, and construction” in multifamily development. Roger Krulak, its founder and CEO, has extensive experience on both the construction and development sides of the real estate business.

What is it like to own homes in a community of “unreal estate": a place where properties have lost almost all their value and homes often are worth less than a second-hand car? In this talk, Sharon Cornelissen, a Center postdoctoral fellow, will explore this question by discussing three years of ethnographic fieldwork she did in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood.

The Black in Design Conference, organized by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design African American Student Union (GSD AASU) recognizes the contributions of the African diaspora to the design fields and promotes discourse around the agency of the design profession to address and dismantle the institutional barriers faced by our communities.

In 1979, after touring public housing sites with deplorable conditions, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Paul Garrity ordered the Boston Housing Authority into receivership. Lewis H. (Harry) Spence was appointed as receiver. As Spence oversaw a massive redevelopment of the fourth largest housing authority in America, two very different housing models emerged: Columbia Point in Dorchester and Commonwealth in Brighton.

Although choice-based school enrollment systems have substantially weakened the ties between local neighborhoods and local schools, most urban inequality research still assumes parents’ choices about where to live are closely linked to their assessments of nearby schools. In this presentation, Jared Schachner, a doctoral student in sociology and social policy who also is a Meyer Doctoral Fellow, revisits this assumption.

In this brown bag lunch, Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at the Center who oversaw our latest State of the Nation's Housing report, will discuss the key findings, including how the shortfall in new housing is putting pressure on house prices and rents and eroding affordability for modest-income households in many markets.

Come learn more about the Joint Center for Housing Studies, a collaborative unit of the Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Kennedy School that carries out research, offers fellowships and grants, provides data, and hosts events on a variety of topics related to housing and community development.