“No society will be totally understood aside from the residences of its members.”
I’ve that quote (from “Crabgrass Frontier,” the seminal historical past of America’s suburbs) taped to a wall behind my desk. It summarizes why I really like masking housing for The New York Occasions and appear by no means to expire of issues to jot down about. Housing is all the pieces. It’s the place we stay and lift our households. It’s most individuals’s largest retailer of wealth. Whether or not you personal, you lease, otherwise you sleep exterior, the place you cling your head defines a lot of your existence.
Over the previous few a long time, and particularly for the reason that pandemic, housing has gone from an emblem of American power to an on a regular basis disaster. Aspiring householders have gotten ceaselessly renters. Folks stay in more and more crowded households, the provision of unlawful housing has surged and homeless camps have multiplied. Individuals are fleeing costly states for cheaper ones — which has in flip created housing issues within the cities the place they find yourself.
There have additionally been new alternatives: The rise of at-home places of work has allowed many individuals to relocate to cheaper housing markets and prompted quite a few households to stop their 9 to 5s and redevelop property or turn out to be landlords. In California and elsewhere, the legalization of yard houses has impressed quite a few householders to turn out to be builders by creating small rental items on their properties.
For the previous a number of years, I’ve coated just about each side of America’s housing disaster, from the general public officers attempting to sort out it in statehouses to the individuals dwelling its penalties. I write about tenants in addition to landlords, builders in addition to environmentalists, public housing in addition to personal — even an try and construct a new metropolis from scratch.
My tales vary in subject and are available from across the nation, however the widespread thread is that they’re rooted within the accounts of individuals and the locations that make them. Which is why I wish to hear from you. I wish to know what sorts of housing pressures you’re coping with and the way they’ve affected your life, household, friendships and neighborhood. And I wish to know what tales or subjects you suppose want extra consideration. The articles I write are impressed by the tales individuals inform me.
I learn all submissions. I additionally at all times attain again out to ask extra questions and ensure I’ve received my details proper earlier than I publish something. I gained’t publish something with out your specific permission, and I gained’t use your contact data for every other goal or share it exterior the newsroom. If you want to submit data anonymously, please go to our ideas web page.
