The Housing Futures Initiative (HFI) is a Chicago-based non-profit that is committed to the pursuit of affordable housing for all and stands in solidarity with communities in need. Rooted in the practices of architecture, urbanism, and policy, we target the current affordability crisis by prototyping advanced housing designs through spatial, material, and construction innovation.
Communities throughout Chicago, Illinois, and the U.S. are dramatically impacted by the lack of affordable housing, with a shortage of 224,445 units in the Chicago metro area alone. In addition, the U.S. housing industry is predominantly concerned with single-family homes for the affluent nuclear family. Two-thirds of new housing construction is devoted to single-family homeownership, making no progress on housing for communities in need (from unhoused to rent-burdened populations).
In solidarity with these communities, the HFI joins in the struggle for housing equity, utilizes architecture and urbanism as forms of advocacy, and recognizes the capacity of affordable housing as a profound political realm for collective agency, action, and empowerment. Positing a radical departure from the way housing is currently designed, financed, and built, we aim to garner intelligence that can confront the dire affordable housing situation, speak to the political dimensions of communal living, and articulate the potential of the collective as a productive challenge for architecture.The HFI asserts that what has emerged as one of the most critical issues of our time can only be addressed through a fundamental rethinking and remaking of collective urban living and the politics and economies that surround them.