AFFORDABLE HOUSING

 Our capacity to shelter all forms of activity will always depend on the gross building area potential of the land involved and the site plan that serves it. 

The land required for housing revolves around what is defined as a dwelling unit. The correlation of land and dwelling takes on greater importance when the issue is “affordable housing”. The potential to provide this housing involves many physical, social, psychological, environmental, and economic factors that I’ve collected under the phrase “shelter capacity evaluation”, or Tegimenics. My focus has been on the measurement and evaluation of the physical factors I am qualified to address.

Table 1 defines a detached 2-story dwelling shown in Fig. 1. It was built in 1903 on a 30x105 foot lot and was built at a time when many lots were 20-25 feet wide or less and did not have enough lot width for the driveway shown. I’ve chosen Fig. 1 because the lot size, home area, and site plan would now be considered small, but not necessarily desirable. The density is 13.8 dwelling units per gross acre as shown in cell F5 of Table 1. It is still not small enough to meet the tiny-home standards I’ve encountered, but is more affordable than many others because of its age, condition, and location. This may not be the affordable housing many are seeking, but its design specification in Table 1 raises several issues relevant to the topic.

The Lot, Pavement, and Building Modules of Table 1 contain approximate specification values from memory that define the fundamental characteristics of the home illustrated by the Fig. 1 site plan. The specification values entered in the shaded cells of the Lot, Pavement, and Building Modules produce the gross building area options shown in cells B41-B49. The value in cell B43 represents the existing home example.

The current small-home arguments I’ve read would seem to challenge the need for the garage shown and specified in cells F25-F27 of Table 1 and the driveway area shown and specified in cell F19. Elimination would mean that the lot size could be further reduced and the density increased. Curb parking is not shown in Fig.1 but is present up and down this street. It turns the two-way street into an alternating one-way system that depends on courtesy and deference to function. It is separated from the home by a 10-foot-deep front yard. The immediate questions concerning this property are:

1)   Can the garage and driveway be eliminated in future plans?

2)      Is the unpaved open space provided in cell F13 adequate in relation to the building mass and pavement present?

3)      Are movement, open space, and life support services adequate?

4)      What is the measurable shelter capacity of the project?

5)      What is the measurable intensity of the project?

6)      What is the measurable intrusion imposed by the floor quantity present?

7)      What is the measurable context of the correlated site plan and building features?

8)      Does this plan contribute to the quality of life of the occupants and surrounding neighborhood?

The calculations related to the physical questions involved are provided in the Implications Module of Table 1, but the data do not provide answers.

The purpose of Table 1 is to show that mathematical evaluation of shelter design decisions, once thought intuitive, is feasible when the calculations are reduced to the strategic foundation on which shelter, form, function, and appearance emerge. Prior to the derivation of Tegimenic equations, however, this analysis has taken place in the creative minds of designers following a random format of trial and error at the drawing board or CAD station. The result has too often been sprawl at one end of the intensity spectrum and excessive intensity at the other.

Figure 2 and Table 2 have been provided to show how small home modification and expansion over time on limited lot areas in response to unknown motivation can lead to compression and deterioration often associated with inner-city neighborhoods. It is a difficult issue because shelter is a fixed asset that does not adjust easily. Any reevaluation that leads to redevelopment, urban renewal, and eminent domain has been political disaster in many cases, but any additional land consumption for affordable housing reduces agriculture and the natural domain that is our source of life.

In my opinion, a successful search for affordable housing will depend on our ability to correlate the many mathematical design decisions involved with the shelter capacity of land for diverse occupant activity. In other words, affordable housing represents one of many demands for land area.

The correlation of land area for shelter capacity, occupant activity, movement, open space, and life support determines the economic stability of the whole. Random experiments responding to market preferences have not balanced the economic equation in my opinion. Affordable housing is not an independent part of this equation. It is not an independent dollhouse like that shown in the cover picture. It is a cell that must be combined to contribute to a healthy anatomy. If you share this opinion, you may realize that information sharing, data science, shelter capacity evaluation, financial analysis, and mapping correlation are some of the tools needed to begin building credible arguments for the shelter capacity equations and proposals needed to correlate urban form, design logic, and data modeling within geographic limits defined to protect both our quality and source of life.

Walter M. Hosack, November 2025

PS: The 260+ essays I have written on my blog at www.wmhosack.blogspot.com and my book, The Equations of Urban Design, are available to those who wish to pursue new efforts to lead shelter for the activities of growing populations within geographic limits defined to protect both their quality and source of life.

photo courtesy of: tiny home girl