Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing

by Diana Lind

This smart, provocative look at how the American Dream of single-family homes, white picket fences, and two-car garages became a lonely, overpriced nightmare explores how new trends in housing can help us live better.

Over the past century, American demographics and social norms have shifted dramatically. More people are living alone, marrying later in life, and having smaller families. At the same time, their lifestyles are changing, whether by choice or by force, to become more virtual, more mobile, and less stable. But despite the ways that today's America is different and more diverse, housing still looks stuck in the 1950s.

In Brave New Home , Diana Lind shows why a country full of single-family houses is bad for us and our planet, and details the new efforts underway that better reflect the way we live now, to ensure that the way we live next is both less lonely and more affordable. Lind takes readers into the homes and communities that are seeking alternatives to the American norm, from multi-generational living, in-law suites, and co-living to microapartments, tiny houses, and new rural communities.

Drawing on Lind's expertise and the stories of Americans caught in or forging their own paths outside of our cookie-cutter housing trap, Brave New Home offers a diagnosis of the current American housing crisis and a radical re-imagining of future possibilities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Urban Planning, Urbanism, History, Architecture, Urban, Sociology

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2020

Reviews

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a lot more slapdash-feeling than I thought it would be. I don't have the impression that the author really understands this topic well. Not so much the idea of "housing alternatives" but the reality of actually implementing those alternatives. The things she discusses are absolutely NOT affordable alternatives to the current housing situation. A co-living situation (basically a glorified college dorm setup with studio apartments and shared meeting spaces) is still almost as expensive as a standard apartment, even if there are more amenities. Think of it as a very pricey boarding house. From looking at the websites and Google Reviews of the ones she mentions in this book, it sounds like they're mainly occupied by foreign nationals/international students who don't have a credit score and can't get a long-term lease.

Tiny Houses and ADUs (accessory dwelling units) are glorified backyard trailers/electrified sheds, but they cost as much to build as actual houses or RVs, and she doesn't even mention the challenges of hooking them up to the utility systems (do you use a tank? run a PVC pipe between the ADU and the house for fresh and blackwater? does it need to hook directly to the sewer itself? is usage submetered from the main house? would you run a gas line or have a propane tank, or keep it to electric-only?). Additionally, she touches on the reality that a lot of people who add ADUs to their properties either use them as a place to keep Granny or as an AirB&B unit, neither of which makes a dent in actual housing shortages. And she mentions garage conversions, but not the problems of 1) the garage being rendered useless for its intended purpose and 2) the extra automotive clutter of having a tenant who likely needs a car as well as the resident. Those of us who live in suburban wastelands understand that vehicles are unsightly, prime targets for theft, and yet necessary for survival because there are absolutely no public transit options.

She discusses intergenerational housing, which is a good idea if the family members are respectful of one another's boundaries, but most of the solutions still require more than one income earner and/or high-dollar renovation projects.

She doesn't seem to look at existing housing stock (how you can subdivide these ridiculous 3400 square feet barns that have been built in the past 20 years) or other higher-density solutions that exist already, even with their faults (townhouses/rowhouses, apartment complexes, etc), or dividing existing suburban 10000 square foot lots into two smaller lots that can accommodate something like 2-bedroom bungalows for empty-nesters. She mentions underutilized spaces in houses, but doesn't touch on the sheer amount of possessions that most people acquire.

Also, there really isn't much discussion about housing that is objectively affordable. She makes scant mention of a short-lived public housing project in St Louis (Pruitt-Igoe, similar to Chicago's Cabrini Green) but doesn't explore the shortcomings of such projects or why and how they became such spectacular failures. These insights would be very useful since there are plenty of successful urban apartments and other high-density housing that don't have the horrendous connotations of The Projects. She spends a paragraph or two discussing modular housing in India, but doesn't investigate housing standards in other parts of the world, other than to say things like "in Singapore, the government will give you a subsidy if you live within 1KM of an elderly relative." Singapore is also 725 sq km, smaller than the five boroughs of NYC.

And she doesn't look at zoning with respect to mixed-use spaces. I live in a suburban wasteland 20 miles from Washington, DC where a car is essential, because the nearest grocery store is over a mile away, the library and closest medical professionals are 1.8 miles away, the train station where you can ride into DC is 4 miles away, and the nearest Emergency Room is 6 miles away. Other than the occasional enterprising Uber driver, there aren't any taxis or buses to get you from place to place, so everyone, including the tenant in your illegal basement apartment, needs a car, and a place to store the car when it's not in use. That's a problem that isn't even hinted at in this book. I realize that it's not a book about public transit, but there's not much point in increasing housing density without also accounting for traffic density/alternatives and having something like a cold store or bodega within walking distance of most houses like they do in urban areas. You can't create urban densities without urban amenities.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our city, much like so many others in North American right now, is struggling with homelessness, income precarity, and a generation that is seeing the possibility of home ownership slip from their grasp. A study shows that a third of households in the US pay more than 30% of their income just on rent and mortgages - but this was pre-pandemic, pre-supply chain disruptions, pre-double digit inflation.

Our obsession with single family dwellings needs to adapt. The 20th century's mass exodus into suburbia, fuelled by elitism and racism has eroded our sense of street-level community, increased social isolation, pushed us into car-dependency, and driven our tendency to conspicuous consumption as we struggle to fill our homes and "keep up with the Jones."

Author Diana Lind proposes some possibilities available to us like Accessory Dwelling Units (or tiny homes), co-living arrangements, multi-generational housing and changing the zoning that often prevents any of this from happening. There is little talk of affordable housing here though. Gorgeously designed tiny homes that populate our social feeds are hardly an inexpensive alternative, and co-living feels more like up-cycled commune living for the affluent dot-com set looking to work remotely around the world.

This is a breezy tour through interesting housing alternatives without getting into the systemic issues that drive the lack of affordable housing. It submits to the unstoppable growth of suburbs and strip malls, and avoids the NIMBYism that often stalls any sort of possible progress. Maybe not the book's purpose, but I can't help wishing it poked at those issues a bit more.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

This was quite an engaging nonfiction book! Diana Lind’s Brave New Home was well-researched, organized very logically, and made a clear argument with substantial evidence of the new trends in housing in the United States and where those trends may be best suited. While I overall enjoyed it quite a bit, I did find the book to be a bit repetitive, which often makes sense in a nonfiction book (it helps for assigning a particular chapter for a class reading, for example) but reading it straight-through made that aspect somewhat frustrating. Additionally, since the focus of the book is primarily to reframe our collective thinking on the necessity and status symbol of owning a single-family home, I did find the book sometimes felt geared more towards solutions for people in the demographic of single, high-earning millennials (looking at you, co-living), which was also frustrating given that, in my mind at least, this is not the demographic with the most need for changes in housing structures. My favorite chapter by far was the chapter on multigenerational housing, which is a topic I find super fascinating (and one that I believe will only become more relevant in my life) and I am eager to see developments in that aspect of the housing sector (side note: it is a fascinating sociological question of why white people in the US are so averse to living with their parents, which is also relevant to the housing concerns of high-earning, single millennials…). Thinking on it now (and this may just be my personal biases and interests coming in), I almost wish the book had been structured around the thesis that the single-family home has taken away our inherent care structures (i.e. multigenerational families and extended relations) and what we really need is a re-establishment of strong community ties, alongside familial relationships.

My personal musings aside, this was thought-provoking, and I would highly recommend giving it a read if housing is an area of interest for you!

Thank you to Bold Type Books for providing me with a free early copy of this work through Netgalley. Brave New Home is out now.

[Mary Bellamy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had all the depth of an article in a women's magazine. From reading it you would think that the only existing housing stock in the suburbs is single family homes, not a townhouse in sight. Mobile home parks only exist as the location of previously maligned manufactured housing which is now much more appealing when used as a granny flat. The co-housing chapter doesn't mention group houses. According to the author, selfies contribute to community and pretty stop signs to wellbeing. Next time the author wants to write about dense housing with community she might spend a week in an illegal boarding house or a group house, instead of in a brand new, expensive high rise with tiny apartments. Nonetheless, there was some interesting information in the book so it gets 2 stars instead of 1.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This well researched book chronicles the history of housing in America. This would be a great book to read as part of a college history course, and particularly courses focusing on urban history. The writing is excellent and interesting to read. The author covers a long time period, from colonial days up until the current pandemic in 2020.

The author does have a specific agenda to push. She is anti-single family housing and advocates for "co-housing" (unrelated people living together) and multigenerational housing. She is particularly fond of ADUs - granny pads in the back yard. She makes her case, but I really wish she had presented the facts and concepts and let readers make up their own minds. I resented her presumption that cities are preferable places to live - over suburban and rural areas - and that living in a single family home is somehow bad.

Overall, this book was well worth reading, but not what I expected. As someone who is about to buy a new home, I was looking for new ways of efficiently living in a single family home in the burbs and as a soon-to-be empty nester. I didn't expect to be told to live in my kids' back yards and take care of grandchildren (which I don't have). I was honestly more interested in learning about better use of space and function of my home.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prior to the 20th century, Americans enjoyed the same rich diversity of housing options as anyone else: detached houses of varying sizes, granny flats, boarding houses, rented rooms, and apartment hotels only begin the list. By the mid-20th century, however, American cities were hard at work creating housing shortages for the future, by restricting residential development to either sprawling acres of single homes, or the odd apartment tower. As we move deeper into the 21st century, Diane Lind posits that the state-mandated tyranny of detached homes is being broken and that alternative housing options are making a comeback.

Lind begins with a quick and serviceable history of American housing, which covers how single-family dwellings became virtually the only permissible residential development allowed in the United States. Unsurprisingly for a contemporary author, she places heavy emphasis on racial drama, with less-charged economic and environmental factors taking a distant backseat. (Suburban Nation, Crabgrass Frontier, etc offer more detailed and less politicized analyses of the same trend.) More constructively, she demonstrates that the nuclear family, consisting of one couple and their children in a detached home, only became the norm as the 20th century opened, driven by both the state’s desire to expand homeownership, reform groups’ attempt to clean cities up by attacking shared living arrangements, and the shift of the American economy from agriculture to industry.

Social factors today are reversing that shift. Young people are entering adulthood already laden with debt baggage, and are delaying starting families, often well into their thirties. They often have neither the means nor the desire to buy a house in the suburbs — and even if they did, the large cities they prefer to live near all have enormous housing shortfalls (sometimes thanks to the city government itself squelching development, in the case of San Francisco). There’s a great deal of interest and energy in creating new ways to live, and the bulk of Lind’s book addresses three trends: co-living, accessory dwelling units, and multigenerational housing. She ends by arguing that housing should be reframed, and that housing and health policy should ruin together.

Two of the two trends are restorations of how people used to live before the suburban experiment, and allow people with different needs to serve one another: accessory dwelling units, which lumps approaches like garage apartments and tiny houses together, offer more affordable places to live for young people, while giving older landowners a source of income and companionship. Multigenerational homes are likwise mutually beneficial: not only are basic household costs shared, but the generations support one another: while Grandma is helping babysit the grands, her own children can likewise better monitor her health — and everyone benefits from companionship. While these revived approaches were created specifically to ease expense, Lind’s version of co-living is rather different. She addresses not young people living in homes together, but housing developments that were specifically created with a dorm-like plan in mind: small private living spaces, connected with more communal shared kitchens and living areas. These allow college grads to continue meeting interesting people and living in community, but are certainly not cheap: indeed, Lind writes that these young people are willing to pay a premium for the experience, which often includes doormen and planned recreation.

I greatly appreciated Lind’s emphasis on how our living spaces effect our total well-being, not just our financial standing: this is something I became aware of after reading Jim Kunstler’s Geography of Nowhere. The big flaw in Lind’s focus here is its emphasis on new developments: even when existing housing stock can easily be adapted to incorporate ADUs or multiple families, she devotes most of her focus to new construction that has multiple families in mind. The co-living chapter is the biggest offender here, because it’s more of a niche product , the dorms attractive to wealthy but single millennials. The problem with new developments is that by their nature they’re difficult to make affordable, since first-gen tenants are essentially helping pay for the building’s development, whereas tenants in later years are only covering maintenance and the landlord’s income. (Jane Jacobs wrote on the importance of old buildings for maintaining affordable stock.) Lind also emphasizes subsidies for making the dream of affordable housing happen, when zoning regs and state incentives were responsible for creating the housing dilemma in the first place. When bureaucrats are removed from the picture, industrious humans have a way of solving the problems at hand.

[Roberto Charvel · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a refreshing book. During the last year I have been reading about urbanism, cities and prop tech and this is probably the best book I read. The books include those from renowned heavyweigth authors such as Richard Florida, Eduard Glaser and Ben Wilson among others.

This is a book about understanding the current housing crisis in the US, but more importantly to know how entrepreneurs and communities are innovation to change this negative trend. As if this accomplishments were not enough, Diana Lind is able to constantly remind us about the social impact of housing and how to keep that vision when imagining the future.

There are several issues surrounding the housing crisis in the US. The first one is the cultural concept about owning a single house as a way of success. This may seem normal, but it is just a cultural invention that the author tracks back to the aftermath of World War I (construction standardization and access to financing) and which origins could go back to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Like all cultural narratives, this is one difficult to overcome only with reality, science and data. This is where Diana Lind shine: she creates a positive narrative around different alternatives to a preconceived axiom.

Just like in the case of health or education, the cost of housing has increased faster than the increase in wages. In this regard, the book is universal. If I could suggest something to the author, it would be for her to consider more alternatives from around the world and teach us through her abstraction capabilities.

The book explores several social topics that other authors have focused on, but probably digs deeper in most of them and from a much humane perspective. Diana Lind includes topics like historical race disparity through housing ownership (and the many laws that supported this unit the 1990s). Where she excels is when introducing other topics such as mental health and suicide and its relationship with securing housing. She also understands in a more meaningful way the importance of multigenerational housing. Maybe the gender perspective (being a working mother in Philadelphia) makes her arguments more convincing.

Most of the influential zoning and housing regulations where conceived after WWI and were focused on separating white Americans from African Americans and other immigrants. Regulators conceived the suburbs as ¨clean and healthy¨ places away from the city centers that where were people of lower economic means lived and where sicknesses were easier transmitted due to density (the Spanish Flu of 1918 had a similar effect on cities as the Covid 19 pandemic where people tried to leave cities looking for safer and healthier locations). Back then is when regulators reserved residential density for public housing and the stigma around that idea was born. If you were rich and successful, you lived and owned a single house, otherwise you were ¨non-White¨and unsuccessful. Density was a sign of poverty and people of color.

After WWII things got worse. The GI Bill was supposed to provide soldiers access to buying single houses as a way to revamp the economy. These were single houses in the suburbs. The only problem was that they did not let non whites access mortgages or other programs that only increased the financial gap between generations of white and non whites. Surprisingly, these easily explained concepts are not know by the majority of my American friends.

It looks like the creation of suburbs had another item on the agenda as well: after WWI women started several movements including the ones that gave women voting rights. Relocation women to the suburbs was potentially a way of disseminating that initiative as well as keeping them for competing in the work force after the role women played during WWI and specially during WWII. This is just one of the many I learnt from the author, and I thought it was brilliantly written.

Another fascinating conclusion of the book comes from understanding the outcome of Obama's response to the 2008 crisis with the NSP and how it was really substituted by the market with the creation of portfolios of single housing units for rent. These portfolio were acquired at a discount in the aftermath of the crisis by private equity funds, that then turn the units into a new industry: single housing rental. Companies like Invitation Homes were able to achieve much more and faster what the NSP only dreamt about. I believe this is one of the largest innovations in real estate in the last 15 years.

The author then describes several nascent trends that can help solve the housing crisis in the US. Her analysis includes ADU, co-living, multigenerational housing and changes to zoning regulations. Her analysis is very different from most of the things I read in prop tech forums and blogs.

For Diana, co-living is a viable opportunity, but the existing companies have focused on providing housing to middle-higher income tenants that have access to other alternatives and have not prioritized other demographics. She makes a spirited explanation and defense of ADUs. Unfortunately she acknowledges there is still a negative stigma about them, they are expensive and the current number of ADUs are not enough to have a significant impact on housing. She also explores multigenerational housing as a potential asset type, which is the first time I ever read about this idea, and I found it very promissiong. Another incredible topic that she introduced in her book is the importance of housing and health.

From the potential impact of telemedicine in tenants paying rent on time, from the idea of Doctors prescribing housing as medicine, this is the most eye opening part of the book. Suicide anxiety, lower life expectancy, the opioid crisis, loneliness, homelessness and many other health aspects could probably be cured with access (not ownership) to stable housing. The author even sheds light on some hospitals that are experiment with housing development as an impactful health tool.

Finally, the book proposes several ways of solving the housing conundrum that include prohibiting single housing zoning (which is already happening in some cities and states), to the support to co-living and ADUs and also to chaining the idea of subsidizing assets (capital gains taxes or deduction of mortgage related interests) to providing housing subsidizes to people.

In any case, this is a great book if you care about the housing crisis, if you want to understand how it got started and if you want tolerant about how entrepreneurs are starting fix it.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was fine. It included a good survey of how we got to where we are in the problem of affordable housing in the US, racial discrimination that accompanied housing policy in the 20th century, and a sampling of some ways to address that problem. Most interesting to me was the coupling of housing and healthcare: a few hospitals have essentially become owners of apartment buildings, and can house a chronically unsheltered individual for roughly $10k a year, instead of in a hospital bed for three nights at the same price. Similarly, some landlords have begun offering some health benefits along with housing, as early indicators suggest that providing healthcare allows tenants to stay on top of their health before it becomes a big issue and therefore decrease tenant turnover.

And, ugh, housing development agencies are the literal bane of the US' existence.

Overall, I wanted more radical suggestions on how we can change our housing. Suburbs are killing us -- as we live more isolated and sedentary lives with underutilized space, the cost of resources to build new homes, and the destruction of wilderness areas. Suburbs have created more "private" but more tense relations: now it is the burden of those individuals to clean, cook, and care for houses and their interiors individually rather than collectively (or, otherwise, though the book didn't make this connection, hire it done by most likely immigrant women of color -- srsly how many white folks in suburbs have brown women cleaning, cooking, or doing childcare for them?). A lot of these problems could be solved, as the book suggests, by multigenerational housing or co-living spaces.

A note on the audiobook: I had to kick up the playback speed, because otherwise the narrator would have awkward pauses or emphasize the wrong word in a sentence. Thus, it was difficult to follow the author's train of thought in complex sentences.

[Lorena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas, but so rooted in capitalism that it was hard at times to consider them at all viable for dealing with the issues of unaffordable and insecure housing. Which, to be fair, was a bias she didn't hide, expressing concern on p. 212 that the housing crisis "creates a situation where people lose trust in capitalism writ large". I think I just don't know if I can read about startup solutions or solutions that have only effectively worked for the wealthy with no real conversation other than 'make it cheaper!' around how housing solutions can work for all. For example, she frequently touts rooming houses and ADUs as great solutions but doesn't address how those may not be environments that feel safe for many, nor does she address the land access that is required to be able to have an ADU --- and that just renting a tiny home on someone else's property is still getting trapped in the same financial cycle. Also absolutely no criticism of landlords, although there is some praise of them in comparison to companies. But I can assure you that individual landlords can be just as exploitative as companies. Not sure what her living history is entirely, but my understanding is that she owns a home and has popped into these alternate living environments for weeks or days at a time to do research and for me, it can sometimes be frustrating when the dominant perspectives in housing-related conversations are those who already own property. I did learn a fair bit still, but didn't leave feeling like there were any particularly practical or beneficial solutions laid out here.

[Sooraj Naga · Rating 4 out of 5]

With 70% of the world's population expected to live in cities by 2050, the affordability of housing and leading a sustainable lifestyle are becoming myths in any given metropolitan area.

Throughout the book, the author deals with aspects of the housing crisis in the United States and explores the fallacy of a policy that is being projected onto the population, which inevitably causes more difficulty for people of colour and immigrants.

The author presents many case studies that show how multigenerational housing and co-living are picking up the trend among realtors and neutralizing urban poverty in urban areas. This strategy should be consciously followed in any urban area from city planning to placemaking. Must read for policymakers, urban planners, architects, social scientists, etc

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, and a lot of great ideas. I’d still like to eat at least some of the rich, though.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting more, but this was an ok read. It has some interesting examples of what are probably considered innovative housing types, but nothing really new. I don’t know why, but I was expecting the book to be more technical, and it wasn’t at all.

[Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book for all of us. From the government official looking for innovative but tested housing ideas, to the renter who can’t seem to find the kind of housing they are looking for. Diana Lind confidently guides us through the history of American housing policy – from the dawn of the republic to COVID-19 – and she makes the case that we (all of us) need to look beyond single-family-home living. Co-living, multi-generational housing, the “tiny house,” accessory dwelling units, the boarding house: these forms of housing, many of them currently stigmatized, must be part of our “brave new” world of housing – because the status quo is simply not meeting our needs.

The book is well-organized, clearly written, and chock full of ideas. It will inspire you to want to be a part of the housing solution – whatever that solution or plethora of solutions is.

[Michael Espinoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this look at our housing situation and how we can change our norms to achieve better social outcomes. Socialization and interdependence are big themes that resonated with me in this book, especially during a time with so much isolation because of the pandemic.

[Andrew Szalay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review of Diana Lind’s 2020 book Brave New Home
For Goodreads and LinkedIn


I enjoyed Lind’s retelling of the history of housing in the United States; this should be a lens that educators should include in survey history classes in her 2020 book Brave New Home. Lind is very informed about the dysfunction of housing in America, and makes accurate observations about the shift of homeownership and suburbia, the effects on cities and rural places.

I spent 15 years in Washington, DC as a Congressional aide and later as a housing policy analyst and registered lobbyist, all the while trying to explain how the housing market works as a system, integrated rather than the silos of homelessness, rental markets, homeownership, from affordable to jumbo mortgages, nomads, and zoning, community land trusts, building code, and alternative living arrangements, from shared homes to tiny houses (once called bungalows, as Lind rightfully points out.) Today, I run a local home building nonprofit. Brave New Home is an attempt to get readers up to speed and inspire them to think outside the box of how we continue to do housing today.

Lind captures the situation well, and discusses a myriad of housing alternatives. She is attempting to open readers' minds, and for that I am grateful. I was blown away by the shift from speaking about housing history to alternative housing arrangements. She jumped right in to discussing shared housing and its mental health benefits, let alone its affordable solution. I wish there was an example out there about a few athletes or musicians, but all the examples online were like the one she characterized: cultured and social young people, which seemed like a unique sample set.

She introduces readers to community land trusts (CLTs). They have been around for decades but she was bewildered at why they aren’t more popular and said the New York Times has only mentioned them once in a year. I am not surprised. I would argue that is because CLTs need to be nurtured like any nonprofit, or investment, and they have flaws, too. I am actively trying to establish one. But I know that CLTs are tactics to keep affordable housing, like a stopgap, not a solution for communities everywhere.

I think the book was too critical of homeownership, generally. It’s a trap easy to fall into, especially if you read about the history, which Lind retells, of how homeownership became the predominant version of housing. In truth, she’s critical of single-family stand-alone homes, and the privileges afforded to homebuyers by the federal government. Ownership is the means of decentralizing housing and ensuring large-scale landlords, like “i-buyers,” aren’t dominating the market. Lind’s criticisms of the mortgage interest deduction, a federal tax benefit, is valid but some readers might think homeownership shouldn’t have any tax benefits; well, she and I agree that it’s worth reevaluating. She asks great questions but hasn't done enough research to close the loop; I’m not sure anyone has, mainly because the catalyst for making more affordable homes has yet to be found.

Too often, Lind tries to be inspiring, and casting broad brush to minor encouraging housing trends in a community or two, or a politician’s remarks that has since phased out from relevancy. In working on creating affordable housing for over 20 years, I can say that it’s hard, and that many things need to align. The crux of the matter is we need a construction industry that can build more starter homes at a large scale. Until we do, however we do it, we’ll be having the same frustrating conversation about housing.

I recommend more people read Brave New Home, but take it with a grain of salt. Lind is another person, like me and you, bravely trying to apply this new knowledge to make housing in America better than it is.

[Jennie · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading Evicted and Color of Law last year, I was looking for additional books about how our country has qualified “home” throughout history. This book was not that. It had a brief history section, but it was not at all why I had expected. (that might be on me) However the reason for the low rating is more than just that issue. Over and over this book discusses multi generational living in relations to grandparents helping out with their grandkids. As a parent that sounds wonderful, but my parents have already raised kids and shouldn’t live like built in babysitters just because I chose to have my own children. In addition, almost anytime the author referenced childcare needs, she assigned that duty to the mom. Multiple times she referenced moms working outside the home and how they have to find childcare...but this is 2021 and dads are responsible for their children’s care during work hours too! Many of the suggestions/solutions are so incredibly privileged that it’s ridiculous. In one section there’s a discussion about the high cost of living and serious lack of affordable shelter for people across the country and a few pages later is a multi-page description of a utopia-esq type community in which stop signs are decorated but people travel weekly out of town for groceries and the pharmacy. That is not a solution the average person can afford, let alone someone in/near poverty.

[Sunni | vanreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diana Lind's Brave New Home explores American housing: the history and how it got to where it is today, and ideas for the future.

Housing in America today is still predominantly the single family home. Whether that is the ideal housing situation is something to be debated. Lind explores how we got here from the historically populous urban living, what its current issues are (in many cases unaffordability and that family units are no longer the same as before with much less people who are also more mobile), and ideas for the future. These future ideas include accessory dwelling units, micro-housing, and co-living to name a few.

It's an easy and digestable read to people who are curious about housing and may not know much about it. Personally, as a Human Geography graduate and someone who has a more extensive knowledge on housing, this isn't really groundbreaking. I would recommend this to a friend who's just getting into this topic.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this eArc.

[Jordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is awful for a more complete history of housing disparities read the color of law. For a look at future housing Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change

This book is filled with the "market shall fix everything" contradictions that are creating more anti capitalist every day. Seriously like this book never says it but belive the we work was sound.

Lind seems to assert that housing insecurity is caused by scarcity. Its not every, major city with large house -less people have more than adequate housing that is currently un occupied. Also well many zoning laws are classist and racist many are in place so that enterpernurers (her word) or slumlords (my words) can't force people into sub standard housing.

All in all neo liberalist trash that co-opts some ideals of revolutionaries to tell readers millennials love nomadic (her words) or unstable (my words) lives.

The bottom line housing is a human right and you can't and shouldn't rent a community.

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The strength of this book is the immense amount of information about our housing history and the current housing crisis. It was fascinating reading about how differently we lived just a few generations ago. There are a number of really cool ideas that people are doing for housing in today’s world but so many of them are for middle class and rich folks, especially in cities with the largest housing crises like the west coast. It is a staggering problem that is being made worse by the day by people who are buying up property to convert to AiBnBs, to raze and turn into larger luxury spaces, to rent out at unattainable rates, and so on. Many of the options in this book still require very high investment or rents. It’s a great book for showing why we need change and what the changes can look like, but now cities must address the crisis by changing zoning laws and stopping the buy-up of all the properties that keeps them out of reach of the citizens who need them.

I read a digital copy of this book for review.

[Julie Capell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent overview of how the US got to the point where single-family housing is valued over all other forms of housing and no one can afford a starter home any more. Lots of statistics and some interesting case studies of current attempts to create other types of housing, including co-living, shared housing, cohousing, and ADUs. But even the author admits that most of the solutions she examines are not affordable. More compelling were the sections of the book that get into how changes in public policy might create housing that is not only more affordable, but healthier in terms of reducing isolation and re-connecting the generations. Still, I found many of the proposals were pretty tame. Community land trusts, for instance, are only mentioned three times in the whole book and are barely explained.

This book would be a good introduction for someone who is new to these concepts, but anyone with more experience in alternative housing probably already knows most of this information.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read if it's your first time trying to understand our housing challenges and different housing solutions. Fair warning - it's based on the US housing landscape but you get the gist of the challenges and menu of solutions.

I started reading it because I'm getting into housing planning and public policy at work for the first time. I needed something to explain the housing landscape simply to me without dumbing it down. I loved the simple statistics and policy explanations, but I especially loved Lind's provocative questions at the end of every chapter and part. I found myself yelling, "YES GIRL, TELL THEM," when she pointed out real estate as a commodity and looking at other wealth generation solutions to stop that commodification.

My favourite part was the last two to three pages where Lind pointed to the media and how we tell stories of those living "differently".

[Dr. Lisa Cowley · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Brave New Home" was a very thought provoking as my husband and I are looking for a home while temporarily living with our grown son, and are also interested in writing a book (our first book is "Pack Lightly: Making Sense of the Second Half of Your Life") about where we land in the second half of our lives. I really believe that suitable housing and one's health go hand in hand and agree with the author that our country needs vision and get creative about what that looks like. Unfortunately, some of her example of ADU's (accessory dwelling units) and co-living or co-housing arrangements still cater to the wealthy and are unattainable for most Americans. Despite not bringing in more examples of how we can truly create a "Brand New Home" for the future, "Brave New Home" is worth the read.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a small book that begins the investigation into a big subject - the American Dream of home ownership. The author looks at the downsides of the single family home - from mortgage debt to carbon footprint to redlining bylaws that were racist and the unhealthy aspects of suburban living. The author investigates many concepts of small living and cooperative living - however the emphasis is mainly on lifestyles unattainable for many people struggling below the poverty line. I would have liked the author to look beyond the borders of the US to shine a light on some great samples of social housing and cooperative living in Europe. This would have strengthened the book. Still she raised many issues that made me think about my own ideas about what makes a home.

[Graham Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

An introductory book into the national housing crisis discussion. I enjoyed reading a bit more into some case studies and general ideas, but this book offers more sweeping overviews, buzzwords, and introductory topics than it does any more detailed or original thoughts.

It has a refreshing take on multi-generational housing, one that helped reframe it for me and question the stigmas and stereotypes, but much of the talk on ADUs and co-living seems a bit tired and unoriginal. I would recommend this to a friend with a distant curiosity, but not someone looking for the next level of detail.

[David Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book, will re-read. Diana Lind is a housing expert, and this book is loaded with information. By far the two most important chapters are the first (Rise of The Single-Family Home) and the last (Zoning Reform). The first chapter is very dense, which might be overwhelming to readers who are less familiar with the history of U.S. housing policy. The rest of the book does not maintain that same density of information. I just wish it was longer; I was not ready to put it down.

10/10 recommend. Do not let the average score fool you.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great, up to date primer on the history of housing, how and why the US favors single family home ownership, what the alternatives are, and policy suggestions on how we might change this dynamic.
I learned something new in each section, whether it was about co-living, micro housing, exclusionary zoning, redlining, etc.

[Cathy Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of times I read books that seem padded, and I'd like better without some repetition, tangents, or whatever. This one's just the opposite. I wish the author had held onto her ideas for another year, and had spent that year collecting more information and working through some complexities. Because as it now stands, the book presents ideas that are at the same time wise, impractical, forward-thinking, half-baked, and very unappealing to people like me who like their single-family home just fine.

The idea that stuck with me most is that homeowners could use our wasted space -- garages, for example, and back yards -- to create rental housing that would provide us with income. That's pretty mind-blowing, because I've never considered that my garage/workshop and backyard to be wasted space. Taking out plants to put up a tiny house rental, or converting my workshop into a rental, sound like things I don't want to do, and I hope I don't have to feel guilty for not wanting to do them.

But incomplete and unpleasant as the various options struck me, reading this has inspired me to look at houses and apartments in my neighborhood and check out how other people use their space. It's sort of turned into my covid hobby. I look at these big garages that have a whole story above the cars and wonder: Is in an art studio, or a party venue, or I wonder what else?

I've noticed the expensive homes down by the lake have mostly turned their back yards into parking lots. They build a big garage and an apron-driveway in front of it. Yet most garages, including these, don't seem to have cars parked in them, judging by the amount of junk stored in front of the garage door. In less affluent areas, where there's still a little grass out back, clotheslines seem to have disappeared en masse; most homes had one at the time we bought our house in 1990, but very few remain, and most of those not in working condition.

Porches are interesting; they seem to evolve, or devolve, over time. Open porches have tables and chairs and look like people use them to sit outside in the nice weather. But once the homeowner puts in screens, the space starts housing snow shovels, bikes, and dead houseplants. Then the screens get replaced by windows, and nobody sits out there anymore. It's no longer outdoors, really, but not connected to heating or AC either. The porch turns into storage space for books, Christmas decorations, spare furniture, outgrown kiddie toys, more dead housplants, and who knows what else. Some homes actually construct a new deck in front of their porch so they've got somewhere to sit outside again. And so the chain of porch evolution continues.

Hmm hmm hmm. I do wonder where our residential spaces are headed. So many cities need more housing for their exploding population. I wonder where all the people will go. It would be great to see this book redone in a few years, expanding on progress and options.

You still can't sleep in my back yard. Just sayin'.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

How can we redefine "home"?

Lind's new work, written before the 2020 election, reviews briefly the history of single-family housing. She looks at market and political issues driving the current issue of lack of affordable housing, and offers some positive developments in the field.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diana Lind lays out her case simply and effectively: exclusive single-family housing is unhealthy, unsustainable, and uneconomical for the 21st century. The American Dream of the 1950s no longer suffices for a United States which is both economically and demographically different, especially after the Great Recession.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting dive into a tough topic. Really has me debating the type of housing I'll live in through retirement. I had been debating the wisdom of the single family home for a while, and this book has me *this close* to considering a multi-generational solution, or ADUs. Lots of suggestions for individuals and policy makers within, worth the read.