Strategies for affordable housing: Cohousing's potential role in creating dwellings equally accessible to all

2022-9-01
Gökçe, Şevket Deniz
Today, the need for affordable and adequate housing is more urgent than it has ever been before. Rapid urbanization, population growth and economic inequalities are causing problems worldwide when access to adequate housing is concerned. The right to adequate housing is recognized as a human right and it is essential for social inclusion. However, access to a decent dwelling is usually problematic for most of low-income population and even middle-income groups. These groups are being coerced into living in informal settlements or inadequate housing units. Therefore, affordable housing is an important topic to investigate in order to respond to these issues and create dwellings equally accessible to all. There are also arguments about the cohousing model’s capabilities in achieving housing affordability. On this basis, this thesis intends to illustrate what affordable housing can benefit on different scales, explore what the responsible parties can do around the globe and uncover the correlation between affordable housing and cohousing. The study is conducted by surveying the existing literature about affordable housing and cohousing while investigating various cost-effective strategies to be followed in different phases of affordable housing provision through examples and researching cohousing projects as case studies. As a result, findings suggest that the cohousing model can play an active role in the supply of affordable housing. That being said, it is not possible for cohousing to achieve housing affordability alone. In conjunction with cost-effective strategies, alternative tenure models, interdisciplinary approach and collaboration between responsible parties, cohousing can make a significant contribution to affordable housing provision.

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Citation Formats
Ş. D. Gökçe, “Strategies for affordable housing: Cohousing’s potential role in creating dwellings equally accessible to all,” M.Arch. - Master of Architecture, Middle East Technical University, 2022.