If you follow housing policy in America, you may have noticed a particular term cropping up a lot recently: social housing. Maybe you?ve read a longform academic article, live in a city that is codifying a social-housing policy like Seattle or Atlanta, or seen one of the recent mentions in The New York Times, highlighting U.S. and Viennese success stories. On the design front, Dezeen is running a social-housing revival series.

Boston Road provides 154 units of housing for formerly homeless people, many of them seniors and living with HIV/AIDS, as well as low-income working adults from the South Bronx. Boston Road / Alexander Gorlin Architects. Image © Michael Moran

If you follow housing policy in America, you may have noticed a particular term cropping up a lot recently: social housing. Maybe you?ve read a longform academic article, live in a city that is codifying a social-housing policy like Seattle or Atlanta, or seen one of the recent mentions in The New York Times, highlighting U.S. and Viennese success stories. On the design front, Dezeen is running a social-housing revival series.As the term is coming into common use, varied definitions have emerged. In the interest of casting a wide net, the distinction I?m interested in within the American context is the idea that governments (federal, state, local) should be more actively involved in the production and provision of housing. This distinction is important, because we already have a dizzying array of p...