Rising to the Global Housing Crisis

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Our world is grappling with a global housing crisis. With demonstrated impacts on educational, economic and health outcomes, adequate housing lifts up individuals and entire communities. Still, more than 1.8 billion people around the world lack adequate housing, and 150 million more are living in homelessness. These numbers are tragically on the rise with an estimated 15 million people forcibly evicted every year and a growing number of individuals -- an estimated 100 million at present -- displaced by conflict, disaster or economic desperation. Driven by economic expansion, growing inequality, and a failure to contend with root causes, rising to the housing crisis will require our best thinking…and solutions. This course examines the scope and implications of the global housing crisis, both in the United States as well as across the Global South. Our discussions will grapple with the complex issues underpinning one of society’s most vital but overlooked social goods. We will dissect the entangled root causes, including growing urbanization and coastal migration, tracing the role of federal policies that facilitated the commoditization of housing as an asset – rather than a basic human right. We further consider whether the historical failure to properly account for disaster risk and environmental impacts may be a deadly accelerant of a housing crisis now unfolding in a rapidly changing climate. Our collective learning will center on case studies from different contexts, using student-selected housing innovations to collectively shape the locales we explore globally and diversify our perspectives on housing struggles. The course will demonstrate the application of systems thinking and the engagement of wide-ranging disciplinary perspectives from fields like political science, anthropology, finance, law, economics, architecture, urban planning and engineering. These are applied with a solutions-oriented perspective, identifying the bright spots that can deliver affordable housing solutions that restore dignity, promote sustainability and build resiliency.