On October 10th, the Parsons Housing Justice Lab, in collaboration with Karen Kubey from the University of Toronto’s Architecture and Housing Justice Lab, hosted Architecture and the Right to Housing Roundtable at the MS Design and Urban Ecologies’ Studio. Bringing together progressive architects, planners, policy analysts, and housing activists, the roundtable underscored the deep interdependence among disciplines in addressing today’s housing crisis. The roundtable underscored that housing justice depends on collective strategies grounded in equity and community control, treating housing as a human right rather than a commodity. Participants’ diverse perspectives proved the need for cross-disciplinary collaboration to ensure housing serves as a foundation for community stability, not profit.
The remarkable group of participants at the roundtable included Brian Baldor (NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development), Margy Brown (Urban Homesteading Board), Matthew Charney (NYCHA), Deborah Gans (Gans and Company), Brian Loughlin (AIA New York Housing Committee / Magnusson Architecture and Planning), Nathan Rich (Peterson Rich Office), Robert Robinson (Partners for Dignity and Rights/ MS Design and Urban Ecologies/ Parsons Housing Justice Lab), Samuel Stein (Community Service Society of New York), Laura Wainer (Spitzer School of Architecture), Cea Weaver(Housing Justice for All), Karen Kubey (Architecture and Housing Justice Lab / University of Toronto), Gabriela Rendón (Parsons Housing Justice Lab / Urban Front), and Miguel Robles-Durán (MS Design and Urban Ecologies / Urban Front).
