An Ideas Report from the Housing Innovation Workshop

The Real Estate Innovation Lab has published the Idea Report chronicling the last two years of the Housing Innovation Workshop, produced in conjunction with the City of Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab and the Boston Society of Architects.

A team from the City of Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab, the Boston Society of Architects and MIT’s Real Estate Innovation Lab came together over the last two years to workshop solutions to a significant problem in our community — housing affordability. The goal was to empower and organize community leaders, across fields and of interdisciplinary backgrounds, to think collectively and design solutions to core issues in the supply of affordable housing for our community. Each year, over 50 people attended from across 15 organizations.

The results have been exciting. At the end of each workshop participants offered up innovative, technologically feasible and politically viable ideas. An outcome summary (available below) is intended to highlight the ideas that came out of the workshops. This will serve as a touch point for community leaders, startups, small business, and others to keep developing, researching, or operationalize these ideas in order to increase affordable housing in Boston and beyond.

During the workshop, leaders were able to explore the frontier of technologies impacting the built environment. Below is the slideshow and workshop guide that participants were able to take part in.