By David Piscuskas, FAIA, LEED AP

NYC stands as a world-class leader in urban design and innovation. Yet, currently, our city is experiencing a severe housing shortage and has become one of the least affordable cities in which to live. The city’s homeless population has reached levels unseen since the height of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Per the Coalition for the Homeless and NYCStat shelter census reports, there are more than 60,000 homeless persons taking refuge in the NYC municipal shelter system. That’s more than the entire population of White Plains, the 11th largest city in the state. Families, including almost 23,000 children, comprise just over three quarters of the homeless shelter population. Thousands more people sleep on the streets or doubled up with friends or family. 

The shelter population is at record levels, driven primarily by evictions (for more than three decades, the sharpest increases in the homeless population parallel the city’s boom periods) and domestic violence. Mayor de Blasio recently announced a controversial plan to open 90 new shelters, adding to the 275 currently overseen by the NYC Department of Homeless Services. The increased goal of 300,000 units in the mayor’s recent housing plan represents real progress toward making the housing stock of NYC more affordable. To lower record levels of homelessness, the city must build and complete an additional 10,000 units of affordable housing for currently homeless New Yorkers in the next five years. With follow-through on that commitment, we can begin to finally turn the tide on the homeless epidemic.

In a New York strained by ever-increasing rents, neighborhood displacement, and wide-ranging housing shortages, how can the design and real estate community better serve those in need and address homelessness, housing affordability, and healthy neighborhoods? At AIA New York, we aim to empower our members to not only learn about the crisis at hand but also convert this knowledge into direct and beneficial impacts in their communities.

Architects and designers have the expertise and the imperative to present innovative design solutions and resilient programs that will ensure healthy, complete communities. The delivery of shelter as a fundamental human need is embedded in the architecture profession’s DNA. Now more than ever before, is the time for architects and designers to come together to explore the problem in depth and identify sound, workable, and enduring solutions to solving our homeless crisis.

It begins by creating community-based design solutions and programs to support life-resiliency. If we are true to our shelter-conscious DNA, architects and designers would do well to become more involved in the politics and issues of their communities as an essential action to raise awareness on addressing the homelessness crisis in New York. We must channel investments to enhance the quality of life in our communities and increase amenities for all without wreaking wholesale displacement, with large numbers of people priced out of their neighborhoods. The architecture profession should assume a leadership role so that we invest these dollars optimally with smart place-making and housing strategies that support economic growth and community stakeholders.

It’s important to have the courage to take actions beyond policy to alleviate homelessness in our city. As designers, we have the opportunity to create safe and welcoming spaces for all. It would be incumbent upon architects and developers to propose forms of urbanism that integrate approaches for housing the full diversity of our city, including the poor and the homeless. We’ll need an integrated, community-centric approach to champion best-practices support opportunities to design neighborhoods for families, children and our aging population and ensure greater housing affordability for everyone. 

Architects and designers are equipped to bring together a range of perspectives and present multidisciplinary solutions and ideas. If sheltering people is really in our DNA, we need to better engage with policy makers, and housing and service providers to underscore the architect as an innovator that needs to be at the decision-making table as early as possible. 

David Piscuskas, FAIA, LEED AP is the 2017 president of AIA New York and the founding partner at 1100 Architect, New York, N.Y.