PJH Studios

Tag: housing

  • Teens develop affordable housing portal

    Two teens created an affordable housing portal for New York City.

    First, he taught himself to code. “I basically spent the first two months of summer in my room, learning from YouTube and A.I.,” said Beckett, 17. “Those are my teachers.”

    In July, after countless bleary-eyed hours on bedroom computers, he and Derrick Webster Jr., his classmate, launched Realer Estate, a website that combines public data with real estate listings, allowing users to search for below-market and rent-stabilized apartments — something the grown-ups who run New York City have never managed to do.

  • Co-op as affordable housing

    The Swiss pioneering a different approach to affordable housing: co-ops.

    What if homeownership had no profit motive and no capital gains?

    In Switzerland’s member-based cooperative housing, new residents buy shares to gain admission to the building and get one vote in the corporation regardless of how many shares they own. The co-op uses the money to maintain the building, keep rents below market rate and, often, provide communal amenities like child care.

    When a resident moves out, their shares are returned at face value. There is no capital gain.