Across the globe, populations of older people are growing dramatically, and few plans are in place to properly care for them. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) says 8.5 percent of people worldwide are over 65, and that number will jump to nearly 17 percent by 2050. The need for supportive long-term housing and healthcare has never been more urgent, especially for those with dementia. But elder care is modernizing, and in many cases, that means doing away with the concept of the institutional nursing home.

IKEA is getting in on the game by partnering with construction company BoKlok to launch low cost flat-pack housing for people with dementia. The Swedish retailer has been working on these “SilviaBo” homes since 2015, designing them with a host of sensitive features. They’re meant to be arranged in small communities with gardens and clubhouses that encourage socializing and spending time outdoors.

Named after Sweden’s Queen Silvia, the homes are a modified take on BoKlok’s other affordable flat-pack units. They’ll feature kitchen appliances with old-fashioned knobs and buttons instead of digital controls, bright red shower railings, doors and other components that can easily be seen. There are no mirrors or dark-colored floors in the bathroom, which can confuse people with dementia. The company says these are just a few examples of the 50 slight changes made to the SilviaBo home.

“In March 2017, the first two SilviaBo homes began to be assembled – a quick timeframe made possible thanks to the focus and effort of everyone involved. It’s a process of assembly, as also key to the affordability of a BoKlok home is a highly efficient system of industrialized construction in which truck-sized housing modules – complete with finished interiors including flooring and even cabinets – are produced in a factory. They are then hauled to each site and lifted into place to form the houses.”

IKEA is reportedly ready to start putting the houses into use. A small pilot community with six apartments was trialled outside Stockholm, but residents haven’t moved in yet due to an ongoing permit dispute with neighbors. The houses will rent through BoKlok’s “Left to Live” payment model, which allows residents to pay what they can afford after taxes and living expenses.

In an unnamed city somewhere in South America, construction is set to begin on a 3D-printed village designed specifically for families living on less than $200 per month. San Francisco-based design studio Fuseproject is collaborating with New Story, a non-profit organization fighting homelessness, and ICON, a construction technologies company to plan and build what they call “the world’s first 3D-printed community.”

“It is our belief that designers, builders and technology innovators have the potential to bring unprecedented speed and scale to housing design that can elevate the lives of some of the most impoverished populations around the globe. 3D printing, in particular, offers a new and powerful tool for realizing this potential and driving this mission forward. We will deliver this  groundbreaking method of homebuilding to families in Latin America who need affordable housing that adapts to their day-to-day lives.”

“We worked directly with the communities that we were designing for to learn more about their culture and environment to ensure that we were providing options that respond to their housing needs in ways that extended beyond single traditional home design. We used 3D technology and the unique design possibilities it enables to provide solutions that addressed important questions related to climate, family structure and the role that the homes play in creating a larger community.”

When finished later this year, the community will house more than 400 individuals. Residents will be able to personalize their homes, including the layout, number of bedrooms and color of the exterior. They’re being offered zero-interest loans, and amount they pay will vary depending on their income, with that money going into a shared fund to pay for other community resources.

It’s definitely achievable. ICON has already proven the concept with the first 3D-printed home in America using a combination of robotics, software and a cement-based mixture that can be extruded easily, bonds well between layers and hardens quickly. This proprietary mix called “Lavacrete II” has a compressive strength of 6,000 psi, which is well above the strength of existing building materials, as well as high thermal mass and the ability to withstand extreme weather conditions to minimize the impact of natural disasters. Combined with 3D printing technology, it enables rapid build times at a lower overall cost.

Buckingham Palace could be transformed to convert its luxurious 775 rooms and rooftop space into a solution for London’s housing crisis. At least, that’s the idea behind “Affordable Palace,” a tongue-in-cheek proposal from German design firm Opposite Office. The architects have released plans that add a multi-story extension on top of the royal palace and redesign the interiors to eliminate corridors and walls so the space can be repurposed as desired.

These radical changes could house up to 50,000 people within shared community living spaces and “improve the Queen’s social standing” in Britain at the same time. Close-ups of the floor plans show a tight grid of rooms radiating out from eight spiral staircases, and while it looks ab it chaotic at first glance with an open network of rooms lacking privacy, inhabitants would actually just pass into common spaces like living rooms and kitchens to get to their own bedrooms.

Now that Opposite Office has made it easy for this idea to proceed, they say, the ball is in Queen Elizabeth’s court. Benedict Hartl, the firm’s founder, wrote an open letter to the Queen about the plans.

“Your Majesty/To Whom it May Concern, At the moment you Englisher are not to be envied… in addition to the self-made Brexit hullabaloo, there is teh largest housing shortage in history! Large parts of population – ‘generation rent’ are locked out of the housing market. Affordable housing is missing! On the other side there is the 800,000 cost for refurbishing Buckingham Palace :(“

“This is why I thought we can develop a strategy to fix both problems! We developed a roof extension/refurbishment of Buckingham Palace to place social (affordable!) housing on top of the palace. Use your royal power & money to create affordable housing in London. We, as architects help you with this matter. We would be delighted to present our project the ‘Affordable Palace’ to you. P.S. Sorry for any mistakes. I am German.”

Affordable apartments are getting harder to find in just about every major city, but if we want to multiply our options, we just have to look up. That’s the idea behind Cabin Spacey, a modular cabin project aiming to take advantage of flat urban rooftops and other disused spaces, with the ability to move on to a new location when the time comes. It’s designed to appeal to today’s urban nomad with the knowledge that small, flexible spaces will likely be in demand for a greater percentage of the population in the near future.

In Berlin, where cheap, spacious apartments were abundant just a few years ago, a constant influx of new residents combined with a lull in new construction has tightened up the rental market. Cabin Spacey founders Simon Becker and Andreas Rauch note that the city has space for 55,000 new apartments on unused roofs that are unsuitable for regular development, an opportunity that calls for portable, minimal homes that can be dropped into place and easily hooked up to existing utilities.

Measuring just 25 square meters (about 269 square feet), the cabin has just enough space for two people with a double-height design incorporating a lofted king-size bed, a wardrobe, built-in storage, a daylight bathroom with skylights and a walk-in rain shower, a fully featured kitchenette with a regular-sized cooktop, a multifunctional lounge area that transforms into a guest bed and a dining area for four.

Other features include surround sound, USB docking stations, a laundry machine, an integrated coffee machine, kettle-hot water straight from the tap and a smart home system that manages the heat, sound, Phillips Hue lighting system, smart locks, integration with Amazon Echo and even a smart mirror with face and gesture recognition. The cabin helps produce some of its own energy with rooftop solar panels, too.

The founders hope to break the conventions that dictate that apartments need multiple large rooms in order to be comfortable, while also encouraging us all to rethink the spaces where housing could fit into existing urban landscapes (and they don’t mean moving to the suburbs.)

“CABIN SPACEY was not a pop-up idea,” they say. “It’s a combined answer to several paradigm shifts, newly arisen needs and behavior changes in living and traveling. An increasing demand for mobility is shaping new forms and habits of accommodation. Right in that field of tension we started working.”

“We always dreamed about CABIN SPACEY as the location independent housing solution for the modern metropolitan. As a first move towards the direction of that vision we designed and built a minimal home which is smart and sustainable at the same time. Our overall goal from the beginning was to lower to access barriers to appropriate living space in exceptional locations.”

The prototype is currently on the ground so visitors can check it out, and more are expected to pop up on Berlin rooftops shortly. Cabin Spacey is expected to retail for around €100,000. Follow Cabin Spacey on Facebook and Twitter for updates.

The United States currently has a shortage of about 7.2 million affordable and available rental homes for households with incomes at or below the poverty level, a statistic that’s clearly linked to the homelessness crisis. Meanwhile, 8 million Americans spend more than half of their monthly income on rent.

To house those most urgently in need as well as the people who make just enough money to fall through the cracks, cities have to start building more affordable housing as quickly as possible. But that doesn’t mean they should slap up some public housing towers and call it good. To be successful, affordable housing has to offer more than just shelter; it has to be thoughtfully designed to provide a good quality of life to its inhabitants.

In the U.S., the few affordable housing developments that exist often feel like fenced-off prisons, reflecting common attitudes about poverty rooted in the just-world hypothesis – the assumption that, essentially, people get what they deserve. Barriers to creating more affordable housing include city and state regulations that prioritize profitability for developers, and severe cuts to federal housing programs proposed by the current administration.

But some cities are forging their own paths. New York City has set out to build and preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing by 2026, and its Public Design Commission (PDC) published design guidelines for that goal that could become a blueprint for the entire nation.

More Than Shelter: Defining Successful Affordable Housing

“Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing” lays out best practices in planning affordable housing that “contributes to the quality, character, diversity and experience of New York City’s communities” while improving equity, resiliency, sustainability and health for residents and neighborhoods. The developments should foster density and encourage interaction while presenting inviting, warm, safe and dignified living spaces that are durable, easy to maintain, attractive and accessible by transit, car, bike and on foot. Oh, and they have to be budget-friendly to build, too.

That may sound like a tall order, but the guide includes seven case studies of existing developments that tick off all of these boxes and more, and there’s no reason their success can’t be replicated elsewhere while also being tailored specifically to each location and population. Utopian dreams of affordable housing communities have certainly fallen flat before, like the spectacular failure of the modernist Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project in St. Louis, Missouri, but today most of them read like warnings of what not to do. While the future of affordable housing may center upon open-source technological solutions, PDC’s guide is a step in the right direction that can be acted upon right now, adding to the general discourse about what makes affordable housing successful.

Community-Oriented & Woven Through the Urban Fabric

Integrating affordable housing into the community instead of setting it apart is a great place to start. Not only should they offer easy circulation into transit and segue culturally and aesthetically into existing neighborhoods, they should respond to the priorities of the communities they serve. PDC cites the Frost Street Apartments, a 7-story, 47-unit complex in a gentrified area of Brooklyn by Curtis + Ginsberg Architects as an example.

Not only does it complement the typologies of surrounding architecture and avoid a monolithic appearance with setbacks and a variety of facade colors, it roots affordability into Williamsburg by housing people with incomes at 50%, 60% and 80% of the area median, with eight units set aside for adults with developmental disabilities. On-site support services are available, and residents enjoy bike storage, lots of natural light, bamboo flooring and open kitchens; five percent of the units are pre-adapted to be handicapped accessible.

“How can a building contribute to a sense of community, and help its residents regain stable, independent lives?” asks the Public Design Commission. The Schermerhorn in Brooklyn helps answer that question with 180 studio units for low-income residents and 9 multi-person suites with shared kitchens and bathrooms for formerly homeless single adult residents, all set along day-lit corridors. Preference is given to those working in the performing arts.

The building’s ground floor is home to a dance studio as well as the Mark O’Donnell Theater at The Actors Fund Arts Center, hosting performances by residents, and the entire second floor is devoted to shared spaces, social services and a rear terrace. It’s visually striking, too, cantilevered over a subway tunnel with a facade defined by five vertical channel glass panels.

Sustainability Means Addressing Health, Too

Making a structure sustainable requires more than just going down a checklist of physical attributes. Sustainability should address the health and well-being of inhabitants, too. While the Creston Avenue Residence in the Bronx may include rooftop solar panels, green roofs, low-VOC finishes, formaldehyde-free materials and a rainwater harvesting system, making it one of the few LEED Platinum Certified supportive housing buildings in the United States, it also incorporates community rooms and amenities that open onto a rear courtyard landscaped with native plants, offers lots of views of the neighborhood and encourages the use of stairways.

This building provides housing to people who are chronically homeless or in danger of being homeless, veterans with housing vouchers and households meeting income eligibility requirements, and offers support services to residents. It’s the first building funded by the New York State Medicaid Redesign Team Supporting Housing Initiative, which recognizes housing as a social determinant of health.

Another example cited by PDC is Arbor House in the Bronx by Bernstein Associates, a state of the art affordable housing complex that incorporates a 10,000-square-foot hydroponic rooftop farm that provides fresh produce like lettuce and herbs to tenants. Built in an area where residents have lower life expectancies and higher rates of preventable chronic diseases compared to New Yorkers in wealthier neighborhoods, Arbor House offers an indoor gym, a wide, central day-lit stairway, an outdoor fitness circuit and organic-themed artwork by a local artist to help give the building a sense of identity.

Smart Use of Land and Materials

For Navy Green, a 433-unit building in Brooklyn by FXCollaborative, Curtis + Ginsberg Architects and Architecture in Formation, one key to affordability was the choice to transform a contaminated brownfield into a building that takes up almost an entire city block to accommodate residents with a wide range of incomes and needs. Owned by the city, the land was once a naval prison.

After rehabilitation, it’s a series of four apartment buildings (low-income rental, mixed-income rental, mixed-income condominium and a supportive housing residence) that form a perimeter around a shared green. The buildings are strategically designed to block views of the adjacent Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and a 15-story Navy Yard warehouse. The distinctive facades of each individual building make the complex seem like it was developed over time.

While located in a waterfront neighborhood that’s susceptible to flooding, the Hunter’s Point South Commons and Crossing building by Ismael Leyva Architects and SHoP Architects in Long Island City offers affordable and income-restricted units stunning views while building flood potential into the design. Critical infrastructure is raised to higher elevations and the building is capable of withstanding substantial water loads, with temporary flood barriers integrated into the ground floor.

Of course, these projects don’t just spring up out of nowhere. Many of them receive special state or city funding and are built on land already owned by the city, circumventing a lot of common obstacles to building new affordable housing. But they also address affordability in a holistic way that benefits the city as a whole, avoiding the segregation of low-income residents from the rest of the population and improving their lives in the process.

Designing and constructing affordable housing also requires taking a hard look at what the word ‘affordable’ actually means in relation to the real and growing issue of income inequality in the United States. But the PDC’s “Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing” gives us a strong foundation for a future of affordable housing that could also include lots of modular, 3D-printed and otherwise technologically advanced structures.