Editor’s Letter: Talking About Money

We know we have an affordable-housing crisis. Here in the States and in places all over the world, buying or renting has long been out of reach for people making average wages no matter what the market looks like where they live. But where is the pressure valve? While many of very different political persuasions agree on the problem, contending theories about how to solve it range from the mayor of New York City’s promise to freeze rents to the U.S. president championing the construction of single-family homes in the sprawling, ecologically disastrous suburban style of the 20th century.

Our annual issue dedicated to budgets looks at a few creative examples of how we might be able to find cracks in the barriers to securing a home. Hardcore YIMBYs will find examples of much-needed new multifamily housing—typically value-engineered into numbing shades of taupe—in an essay that makes the case for artists covering new developments with murals. Then, we visit Barcelona, a city with a housing market choked by overtourism, and an inclusive co-op rooted in queer values and designed to remain affordable for its residents over time.

We also feature people who own more traditional homes but have gotten creative with cash to decide where they should spend or splurge to realize a design. That means everyone from a couple who set up house in a yurt on their Oregon property for more than six years while building the home on our cover largely with their own hands to a group of midcentury obsessives in Las Vegas making big investments to preserve the character—and kitsch—of their singular neighborhood.

This annual issue is unusually candid about money and what it actually took to build the homes we feature—something that shelter magazines, including this one, have historically been cagey about, as we explore in one essay. That said, I always add the caveat that all of these budgets are self-reported by residents and designers. How you do the math might not be the same as your neighbor, and obviously costs vary exceptionally from place to place. Also, having connections in the design and construction worlds, as some people in this issue do, can certainly get you friend prices on furniture and materials that can be 50 percent (or even more) below rack rate.

So, think of the budget tables in this issue as small stories in themselves that show where people either chose to reign it in or to splash out. No matter what your budget looks like, whether you’re renting a room or designing a tower, I hope this issue gives you some new ideas about how to get it done.

—

Top photo by Yves Drieghe

—

Head back to the March/April 2026 issue homepage