Location: Stanley Road, Deal, Kent, England

Price: £1,950,000 (approximately $2,523,504 USD)

Year Built: 1881

Renovation Year: 2o24

Renovation Designer: Raycasa Investments Limited

Footprint: 3,964 square foot (5 bedrooms, 4 baths)

From the Listing: “Built over 200 years ago, this five-bedroom former schoolhouse in Deal’s Old Town has been reimagined by its current owner. It unfolds across over 3,960 square feet, with a muted, limewashed palette that emphasizes its generous proportions and soaring ceilings. Original features have been paired with modern interventions such as the steel staircase that winds through the core of the house. An open-plan kitchen and dining room opens to a south-facing courtyard garden. The property lies on Stanley Road, which leads to the town’s shingle beach.

“The house’s period frontage belies the contemporary interiors within. From the outside, Flemish-bond brick and a towering pitched roof render a distinct profile. Entry is from the north side, via an original wooden door that opens to a hallway. Ahead lies the sleek central steel staircase along with adjacent six-over-six Georgian glazing.

“All five of the home’s bedrooms lie upstairs. The principal is defined by tall ceilings, contoured walls, and enough space for a seating area beneath a large, original arched window. There are two further bedrooms on this floor, both with en suite bathrooms concealed behind wardrobes. The remaining two bedrooms lie on the second floor with exposed timber frames.

“Entered via the dining room, the house’s wide and private courtyard garden is bounded by brick walls along three sides, with a row of pleached holm trees along the fourth.”

Those who live along the Atlantic coastline are no strangers to hurricane season, which typically spans late summer through late fall when warm ocean waters abrade with chilly atmospheric temperatures, colliding with hurrying jet streams. In late summer 2021, the remnants of two tropical cyclones—Hurricanes Henri and Ida—gravely impacted a swath of the Northeast, causing devastating, widespread flooding across the region just a few weeks apart.

Married couple Dewey and Marie were sitting in their basement-level living room in north Brooklyn during Henri (downgraded to a tropical storm by landfall) when they asked themselves what they would do in the event of a flood. The question was hypothetical at that point, but “we both agreed we’d save the couch, which is the most valuable thing in our apartment,” says Marie. “We would lift it onto something, but we never thought that we would actually have to do that.”

A week later, Hurricane Ida hit—and that storm was far more destructive than Henri. When it passed over New York as a post-tropical storm, it broke the city’s record for heaviest rainfall in a single hour and caused unprecedented inland flooding. (Eleven people died in flooded cellar apartments, sparking a wider conversation about the dangers of the city’s mostly unregulated basement homes.)

While the couple was watching a Noah Baumbach movie in their below-grade living room, Dewey says he started to feel “a cold wetness on the bottom of my foot.” He saw sewer water coming up from the drains in the HVAC closet and bathroom. “Right away we snapped into action and got the couch up onto the coffee table and some chairs,” he says. 

Some items couldn’t be saved—vinyl records, suitcases, bath mats, and some laundry—but their West Elm sectional was elevated in time. Their rug was so heavy and foul-smelling from the soaked water that Dewey and Marie had to cut it up into pieces the next day to get it out of their rental.

After the flood, their building’s management replaced the broken water boiler and moldy baseboards and doors, although Marie says “they did the cheapest, most minimal repairs that they could possibly do.” An electrician came in. A gas leak was fixed. But, for the most part, the couple cleaned the mess themselves. Dewey bought a Vacmaster and supplies like Clorox and Swiffer to mop the porcelain tile floor. They opened all of the windows and ran industrial fans that they borrowed to clear the smells of mildew and chemicals.

“The plumber told us that water will find a way. It’ll come out of the toilet.”

Though the couple has renter’s insurance, they learned after their claim was denied that it doesn’t cover floods. They, instead, fought to have their building’s management company reimburse them for the cost incurred by damages. Management essentially shrugged at the incident—they told the pair that flooding was a citywide problem, with the drains not being able to handle the amount of water going in.

Marie and Dewey then spoke to a plumber about setting up a backflow stoppage in the pipes so that water doesn’t come up from the drains, but they learned that it’s impossible to contend with the forces of Mother Nature. “The plumber told us that water will find a way. It’ll come out of the toilet,” says Marie. So they came up with an action plan. 

“Over the course of this ordeal, we have essentially become professionals at dealing with this situation, to the point where we’re very prepared for it if this would’ve happened again, which it did,” says Dewey, referring to the floods that affected New York City in September 2023.

First, the couple keeps an eye on the weather apps—they especially like Clime. “We now know what level of precipitation to look out for and we’ll know a day or two in advance if something might happen,” says Marie. Dewey bought durable sawhorses (trestles used to support wood when sawing), which they usually store in a closet, but bring out to elevate and support the weight of their couch during storm prep the night before. Next, they roll up their rug and place it on top of the couches. All of the electrical items get unplugged and the cords are rolled and cleared from the outlets. Dewey’s gigantic framed John Cassavetes poster is moved upstairs.

The idea of moving to try to escape inevitable climate patterns seems more trouble than it’s worth. 

To get valuables off the ground, the couple set up a shelving system under the staircase where larger objects like musical gear and instruments are stored. There is a third drain located near the laundry appliances—the floor is slightly sloped for this drain, and it’s where flooded water eventually goes into—and everything else is pushed as far away from this drain as possible.

“I can whip this basement into emergency formation in about ten minutes,” says Dewey. “I basically get everything off of the floor.” They set up a Nest Cam that points toward the couch so the couple can keep an eye on the status of their basement living room if they happen to be out of town during heavy rainfall.

“Whenever I explain this situation to somebody who doesn’t live in New York, I sound crazy. They ask, ‘Why don’t you move?’” says Marie. “But we have a rent-stabilized apartment in a neighborhood we love, it has a washer and dryer, all of these things, and I’m willing to put up with this inconvenience to live here and have it be great most of the time.”

Dewey also points out that “everybody, to a certain extent, contends with the hazards of weather and natural disasters,” and that they happen to live in an apartment that is prone to flooding. Their neighbors on the top floor deal with leaky ceilings. Their friends in Los Angeles have lost homes in fires. Dewey’s sister, who lives in Massachusetts, deals with strong winds that can knock down trees and damage her house. The idea of moving to try to escape inevitable climate patterns seems more trouble than it’s worth.

“If this situation were ramped up by ten or fifteen percent, then I would not live here, but right now it’s manageable,” says Dewey. “We’re super dialed into all the weather apps and New York City announcements that we have a good enough runway of knowing when stuff is going to happen. I get hundreds of alerts a day, mostly Silver Alerts of some old person wandering around, but I keep these apps on my phone so that we never have a weather-related emergency again.”

Illustration by Sergio Membrillas 

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There’s a scene in the first episode of The Studio, Seth Rogen’s new Apple TV+ showbiz satire, when his character, Hollywood executive Matt Remick, charges into the office building of his employer, Continental Studios, past a tour guide who’s telling visitors that the structure was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1927 “in his signature Mayan style.” It was built, the guide says, “to literally be a temple of cinema.” Remick, who is woefully on his way to a meeting about a potential Jenga movie, audibly scoffs, telling his equally fast-paced assistant, “A temple of cinema, huh? And they want me to make movies out of wooden blocks.”

That exchange sets up the whole premise of the already highly praised, cameo-packed series: Legacy film studio fights to stay relevant in the era of streaming, franchises, and fractured viewing. While Rogen’s Remick is a self-described artist and film buff, he’s made his bones pumping out action thrillers. Later in the premiere, he’s promoted to head of the studio, but there’s a catch: His first project has to be a big-budget blockbuster about Kool-Aid. Oh, yeah!

To build the (fictional) studio at the center of The Studio, Rogen and series cocreator/longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg first had to build out their vision for Continental. To do that, they enlisted production designer Julie Berghoff, who’d previously worked with the pair on AMC’s Preacher. They told her they wanted her to think out of the box and create something akin to one of the “Big Five” Hollywood film studios (Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Disney), complete with its own movie lot and backstory.

She knew from the show’s script that Continental Studios started around 1923, which led her to look at Art Deco and Spanish Revival architecture, two of the dominating styles in Los Angeles during that era. Rogen and Goldberg love midcentury design, with Rogen in particular having a fondness for John Lautner, so the trio settled on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mayan Revival period. (Wright was an early mentor to Lautner.) It was an easy reference, with examples of that early 1920s Wright era, like the Ennis House, already dotting the L.A. landscape. Berghoff got to work.

“Wright came to Los Angeles after the World’s Fair in San Diego and he was in a very dark place—he was designing a lot of buildings that were very tomblike because he’d lost his wife and his children,” Berghoff explains. “Seth and Evan liked the idea that the studio’s office could feel tomblike too, because it was embracing the fact that this silver screen cinematic world was almost coming to an end with streaming. Creating this place that was antiquated amplified the storyline of the studio.”

To capture Wright’s Mayan Revival essence, Berghoff designed decorative blocks that reference the Continental Studios logo for the facade of the building, as well as the atrium’s pillars and the cavernous entry. “That logo is throughout the whole set,” Berghoff says. “It’s on the floor, it’s in the fountain, it’s on the walls, it’s on the screens, and it’s in the office.” The textile block–style pieces weren’t made out of concrete, brick, or stone though; they were crafted through a combination of CNC routing, laser cutting, and casting. Berghoff’s team laid dark plaster on top of wood, mixed with glass aggregate so it would reflect a little light on-camera.

They had to do it all quickly, too, because they only had six weeks to build the more than 8,000-square-foot Continental Studios interior on a Warner Bros. lot soundstage. (They built the studio’s facade over the front of the actual Warner Bros. TV offices, as well.) Berghoff was conscious of camera movement and how light would reflect through the structure, saying she took particular inspiration from Wright’s Palmer House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, built with perforated brick to let light in and encourage its flow from room to room. She created boxy acrylic lights for the atrium’s pillars inspired by Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Berghoff says the building’s front doors were inspired by the almost-brutalist sunburst doors at Lautner’s Hollywood Hills Harvey House, which is where Catherine O’Hara’s character, a savvy producer and Remick’s former boss, lives on the show. (Lautner’s Carling House stands in as Remick’s home, and another Lautner classic, Silvertop, or the Reiner-Burchill Residence, is the setting for one of the show’s standout episodes.)

When The Studio takes place in the faux-Wright building, it’s often for scenes full of long, moving shots that soar from the atrium to the balcony level of offices above, or that let Remick survey his whole domain through a wall of glass in his corporate fishbowl. Set decorator Claire Kaufman was responsible for sourcing all the studio’s contents, from Remick’s 10-foot walnut desk to a massive mural of Hollywood’s geodesic Cinerama Dome or a custom conference table etched with the studio’s logo.

Location: 249 Goldsmith Road, Bethel, NY

Price: $1,095,000

Year Built: 2022

Architect: INC Architecture

Footprint: 2,072 square feet (3 bedrooms, 2 baths)

Lot Size: 10 Acres

From the Agent: “Bethel Pines is a meticulously curated 10-acre sanctuary nestled in the heart of the Catskills. Located just under two hours from NYC, this fully furnished and turnkey property offers both a meditative escape and a vibrant base for exploring the boundless natural beauty of the region. More than a home, it’s an experience—a retreat designed to remind you of the art of slowing down and living well. The prime location places you at the crossroads of culture and nature, just minutes from Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Jeffersonville’s charming Main Street, and the vibrant energy of nearby towns like Livingston Manor, Narrowsburg, and Callicoon. Whether you’re drawn to the Upper Delaware’s pristine waters or the region’s thriving arts and culinary scene, this home offers a rare balance of solitude and connection—a place to live fully and intentionally.”

Jane McDougall and David Beynon didn’t quite know what to expect of life when they moved from their apartment in Melbourne to a standalone in Launceston, Tasmania. David’s new teaching position at the University of Tasmania, the reason for their move, meant that Jane, a generational Melbournite, would become the sole practitioner of the couple’s architecture practice, alsoCAN. It also meant that their new home would need space to host family, particularly their elderly parents, and friends coming from Australia and as far as the U.S.

The couple bought a 1920s California-style bungalow with apricot trees and an ample garden—a refreshing change from their inner-city apartment—that had a 600-square-foot shed in the back. It was previously used as a sleep-out, an outbuilding used to escape the heat before air conditioning became commonplace in Australia, but also held a garage/workshop, a derelict bathroom, and an outhouse (or a “dunny,” as they say in Australia). It presented the perfect renovation opportunity to create a guest suite; it also felt right given the couple’s architectural ethos, which emphasizes using space more effectively instead of expanding unnecessarily.

• New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wants to combat rising food costs and food deserts with city-owned grocery stores, a concept already gaining traction in Midwest cities like Madison and Chicago. The plan promises to lower prices, challenge monopolies, and provide fresh produce to underserved communities—if it can survive a competitive market. (The New Republic)

• Jan Sramek, a Czech tech millionaire, wants to build a utopian city in California’s Solano County, promising affordable housing and job growth. But locals aren’t buying it, and neither are their elected officials. (Politico)

• Trump’s push to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could hand billions to investors but hit home buyers with higher mortgage rates. By shaking up leadership and killing first-time home buyer assistance, the plan could make the American dream much more expensive. (The New York Times)

• Despite a few software hiccups and pole run-ins, Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car service, is already operating in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin. Now it’s slated to arrive in Washington, D.C., in 2026. But first, the company will need to convince local lawmakers that its cars are safer than the average commuter. (Reuters)

• In the early 2000s, a group of eight artists created a hidden apartment inside a Rhode Island mall, where they lived on and off for four years. Now, with a new documentary shedding light on the squat, two of the occupants unpack their experience. (Dwell)

Top image courtesy of Luis Alvarez/Getty Images

I first heard the story as a student at Brown University in 2023. It was passed down like an urban legend: Two decades earlier, eight Rhode Island artists set up camp in an off-map crawl space in the Providence Place mall. The group somehow outfitted the undeveloped corner of the colossal (and in-use) structure with the trappings of a home, from a dining table and secondhand couch to a TV set. Sneaking in through pitch-black service shafts, they made the forgotten concrete back room into a covert apartment, going as far as installing a door and running electricity, until they were busted in 2007. Scant news coverage and a few blurry photos were the only proof I could find that the unbelievable story was true.

Two of the occupants, Adriana Valdez Young and Michael Townsend—then married, recent college grads—say that at first, they were simply curious if they could spend an entire day in the hidden section of the busy shopping mall. It spiraled into their group of eight hanging out in the unit on and off over the next four years, filming their escapades and planning art projects. (“When you’re really weird, you don’t think anything you do is weird,” says Valdez Young. “What else are we gonna do?”)

Much of that footage made its way into a new documentary about the saga, in theaters (including a screen at Providence Place) as of March 21, after debuting in 2024 at SXSW. Secret Mall Apartment, directed by Jeremy Workman and executive produced by Jesse Eisenberg (who recently did a Tonight Show bit about the film with Jimmy Fallon), splices together the group’s point-and-shoot clips with present-day interviews, telling the story of their hush-hush living space and unpacking the wider history of the divisive Providence development.

The early 2000s “secret mall apartment” was born at a time of strife in Providence’s real estate market. After more than 150 years of industry driving the local economy, the mid-20th century saw production dwindle, and the city became home to a large community of artists. Then, near the turn of the century, the city’s economy shifted again. The abandoned textile mills where these artists lived and worked were demolished, pushing them out. Simultaneously, Providence Place was being built, promising to bring the city into a new era of economic prosperity. Today, the remaining mills are still under threat and Providence Place has an uncertain future, effectively declaring the state-level equivalent of bankruptcy. Ironically, some are now calling for the redevelopment of the massive mall into housing. I spoke with Valdez Young and Townsend about making a home in the mall, the state of Providence real estate, and (surprisingly) how Dwell influenced their secret apartment. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was the genesis of living at the mall?

Michael Townsend: I had a habit of jogging past the mall’s construction site. I identified a space that didn’t fit into my calculus of usefulness. It didn’t seem like stores or parking. When Adriana and I went to look, we shimmed in, and miraculously, [the empty nook] was there.

Adriana Valdez Young: The project was about knowing the enemy, but also knowing what the future looked like. If the mall was the ideal version of Providence or the modern American city, then we had this curiosity to better understand how this behemoth worked. And if there was room for us in its future.

Providence Place was pitched to residents as integral to the city’s revitalization. What was the development’s ideal vision of Providence?

MT: The [mall’s] advertising campaign had two words: “Defining You.” It was everywhere. We embraced it as a challenge and a threat simultaneously. How far will we let this building define us?

AVY: This campaign was, oddly, for nothing, right? It was about defining the future of retail and of the city. The massive square footage of this shopping center far exceeded all the total retail in downtown Providence. There’s no need to revitalize your little local economy. Don’t worry. We’re just taking care of it in one strike. The mall had a Tiffany’s. There was a Brooks Brothers. How many people are wearing Brooks Brothers in downtown Providence? Nobody, right? It was an image of a lifestyle that didn’t reflect local culture.

When we were developing the apartment and hanging out at the mall as good shopper citizens, I remember [thinking about] the phrase “critique through hyperconformity.” What if we did follow the rules and let them all define us? What would that look like? 

At some point, I recreated the “Defining You” ads. I bought everything from the mall, staged it, and returned it. It was like $1,000 to get everything you want from one picture. The math does not work when you try to achieve that kind of perfection—maybe for the one percent.

Were you viewing this as an art project or a political response to the housing situation in Providence at the time?

MT: This question gets asked a lot. In my memory of the arrest, one of the clear thoughts I had was, Oh no, now I have to curate the story. Until that point, and I know this may sound ridiculous, but it was just our life. That was just how we lived our life. There were eight artists involved in this project, but we made the decision that Adriana and I would be a good face. The idea of a couple who’s trying to make it.

AVY: The shared American narrative.

Welcome to Prefab Profiles, an ongoing series of interviews with people transforming how we build houses. From prefab tiny houses and modular cabin kits to entire homes ready to ship, their projects represent some of the best ideas in the industry. Do you know a prefab brand that should be on our radar? Get in touch!

Years ago, Johnathon Little and his wife, Zoë Little, disembarked from the U.K. to Norway., where Johnathon took a job as an architect at Snøhetta. There, the couple became devotees to Scandinavia’s minimalist aesthetic and its emphasis on nature. Later, in 2017, after designing some projects for themselves with what they had learned abroad, the couple founded Koto with friend and designer Theo Dales to builder modular homes and cabins.

The name comes from old Finnish, loosely translating to “cozy at home.” With yakisugi-style cladding, tidy picture windows, and angular rooflines, Koto’s prefabricated cabins are designed to conjure a cocooned feeling. The company has built several across the U.K., including a custom home in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, a work cabin, and beach shacks. It’s also completed a couple in the U.S., including a collaboration with Abodu, a prefab backyard home builder in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Now, Koto has developed the Niwa, a flatpack cabin designed to be easily shipped, and has built two in Boston. Here, company cofounder Zoë tell us more about how the Niwa adds to Koto’s impressive lineup.

Tell us more about how Koto got started.

Our journey started in a small apartment on a small island near Oslo, where Johnathon designed a series of tiny outdoor rooms, playhouses, and reading nooks for myself and our two small children. It gave us the extra space we needed. When we saw the finished product, we thought, why not create something like this for adults? That was the spark for Koto: creating sculptural, nature-connected spaces that offer peace and adaptability.

Around that time, Theo and Johnathon began collaborating on smaller architectural projects, moving away from the large-scale commercial work they were accustomed to. The three of us soon realized that by combining our unique visions and diverse expertise, we could (hopefully) create something exceptional. And with that, Koto was born.

Tell us more about the first Niwa project in Boston. How is it different from your other prefabs?

Our clients own a home in Boston near a hill that overlooks a lush pine forest, an idyllic setting where they envisioned placing multiple Koto cabins. The Niwa cabins serve as both guest accommodations and workspaces, connected by pathways that encourage movement through the outdoors. Their favorite aspect of the project is how it blends functionality with tranquillity, offering an immersive retreat within their own property.

Unlike our previous cabin designs, due to the nature of the clients’ remote location and the shipping distance, the Niwas were delivered inside a shipping container in a panelized form, allowing for seamless shipping from Europe to the U.S., and efficient on-site assembly by a small team. This approach not only simplified logistics but also enabled a faster and more flexible installation process. We hope it will make high-quality, sustainable design more accessible in new markets.

What does the base model for a Niwa cost and what does that include?

Niwa pricing varies based on size, configuration, and customization options. The current Niwa family of designs ranges from 67 square feet up to 400 square feet, with more sizes on the way. The small Niwa cabin pack starts at £40,000 (approximately $51,760 USD) and the cost includes high-quality finishes. Shipping, installation, and other costs are calculated separately upon inquiry.

What qualities make Koto’s prefabs stand apart from others?

We’ve always focused on creating spaces that blend seamlessly with nature. We’re passionate about combining thoughtful, sustainable design with craftsmanship, creating homes that feel like part of the landscape rather than just sitting on it.

Our cabins are inspired by the simplicity and serenity of Scandinavian design. We use large windows to bring in the natural light and want to give people a constant connection to the outdoors, while our signature charred-timber cladding helps the cabins blend into their surroundings.

When we design Niwa cabins, we want them to last. We use sustainably sourced materials that are both beautiful and durable, and the cabins are engineered to stand up to different climates while still feeling custom and unique. 

Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. From the FSC-certified timber to energy-efficient designs, we make sure every detail has minimal environmental impact. The Niwa collection, in particular, focuses on light-on-the-land construction, so ideally a cabin’s natural surroundings would go largely undisturbed.

The Niwa collection is designed with ease and accessibility in mind. It’s panelized, so it ships efficiently and assembles quickly, making it possible to bring our designs to remote locations, from mountain retreats to urban backyards.

There’s something picturesque about a city of old homes. Charming 1950s bungalows in Los Angeles, 20th-century brownstones in Brooklyn, or a success story from Cheap Old Houses in Orange, Massachusetts—a small town where a $98,000 house was transformed into a bed and breakfast—are what make cities great. These homeowners preserve unique vernacular architecture, demonstrating a devotion to repair and care for their houses and their communities at large.

Yet as housing construction has slowed over the past decades, older homes have dominated not just the real estate market but the housing stock entirely: “Improving America’s Housing,” a new report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released last week, highlights that the average American house is now more than four decades old—by far, the most “senior” our housing stock has ever been. An aspirational vision of vintage living comes to a screeching halt when you remember just how much time, energy, and cash has been infused into these properties to modernize them—or even to keep them standing. As climate change threatens Americans from coast to coast, and the cost of housing becomes more burdensome to those with stagnant wages, the risks faced by homeowners and residents make the proposition of a “cheap old house” a lot less romantic, and a lot more precarious.

“Improving America’s Housing” is issued every two years and tracks significant changes in the home repair and renovation markets over time, utilizing data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s American Housing Survey conducted by the Census Bureau. But it’s not an industry trend report, says Sophia Wedeen, senior research associate at the JCHS; rather, “Improving America’s Housing” speaks to the renovation market’s health, possible causes for fluctuations, and the effects that renovations can have on the housing market at large.

While the pandemic fueled a massive growth in renovations, the report reads, Wedeen says that one long-term force driving a continued interest in home improvement (and our aging houses) is a lack of new homes. “The Great Recession really slowed the pace of single-family home construction. We haven’t been adding as many new units since,” she says. “And at the same time over the decades, with the introduction of much stronger building and energy codes, our homes are also lasting longer.” It’s yielding a housing stock that has grown progressively older: In 2003, the mean American home was 31 years old; by 2023, houses had aged on average another 13 years, according to the report. A plethora of old houses becomes an affordability issue, says Wedeen.

“We need to increase the [housing] supply because many households don’t have the cash on hand to improve their housing conditions, to increase their home value by undertaking these activities that add value to their homes or just maintain existing conditions,” she explains. As families inhabit increasingly older homes, the cost of performing repairs or upgrades only increases. Wedeen says that over the course of two decades, homes begin to require more frequent repairs as roofs, HVAC systems, and more begin to wear out. For those built before 1940, costs are especially high: The study shows that those who own houses built before 1940 spend 50 percent more on improvements and repairs than those who own homes built after 2010.

For those looking to buy their first home, this means that a less-expensive price tag on an older home could be enticing, but it doesn’t include the costs of doing necessary repairs or updates. “Across the board, homeowners living in older homes spend much more than homeowners living in newer homes,” says Wedeen. “Recent home buyers consistently outspend homeowners who hadn’t bought recently by more than a third.”

Not only does the study show that lower income households spend less on renovations and repairs, but they spend a higher proportion of their total income on these projects in comparison to higher earners—16 percent versus four percent, respectively. The study also emphasizes that lower-income households are particularly vulnerable to the problems of older homes, especially those projects that can affect basic livability. In 2023, more than three percent of homeowners lived in “moderately or severely inadequate homes“—defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as homes that lack basic infrastructure like hot water, heating or cooling systems, or other major deficiencies. The study notes that, among homes built before 1940, nearly seven percent are considered “inadequate”; homeowners with lower incomes, as well as Black and Hispanic homeowners, are the most likely to live in them.

All of these issues are exacerbated by the climate crisis, which is expected to hit lower-income families hardest. Not only are insurance costs growing beyond the means of many, disaster repair expenditures have grown since 2017 ($23 billion was spent on such fixes between 2021 and 2023)—repairs that may also be burdensome for lower-income people. “Given that housing quality, and I should say poor housing quality, is linked to so many other health issues, financial instability, and housing instability, it has all of these spillover effects,” says Wedeen. “This is a critical issue that needs more attention in the policy space, and certainly should be considered by people who are concerned with housing affordability.”

What’s required is a full commitment at federal and state levels to provide financial support for those most vulnerable to the problems of our aging housing stock. We might love how older homes appear after repairs and replacements, where the love and care is plain to see. But what’s hidden are the financial realities—the high prices paid from even the smallest earnings that don’t only benefit homeowners themselves, but contribute to entire neighborhoods. 

Top photo of downtown Cincinnati by Pgiam via Getty Images

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Location: 13290 Electron Drive, Fort Myers, Florida

Price: $2,395,000

Year Built: 1986

Designers: Mary and Lawrence Voytek

Builder: Richard Pottorf

Footprint: 2,144 square feet (3 bedrooms, 2 baths)

Lot Size: 3.25 Acres

From the Agent: “Discover a property steeped in artistic history, a sanctuary for creatives and visionaries. This exceptional estate, known to renowned artists, is now available for purchase. The spacious lanai overlooks the stunning acreage, offering a serene setting to relax and recharge. This estate is possibly the largest residential parcel available in proximity to Sanibel, Fort Myers Beach, and the commercial districts of Fort Myers, providing seclusion and convenience. Whether you’re an artist seeking inspiration, an entrepreneur envisioning your next endeavor, or someone looking for a unique and spacious property, this estate is a canvas ready for your vision.”

 The home is finished with imported tile and heart pine flooring.

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Owned and designed by Sculptor Mary Voytek—a longtime Robert Rauschenberg collaborator—the property has hosted artistic icons including Roy Lichtenstein and Dale Chihuly.

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