Replacement Housing represents the path to the future as our housing stock ages. It is nothing more than the natural evolution of the built environment as major forces (Individual, Societal and Environmental) interact and redefine the concept of housing. Each force plays a role: Individual needs change over time with increasing affluence and technological advances, Societal issues evolve and become more complex as the house becomes a vehicle for social progress and evolution, Environmental forces work on the physical structure causing depreciation and need for continual repair. As these forces interact, the concept of ‘home’ takes on a different context and characteristics. Thus, housing needs to continually evolve over time like everything else in our world. The problem with many existing structures lies in their inability to accommodate these changes. Existing homes are expensive to modify, having been built at different times under different assumptions, rules and codes. Many of them are far beyond cost-effective reclamation or resuscitation.

Opposition to Replacement Housing comes from seeing the built environment as an absolute instead of a living, evolving continuum. This view doesn’t take into account housing’s life cycle nor recognize that a community’s legacy is its land – its structures, from necessity must change and evolve over time.

Most humans prefer the known and familiar to the unknown and indeterminate and try to preserve as much as possible the predictability and integrity of their built world. Replacement Housing brings physical change, which can impact neighborhood social order, alter wealth and political patterns and trigger class resentment. Often, it can incite hostile and vocal opposition, which is couched in

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