This thesis will be exploring the situation of one of the most vulnerable groups during the COVID-19 pandemic, low-income renters. As businesses and whole states were shutdown, jobs and wages were lost and the over 100 million renters in the United States, many of whom spend a significant chunk of their income on their rent, were forced into a precarious situation. <br/><br/>The Federal Rent Moratorium that is currently in effect bars any evictions for missed rent payments, but these are expenses that if left unpaid, are just continuously accruing. These large sums of rent payments are currently scheduled to be dropped on struggling individuals at the end of the recently extended date of June 30th, 2021. As these renters are unable to pay for their housing, landlords lose the revenue streams from their investment properties, and are in turn unable to cover the debt service on the financing they utilized to acquire the property. In turn, financial institutions can then face widespread defaults on these loans.<br/><br/>The rental property market is massive, as roughly 34% of the American population consist of renters. If left unaddressed, this situation has the potential to cause cataclysmal consequences on the economy, including mass homelessness and foreclosures of rental properties and complexes. Everyone, from the tenants to the bankers and beyond, are stakeholders in this dire situation and this paper will seek to explore the issues, desires, and potential solutions applicable to all parties involved. Beginning with the pre-pandemic outlook of the rental housing market, then examining the impact of the coronavirus and the resulting federal actions, to finally explore solutions that may prevent or mitigate this potential disaster.

To investigate the impacts of an energy efficiency retrofit, indoor air quality and resident health were evaluated at a low‐income senior housing apartment complex in Phoenix, Arizona, before and after a green energy building renovation. Indoor and outdoor air quality sampling was carried out simultaneously with a questionnaire to characterize personal habits and general health of residents. Measured indoor formaldehyde levels before the building retrofit routinely exceeded reference exposure limits, but in the long‐term follow‐up sampling, indoor formaldehyde decreased for the entire study population by a statistically significant margin. Indoor PM levels were dominated by fine particles and showed a statistically significant decrease in the long‐term follow‐up sampling within certain resident subpopulations (i.e. residents who report smoking and residents who had lived longer at the apartment complex).

The aging apartment blocks (nicknamed “khrushchyovka”, or plural “khrushchyovki” for Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev) of the former USSR are facing demolition, despite the fact that many low income families still depend on these units for housing. This paper researches the development of the khrushchyovka and its estate leading up to the post-Soviet period and examines case studies to assess how these buildings can be modernized to spare them from demolition and to continue to serve as a reliable low-cost housing option. Studying how other projects have addressed similar problems in their architecture, these findings will be synthesized to present a full but minimally invasive khrushchyovka retrofit prototype, with improvements that will culminate in a more energy efficient, sustainable, and comfortable living environment for residents. This prototype provides a standardized template of services and improvements to be made, and can be adjusted to include specific features that meet the needs of a certain climate or location. In the early 1960s during the Khrushchev administration, these housing blocks made from prefabricated insulated concrete panels were constructed all over the USSR to alleviate housing shortages. A lot of them have an in practice service life of 150 years, meaning that many are incredibly durable with millions of people still living in them today. With their small size (ranging from 323 to 646 ft² depending on the number of bedrooms), they continue to be a suitable housing choice for low income small families and young people (Aliashkevich 31). Amid the threat of demolition to make way for cheaply made luxury-priced condos, many residents in the former USSR contend that their beloved khrushchyovki should be preserved (Watson), as they still have the capacity to be renovated in the interest of energy efficiency, cost savings, and community comfort.