Housing +

As a preliminary study for The Future of Housing in Los Angeles studio, we created Housing+, a strategic game that simulates the challenges of delivering new housing in a city with few vacant lots. The game focuses on co-location housing—mixed-use development where housing is built alongside civic or publicly sponsored amenities. Designed for developers, the game blends negotiation and chance: players roll dice to navigate a map of Los Angeles, landing on spaces that award policy cards, funding “cheques,” or stakeholder tokens in different colors. Matching colors allow housing to be added to the corresponding program, while rare black tokens—often carrying negative value—pose an ethical dilemma: pursue personal profit and risk ending the game, or protect the collective goal of maximizing housing production. Timed decision-making mirrors real-world pressures, and quick user testing showed the game’s potential to make the complexities of housing policy, funding, and stakeholder dynamics accessible and engaging.