Life of a Building

Intro

CHPC is excited to present “Life of a Building”, an online educational game showing the challenges of keeping an old rental building in good financial and physical health.

Discussions about housing policy in New York City often pit landlords against tenants and it can be difficult to engage in the topic without taking sides. Life of a Building puts the building at the center of the game. It is the building –not the owner or the tenants– that seeks the player’s guidance in order to make it through the cycle of the game.

Whether you won or you lost at Life of a Building, you just experienced some of the real-life challenges facing old rental buildings in New York City!

Prewar, multifamily rental buildings like the one in the game contain 1.2 million housing units which will house the majority of New Yorkers for the foreseeable future. However, the focus of policy efforts and media attention is more often new development.

CHPC designed Life of a Building as a learning tool to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining our existing housing stock and the difficulties of running an old rental building successfully. As you have seen in the game, it is a daunting task that requires financial know-how and attentive management.

Every time you play you will face different challenges, and –as in real life– your choices will affect what happens to the building years down the road. So play again and share the game with your friends!

A NOTE ABOUT THE STORY-TELLING

Discussions about housing policy in New York City often pit landlords against tenants and it can be difficult to engage in the topic without taking sides.

Life of a Building puts the building at the center of the game. It is the building –not the owner or the tenants– that seeks the player’s guidance in order to make it through the cycle of the game. As you play, you may even encounter that there is tenant turnover or that the building is sold to a new owner.