One chilly day in November 2025, community worker Mike Prado drove through Abilene, Tex., handing out blankets, socks, and jackets to unhoused individuals across the city. People sat on curbs, alleyway after alleyway, their meager belongings soaked by the previous night's hard rain. Prado has worked in this community for a decade, and was once homeless in Abilene himself. Prado has witnessed difficult years--but the current situation was the worst he'd ever seen, he told TIME. One man with a walker approached Prado outside of the Hope Haven offices--an Abilene nonprofit where Prado works, which operates a shelter and helps people with vouchers find housing--and accepted a jacket from him.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Two decades ago, the fire marshal in Glendale, Arizona, was concerned that the elevators in a new stadium wouldn't be large enough to accommodate a 7-foot stretcher held flat. Tilting a stretcher to make it fit in the cab, the marshal worried, might jeopardize the treatment of a patient with a back injury. Maybe our elevators should be bigger, he thought. The marshal put this idea to the International Code Council, the organization that governs the construction of American buildings. After minor feedback and minimal research (the marshal measured three stretchers in the Phoenix area), the suggestion was incorporated into the ICC's model code.

Promise Robotics CEO Ramtin Attar with a few Kuka Industrial robots similar to ones fitted with custom tooling developed by Promise Robotics to perform complex construction tasks. Robots constructing homes may sound like science fiction. Yet a Toronto-based startup aims to make this futuristic idea a reality within the next year, leveraging advances in automation, advanced manufacturing, cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI). Promise Robotics was launched in 2019 by founders Ramtin Attar – a former technology lead at a multinational technology company – and Reza Nasseri, the chief executive officer of Landmark Homes. The technology company, which also has operations in Edmonton, seeks to bring emerging technologies to the home building industry to address the industry's biggest challenge: meeting the rising demand for housing amid a growing shortage of affordable homes.

A US technology company is 3D-printing futuristic holiday homes starting from $100,000 (£75,000) that fit in a back garden. Mighty Buildings, based in Oakland, California, says it can manufacture a 350 square-foot studio unit in less than 24 hours, providing owners a peaceful hideaway or a holiday cabin to accommodate guests. The firm is offering a variety of units on its website, ranging from a dinky studio to a luxury family home, which are printed with liquid synthetic stone that hardens almost instantly. The buildings are constructed at the company's facilities, transported to the customer's property on a truck and placed in a back garden with a massive crane. Units could also be leased out by property owners to help tackle the housing crisis, or big companies could also buy them to house employees while they're looking for something more long-term.

In the throes of a housing crisis, "our primary concern should be how do we keep housing on the market, and not turn it into a profit vehicle on the short-term rental market," said Cynthia Strathmann, executive director of the nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy. "If we're in the middle of a housing crisis, we shouldn't be turning housing into other things."

From the tall windows of WIRED's offices in San Francisco's South-of-Market neighborhood I've watched almost a decade of radical change made physical in concrete and glass. The city's forest of new skyscrapers is at least in part the legacy of Mayor Ed Lee, who died early Tuesday morning after almost seven years in office. San Francisco is rolling into the second quarter of the 21st century with the purposeful but cautious stutter-step speed of a first-generation self-driving car--the wealthiest, youngest, smartest people on earth live alongside some of the poorest; utopia and dystopia are barely a few blocks apart. That's the city Ed Lee built. It's a cliché to say upon a politician's death that he or she had a complicated legacy, but here we are. Lee was a housing advocate who presided over a city in a deepening housing crisis, facing massive gentrification, displacement, and homelessness.

Essential Politics: Details emerge on Legislature hiring Holder, new report on California's housing crisis This is Essential Politics, our daily look at California political and government news. The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program . The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program .

Essential Politics: Details emerge on Legislature hiring Holder, new report on California's housing crisis This is Essential Politics, our daily look at California political and government news. The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program . The law firm of Eric Holder, the former U.S. attorney general, has been hired by the California Legislature to defend state policies during the term of President-elect Trump. Rep. Darrell Issa on Wednesday launched a new effort to change the rules of the nation's skilled worker visa program .

There are roughly 863 million people living in slums, with that number continuously rising, according to the World Health Organization. That's a massive issue, especially when you factor in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory in psychology that outlines the basic needs of humans. As Berok Khoshnevis, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California, points out, shelter is considered a fundamental need in Maslow's pyramid. That's why Khoshnevis wants to tackle the world's housing crisis head on using tech. Scroll down to see his plan.