Forging The Path To More Public Housing In São Paulo, Brazil
The mayor of São Paulo, Brazil, says the city needs 400,000 additional rental homes. Faced with such a large shortage, residents have taken housing matters into their own hands....
UK Ghostly Service Charges May Sink Social Housing Tenancies
"Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a cost that wasn't there!"
A poem by William Hughes Mearns, written at the turn of the twentieth century (slightly modified with the word 'cost')...
Listless In Seattle: In Search Of A Better Form of Social Housing Without Lists
Activists in the U.S. are exploring the idea of a public housing 'reboot' under another name, 'social housing' — one little-used in America, where 'public housing' is used more...
Public Housing Musical Chairs With CryptoBucks? Sit This One Out?
Gather round, public housing poor folks with toothpaste money to invest. Skip the rinse and spit and put those hard working cavity-prevention pennies into the black magic of cryptocurrency!...
Public Housing Authorities, Please Justify Your Pernicious Stock Shrinkage
In 2019, a group of mothers, together with children and supported by activists, occupied an empty home in Oakland, California. At affordablehousingaction.org, we wrote a post about their invasion,...
Non-Profit Chicken Little Concern: Public Housing Sky Is Falling
For some reason we humans are initially inclined to think the best of each other as individuals. It seems a reasonable and understandable 'human' reaction.
However, there are reasons to...
Hong Kong Offers Solace That There Are Indeed Limits To Rising House Prices
While some wealthier people prefer renting to ownership, our society views the rental market primarily as a refuge for those who cannot afford to buy. Alas, renters are not...
U.S. Section 8 Vouchers: Hard To Love ‘Em Or Leave ‘Em If You Can’t Get ‘Em
Late in the 20th century, economic theorists in the U.S. came to the conclusion that those with low and no incomes did not need to be housed in government...
Stats That Make A Case For Public Housing For ALL, Neoliberalism Be Damned
International investor/speculator-fuelled propaganda leans on neoliberal "small government" ideas. One product is a picture of social/public housing as incompetent government-run disaster still limping along on undeserved life support.
A new...
Squeaky Wheel/Diplomat: What Is Needed For A Public Housing Voice
A sprinkling of encouraging notes from several countries might signal a sea change in the treatment of public/social housing tenants. The trend continues for fixing up more of the...
Is HUD Pimping Out Unoccupied Housing To The Private Sector?
It's a strange lawsuit on the face of it, Philadelphia low income housing activists taking on Marcia Fudge, the U.S. Secretary of Housing and her HUDThe U.S. Department of...
Public Housing: “Lean And Mean” Clashes With “Green”
American public housing over the last few decades has been an underfunded study in ignoring basic tenant health and safety. But with a growing outcry about everything from lead...
How Middle Class Miami Ran Over Public Housing On The Way Out Of Town
It was an unfortunate traffic accident. The American dream lay affordable and enticing in the suburbs. Middle America could afford cars to pursue it. Nobody gave thought to the...
Mediterranean Holiday Homes To Be Expropriated For Social Housing
Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Formentera. Familiar names to holiday makers who flock there in summer. These are part of the Balearic Islands off the Mediterranean coast of Spain — just...
City of Toronto Helps Homeless-Loving Carpenter Follow in Famous Footsteps
In an age where social media allows everyone to preach the gospel of certainty for every possible lifestyle, social behaviour and religious belief under the sun, we wondered how...
Who Might Jesus Look Like In A Modern Canadian Winter?
The face of a Second Coming in today's modern world might be that of a man more effectively able to preach by what he practices, rather then practice his...
‘True’ Housing Affordability In A Private Enterprise World: Is It Possible?
Over the last few years, the term "affordability" when applied to housing has deteriorated to a match between seller's asking price and whatever you have in your pocket. And...
It’s A Bird . . . No, A Plane . . . No, A Bristol, UK Super Tenant!
In the United Kingdom, social housing has been loved and lost. Let us consider the national government over the last few decades as the lover, and the UK society...
Philadelphia Homeless Moms And Children Commandeer City Houses
Over the last few months, the saga of a Bay Area empty house occupied by homeless single moms with children has made national headlines in the U.S.TRY: Evicted Oakland...
Evicted Oakland Squatter-Moms Buy That Vacant House — Updated
Fabulous news for the evicted moms. A totally meaningless victory in a war that desperately needs to be fought against house flipping?
Short Term Rental Disease: Europe Uses COVID As An Affordable Housing Cure
Until the coronavirus pandemic, a rising number of world cities were suffering from affordable housing problems.
In some cities, overheated housing markets have attracted investors acting from purely speculative reasons....
One Size Fits All Social Housing? Nope. Doesn’t Fit Seniors
Is the idea of mixed age social housing a clever attempt to build more complete (and therefore presumably healthier) housing communities? Or is it just a government slapdash cost-cutting...
Lisbon’s Answer To High Rents For Essential Workers
Lisbon is inviting short term rental landlords to get into the long term rental business.
Concerned that there is no housing in the city that is affordable for essential workers,...
As COVID-19 Lingers, A Focus On Coming Landlord Vacancy Crises
A tsunami of evictions looms on the horizon for individuals and families who have suffered job loss in the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. But every single eviction often...
A Different Way To Fight Housing Discrimination
On July 1, an English a court handed down a ruling to make it easier for people who receive social assistance to move to housing in the private rental...
Social Housing Evictee Death: Can A ‘Safeguarding Board’ Make A Difference?
What is it with governments and their agencies faced with a need to learn as they go? Even when they come right out and pledge to do so, they...
Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste: BC Low And No Income Benefit
Commentators around the world are totting up some of the previously unthinkable changes that COVID-19 has offered to low and no income residents. The response in British Columbia, Canada,...
Moving Day, Québec Leaves A Few Without Leases: Disaster Or Triumph?
A couple of weeks ago the Québec government stuck its neck out and resolved to shepherd that province's preponderance of rental lease renewals on July 1st every year. They...
A City’s Coming Homelessness Disaster, By The Numbers
It's become fashionable these days for homelessness and housing activists to proclaim that once eviction moratoriums expire, 'many, many' will become homeless. Well, perhaps 'fashionable' is an inappropriate description...
Federated To Death? When It Comes To Housing, I Pick Québec
State "A" thinks tenants should sink or swim on their own. Maybe you should move. Province "B" is handing out dollars, but stopped yesterday, you're too late. Nation "C"...
In Barrie, Ontario, Cash-Strapped Students May Buy Housing With Chores
Social housing removes homes from the free market and so can provide an ongoing guarantee of truly affordable housing for low income and no income citizens. Unfortunately, there are few...
Four Kinds Of Affordable Housing That Can Work In A Democracy
Social housing has been largely abandoned by democracy. Or at least by those democracies that have participated most fervently in the East-West Cold War, where socialism became viewed in...