Putting Non-Market And Market Rental Housing To The Test In Canada
Canada has a long history of public support for housing. A lot of that support has gone to the private sector for housing that people own and for housing...
Washington State Funds Two Knights To Tilt With Seattle’s Social Housing Windmills
Arguably, Seattle is getting too much of our attention these days. Yes, we're perhaps over-emphasizing the 'social housing' events that are currently occurring thereTry: A Self-Funding Form of Truly...
Churches Roll Out The Housing Carpet
Churches have a history of speaking up for people who are oppressed in society. Faith based organizations have charitable arms that provide services and supports. Religious instruction also directs...
How A Needy Family’s Future May Be Assured By Broadband
"Broadband is no longer a luxury that only a few people need; it is a critical service that supports . . . economic opportunity, health, education, recreation, and well-being."
We...
Spreading The Word About Housing Co-operatives
The post features stories about housing co-operatives.
First up is a workers' cooperative in Chicago, which was founded in 2020 to provide employment for people who had been incarcerated. ChiFresh...
Seattle’s Imaginary ‘Don Quixote’ Set To Tilt At Public Housing Windmills?
Seattle, Washington's newly approved 'Social Housing' nobility may or may not be ruled by a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Still imaginary, such a creature will also have a faithful...
Killing The Profiteering Beast: The Inhuman Right to Inadequate Housing
" . . .Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” was the way U.S. President Abraham Lincoln honoured Civil War...
Assessing The Potential Of Co-operatives To Expand The Supply Of Non-Market Housing
What is the potential for limited equity housing co-operatives to add to the supply of the non-market housing stock? The two kinds of housing co-operatives that get aired in...
A Plan To Lift Canadians Out Of Poverty
Autumn in Canada is filled with coloured leaves, cooler temperatures and harvests. It's also the time of year when the Federal Government starts preparing its budget for the next...
Toying With Wrong Builders And Wrong Models For ‘New’ Social Housing
Activists in the United States would like their country to play nearly a century of social housing catch-up. When the federal government set out in the 1930's to build...
Deeply Affordable Housing Is Needed – Is A Donation The Best I Can Do?
This post starts with an story about Mères avec pouvoir, which supports single moms in Montréal, Québec. The wraparound services include help with child care, education and housing. The...
Housing Financialization —> Individual and Community Ill-Heath
In some jurisdictions, laws are beginning to restrict the financialization of housing — buying and selling it principally for profit, not shelter. Financialization is not only a local game,...
Social Housing That Pays Its Way
Social housing costs and costs and costs. Until the building reaches the end of its useful life, it has to be supported with public funding, right?
According to Marc Lee...
Australia’s Housing Crisis: When Housing Is An Asset, Not A Need
You can't really camp out and expect to be protected from the elements under a multi-million dollar Andy Warhol painting. It is an asset pure and simple, to be...
Everybody’s Housing Crisis: One Way Out Of No Way Out
Dan Darrah, writing in Jacobin, takes us yet again along the North American housing superhighway which is speeding us towards an untunneled cliff face — the point where there...
The Plague Of High Housing Prices Spreads Across British Columbia
Tim Richter is one of the leaders behind Vote Housing, a Canadian campaign to draw attention to the affordable housing crisis. He frequently reminds us that we have created...
Affordable Housing Brings Down Nearby Property Values, Doesn’t It?
Does living near affordable housing boost property values or lower them? Christina Stacy and Christopher Davis, who are based at the Urban Institute in the United States, reviewed existing...
Canada: Local Tools To Implement The Right To Adequate Housing
One thing you can say about local governments – they really can't turn away from the housing struggles of their residents. And to their credit, local governments in Canada have...
West Coast U.S. Activists Struggle To Reinvent A Housing Wheel
We think re-inventing this particular housing wheel is a very positive thing. The activists themselves are understandably wary of admitting their ambitions for very good reasons, because it will...
Everywhere Public Private Partnerships Are Still Flavour Of The Millennium. Not In Dublin.
Has the City Council in Dublin, Ireland found a formula to replace Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), which have dominated neoliberal government thinking during this new millennium?
Recently, Dublin's Council has...
Why Acquire Existing Rental Housing As Part Of An Affordable Housing Strategy?
This post considers the potential of a program to acquire existing rental units as part of an affordable housing strategy. The context is Canada, but the thinking could be...
Wrap-Around Support Program For Homeless Moms Gains Stable Housing
WoodGreen Community Services has scored another triumph in their award winning Homeward Bound program, with 36 new permanent rental housing units coming on stream in Toronto's Regent Park later...
Could “Social Housing For All” In California Crush A Truly Affordable Housing Crisis?
Two cities are commonly linked with the current outstanding success of social and public housing as a way of life. One is Vienna. The other is Singapore.
In both places,...
Housing Financialization And Homelessness Taints The Far Side Of The World
New Zealand's housing crisis received some mixed attention a couple of years ago, with the announcement of a national scheme to address the issue with the catchy title of...
Affordable For All: The Challenge For New U.S. Housing Secretary
Recently, we posted a storyTry: Biden-Harris: Timely Dawn Of A New Day For Public Housing? Unlikely that assessed the chances that Public Housing would see a revival in America...
A Drop-In Centre With A Housing Mission
Here's an article about the sale of a heritage rooming house building in a Toronto neighbourhood. The new owner is bucking the trend to gentrification and will continue to...
Dublin On Social Housing: Let’s Do It Better, Like The Europeans Do
For any city, town or rural area re-thinking the benefits of social housing, it's important to acknowledge that what went wrong in the past can be a useful foundation...
Update – San Francisco Considers Paying The Price For New Public Housing
A lot of attention following the U.S. elections has been focussed at the national level, where counting continues slowly and painstakingly. Not so in San Francisco, where some of...
Calls For Public Housing: Part Of A UK Economic Recovery Plan
In the early days of COVID-19, Guardian reporter Laura Spinney asked if COVID was a consequence of the economy, and not the other way round.Try: COVID-19: Brought To You...
San Francisco Considers Paying The Price For New Public Housing
“The vision is that you can be a working class person who lives in San Francisco and pays a reasonable percentage of your income to rent.”
It's déjà vu all...
Reforming City Management To Meet The Needs Of All Residents
This post is a portal to two series of articles. Both call for resident-centric planning in cities. Decent housing and thriving communities are at the core of both. Both...
Clever Designs for Tomorrow’s Hobo Jungles
Does a spontaneous camp of the starving homeless profit from design or planning? There are architects who believe so.
Applying the thought to past hobo jungles of the Great Depression...
The Decline And Fall Of Public Housing, Or . . . Back To Tent Camps & Slums
Is the villain called 'small-government conservatism' or is it called 'neoliberalism?' Here at affordablehousingaction.org we've given up puzzling it out. Maybe we seriously need an academic lecture on the...
Can Micro Income, Micro Houses And Micro Businesses Add Up To Micro Communities?
The success of human communities over the eons have been centred around many different physical and social needs, from water or food sources to protection from enemy attack.
Why not...
TOPA Power: Allowing Distressed Tenants To Buy Out Landlords
The headline above seems to suggest an absurd impossibility. The idea that a battered tenant on the brink of rent default and eviction might somehow rise from the floor...
COVID 19 Recovery — Financing Prospects For New Social Housing
There is no question that the COVID-19 response has messed with the economy. Recovery planners are eyeing social housing as a potential win-win for the construction industry and households...
Empty? British Columbia Translates Housing Speculation Into Social Housing
Vancouver, B.C. has been home to some fairly insane social housing practices that, rather than supporting residents with low and no income, seem far better designed to leech government...
Black Or White, There’s Real Power in Cooperation And Community
How to compete with aggressive land developers, particularly in the largely unshackled competition of free-enterprise nations such as the United States?
Land developers have pockets lined with cash to outbid...
Students Create Financing Model To Protect Affordable Housing From Market Forces
HUD (the US Department of Housing and Urban Development) sponsors an annual affordable housing competition. The competition is open to university students across the country.
The site chosen for this...
Reviving Adam Smith
A researcher at University College London draws attention to Adam Smith's theory of economic rent. Smith is widely known as the the father of free market economics. The theory...
For North American High Rise Social Housing Haters: Small Can Be Beautiful
Or, in the case of one particular social housing project in France, small can be pig-ugly, at least in the view of this affordablehousingaction.org writer. But fortunately we all...
Canada’s COVID-19 Pandemic Triggers A Curtain Call For Social Housing
The following article provides a clear and detailed history of one country's journey from some of the most affordable housing in the world, to some of the least.
It reflects...
A Wooden High-rise Tower Will Offer Support to LA Homeless
In March we posted a story about the possibilities of 'returning' to wood construction for social housing, as it was now being treated seriously as an alternative to more...
What Is ‘Trickle Up’ Housing Affordability?
Given it's name, 'Trickle Up' affordability would suggest the defiance of gravity. That's always a risk when using physical world metaphors for the financial workings of such as a...
The PPP Era? Lost In Translation. Edinburgh Refocuses On Social Housing
Bad news for that Thatcherite conservative, small government fever-dream of arranged housing marriages. Those are the ones in which a sturdy, competent private groom lifts the bridal veil to...
