Public and Social Housing

The article linked to this post is about messaging: that dynamic interaction between the way an issue is presented and the way that it is received. In the advertising world,...

Media are reporting tent clearances all over the United States these days. Public support is crumbling for Housing First and similar programs that help people who are homeless to...

Still early days for a pair of city newly-weds, but . . . Should we remark on the potential of  a "V for Victory" link-up between the two cities, Vancouver,...

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...

Those dratted American public housing tenants who won't drink the Kool-Aid! With the Race-To-Replace currently under starter's orders, big bucks and bulldozers poised and ready, who are these selfish...

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...

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...

Affordablehousingaction.org frequently trots out Singapore and Vienna as examples of 'how social housing could be done better.' Nor is this some unique trend. Governments support fact finding missions. As...

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...

Nursing homes have no desire to become custodians of tatty old furniture, near and dear to nobody's hearts but the owner's. But far from discouraging such an intake along...

Why would an Australian state worry itself about a wide range of possible health issues for those living in social housing? There is a declining stock of social housing that...

A recent study in Ireland explored the satisfaction of tenants in mixed housing developments. It comes to the conclusion that mixed tenure communities generally work well, supporting the aspirations...

An article in The Age serves up a commentary on questionable social housing community affairs in the Australian state of Victoria. The article's authors react to remarks by Victoria...

Ipek Türeli is based at the School of Architecture at McGill University in Montréal. She has recently written an article in The Conversation about the housing crisis in Canada...

Never mind the practicality, what about the optics? Marijuana magnates have apparently been blowing befuddling smoke into the face of New York's rookie Mayor Eric Adams. Public Housing is America's...

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...

Here's a Social/Public housing management decision worth noting. It's what neoliberals might call a backward step. From that 'small government' political perspective, local councils should farm out all affordable housing...

When it comes to social housing that actually works, two names pop most frequently into the news: Vienna, which is both a city and a state in Austria, and...

A somewhat unconventional collection of survey partners in the United Kingdom have established possible links between a sense of community that binds social housing tenants on one hand and...

Four years ago a UK report advocated public housing as the optimal launch pad for a campaign to meet the committments to achieve decarbonization of homesBuilding decarbonization is a...

The world woke up to the horror of high rise building fires in 2017, when substandard cladding on London's Grenfell social housing tower turned it into a flaming torch...

The Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUD) has been touting the win/win value of its RAD (Rental Assistance Demonstration) program. By converting public housing to various forms of...

Governments are well-versed in the art of seizing land. This isn't just a comment on autocratic non-democracies. Modern democracies know how to do it, too, simply declaring that a...

The Australian State of Victoria appears to be bucking international trends by not only announcing a massive social housing (rent geared to income) build, but actually taking the necessary...

Can affordable housing high rises serve the needs of low-income people and cut carbon dioxide emissions at the same time — all at a competitive cost? Let's look at...

Suburban wealth and automobile culture have produced three-quarters of a century of downtown commercial erosion. Pedestrian convenience gave way to suburban/exurban shopping centres and box stores more easily accessed...

Canada is so enamoured with the importance of human rights as embodied in United Nations declarations, that it has built a museum to showcase the lofty heights of its...

Private enterprise is a soft target for anyone inclined to see 'profit' as an unholy alliance between a business enterprise and its shareholders. This is particularly true for activists...

The State of Victoria in Australia has come up with an astonishing plan to actually fight homelessness with housing. It intends to do so by rapidly building some 10,000...

It's hard to picture (the following article allows that) one of Denver, Colorado's official homeless tent communities without noticing how ephemeral it is. A strong puff of wind might...

The following article tells a great story for anyone who has trained as an urban planner, architect or other design professional. It is written by a planner who went...

It can sometimes be pretty frustrating to present evidence and arguments in favour of public funding for social housing. The whole idea is often batted away, or the facts...

Amidst calls for urgently needed social rent housing in England, the Parliamentary Secretary of State for Housing, Levelling Up and Communities has tabled a White Paper. It discusses the...

Don Layton is a Senior Industry Fellow at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. He has just published two papers about housing policy in the United States. His...

For the hot, hot, hot citizens of Phoenix, Arizona, climate change is cranking up the weather thermostat. A recent report describes rising local temperatures as "expensive," and outlines some...

There was a period in the 18th century Highlands in Scotland when the entire economy pursued by its men — warriors all — was to raid neighbouring clans. Half...

Recent American news has featured a growing catalogue of consequences that stem from a certainty disguised as an experiment by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). That...

Last year, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal won the 2021 'Nobel Prize For Architecture' — the Pritzker Prize — not for tearing down social housing and replacing it with...

Mixed income communities have been the clarion call of progressive city planners trying to harness the income and influence of wealthier neighbours in the downtown 'hood, without driving out...

Neoliberal 'small governments' see housing subsidies as the ticket to ride, allowing all — even the poorest — to climb aboard the housing train. No income? No problem. Government...

This post is about a new series from Statistics Canada, which is responsible for gathering and analysing data about residents. The agency regularly collects data about housing. When Canada...

The night and following day of the latest Bronx child-killer fire on January 8, 2022, there was already little mystery about those responsible for the disaster.  It was possible...

Are the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and local housing authorities together losing faith in the promise of free enterprise? The test of that question is the...

Religious organizations, particularly older ones, may have a surfeit of property as their mission to the faithful changes over time. Many have traditionally been active in providing shelter and...

State Housing, Council Housing, Social Housing, Public Housing, what's in a name? Underlying them all is a social compact between a nation and its most vulnerable low- and no-...

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...

Sophie House and Krystle Okafor are both based at New York University. Building on the work of contemporary abolitionistsAbolitionism is often understood to be about the abolition of slavery...

Jon Stanhope is perplexed. He led the government in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) from 2001 to 2011. Since retiring from the scene, housing in the ACT has become...

Who can afford affordable housing? KiwibuildTry: New Zealand’s Kiwibuild ‘Affordable’ Housing Stumbles Out Of The Starting Gate was initiated in New Zealand as an ambitious affordable housing program. It came...

In the late twentieth century, prior to its demolition, the Cabrini Green public housing buildings in Chicago had become the poster child of all that was supposedly wrong with...

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...

Here's a short and depressing story that features a need for truly affordable housing viewed via costing alternatives. Like everywhere else in Canada, the District of Nipissing has its homeless. What...

At least two models of public housing tenure exist. One was exemplified by an American home-building experiment that began during the Great Depression of the 1930's. The initial objective...

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...

Anyone browsing the nation's media outlets these days may notice increasing numbers of reports that combine a poisonous combination of the following words: tenants, lawsuit, rats, mould, sewage, lead...

It's a world in which some countries, for example the U.K., the U.S. and Canada, public housing is still presented as burst balloon — unfortunately overinflated and sadly exploded,...

Most of us interested in the future of public housing have heard (possibly even ad nauseum) how a couple of cities — Vienna and Singapore — manage to provide...

Trapped in the public housing heart of a low income community on the wrong side of the tracks? With a little help from the community at large, why not...

The article linked below discusses the attitudes and actions of a man who is homeless and who needs an operation in hospital. He (not the young man pictured above)...

Although Australia has policies and programs to support aging, the experience of aging tenants in public housing has received little attention. A recent report from the Australian Housing and...

The Ventura County Housing Authority in California is starting to redevelop its oldest public housing site, with support made available through the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. Amid a slew...

Complimenting some recent posts about the housing crisis in AustraliaTry: Praiseworthy Australian COVID Response A Blip In Housing Financialization Focus and Domestic Violence Costs Australia: Social Housing Can Help...

A recent study has been released by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS). It's the work of their Poverty and Inequality...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, a fragment of a William Butler Yeats poem, The Second Coming Representative democracies would seem to be...

Social housing activists on both sides of the Atlantic from USA across to the UK and Europe, fight an uphill battle against persistent remnants of neoliberal thought. By now, everyone...

Trending this week: check out the American media (Google helps) and there's one trend that stands out for affordablehousingaction.org (admittedly a tad obsessive about housing and homelessness). That trend...

What do you do when your mission dies an untimely death? Find another. Built in 1769 as a private residence, Chase Lloyd House in Annapolis, Maryland has been housing senior...

Supposedly, the free housing market spawns developers who can do it cheaper, faster and more efficiently to produce a superior product. These are glories sung by the choir in...

With the the 2020 White Paper on Social Housing, the national government of the United Kingdom has sent a message to local governments and housing associations. They need to...

Clawbacks are an almost irresistible government method for penny-pinching. First, harvest good will by promoting a program that seems to provide a kind of lottery win for some lucky...

Michael Gove is The United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This is a new role for Mr. Gove as well as for the UK...

This is a story of two housing lotteries held in two different countries, both envied hotbeds of commercial capitalism: the United States and Singapore. Housing Lotteries In The United States In...

Here's a mashup of the public/social housing "Fantasy Fix." In the United Kingdom, so poorly have local councils and housing authorities been responding to tenant problems that the national...

Is the pandemic-related decline of big city central business districts (CBDs) merely a hiccup in their grand and enduring history? Possibly. But the chance that working from home might...

Update: On February 4, 2022, Canada announced the appointment of its first Housing Advocate, Marie-Josée Houle. Canada has launched itself on a path to recognize the right to adequate housingCanada's...

How long can citizen-power stall a housing crisis? NimbyitesFrom the acronym NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). have been pushing the envelope for decades. They have been both fervent and...

There are a variety of opinions on the causes of crime and violence in America's public housing. For example, the architects dunnit: their design failures with their low-budget, corner-cutting...

Suppose that 30 years ago, your government adopted a plan that, unbeknownst to everyone, works in theory but not in practice. Thirty years pass, and today we have practical evidence...

Reaganism and Thatcherism (a.k.a neoliberalism) touted the theory that small government was essential to free enterprise. Within this mindset, social/public housing was an example of all that was wrong...

The earliest forms of energy conversion for human use were granular — many small conversions using wood or peat or coal in a fireplace for warmth or a stove...

Awards for public/social housing in North America? Really, awards? Isn't that the housing that the entire continent is attempting to neglect to death? And yet, even in North America there...

A affordablehousingaction.org, we've already expended a certain amount of ink on the notion that the "private sector does it better," a favourite theme of neoliberal politics which has had...

What can save U.S. Public Housing from on-going government subsidy? The received wisdom (now growing rather shopworn) is that razing dilapidated Public Housing and replacing it with a mixed...

In 2020, the UK Government was moved to take action on the poor, and still deteriorating, conditions in the country's social housing. A further cause for distress was what...

If public housing is meant to be transitional rather than transformativeTry: Public Housing Futures: Transitional Or Transformative?, it follows that public housing must be located within striking distance of...

In 2000, the national government in France implemented legislation that obliged local governments to build social housing. (Social housing is often referred to in this blog as truly affordable...

Here are two visions of public housing: An attractive, secure, affordable lifelong home for "workers," first promoted in the U.S. at the dawn of American public housing by the...

The United States is gradually waking up to the fact that it has profoundly neglected the upkeep of its public housing. This hasn't mattered under several decades of neoliberal...

Mobile Homes, from bus-sized RVs to the back seat of a car, offer another vision of homelessness, one which can be useful to both the homeless themselves and well...

The demolitions of Cabrini Green in Chicago and Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, two very large public housing projects, reflect decisions made by people who had never lived there. Some...

Imagine living in a public housing project that is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places! Since public housing is generally vilified in the public press, this seems...

Okay, we have occasionally gushed about the "amazingness" that 80% of Singapore's population live in social housing and actually own it as well. That gushing has stretched even to numbers of other...

Traditionally, the U.S. as well as other countries have depended upon non-profit organizational status to protect arm's length government housing agencies that oversee and maintain public housing for low...

These days, elections in many countries feature political party commitments to build crisis-ending quantities of affordable housing. Somehow, once the dust settles, the promises fade away, or the "affordability"...

Dan Darrah, writing in Jacobin, took the recent Canadian election as an opportunity to discuss the growing housing crisis for people with very low and no incomes. Even though...

Those of us who are aging surrounded by aging family and friends often need forgiveness for getting birthday dates slightly wrong. So we're hoping we'll be forgiven by joyously...

Governments in the United States (and likely pretty much everywhere else) depend on a docile underclass of unhoused and precariously housed citizens. In big cities, those applying for limited public...

Upzoning! Brought to you by those developer-folks who once facilitated the American Suburban Dream! Now they want suburbanites to change their living spots, or at least nudge over a...

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...

Necessity the mother of indifference? A far cry from the period following World War II, when necessity was very much the mother of amazing invention as countries rebuilt housing...