Public and Social Housing

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...

"Temporary housing" has become a growing industry. It started when the UK government gave local councils a "duty to accommodate" people who were homeless. As the number of households...

OMG, landlords and Tenants are getting together to put forward a comprehensive plan that will share the burden of COVID-19 with the government. Brilliant! Can this be a signal...

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...

The foremost affordable housing charity in the world proved the method: unskilled volunteers can be enticed to pay to travel to another continent, make a cash donation, then contribute...

With the coronavirus pandemic has come a remarkable downturn in tourism. This has crimped the style of high-flying Short Term Rental (SRT) landlords, who have over the last few...

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...

Social housing providers have been teaming up to reduce costs by making bulk purchases for years. It's a tested method to reduce insurance, utility and financing costs for individual...

The Faircloth Amendment, passed in 1999, attempts to freeze American social housing in time. Now and in the future, cities may destroy public housing. Cities may neglect public housing...

With years and years and billions and billions of dollars worth of government neglect lying heavily on its shoulders, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is understandably grasping...

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...

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...

So where did it come from — all the COVID-19 homelessness good news that actually wasn't? Affordablehousingaction.org thought that Everyone In, which directed local councils to provide housing for everyone who was...

The ultimate degradation of the term 'affordable housing' has been reached by returning it to a strictly individual expression. Pat YOUR pockets. Is it affordable to YOU? How much...

The United Kingdom is in a unique position. It actually knows the truth about what happens when housing developers are handed their Holy Grail — the unrestricted right to...

The government of Western Australia recently announced plans to build 15,000 units of green social housing as part of its COVID-19 recovery strategy.Try: WA COVID-19 Recovery Plans Include Green...

If you’ve been reading affordablehousingaction.org for a while, you might wonder why there are so few stories about housing in the global south. There hasn't always been much to...

The Royal Borough of Greenwich recently showcased a pilot project of four new homes. The homes are built to meet exacting emission standards and will rent to people with...

In a 1946 essay, George Orwell proposed that “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” Surely the lack of truly affordable housing for...

In business-oriented Vancouver, BC, all roads would seem to lead towards profit. For a city regularly rated #2 in the lists of world's most expensive cities to live, it...

February 28, 2020 was a memorable day for the staff and residents of the Maryland Baptist Aged Home. It was the day President Trump said that COVID-19 was a...

America's greatest housing and employment crisis occurred after the 1929 stock market crash. We're facing another, perhaps even greater one today with the still uncontrolled COVID-19 pandemic. During the 1930's,...

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,...

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...

Thanks to COVID-19, your hours of work have been reduced and you've had to apply for emergency financial assistance to help make ends meet. You've been on a waiting...

Vacant hotel rooms have been identified as a potential source of new housing on a large scale. These particular rooms are in the Los Angeles area, where as many...

In 1920, one of the world's best known architects, Le Corbusier was funded by a French altruist to create a social housing complex for industrial workers in Pessac, France. It...

COVID-19 has meant less work or no work at all for too many people. National governments have stepped in with emergency financial assistance. In England, two million people had...

Australia, with its eyes locally focused but with a continuing awareness of developments around the world, has tackled social housing in a variety of ways. However well-meaning, some have...

COVID-19 got you penniless and unemployed? The Irish Government has legislation planned to get you dancing for joy. Soon, folks in arrears on the their rent payments will legally...

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...

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...

Last month, we shared a story about a homeless encampment at Belle Park in Kingston, Ontario.See: Homelessness Underfoot: Grey Problems For Black And White Decision-Making As of today, the...

What an opportunity to kick-start the national housing industry by building much needed social housing! There is a great deal of activist push for this COVID-19 inspired recovery program....

Australia's COVID-19 response required some people to work, not from home, but at their job site. Similar to other countries, the government heralded these key workers, who included waste...

Housing associations in and around London, England have been increasingly frustrated in their efforts to build housing that is affordable for households with low and very low incomes.Try: UK...

Australia went at COVID-19 'hard and early'. It is now moving on to recovery schemes well in advance of countries such as the United States, which continues to struggle with...

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...

The national government in England set out to reform its existing social assistance programs under the banner "Universal Credit" in 2013. It planned a phased implementation over four years....

The mission of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness is pretty self evident. These days, it’s making the case that ending homelessness should be part of Canada’s COVID-19 recovery...

The internet has had a remarkable impact on human life, creating powerful new ways in which people can interact. But business has been reluctant to abandon itself to the...

Starting in 2010, homelessness in England began to rise. It wasn’t specific to any particular group. The numbers of people sleeping rough, the families with children, and the women...

Pretty much everyone is hearing about the poor quality of life for seniors that has been exposed by COVID-19. Care conditions have been held to blame, but the roots...

When Alexander von Hoffman at Harvard penned History Lessons for Today’s Housing Policy, he was writing in 2012, during the Obama administration. What possible relevance could that have for...

In Vienna, a sizeable portion of the population lives in public (social) housing. We're not talking just low and no income folks, but a wide range of middle class...

A team of 15 researchers across Canada wanted to find out what services helped people experiencing homelessness who are living with a mental illness. They reviewed every published study...

Critics focused on the failure of public housing find it convenient to blame its woes upon the collective inabilities of its residents. This dismissal has been much easier to...

Social Housing as nuisance/necessity for the human scrapings at the bottom of the income barrel? Not in Austria (and particularly Vienna) where social housing is the housing of choice...

Homelessness is not something to wish on anyone. This is especially true for young people. Instead, we should put a priority on preventing young people from experiencing homelessness in...

Everywhere, higher levels of COVID-19 sickness and death are being associated with urban regions of low income, overcrowding and substandard housing conditions. These regions often contain, or are exclusively...

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...

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...

Over the last few years, the free market home-building industry has demanded various forms of government bribery in order to shift its attention away from its preferred profitable activity,...

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,...

Anyone can learn to do-it-yourself (DIY), even this writer's corporate-lawyer father who turned foot-wide biscuit tins into lamps that never fell over. An intriguing project in Oakland California is assisting...

The right to adequate housing in a time of civilization-threatening climate change: how will nations respond to these twin imperatives which, on the surface at least, appear to compete...

The government in Ireland has announced its COVID-19 recovery plan. Its promises for housing raise serious questions about whether the government is paying any attention to its electors. Housing was...

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...

The national government in England set out to reform its existing social assistance programs under the banner "Universal Credit" in 2013. It planned a phased implementation over four years....

"World War House?" Churchill prophesied that war in 1909 when he was the President of the Board of Trade. He lamented landlords gouging tenants, a chronic housing condition which...

Moving to new housing is a very big deal. This is something that community based agencies, non-profits and charities understand well. As the housing market has changed, community agencies...

Can the private sector ever cost-effectively AND the profitably build social housing? A simple economics-101-multiplied-over-time argument might be that if they could, they would. But they haven't so they...

A colleague of mine always asks two questions: what are we missing and who is being left out? These questions are especially important in an era where funders and...

Only the wildest-eyed optimists imagine that defunding the police means abolishing crime prevention by creating a magical world in which the disappearance of police somehow creates an end to...

On one hand, the horrorTry: America Has A Bogeymen Under The Bed: Social Housing. Austria Sure Doesn’t! and gloryTry: Project Towers Reboot: Let’s Dump The Bad Attitude of social...

People with very low and no income desperately need housing they can afford. That's old news, in far too many countries. Enter the COVID-19 pandemic. National responses to this crisis...

Repossession rates are up amongst people who receive social assistance in England. Repossession in England is equivalent to eviction in Canada and the US. This rise in repossessions is being...

From a likely source: how to squeeze the last drops of profit from the design and construction of a social housing project. The result is housing, but only the...

Does your government really work for you and all the other people who share your corner of the world? Or does it really serve itself, and grant its grace...

It's so dreadfully convenient to be able to dismiss the social tragedy of homelessness by harping on about the losers of society who have been condemned by fate to live...

Nation, an American publication, reacts with some horror to the fate that would seem to be inevitable for no-job no-rent households, and COVID-19 moratoriums on evictions begin to expire. Depending...

Decades of 'small government' philosophizing has led to social housing community-bashing by the US and its fellow travelling Canadian and UK governments, among others. Suggesting that low and no income...

Tamara Loyer runs a drop-in for trans women in Vancouver. Loyer welcomed the announcement about a housing project that will be dedicated to people who are transgendered and people...

If we are ever going to end homelessness, we need to prevent it from happening in the first place. Getting to prevention requires changes to multiple systems, services and...

This post is about a homeless encampment in Kingston, Ontario that is operating with permission from the local council. It is about the people who are part of the...

For many, a Green New Deal is founded on new forms if human living that respect the balance of life on our planet, a life once assumed to be...

Canada is a polite country and it's sometimes possible for progressives to get a word in edgeways without a nuclear blast of scorn from the centre and right. That's...

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...

The shocking state of care homes in many supposedly advanced countries have so far contributed a lion's share of COVID-19 deaths. Why have these poor standards of care, as well...

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"...

If there's one thing that the COVID-19 has demonstrated, it is that humans are social animals who are prepared to die rather than go without community. This is a...

Architecture inspired by pandemics? Who knew? Serious architecture students, no doubt. But both the broad idea and the detail behind architecture that helps homeowners to cope with a pandemic...

Rattle a container of upper middle class citizens, and, like a basket of live clams, their shells will close to protect themselves. These are not paragons of social living,...

Architects are necessarily opportunistic guns for hire, with one project bid for and landed, only to be followed by another, and another. The events of COVID-19 have triggered a demand...

In one year — 2005 — The federal government of Canada guaranteed 746,157 mortgages to provide housing security for homeowners. How fared those unable to afford to buy a house?...

Decades of government-abetted shaming in North America have turned social housing into a monster. Its enduring image is one of menacing towers, either filled with the malignant detritus of...

Recently we've been exploring necessary steps that will need to be taken in order to allow future social housing communities to flourish. In this regard, we are not giving...

For decades, many governments inclined to goose their housing industry have favoured assistance to new homeowners, rather than stimulating the economy by supporting new rental housing construction. Australia has...

From a romantic point of view, America's flower-child city has everything. San Francisco has atmosphere, sea views (when the fog has lifted), quaintness, vibrancy, and most of all success...

To hear the housing industry talking about it, they are the embodiment of all that is right about Adam Smith's economic theories. They build only to satisfy a public...

Before COVID-19, there was evidence that investor influence, which dammed up attempts to prevent rent control measures, is crumbling. The past year in the United States, Oregon led the way...

The ever-growing low-income housing crisis is largely due to the uncontrolled free-market commodification of housing that raises rents and purchase prices beyond the reach of those with small, or...

A must-watch Ted TalkThe Best Stats You've Ever Seen uses global statistics in an extraordinary animated way that is highly visual and actually understandable! The talk and its attendant animation punctures the...

This website has been rather relentless in its criticism of social housing built by public private partnerships (PPPs), which tag a small social housing caboose onto the back end...

A group of UK housing associations are proposing a 'Homes For Heroes' housing initiative modelled on the social housing drive following World War I. Banging pots in appreciation daily...

Without any true desire by governments to make the changes needed to end homelessness, the problem has been growing towards a crisis in many nations. That was before COVID-19. Now,...

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...

Imagine three sets of people who are asked to describe their housing search: The first set are one person households looking for a one bedroom apartment. One is employed,...

What better time to be thinking about a better social housing future than standing in a quicksand of failure from the past?

This is a shout out to the Rent Assist program, which operates in the province of Manitoba. It helps all tenants with low incomes to pay their rent and...