Public and Social Housing

You've lived in the same home for over 20 years, and always paid the rent on time. So why has your landlord decided to evict you? You live in social...

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives issued its 2020 alternative budget just as the COVID-19 pandemic was declared.The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives/Centre Canadien De Politiques Alternatives is a...

Why bother to report yet again about riding people who are homeless out of town on a rail? After all, somewhere at this very moment an official is probably...

Who wants to build social housing? Not the housing industry. They've been quite upfront and vocal over the past few years about the housing they would prefer to build...

An article by three U.S. Law Professors explains how the federal CARES Act only momentarily addresses the threat of eviction and only for a select group of owners and...

In the midst of the COVID-19 uproar, a new law benefiting English tenants crept into being with little fanfare. Tenants and landlords have for 35 years been 'protected' by the Landlord...

And it seems that in the United Kingdom including Scotland, the national government has found the right disease. Only COVID-19 found the government, rather than the other way around. Nevertheless,...

Thinking about sharing as a way of keeping a truly affordable roof over your head while maintaining some control through home ownership?

Looking for a some rays of sunshine that reflect a better housing future for low income families? Different climates, different histories, different social and cultural communities: a Mexican 'laboratory for...

In the final quarter of the 20th century, public housing on both sides of the Atlantic fell victim to "Thatcherite" small-government philosophy. Governments don't belong in the housing business....

In America, it's hard to imagine a bright future for public housing, notwithstanding that few if any alternatives appear to match its capacity for sheltering low and no income...

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...

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...

A groundbreaking meeting was held recently between two UN bodies, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and UN Women (UN/Women). The two groups are talking about developing...

During the 20th century, different nations found different reasons to develop different forms of social housing. Exceptionalist America more or less did theirs one way for one reason in one...

Not all that long ago, religions assumed responsibility for the less fortunate with local governments picking up the slack.

There are a growing number of warnings about a gathering storm of tenant evictions unless some action is taken to move the focus of the American Congress away from...

In the years following WWII, national governments directly funded and built social housing that was affordable for people with very low incomes. The policies, programs and funding that enabled...

Housing insecurity and criminality are linked. How, and why? For decades in North America, many were quick to answer. People who are housing insecure — low and no income tenants...

In North America there are two ways of dealing with the term 'public housing.' One, which we've chosen of late, has been to blur the distinction between it and...

Will the government inevitably bow to developers eyeing The Causeway — a public housing estate extraordinarily close to where it's all happening in Australia's capital city? What an extraordinary profit-making...

Three decades or so ago, it suited the political times to declare American social housing dead. If not entirely gone and forgotten, still-remaining projects have ever since been treated...

Governments around the world have, for the last few decades, abandoned social housing as a kind of 'failure in progress,' helped along by conveniently diverting dollars for truly affordable...

With housing a vital containment against the spread of COVID-19, housing is finally receiving national public health recognition both needed and deserved. Shelter, along with food and clean water,...

Nostalgia for something never experienced? Such is the feeling of a Boston Globe article, which yearns for a form of housing never successfully taken hold in North America. The...

You're not by any chance associated with a city council currently vulnerable to seduction by a housing industry solution to end all housing crises? Surely you've heard the battle cry:...

Congratulations to housing activists from Comité d’action de Parc-Extension in the city of Montréal, Québec, where rapid gentrification and a new campus extension of Université de Montréal are driving...

A recent study commissioned by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) introduces the issue succinctly: "HUD subsidizes the rent of nearly one million very low-income households who...

In a recent report from Australia, researchers studied the assistance that is offered to people who are homeless and living with a mental illness. The report recommends changes to...

3D Printers capable of creating sophisticated devices such as fireable guns have tweaked the imagination of dreamers. Those with housing on their minds are not only proposing, but actually...

Historically, the most effective way of creating new social housing has been national government-funded construction upon land removed from the free market. Sustaining that housing has been another saga altogether....

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...

A silly, satirical British song was still sung by drunken rugby players more than forty years after David Lloyd George served as British Prime Minister in World War I...

American Public Housing Authorities, form into a great big circle. Now lean forward and pat yourselves on the back. Oh. You're already doing that? What a clever little group of social...

Leave it to a city which, by some measures, is the world's least affordable after Hong Kong. Leave what to them? Why, solving an affordable housing crisis without actually creating...

The great equalities of the future as described in George Orwell's book 1984 are almost upon us. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. The last is a...

One way or another, many feel that social housing is too expensive for America, even as many other nations find ways to utilize this truly affordable form of housing....

Researchers based at Calgary's Elizabeth Fry Society have completed a report about how indigenous elders and knowledge keepers help people to forge paths to leave homelessness. The report focusses...

For some decades, boots-on-the-ground UK local councils and housing associations have followed orders from national government generals hellbent on creating social housing more efficiently and cheaply by hiring mercenary...

Is homelessness getting your community down? You can stamp your feet, roll your eyes, express disgust, then play the blame game. In America, this technique of getting nowhere fast...

In North America, the green parties are still a public curiosity rather than the muscular political force that they have become in Europe. In the fiercely two-party United States,...

Business-friendly governments in both the United Kingdom and America cling stubbornly to the notion that mixed income housing developments can build enough truly affordable housing to ease national housing...

With growing numbers of low income residents in North America paying more than half their income in rent, there's a pressing need for scalable housing solutions that do not...

The North American housing industry's current battle cry? Unchain us from pesky regulations, and we'll mass-build nations out of their affordable housing crises. There would appear to be no brakes...

The Native Women’s Association of Canada recently issued a research report about the current housing conditions of indigenous women in Canada. Individual communities may declare a state of emergency...

Local Housing Authorities are finding themselves in almost-impossible situations when it comes to selling long-suffering tenants on the benefits of repairs and renovations. Why are social housing tenants frightened about...

'The dog that didn't bark' is an important clue pointing towards the solution of a famous Sherlock Holmes mystery. Likewise, the 'dog that didn't bark' can be considered a metaphor...

Housing support voucher programs suffer profoundly in the United States by being unacceptable to many — even most — landlords, whether landlords are legally allowed to ignore them or...

Those who have worked in the business of providing or maintaining social housing inevitably come up against a general public attitude that those in need of public assistance don't deserve...

20 years ago, the Colorado Supreme Court decided that classic public private partnership (PPP) 'inclusionary zoning' projects were a form of rent control, expressly forbidden by legislation. This year, housing...

New York City has broken some important ground with the release of a new report "Housing We Need." The City, at least from a reporting perspective, is apparently no...

One less-than-obvious but by no means less-than-important takeaway comes from a New York City report on Homelessness just released. That is the inherent weakness of Low Income Housing Tax...

This is for those who have never been a starving student sharing a home space with one or more 'might-one-day-be-friends', but not if they carry on the same way. This...

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has recently published a report about intimate partner violence in remote communities. The report reviews existing academic research and arranges it thematicallyThe themes...

A pair of photographs reflects a depression-era pattern: tumbledown wooden slums in New Orleans, LA, pictured above, replaced by sturdy brick government-built social housing pictured below. St. Thomas Street, New...

The American Federal government's biggest tool for the creation of affordable housing is designed to help developers have their cake and eat it — building subsidies today, and free...

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...

When governments mortgage the future to pay for the present, sooner or later the bill comes due. It arrived last year for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)...

How do you rationalize a responsible management position that impacts human lives and health when, thanks to an inadequate budget, you can't do your job either effectively or humanely? If,...

Communities across the US are crowding towards the mistletoe for a chilly smooch with uncle HUD,HUD — The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development celebrating the late Christmas...

If you're interested in affordable housing, we'd like to "water" down your experience for a few moments in service of one large word: remunicipalization. (You may need a sip...

In America, aging red state populists are the last survivors of the good old Cold War days when anybody who was anybody checked daily for Reds under the beds. In...

#affordablehousing #affordablehomes Story, full photo&credit at

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...

These days, the affordability of housing is defined in many places by the market value of the housing. For example, one range of housing cost, based on local markets,...

Two years ago, Homes For All published a report entitled Communities Over Commodities: People-Driven Alternatives to an Unjust Housing System. At the time American politics, particularly at the federal level, battled...

This post features a "good news" public housing story. It comes from Germany. We'll admit it right up front, part of the story is a little stale. It's about...

Much of the world, if not all, is addicted to housing, even to the point of declaring it a human right. It seems to be part the natural human...

These days, not everyone in the world except Americans (the odd progressive aside), believe that social housing deserves to go belly up in a hand basket, or be otherwise...

Useful articles on the subject of public housing have been a rarity in mainstream American publications. "Not in our lifetime," has been a characterization of a date when the...

American government: point that urgent finger at yourselves. Your citizens need YOU to recreate a public housing program! Articles like the one linked below have been scarce to nonexistent in...

Okay, we were as aghast as everybody else that "poor" doors had been installed in a publicly subsidized New York City building so that rich folks didn't need to...

The future of council housing in England has changed considerably since 1981, when 32% of all of the country's households lived in it. At that time, the government had provided...

Faced with an affordable housing crisis in his city, the Mayor of London, UK, has pointed out the fatal flaw when it comes to using PPPs (Public Private Partnerships)...

The Mayor of London is himself an example of the benefits of public housing, largely abandoned as unworkable in America. He grew up in one, takes pride in the...

"But where will we go?" Scanning affordable housing stories worldwide, an article reports some unfortunate locale were residents are being evicted from social or public housing practically every day. Four constant...

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have been a darling of neo-conservative "leave it to the private sector," thinking. Alas, when it comes to affordable housing in mixed income projects, they've...

As the flood of unaffordability sweeps across nations, humanity queues up (not necessarily two by two) for a chance to stay high and dry under social housing shelter. Not enough...

The Ontario Government has just announced its housing program. The principal strategies? Building more housing and selling government assets. There is also a sweeping announcement about possible changes to...

Before World War II, America never had the political will to allow low-income employed persons to live in public housing. Unfortunately, by immediately turfing newly employed wage-earners out, the federal...

In recent years, the UK government has relentlessly pushed a public/private partnership model to build the nation out of an affordable housing crisis. As time goes by, the meagre handfuls...

A recent article in CITYLAB features a pundit with a narrow vision of New York City's public housing problems: he feels there's just not enough churning. Churning? It's a rental...

While public (a.k.a social) housing has been extremely successful in some European nations, it survives and prospers against a small 'c' conservative attitude that financially poor tenants are both...

Tax credit and subsidized affordable housing projects need not be be solely based upon an ownership model. However, it seems that many developers would much prefer to avoid build-to-rent...

Partnership and family have long been a first stepping stone into adulthood, whether a formal or informal union, plus or minus children. But a conventional "Rush to Marriage" today no...

Consider the All-American Attitude towards Public Housing Project Towers. That's "All," as in pretty much all government, all political party, all public opinion. And that Attitude is? Surviving American Project...

With American conservatives pouring poison down the social housing well at a fearsome rate, the world — or at very least the North American continent — has been brainwashed...

According to free market conservatives, American public housing is dead. It was the victim of its socialist anti-free-enterprise roots and of the lower class inhabitants who, in fits of...

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...

In a recent speech committing to more British affordable housing, Prime Minister Theresa May was quick to find culprits everywhere, but not so much on her own doorstep. The...

What happens when the brave new affordable world of public/private partnerships meets only half the annual demand for affordable housing? What happens? It's obvious. The demand for affordable housing just...

For all of its physically attractive qualities, gentrification of inner cities is becoming a barrier to affordable housing world-wide. In North America, government action is limited by 'hands off...

A nice little easy-read history of Social Housing in Britain from the BBC: A history of social housing

The California Town of Santa Clarita is a world away from the 2017 social housing inferno that killed so many in London England. Grenfell Tower residents were ultimately victims of...

Who knew that architecture could warp the mind, pollute the thinking, cause people to sink into poverty and condemn them to a life of crime? That seemed to be...