Preventing Homelessness

Hard on the heels of a post about Governor Newsome's end homelessness campaign in CaliforniaTry: Funding Houses For All Homeless. An Enormous Expense Or An Amazing Money-Maker?, here is...

In the days leading up to the 2023-24 Federal Budget, here's an article in the Ottawa Citizen. It promotes a proposed Canadian Housing Benefit to help people with very...

A warning to readers. This post might be a bit of a downer. Being the middle of winter and all, it's a time when tough stuff can be particularly...

The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) is calling for a homelessness prevention and housing benefit to help bring homelessness in Canada under control. The number of people who are...

Plans to deal with homelessness are not new in the United States, and the one that has just been signed by President Biden is certainly timely.  This post is...

An article from New Mexico (linked below) describes an appalling systems failure. Young people in care (the care of the state) are not getting access to mental health and/or...

A recent report has been published about housing and homelessness policy in Ireland. The report was commissioned by six voluntary agencies that are on the front line in delivering...

When is a home . . . with a sound roof overhead, with windows and lockable doors and storage space and access to kitchen bathroom facilities . . ....

If a tenant is behind in their rent, how important is financial assistance in preventing an eviction? It might seem that the answer is obvious, but as six researchers...

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...

The United Nations Economic Commission For Europe (UNECE) has just recognized the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness as a Centre of Excellence on Youth HomelessnessBoth Canada and the United States...

This post is the final one in a three part series of resources to plan for a COVID recovery that includes ending homelessness for young people and preventing it...

This post is the second of a three part series of resources to plan for a COVID recovery that includes ending homelessness for young people.For the first article in...

This is the first of three posts about young people are who are experiencing homelessness. Each one highlights resources for planners and front line workers to use. The second...

Finland is the only country where the number of people who are homeless is going down. The success has drawn a lot of international attention. Y-Foundation, a housing provider,...

As part of a commitment to its residents, Toronto's City Council has confirmed housing as a human right and implemented programs support that commitment. With COVID-19 arriving on the...

Toronto's Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust is buying properties in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood with the goal of making sure that homes are available to people with very low incomes. At...

Toward the end of the 20th century, when people experiencing homelessness became more visible, the programs to help them leave the streets quickly became overwhelmed. People asked, "where did...

The Homecoming Project in Oakland, California matches people who are leaving prison with community hosts who provide housing for six months. The idea is to provide safe and secure...

In Ontario, many agencies, governments and funders work to help people leave homelessness. They need to be able to work closely together to provide an effective and seamless service....

Here is news of a promising study from the University of British Columbia about New Leaf, a program that distributes lump sum cash payments to people who are homeless. The...

Canada's most recent Speech From the Throne states, "the Government is now focused on entirely eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada." Governments in many countries acted during the early phases of...

Australians have the highest median wealth in the world, yet they rank 3rd in the proportion of the population that is homeless. At $264,903 per adult, Australia's wealth is...

An internet provider in California and the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) have reached an agreement to provide free internet access until the end of...

Let us generally discard mobile tow-trailers and motorized caravans as 'camping adventures' and focus instead on the idea of a true home, but a 'tiny' one. Over the last...

An African American producer and documentary filmmaker describes the difficulties incarcerated women face in their attempts to avoid reoffending and being pushed back into the prison system. To explore the...

Handfuls of social housing have been built as a nuisance requirement of any free-enterprise housing project in the UK. The failures of this coercive social housing program are many....

For many years, U.S. governments at every level have been determined to provide no "free ride" for those newly released from various prison systems. One incredibly self-defeating consequence of these...

In the UK, there at last seems a limit to washing your social housing hands. To be sure, the national government continues to get away with its scheme of...

Witnessing young people experiencing homelessness in Vancouver led to the creation of Zero Ceiling, which is based in Whistler, British Columbia. Zero Ceiling’s programs to support homeless youth have...

"Pay the rent or feed the kids" articulates an extreme choice. Yet it is one that people with housing costs that eat more 30% of their income face all...

'Housing First' is a world-respected program designed to rescue individuals from homelessness. It has been very successful. Indeed, its success has been communicated to city councils everywhere to the...

Traditional definitions of social infrastructure focus on a building and its facilities: a library, a hospital, a recreation centre. From Australia, however, a much broader definition has come into focus...

Instant adulthood. That's what's expected of youth in Ontario's child welfare system. The idea behind the child welfare system is to provide stability for young people as they grow...

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...

Could a basic income rescue low and no income citizens from a life of worry, job and housing insecurity, as well as ill-health costly not only to individuals but...

#affordablehousing #affordablehomes Story, full photo&credit at

Finally! Over the past few decades it has seemed that when it comes to housing, the Canadian federal government was hiding in bed with the covers over their head. Then...

Remember 911? That was the number you were meant to dial in an emergency if you wished to summon the police? These days, you need to be careful what...

Rent Banks are funds that help rent burdened tenants keep their housing and avoid eviction. Here's a current example of a proposed rent bank (along with nine other ideas) to...

Affordable housing is not just a collection of construction material and land costs. It’s a purse that must stretch to cover a rental or purchase . . . after...

There are plenty of media reports that homelessness is growing. Point in time counts document the rise in the number of people who are living outdoors or emergency shelters...

The Premier of New South Wales has just announced that it will halve street homelessness in that state by 2025. The strategy? Partnerships of the best and the brightest....

Like affordable housing, homelessness has received its share of media attention and calls for action. Homelessness has also been the subject of innovative programming and research, which are influencing...

When Ben Franklin said “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, he was talking about fires. It ought to apply to homelessness as well. Yet for...

'1000 tiny points of light' was President George H.W. Bush's famous description of a nation's charities. They could generously care for the needy, absolving 'big government' of any obligation...

For a great many people, the public face of homelessness is a dirty sleeping bag in a downtown doorway. But only a small handful of homeless people are in...

In the comic movie fantasy 'Groundhog Day' a newscaster is forced to re-live the same event over and over again as punishment for his self-important arrogance. In the real life...

Not everyone is as fortunate as Steven Long. He, like an increasing number of Americans, has been staving off homelessness by living in a vehicle. As far as he...

Groundstory began tackling the precarious work and housing situations faced by the arts community in Ontario in 2017. Groundstory is billed as a collective action of the arts that aims...

A recent U. S. District court decision caused government consternation and dismay at several levels in Orange County California as officials scrambled frantically for weeks to mitigate a crisis...

It began as an art project about racism, inequality and social justice. Six Houston artists renovated 22 row houses in Houston's impoverished and predominantly black Ward Three. Sculpting with...

Housing is affordable if: •        a household is paying less than 30% of income for rent, or housing payments. •        the rent is in reach...

Studies show that providing emergency shelters for the homeless people is far more expensive than housing them. But many, if not most, American communities do not invest in preventing...

One of the world's foremost English Language Newspapers, The Guardian, recently reported that Finland has ended Homelessness. Try: Finland Ended Homelessness, Thanks to Housing First. But Not JUST to Housing First! YLE,...

UK homelessness got legislative support on April 1, 2018, with a homelessness act that places responsibilities those in the front lines on the war against homelessness—towns and cities that...

Wisconsin Coalition Against Homelessness  has published a paper they hope will receive active consideration from the State Legislature. They point to the current interest in the respected Housing First concept as...

Freedom of movement is the tiniest of advantages possessed by the unemployed and unhoused. Disparaged as ‘rootlessness’, whether exercised in ambitious hope of finding work, or for survival on...

Cities in the American sunbelt bear a heavy brunt of the nation's homelessness, thanks to the easier living conditions for those condemned to a life without housing. Inheriting the...

In a world plagued by a lack of affordable housing, and rising homelessness, the Finnish have seemingly achieved a miracle by eradicating homelessness in their nation. The 'saint' responsible...

Young and impatient. Fed up with childhood. At risk of abuse and assault. All are contributing to a youth homelessness crisis in Bristol, UK, a thriving city with an...

Oops! Some of the best intentions don't pan out quite the expected way. Some twenty plus Cuyahoga County, Ohio communities have instituted what, on the surface, seemed to be a...

It couldn't happen, could it, except perhaps in a creepy, frightening movie? A stranger suddenly invades your home, demanding, threatening, and turning your life into a nightmare day after...

Much of the developed world is facing an affordable housing crisis. But the nature of the crisis, together with its hidden social and human costs, if any, remain the...