Poverty

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...

Cynthia Puddu, who teaches at MacEwen University in Edmonton, Alberta, is calling for short and long term changes to housing and homelessness programs across North America. Before COVID-19, housing for...

Some people may dread reaching the age of 65, but it's a good news day for others. Why good? People who receive social assistance in Canada can look forward...

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...

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," "Missing Middle," "Workforce". . . are you up to date on your housing labels? Knowing how housing is described can help navigate the fog of manufactured confusion that...

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...

Everything went wrong for New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, except for those private and public interests that extolled mixed income build-anew as a way of 'de-ghettoizing' social...

Is social reproduction a suitable topic for an affordable housing web site? In the hands of David Madden, definitely. The term 'social reproduction' incorporates the activities and the processes that...

Of all the formulae we hear about parliamentary (or congressional) representation, one of the least mentioned is a test based on the wealth of the candidates. Normally, Rep by Pop...

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...

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 John Howard Society of Ontario provides support to people who are affected by the criminal justice system. Their mandate also includes research and public education. The Society's report...

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...

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...

"Public-private partnerships can build American affordable housing more cheaply and more effectively than the failed 3/4 century experiment in public housing." Is it possible that the above premise was on...

According to some, there is no housing crisis in AmericaTry: Turn Menace Into Myth: How To Bigfoot An Affordable Housing Crisis. It takes a pretty blinkered view of housing events...

'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...

Genital Mutilation? It used to happen. Still does. Sterilization? It used to happen. Still does. Deliberate infection by disease? It used to happen. Still does. Slavery? It used to happen. Still does. Child...

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...

What would a massive, countrywide betrayal of a Human Right To Housing look like? In America, such a betrayal might well trigger court cases which, backed by the U.S. Constitution,...

Shelterforce has just published an article about local residents opposing development in their neighbourhood in Camden, New Jersey. Far from being the typical NIMBY story, where people with money...

Two members of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom have resorted to prayer to protect tenants who are at risk of being evicted. Skeptical about the power...

Beginning with personal stories of today's deepening housing crisis, an excellent in-depth article introduced below traces a progression of American affordable housing problems and government solutions through the twentieth...

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...

Data geeks have something really special to celebrate in the link attached to this post. Researchers at the Urban Institute in the U.S. have gathered, organized and published a massive...

Inflation affects everyone. Public opinion polls indicate that Canadians are cutting back on spending and/or deferring purchasesHere's a recent report from the Angus Reid Institute: Highest Inflation Rates In...

Do you know that the writer of this article is a senior? You may not, but Google does. I read articles from around the world daily in publications from...

Here is a report about fixing the homelessness crisis. Unlike many articles, this one does not recommend clearing encampments and moving people onIf you haven't come across this sordid...

You can fool 'some of the people all of the time' is part of a common sayingYou can fool some of the people all of the time, and all...

How does spending more than 30% of income on housing affect households with low incomes? How does it feel to borrow money to buy food so that your loved...

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...

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,...

When schools closed at the start of COVID, community organizations jumped in to make sure that students in Baltimore's Cherry Hill neighbourhood had food to eat. One of the...

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...

A local article from a Welsh newspaper paints in one corner of an enormous issue: 'decarbonization' of United Kingdom's social housing. Viewed from America, decarbonization or greening, or energy efficiency,...

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...

Has Humboldt County California gone commie? Or maybe just half as sinful — socialist? The major purpose of government at all levels is to collect individual problems into solutions for...

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...

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...

An eviction can change your life. It certainly changed Matt Desmond's. He witnessed sheriffs evicting a group of siblings who had been orphaned when their mother died unexpectedly. Desmond...

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...

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....

Tenants in Los Angeles want to reduce emissions and energy consumption. That wish is clouded by two concerns: their rents will go up a lot and/or they will be...

For decades and decades, the Rolls Royce of trailer park living has been the mobile home. Single-wides and double-wides These designations are based on road widths. A single-wide is...

Too much to expect, we assume, for Canada to announce the arrival of a huge burst of actual housing on National Housing Day. Maybe some kind of national surprise...

Well, to be honest, the blood started to boil several months ago and it's been quietly simmering until this latest eruption. The initial cause was the news that U.S. private...

Proposals for guaranteed income programs have witnessed renewed popularity recently. Many pilot projects were rolled out during COVID shutdowns. They provided one way to flow money to people who...

Let's get right to the good news. Miguel Cardona, President-elect Joe Biden's choice as Education Secretary, is a public housing alumnus! He apparently describes his earlier self as a...

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...

A small project in Vancouver, BC, which gave a lump sum of $7,500 to people who were homeless, has caught the attention of The Guardian. The Guardian does not...

Young people approaching the age of majority are in a time of transition: finishing high school, starting post-secondary education, or employment, leaving home. Young people aging out of foster care...

A constant theme of pandemic reporting worldwide has been the greater number of COVID-19 cases in poorer neighbourhoods, compared to those which may be close by, but at least...

Have you ever been in the situation where someone told you with great authority that you had to do some particular thing? Whatever it was, you didn't want to...

"Minimum wage" is a common name governments use in their quest for wage "fairness." It is the lowest wage legally permissible to pay a regular employee.Some categories of employment...

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...

In some countries (America in particular), decades of neglect to social housing has presented an overwhelming mountain of repairs for many local housing authorities.Try: Can A Public Trust Help...

"Advocates say. . . " Are those unnamed advocates real or imaginary? Advocates of the facts? Or advocates of "alternative facts?" Pursuing a viewpoint, or running away from one? A...

"Despite the profoundly divergent impacts of COVID-19 globally, it appears that diverse policy makers, scholars, and community leaders can agree on one thing — the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated...

In 2017 (around the time affordablehousingaction.org started posting), researchers from universities in Spain and Chile published a review of academic literature that investigated the connection between eviction, health and...

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....

North Carolina climate change deniers can no doubt point to other reasons for changing weather patterns over land as well as unusual storm surges at sea. But nobody can...

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...

For several years now, it's been clear in America and other countries that internet access is growing in importance for providing individuals, old as well as young, to equal...

'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...

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...

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...

Perhaps you've heard of the Homeless Industrial Complex? At the very least it seems to be a phenomenon on North America's west coast. It's hardly as financially fattening as...

This is the first of three posts about Universal Basic Income. It is an idea that has been around for some time but often seen as out of step...

Dismissing a useful future for social housing these days works most dramatically when raising the spectre of high rise projects. President Trump, as part of his 2020 campaign, has...

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...

The Centre for Homelessness Impact (the Centre) has issued a report about renting homes in the private marketThere is certain irony in the timing of this report. For years,...

A little too early perhaps, to sound a version of Pogo's famous cartoon statement: "We have seen the enemy, and it is us." Yes, perhaps. But here at affordablehousingaction.org, where...

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...

Is social housing a disease or a cure? Half a century spent pondering that question has left neoliberal governments around the world no closer to an answer. One thing is...

Everybody knows that the older little piggies get, the more small-c conservative they become. Older piggies drift away from a youthful idealism and the need for change towards the...

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...

Matthew Desmond came to our attention when "Evicted" — his book on the subject — was published in 2016. He's an expert on eviction as well as the destructive...

It is difficult to avoid shaking the head in disbelief. Some reports peg housing demand and housing prices as either stable or rising in the face of COVID-19.Here's a...

Recently we featured a post on a Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiment in Spain. We raised a question: why do Universal Basic Income plans seem to always be the...

Free Market Housing Assistance? Known by a variety of terms around the world (e.g. housing allowance, rent supplement, housing choice, Section 8 vouchers) that bridge the gap between an...

There is a longstanding international interest in Universal Basic Income which can be traced back as far as the year 1516Try: Universal Basic Income Part 1: Applying A Justice...

Speculation in housing places temptation in the path of investors in England. You have a three bedroom house. You could rent it to a mum with three kids. They...

Whether a product of climate change or not, some weather disasters have been with us forever. Flooding is one particular inevitability, thanks to human habitation near water for transportation...

Statistics Canada has just announced 2022 income data. It reports that Canada's poverty rate is lower than pre-pandemic levels and that Canada is on track to reach its 2030...

Like the three little pigs who are inclined to stop shaking with fear when they no longer hear the wolf huffing and puffing outside their doors, we are slowly...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

For those low and no income residents lucky enough to win a lottery and move into one of the handfuls of subsidized housing, finding food will not be a...

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...

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

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...

Evictions are a useful 'miner's canary' for the health of a city's rental housing. Instead of falling off the perch dead in a pocket of dangerous gas, the eviction...

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...

A little research, PLEASE. This means you, Catherine Holt, Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce CEO and author of an opinion piece in the Victoria, B.C. Times Colonist. You have us in...

The Women's National Housing & Homelessness Network has just released a new study that documents how housing and homelessness affects women, girls and gender diverse populations in Canada. This...

The article linked to this post is about what it's like to experience homeless in two cities in Ontario. It's also about what people experience when they leave homelessness...