Speaking Up About How Housing Systems Are Failing Us
Living in Canada's arctic territories is not easy. Housing is scarce, in poor condition and often very crowded. Housing advocates have been speaking to the government, the media and...
How Efforts To Crush A Tent City Produced An Enduring Record Of Their Value
People who experience homelessness have a lot to contend with. Where will they go to eat, sleep, get clean, do laundry? With these basics up in the air, it's...
Health Research – A Doorway To The Right To Adequate Housing
A note to readers: the content of this post was developed as a submission to a review panel convened by Canada's National Housing Council. The Council is part of...
Trouble In Paradise: How Far Does NY Commitment To Shelter Actually Stretch
All right, we are exaggerating slightly, calling New York 'paradise.' But when it comes to that state's legal commitment to a human right to adequate shelter, there are some...
NYC Mayor’s Message To The Unhoused: Don’t Come Here, We’re Full up.
A combination of events makes New York City an excellent example of why every mayor and council of every town and city in every world democracy should think seriously...
An Action Plan To Achieve The Right To Adequate Housing
Mariana Mazzucato and Leilani Farha have collaborated on a roadmap to achieve the right to adequate housing. The roadmap starts with a mission.
Mazzucato and Farha argue that having a...
Housing Rights Of People With Disabilities – Overlooked And Understudied
Jewelles Smith is based in British Columbia. She has deep knowledge of parenting with a disability, through personal experience, disability advocacy and research.
In her doctoral research, Smith compares human...
Should Housing Be A Wealth Creation Tool Or A Social Benefit? An Aussie Medical Perspective
In case you hadn't noticed that your own national housing emergency looks a lot like Australia's, an InSight article by Caitlin Wright describes some conditions that you will probably...
Canada Cares Enough To Allow The Homeless to Commit Suicide Without Being Fined
Other countries take note: Canada would seem to be extraordinarily compassionate by allowing 'assisted euthanasia' for any strongly-felt reason. When applying that compassion to a national homelessness crisis, it...
Homelessness, Housing First And Living In A State Of Lack
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...
Perspectives On Housing Rights In Canada – Experts Weigh In
Today's post is about housing rights in Canada, where the United Nations' right to adequate housing was affirmed in law in 2019Going forward, this means that Canada's definition of...
Homeless Or Not, Your Belongings Frame Who You Are. Losing Them Can Be Devastating
Not all that long ago, it was against the law to be homeless in Canada. That changed in 1972, when vagrancy laws were repealed. So, imagine a currently homeless...
A Human Right To Adequate Housing: Thunder Bay Wrestles With Homelessness In This Light
Like virtually all North American cities, Thunder Bay, Ontario faces the reality of persistent homelessness. Like a smaller number of cities, indigenous people make up a portion of Thunder...
UK Youth In Care + Private Care Homes = Toxic Combo: The Dregs of Failed Neolibralism
What is it about the attraction of governments to the almost guaranteed predation caused by funding private-enterprise care homes? The title above reflects a United Kingdom report on dreadfully...
Years Pass Before A Death Discovered: A Public Housing Association Too Business-y To Notice?
How can a nonprofit or a charity become significantly profitable? Answer: it can't. But non-profits can create a comfortable living for a group of employees. Some of them, with...
Been Homeless? No? A Property Guardian Maybe — Not Quite Homeless, But Usefully Close
Late in life, I'm pleased to learn a little about property guardianship. Seems I was a property guardian and never knew it. So was my daughter, at least in...
Homeless With Mental Problems/Drug Abuse Issues: Human Rights Bang Heads With Compassion
With roughly one in three people who are homeless having mental health or drug abuse issues, the growing numbers of people on the streets without shelter is creating antagonism...
A Survey In Search of A Human Right To Shelter: Tiny Temporary Homes
While news of yet another collection of 'tiny homes' is becoming more commonplace in North America, they are by no means a standard method of community commitment to housing...
Slum Clearances – An Unlikely Source Of Housing Inspiration?
With all of the reports about tent clearances across North America, it is encouraging to learn that there are some places where the rights of people living in encampments...
Pitching In For Better Housing In Louisville, Kentucky
When you think about tenant organizing in Kentucky, you might visualize Black tenants calling out their housing authority for poor conditions. The article linked to this post tells a...
Any Teeth To ‘Adequate’ In Human Right To Housing? Australian High Court Will Decide
Here's an update about the government of Australia's Northern Territory and the housing it provides to its tenants.
Last year, tenants brought a court case over the definition of adequate...
A Crime To Ask For Help? Such Statutes Declared Unconstitutional At Last!
The lifeguard is no more than a couple of strokes away from the drowning person when... "Stay Back" shouts an officer in the police boat that speeds between the...
In Praise of Once-Canvas Slums. Consider Modern Ripstop, Health And Safety Incl.
Around the world, tent encampments have been a sensible, practical alternative to more permanent housing when none other is available. Search Wikimedia Commons for 'tents' to reveal some of...
One Shape of The Human Rights of Children In A World Of Homelessness
Those countries that advertise themselves (or at least believe in themselves) as 'lands of opportunity' are living the lie when they can build battleships but not housing for the...
Nevada’s Toothless Tiger? New Laws Granting Human Rights For the Homeless.
Well, the State spirit appears willing, but the local flesh seems to be weak. As far as the facts are concerned, even state legislators in Nevada would appear to...
Absolute Freedom For The Housing Free Market: A New Way To Protect Renters
Those of you who follow Scottish politics will have noted the departure of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon from the political stage. The reason for her departure is largely due...
How Australia’s Housing Became ‘A Closed Shop’ Favouring ‘Already-Owners’
Currently around the world, country after country allows and/or actively encourages a gambler's haven — the use of housing ownership, not (or only incidentally) as shelter, but as chips...
Public Housing Thwarts, Not Supports, The Human Right To Housing After Incarceration
Encouraging as it might superficially seem, America's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) actually stood up in 2022 to allow Americans with criminal convictions to have access to...
Spain’s Right To Housing Law: Freedom From Housing Price Extortion. Or. . .Not!
Spain has just passed a Right to Housing law. The law allows rent controls in any and all housing markets that are deemed by local governments to be 'stressed.'
This...
Prying Open The Doors To Housing For Gender-Diverse People
The Women's National Housing and Homelessness Network (WNHHN) is drawing attention to the issue of how gender-diverse peopleThe research discussed in this post uses the term “gender-diverse” as a...
Notes From The Heat Pump Battlefront Lines
Forgetful as always, it's time to quiz our readers on what we've been reporting. We need all the help we can get.
Heat pumps? Yes, we know we've been there,...
Toronto Needs More Supportive Housing – A Hospital Speaks Up
Here is a brief story about social medicine in the city of Toronto. It is an interview with Dr. Andrew Boozary, who heads the social medicine program at the...
Chronic Homeless Incarceration: Who, What, Where Why, When, How?
A magical mystery tour is currently being considered by a few American jurisdictions. What percentage of the people experiencing chronic homelessnessChronic homelessness means homelessness lasting for a long time...
Canadian Tent Encampments Win Precedent-Setting Legal Reprise
Across North America a strange kind of post-COVID vindictiveness towards homeless people seems to have set in. Jurisdictions everywhere have been passing laws to ban all kinds of activities...
U.S. East & West Coasts Flirt With Incarceration Programs For Chronic Homeless
Recently, considerable fuss has been generated in New York City concerning the involuntary incarceration of chronically homeless citizens, presumably in some unofficial and deniable category of 'tremendous nuisance,' and/or...
A Once-Homeless Socialist Who Wants More Upscale Housing Built?
No, this isn't about an influential person who experienced homelessness, saw the light, and embarked on a fight for the Human Right To Adequate Housing via the power of...
The Serendipity Of Canada’s Commitment To Allow Suicide Of The Homeless
Well now, here's a convenience that nobody considered when Canada decided to allow mercy killing of those whose lives had become an unbearable torment. Physical pain was the torment...
New U.S. Federal ‘Renter Bill of Rights.’ Housing Help Or Hot Air Balloon?
The strains of the COVID-19 pandemic have laid bare the increasing crisis faced by America's renters that is now reaching into the middle classes. The U.S. Biden administration plans...
Mental Heath Compulsory Tuneup Program For NY Homeless: Still Waiting
Recently we reported (alongside a good chunk of the world's press) when New York City's Mayor Eric Adams announced his plan to remove homeless people from the streets and...
Affordable-> Unaffordable. Temporary-> Permanent. UK Plays Name Change Game
The United Kingdom National charity, Shelter, laments something affordablehousingaction.org has moaned about for a long time: Canada's federal government, like the UK national government, has conspired with builders. They...
Uprooting The Homeless: Meet Them and Cheat Them Today, Lose Their Trust Tomorrow
"When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose," sang the Bob Dylan in his famous song "Like a Rolling Stone." Dylan is renowned for his great lyrics.
But...
The Homeless Are . . . Are . . . So What Are Your Particular Explanation(s)?
The homeless are:
unable to afford housing for their family
afraid of being beaten to death on the street, or in a homeless shelter
too lazy to work
...
Can the Human Right To Adequate Housing Include Bits Of ‘Unhousing?’
"Adequate" can be a vague term when not supported by a more detailed explanation of what what it actually means. 'Has a roof?' Well of course, in that particular...
Come From Away? Don’t Cut No Ice With Us. Not Your Home, So Begone, Homeless
"Papers, please!"
Wouldn't it be great if a community could gold-braid and tin hat a cadre of officious, hopefully armed, bureaucrats. They would challenge those hoards of suspicious undesirables that...
Coming To Grips With The Financialization Of Housing
Since the 2008 mortgage crisis, more people have become aware of the financialization of housing. Housing has shifted from being a place where you live to become partially or...
Building On COVID Innovations To Support People Who Are Homeless
Have you ever had a day when you just needed to rest? There could be any number of reasons why you don't actually do it. But at least there...
Will Neoliberalism Self-Destruct? Housing For All Is The Ultimate Challenge
Those of us who are immersed in Western society may well consider ourselves as comfortable frogs immersed in slowly heating water, unlikely even to notice being slowly cooked to...
‘Why Should Londoners (Canada) Fret About Financialization in London, UK?
Is London, UK and its environs the largest housing drain in the world — the leader of rapidly growing worldwide shortage?
Might be. It's certainly a candidate for that dubious...
California: Exploring The Human Reality of Adequate Housing For All
The human right to adequate housing is a noble aspiration. And if communism and socialism have contributed nothing else to humanity, they have at least proven that determined governments...
London, Ontario: Does A Civic Emergency Require Light At The End Of The Tunnel?
Ho Hum, Another Day, Another City Emergency. That's what London, Ontario might be trying to sell in order the access federal and provincial funds available to cities that are...
Big Landlords Beware: Activists In Berlin Celebrate The City’s Right To Expropriate
If you haven't been following the rental housing fight in Berlin, Germany, it's time to catch up. Berlin is a city/state where renters far outnumber homeowners. A considerable majority...
Gregory Ain, FBI-Hounded Architect With The Fairest Visions Of America
Gregory Ain wanted to build social housing in Los Angeles. During a lengthy, illustrious career he won a Guggenheim grant to research small, inexpensive, single family homes. Ultimately, the...
Will The ‘Crisis Of The Day’ Forever Delay The Human Right To Adequate Housing?
Waiting lists exist worldwide for those who need affordable housing but don't have it. Ultimately, do these lists represent a positive movement towards a human right to adequate housing...
U.S. Government’s Action On Homelessness Heads Off In New Directions
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...
New York City Erodes Fragile Human Rights Protection For Mental Health Sufferers
The following Guardian article — a personal diary of one American with mental illness who was incarcerated against her will — is a vision of horror. . . for...
Revisiting Public Investment In Non-Market Housing
This post is about a report that revisits a housing policy debate in Canada from the 1990's. The results will be of interest to decision makers, policy makers, advocates,...
U.K. Human Rights??? Ten-A-Penny Warrants Authorize Thousands Of Home Invasions
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,...
U.S. National Green Bank Can Help Stretch Affordable Housing Dollars
So, what does a green bank do, anyway? According to the article linked below, green banks help make investments in climate change by facilitating loans to customers that banks...
Suicide Prevention? How Many Human Rights Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin?
In Australia, how many well-being influences can be gathered up and sheltered under the immeasurably well-intentioned umbrella of a 'Human Right?' Indeed, is 'well-intentioned' a sufficient reason to define...
Major UK Housing Associations Struggle With Shaky Finances
In 2021, the United Kingdom government published The Social Housing White Paper serving notice that tenants deserved to be on the same page as their landlords. While not expecting...
To Need Is To Plead: America’s Flirtation With Heat Pumps Gets Serious
Heat Pumps: just who is pleading for this trendy technology in America? Public Housing is who, and not just some potty little local Housing Authority with a handful of...
UK Doubts: Having Your Human Rights To Housing & Enjoying Them
Civil society groupsRead more about Civil Society in the World Economic Forum: Who and what is 'civil society?' in the United Kingdom feel they have their finger on...
Working From Home For Survival? Forbidden In Canada’s Arctic
"You can’t run a business from NWT public housing. Is that fair?" The question is asked in an article featured below about the rights of public housing renters in...
How Inflation Contributes To Canada’s Housing Crisis
Putting 'celebrating' and 'stalling housing prices' in the same phrase will probably ensure that people read at least a few pages of Generation Squeeze's new report: Celebrating Stalling Prices...
Remote Australia: Poor Housing, Over-Crowding = Disease/Death
Why is it important to have a universal definition of human rights such as the U.N.'s Human Right to Adequate Housing?
For those of us fortunate enough to live in...
No-Housing Fix In Canada? Easy Peasy. Just Get a Doctor To Kill You
Seems we're not talking much about assisted suicide in Canada. Not as much as we might, given how it's becoming a convenient and very cost-effective cure for homelessness.
Britain has...
Scottish Homeless Deaths: ‘Adequate Housing’ Is More Than Physical Condition
When we think of adequate housing, many, if not most of us, might be excused for thinking about heating, cooling, mould, drafts, secure locks — physical conditions that must...
Once Again, NYC Forced To Consider Inadequate (Tent) Housing
With so much misery in the world today, asylum seekers are on the move in considerable numbers. The U.S. is seeing a share, including New York City with the...
Taking The Right To Adequate Housing Into Homeless Tent Camps
A report from Canada discusses the housing rights of residents who are living in encampments. Encampments Across Canada: A Human Rights Approach (Encampments) also makes recommendations to governments about...
Should The Poor Have Human Rights Based On ‘Social Condition’?
Whether promoted by the United Nations or part of a country's definitions of the rights of its citizens, the Human Right to Housing has a kind of full-stop certainty...
Can A Loony Bin Stand In For A Human Right To ‘Adequate’ Housing?
For those of us long enough in tooth that we are drooling over the keyboard, a seminal 1975 film stands out in memory. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...
How Can A Right To Housing Advance Without Preserving What We Have?
Both the United Kingdom and the USA soured on public/social housing coincident with the rise of Reaganism/thatcherism/neoliberalism and its emphasis on small government. In place of government incompetence, free...
Killing The Profiteering Beast: The Inhuman Right to Inadequate Housing
" . . .Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” was the way U.S. President Abraham Lincoln honoured Civil War...
Steps To Close The Door On Private Rental Evictions In The UK
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,...
Human Right To Housing: Four Steps To End A USA Eviction Crisis
In a country that is not yet a signatory to the United Nation's Right to Adequate housing, polls show that it has considerable support from the American population.
All very...
Why Evidence Should Be Part Of The Strategy To End Homelessness
David Park's book "The Fire In the Eye: A Historical Essay On The Nature and Meaning of Light" reviews the history of ideas, debates and thinking about what light...
Co-Design – What Is It And Why Does It Help Build More Deeply Affordable Homes?
Local Councils and Housing Associations are taking the heat in England these days for failing to listen to the concerns of their residents. Some housing managers aren't doing a...
Why Living in Skellefteå, Sweden, Might Be Everybody’s Cup Of Teå
The Human Right to Housing commitment of the United Nations has evolved to include the addition of an all-important word: 'adequate.' The Human Right to Adequate Housing is a...
The Poor: Thoughtful UK Opinion Roasts Murderous(?) Canadian Policies
We might have found the above headline suitable to describe Canada's relentless lip service without action towards the rights of indigenous people and their housing that Canada has selfishly...
NY Teachers Go The Extra Mile For Homelessness, But For How Long?
It's fairly clear by now that your average community citizen has some difficulties facing the human wreckage of homelessness. It provokes exasperation, annoyance and open anger among those whose...
A ‘Right’ To Get Rich Clashes With The Right To Adequate Housing
Is there any agreed-upon human right for people to get rich? It's certainly an underlying premise of unfettered capitalism. Many, if not most who live in capitalist societies see...
Approaching A Human Right to Housing Beyond Life In A Cold, Leaky Tent
In the words quoted from an article below by Morris Copeland, the Miami-made county administrator who oversees housing: “ should be a right, not an amenity.”
Alas for Americans, the...
“Housing First:” Hitting a Homeless Home Run With The Right Swing
Finland developed the Housing First model for "curing" homelessness. It recognizes chronic homeless as a disease closely linked to a lack of permanent personal shelter. The model proposes that...
Finding The Connection Between Housing And Health Outcomes
Since starting affordablehousingaction.org, we've been watching and reporting on the relationship between housing and health. We're aware that in the 1980's, when health research began noticing that additional $$...
More Positive Prospects For Tent Encampments As Winter Draws In
When it comes to homelessness, it seems the reasons that we (the housed) can come up with for clearing tent encampments are practically endless. Some examples:
the campers are...
What Does The Human Right To Adequate Housing Say About Caprice?
Look skyward to find Capricorn, the heavenly goat, among the stars. Look to Youtube and search for 'baby goat.' After a little browsing you'll have some idea of capricious...
Realizing The Right To Adequate Housing In South Africa
When it comes to housing rights, it is good to keep South Africa in mind. The right to adequate housing is part of its Constitution. In 1994, the official...
Homelessness Triggered: Then The Same ‘Old’ Before-And-After Story
This post is about older lives, lived on a fixed income. That's a dangerous state of affairs, given that much of free market North American society accepts that just...
Does ‘Animal House’ Anarchy Feature As Tent Encampment Style? Some Say.
Surely drug addicts/dealers with mental health issues get a satisfying kick out of tent-camp anarchy, making big bucks as they do while getting to party all night For those...
Frankenstein Lives! He/She/They Are a Homeless Person. Be Afraid!
Courage, mon brave! This is affordablehousingaction.org's sympathetic advice to all AmericansWhat a delightfully reassuring French phase we've offered up to start the post! It is completely understandable, even when...
Shelter: House . . Dorm . . Tiny Home . . Tent . . BAG?? Have We Reached The...
We have no desire to diss the fashion designer who created a live-in homeless bag as a memorial to a friend's father who was homeless and died of exposure....
Can Americans With Disabilities Navigate Sidewalks With Homeless Tents?
People who are homeless as a class may well be the most disadvantaged Americans of all. But alas, there are contenders for this status. Equally disadvantaged, if not more...
Psst! Wanna Become A Legit Homeless Tenter In The Land Of Somewhere Else?
Update: the Region of Waterloo is pressing on with its plan to open supported tent encampments for people who are homeless. The location has yet to be determined. Read...
No Camping! How U.S. Human Rights Give Recourse To Pushback From The Punished
In America, if a human right isn't enshrined to the U.S. Constitution, there's a tendency to think it can't possibly exist in any meaningful way. But times change everything....
Spotting Architecture That Encourages Homeless People To ‘Move On’
A recent affordablehousingaction.org post featured a town seemingly hell-bent on destroying its own quality of life — anything to get rid of those drug-crazed, brain-fried homeless folk who just...
Footloose And Fancy Free: Can RV Living Make Homelessness A Dream Come True?
The answer to the question posed in the headline above is a qualified and rapidly eroding 'maybe' heading towards the spectre of a probably soon-to-become universal 'no.'
Up until a...
Challenging Canada’s Denial Of Health Care: A Path To Housing Rights?
Ontario's Superior Court has issued a decision in a case with significant implications for the right to adequate housing. The case involves Nell Toussaint, who has been challenging the...
Want To Erase Homelessness? Turn Your Township Into A Hellhole
Two stories about how to 'end' homelessness have emerged from a clever New Jersey township.
The first: invite the police, well-known for their expertise in community planning and design, to...
Everyone Will Celebrate Today — World Homeless Day — In Different Ways
Affordablehousingaction.org is celebrating World Homeless Day, Monday, October 10, 2022 by publishing our 2418th and 2419th posts to help educate people about homelessness, affordable housing and housing rights (as...
Financialization Of Housing In Canada Exposed
Canada's National Housing Advocate has just released a study about the financialization of housing. Financialization of housing is about treating housing as a commodity for profitIt includes the structures...
