Building

From . . . temporary affordable housing that isn't housing anyone at all while it takes a lengthy snooze. Read more in The Seattle Times: The story of Seattle’s homeless...

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,...

Move over tempeh, truffles and psilocybin! A business in the United States is planning to build a 300 unit housing project with mushrooms. Of course it's not quite that...

"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...

In the wake of a two-year-old boy's mould-related death, what most struck the Manchester Evening News and the UK Charity Shelter, which shared a now internationally known investigation, was...

Does anyone brew tea in a pot any longer? And what about tea cozies, the padded and fitted covers that go over the pot to keep tea warm? With...

In spite of clear evidence that some or all knocked down social housing is never replaced in redevelopments...Try: The Life And Death Cabrini-Green Public Housing Projects, 25 Years On In...

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...

In North America these days, the commitment to public housing still tends to be drowning underwater, or perhaps buried meters-deep in the primordial mud at the bottom of the...

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...

Are you a carefree, and perhaps careless, bather? Maybe you own a large dog that enjoys mucky walks, but not a washdown in the tub? Hard to imagine that...

Ignoring deplorable conditions in housing for low and no income citizens has become a worldwide technique for trimming local government budgets. In North America, it goes hand in hand...

In June of 2018, Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi announced an extravagantly ambitious national housing scheme  — a home for every Indian by 2022. India is a populous country....

In societies where social/public housing tenants are treated more or less like dirt,  governments have a low bar of behaviour to meet when change threatens to upend the status...

Ask movers and shakers among North American public housing activists about their thinking on the grandest scale: what's new? The top of the pops these days is a 'retro'...

Check out the science and you will discover that the renewal of life on earth requires decay. By and large there can be nothing new without the breakdown of...

With the COVID-19 pandemic, home internet connectivity became not just desirable, but essential to allow safe distancing from infection. At the heart of this essential connectivity was education, which...

Over the last couple of years, there have been whispers of hope for a reboot of government built, deeply affordable housing in America. Nobody will miss the face of American...

The UK is currently celebrating/bemoaning a sky-is-falling introduction to the new Prime Minister's Trussonomics.  That would be 'small government' neoliberalism shrunk to a squabbling anti-intellectual dot. Under Liz Truss, government...

A picture is often worth a thousand words of fun and fancy. When it comes to truly affordable housing we know this because, over the past few years, one...

'Business as Usual?' The YIMBY movement  — Yes in MY. . . OK, YOUR Back Yard? Or maybe best to use those generally politically desirable (for builders) terms: kill the by-laws,...

Many more U.S. folks live in mobile homes ("manufactured homes" if you want to be snobbish about them) than receive federal housing assistance (e.g. public housing and housing choice...

Victor Body-Lawson heads an architecture studio that designs affordable housing in the United States and Africa. He describes a recent moment of pleasure when he read a housing proposal...

Truly, deeply affordable housing using traditional building methods is the housing development industry's way of throwing up a 'road closed' sign. Government subsidies would seem to be the preferred...

This post is hardly good news for citizens of the United Kingdom. Other nationalities may view it with a sigh of relief together with head-scratching curiosity. As far as...

For some reason we humans are initially inclined to think the best of each other as individuals. It seems a reasonable and understandable 'human' reaction. However, there are reasons to...

In North America, providing housing for the most vulnerable has been achieving limited success in 'mixed' income housing projects. Decaying public housing is torn down and replaced with new,...

The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University annually issues a 'State of the Nation's Housing' report. A release 'event' is convened where the results are reported and...

Why should New York City, and a lot of other cities for that matter, refurbish existing public housing when knocking it down and building anew would be cheaper? Because it's...

When it comes to housing construction these days, it's more than a challenge to keep up with the Green Revolution and its requirements to prevent climate change. That's to...

Climate change is a compelling argument for doing things differently. In northern climates at least, our homes contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures. Researchers have...

Still early days for a pair of city newly-weds, but . . . Should we remark on the potential of  a "V for Victory" link-up between the two cities, Vancouver,...

To mark Earth Day this year, the National Housing Federation (NHF) summarized developments in energy saving activities among social housing providers. We've chosen to pair the first subject covered: "Electric...

In an attempt to discover some useful architectural designs to enhance the quality of new-build social housing, the writer of this post encountered the following sentence: "The size of the...

Why does all social housing badly need fast internet (a.k.a broadband)? Social housing needs it for the same reason it needs to be connected to roads. America, like the rest...

The original Bauhaus MovementRead more at My Modern MET: Bauhaus: How the Avant-Garde Movement Transformed Modern Art in the early twentieth century explored ways 'to bring art back into...

Four years ago a UK report advocated public housing as the optimal launch pad for a campaign to meet the committments to achieve decarbonization of homesBuilding decarbonization is a...

The world woke up to the horror of high rise building fires in 2017, when substandard cladding on London's Grenfell social housing tower turned it into a flaming torch...

Tiny Homes? Hug 'em and Love 'em! The Media seems to, including us. They're forever popping up as cozy little bandaid stories about the housing and homelessness crisis in...

Turns out, it's not just the police who get caught out by public exposure. That embarrassment is down to half the population having a video capability in their smart...

15 years before the 2017 Grenfell Tower Fire, neoliberalism had firmly gripped the imagination of politicians. The message had not necessarily filtered down to UK bureaucrats who laboured on,...

As we are learning in Canada, adopting the Human Right to Adequate Housing marked an ending and a beginning. It's an ending because after decades of work, Canada's government...

Can affordable housing high rises serve the needs of low-income people and cut carbon dioxide emissions at the same time — all at a competitive cost? Let's look at...

A builder in the U.S. northwest argues that it is possible to lower construction costs, using conventional methods, without sacrificing quality. In the article below Mike Steffan, the builder,...

A recent winter offer to buy and donate mini-shelters to the City of Montréal for protection of the homeless has been turned down. There was no joy in being...

In North America, the idea of preserving public housing as a model of national achievement is absurd. It began and existed for a few heartbeats as a form of...

Are there reasons to be cheerful about heat pumps? That's the story from Norway. Being apartment renters all, the staff of affordablehousingaction.org's own cheeriness about heat pumps is entirely...

Sophie House and Krystle Okafor are both based at New York University. Building on the work of contemporary abolitionistsAbolitionism is often understood to be about the abolition of slavery...

Most of us interested in the future of public housing have heard (possibly even ad nauseum) how a couple of cities — Vienna and Singapore — manage to provide...

Social housing activists on both sides of the Atlantic from USA across to the UK and Europe, fight an uphill battle against persistent remnants of neoliberal thought. By now, everyone...

Here's a mashup of the public/social housing "Fantasy Fix." In the United Kingdom, so poorly have local councils and housing authorities been responding to tenant problems that the national...

There are sound arguments to be made that "The Internet of ThingsFrom Wikipedia: The Internet of Things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects), that are embedded...

Reaganism and Thatcherism (a.k.a neoliberalism) touted the theory that small government was essential to free enterprise. Within this mindset, social/public housing was an example of all that was wrong...

The earliest forms of energy conversion for human use were granular — many small conversions using wood or peat or coal in a fireplace for warmth or a stove...

The City of New York recently declared an emergency following Hurricane Ida, which flooded homes and apartment buildings in low lying areas. Eleven of the 13 people who died...

In 2020, the UK Government was moved to take action on the poor, and still deteriorating, conditions in the country's social housing. A further cause for distress was what...

More than 4.3 million homes in England do not meet basic standards of decency. It is more prevalent in the private sector, and among residents with lower incomes. Although it's...

For the one in a million among you who lies abed before sleeping, mouth tingling from mentholated toothbrushing, and wonders whether the world's housing crisis can be solved by...

The demolitions of Cabrini Green in Chicago and Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, two very large public housing projects, reflect decisions made by people who had never lived there. Some...

A 15 unit public housing project in Paris's 18th arrondissement is catching the attention of architectural magazines. The building, which is built with hempcrete insulation, rises no higher than...

The demolition of Cabrini Green — public housing units in that were home to 15,000 people in Chicago — is the starting point of this article in Salon about...

Remember the three little pigs and their variously constructed houses, only one of which survived the huffing and puffing of the big bad wolf? Well, modern, eco-aware societies need pigs...

A sprinkling of encouraging notes from several countries might signal a sea change in the treatment of public/social housing tenants. The trend continues for fixing up more of the...

In June 2020, affordablehousingaction.org reported about a renovation project at an eight unit tenement in Glasgow. Now, the BBC is providing an update on how it's coming along. The...

Insulation? It doesn't have to be a manufactured product. It can be grown. Seaweed insulation made from shallow water eel grass once provided an excellent quality of insulation, gathered...

The City of Philadelphia began providing funding for low income homeowners to make basic system repairs to their housing in 1995. Now, research from the University of Pennsylvania demonstrates...

Sure, we get it. "Bunk" and "Cabin." Put them together and you've got cute little Bunkabins, small, private, inexpensive shelters for people who are homeless. But we're talking the United...

Not all that long ago, private landlords were to be the new caretakers of America's low and no income residents who could not survive in the free rental housing...

What do you think of the changes that will need to happen to your apartment by 2030, whether social housing or free market housing? If you are roughly 79,999th on...

People should only get what they deserve. This "survival of the fittest" mantra has dominated neo-liberal thinking for several decades. It pervades the policies of America's Department of Housing...

Besides a rather large number of things the two locations do not share, one they do is local councils prepared to risk human lives by tinkering with building codes...

In a dog eat dog housing world, those who can afford housing compete in a low-choice social universe that offers the suburban dream home sprawl versus gentrified shoe box...

The Canadian Province of British Columbia is evaluating all of BC Housing's homes built since 2019 to determine which units deserve certification as both liveable and accessible. One indication of...

This year, 2021, the prestigious international Pritzker prize was awarded to a pair of French architects who specialize in retrofitting old buildings, especially public housing. It has inevitably re-focused interest...

Do you live in a community or region short-changed on broadband internet accessThe terms "high-speed" and "broadband" are pretty much interchangeable. Use the term "high-speed" if you'd like to...

NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard. Keep current by-laws. The neighbourhood is perfect just as it is. No more housing development, even though the city needs houses. YIMBY — Yes...

America's public housing, born in the 1930's, looks refreshing to the eye even today. . . What's wrong with the above sentence? By and large, the average eye sees and...

Not all that long ago, a school teacher could assign research projects to students based only upon books and resources available in the school library. Those days vanished in...

Vegetation, it seems, has a history as effective housing insulation. Straw bale houses were not uncommon as first residences during the settlement of the American WestStraw bale houses are...

Ten years ago, the last building of Chicago's Cabrini-Green public housing project was torn down. During its lifetime, the 23 buildings housing more than 15,000 mostly black residents became a...

A recent article in Australia's Fifth Estate explores two important benefits that may accrue in the future from a more active program of building community housing.There's literally a whole world...

Recent good news for rural America: billions of federal dollars have been promised to provide high speed broadband internet access that is currently as spotty as the rural housing...

The Wellesley Institute is a champion for the social determinants of health in Canada. The Institute has focused considerable attention on the link between housing and health. One example...

World-wide, it might seem that there are few opportunities to bring meaningful architectural design to the budget constraints of public housing construction. Certainly this lament can often be found...

With housing firmly established as suitable gambling chip in the world's stock markets, it is becoming increasingly difficult for those with lower incomes to even rent it, let alone...

How do tiny homes fit into a country's affordable housing scheme? The attraction of tiny homes is undeniable to certain kinds of imagination, impractical as they might seem to...

This post considers the potential of a program to acquire existing rental units as part of an affordable housing strategy. The context is Canada, but the thinking could be...

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is currently exploring the "bad and ugly" aspects of racist architecture as a prelude to a celebration of the "good"...

In an age where social media allows everyone to preach the gospel of certainty for every possible lifestyle, social behaviour and religious belief under the sun, we wondered how...

There would seem to be nothing quite as catastrophic as Inuit housing in Canada's far north, where much of the population was forcibly resettled much less than a century...

From Sydney, Australia to Ontario, Canada: celebrating a new Ontario Association of Architects president with a Down Under query about the role of architects in public Housing. Are we...

Slowly but surely, communities are looking towards internet access as a key infrastructure component of housing. Expressed as a part of the United Nations right to adequate housing, infrastructure...

Can high-tech imagination-tickling 3-D house-printing out-wrestle factory-based cookie-cutter modular homes and solve international housing affordable housing crises? Straight from the 3-D horse's mouth (a 3-D printing mag), the answer is...

Refurbish decrepit empty housing, including dead-but-hasn't-fallen down public/social housing? Maybe it's a good idea. A growing number of nations worldwide, from those who think public housing is or was a...

Imagine! Spring, in all its greenest finery! Giddy goats gamble on grassy hillsides, the fresh scent of new-mown hay wafts in through the kitchen window between billowing curtains. All the...

Is there anyone in the world not familiar with what has become known as "flat-pack" technology, thanks to its international masters, IKEA. Build your own day-bed complete with blanket drawers...

The Tyee has published a five-part series about a green new deal for housing. The Tyee is based in Vancouver, where housing prices are pricing out more and more...

The Tyee has published a five part series about a green new deal for housing. The Tyee is based in Vancouver, where housing prices are beyond the reach of...

Just over two years ago, we reported on tiny home communities that were being built in Seattle and other cities across the United States. Today, we're checking in again,...

How to explain what seems to be a middle class romance with the idea of getting away from it all by hiding in your own closet — one transported...