So There Was A Fire. Sorry For The Damage & Injuries, But We’re Underfunded. Not Our Fault.
What's the most likely way to prevent public housing fire disasters? Consider the infamous 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London, England, and two fires in January 2022, one in...
From Carefree Bathing to Accusations of Murder: It Could Happen To You
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...
US, UK: Public Housing Fire Disasters, How Do They Happen?
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...
UK ‘Small’ Government As A Deliberate Death Machine
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,...
Wheelchair Bound, Public Housing 15th Floor, Alarm Ringing, Elevator Dead . . .
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...
A Fix For Illegal Housing? Wanted: Politicians Who Lead
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...
HUD To Choose Safety Of Investors Over Public Housing Tenants
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 London, UK & Kugluktuk, Nunavut, Canada Have In Common?
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...
Making Private Market Housing Sustainable For Tenants With Low Incomes
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...
City of Toronto Helps Homeless-Loving Carpenter Follow in Famous Footsteps
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...
Customer Sometimes Right? Social Housing Landlords Might Need To Check
In the United Kingdom, the Grenfell Tower disasterSee: “Nobody Listened to Us!” Grenfell Tower Fire Survivors Demand A Legal Voice For All Social Housing Tenants and its aftermath shows...
High Rise Fires: Rethinking ‘Stay Put.’ Can There Be An Escape Route?
Two years after the Grenfell Tower disaster, the London Fire Commissioner ultimately responsible for how the fire was fought is advocating a serious review of 'Stay Put' advice to...
Lifting The Hood On Affordable Housing ‘Red Tape’
Red Tape: Everybody hates it. Nobody needs it.
When it comes to affordable housing, red tape is taking the blame for high costs. It is being disparaged by many actors...
“Nobody Listened to Us!” Grenfell Tower Fire Survivors Demand A Legal Voice For All Social Housing Tenants
The 2017 Grenfell Tower Fire in London has spawned several different regulatory and police investigations. So far, targets of possible manslaughter charges for actions contributing to the disaster include...
The Reprieve Of The Flimsy Fly-By-Never Single-Wide Trailer Park Death Trap
For many, many years manufactured homes just couldn't 'get no respect.'
Inexpensive, certainly. Mobile? Not really. They just picked up that reputation by snuggling up to real — and real...
A Hurricane Tests The Myth That Affordable Housing Must Be Shoddy Housing
"Nuclear destruction" has been a common theme in descriptions of Florida Panhandle towns in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael. Multi-block stretches of flattened houses are pockmarked here and there...
English Government Bans Cladding That Burned At Grenfell Tower
We have just received word that the government in England has announced a complete ban on combustible cladding on buildings more that 18 m high. At the time it...
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