Funding

Like a majority of American States, Arkansas has created a Low Income Trust Fund to help it build affordable housing for those most in need. Unlike a majority of American...

From the Charlotte Explorer comes a small, sad story in the midst of a global housing crisis. It illustrates in a nutshell why 'community interest' housing cannot be pieced...

Owning a home on leased land? These days, most affordable housing discussions of this method of home ownership focus on community land trusts, where the home owner has a...

The Charleston, SC, author of an opinion piece on the need for imaginative housing solutions waxes nostalgic about his upbringing in a neighbourhood of purpose-built affordable housing. In the midst...

Some pretty darned exceptional Americans have donated sweat equity to help form no less than thirty-four little communities of good spirit and good work in the company of other...

"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...

India is the world's second most populous country and it is rapidly developing. Luxury houses are no longer just the palaces of a backward feudal state. Modern sub-developments and...

Sweat equity undoubtedly pre-dates currency. When there isn't any cash, you can pay with goods. When you have no goods to pay, you can pay with the sweat of...

While public (a.k.a social) housing has been extremely successful in some European nations, it survives and prospers against a small 'c' conservative attitude that financially poor tenants are both...

Hand-wringing about the rising cost of affordable housing is by far the most common way of identifying 'the target' of the affordable housing crisis. But housing is almost always paid...

Public banks — those are the ones that are open to the public, right? Yes . . . and no. Although people may casually refer to a "public banking system,"...

You know those big multi-storey fire escapes on old buildings? The ones where the last ladder has to be lowered to the ground from above? If you're young and planning...

In all housing matters affordable, Toronto has disappointed in recent years. The City has an affordable housing office that has studied the city's housing problem while churning out reports...

We'll leave our hat on first, an unusual act of mourning for the wreck of the USS Public Housing, driven quite deliberately onto the rocks. Conceived and capitalized as...

Industry operating in remote communities inevitably take responsibility for providing employee accommodation. But in tourist towns of Southern Georgian Bay? Really? The sad truth is that affordable housing is in...

Let's place our housing future in the hands of private enterprise, shall we? Let's all live in a housing industry's pipe dream of what homeowners truly want and deserve. Tempe,...

Public transit takes the fall in an awkward, defensive article about the housing market in Toronto by one of Canada's top business newspapers. Toronto, for many years overly-conscious of becoming a...

"Business done by government is invariably mediocre, inefficient and wasteful." That's the message of political touts for private-enterprise affordable housing. "Financiers, developers and the construction industry can run rings...

When finished, 41 households in Patterson, California, will move into affordable homes that they will help to build. Self-Help Enterprises is the sponsor of the project. The US Department...

However 'winning' the Cold War benefited America, reflections on the history of this period are gradually exposing costs incurred by the stoking of public fear. Today, a new generation of...

In an era when a global housing crisis demands leadership from national government, it seems reasonable to expect that local government would be one hundred and ten percent onside,...

Recent house financing developments in India make a case for looking beyond a country's borders when looking for best practices for financing and constructing affordable housing. Risky lending practices, buying,...

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Modern free-market capitalist-based society fervently wishes the answer to be two: the angel of affordable housing, and the...

Don't gimme shelter. Gimme neighborhood slow-taxiing housing values finally lifting off the runway into the free market stratosphere, dragging my house along with with them. I'm stuck in a down-market,...

Amazon, currently ranked the third most valuable company in the world, will not find the dollars to show leadership in a civic, state, national and world affordable housing crisis....

Community activists in New York City are pushing for the establishment of community-oriented banks that can be counted on the reinvest a community's financial resources into local endeavours, such...

So the brilliant Margaret Thatcher era scheme to buy your UK council rental home is unravelling. Really, it only ever could unravel. With only a third of the sale price...

Increasing density seems the only option for building affordable housing in the downtown core of many cities. Even smaller homes in higher towers may only temporarily be affordable, if...

What happens when a UK developer, eager for a housing contract that includes a fat government subsidy, deliberately ignores the true cost of the housing and paints a too-rosy...

Seattle, with the third largest homeless population in the country, can be excused for generating money for affordable housing construction by levying a tax on big business. Amazon, one...

On one hand, we have a world-wide casino that uses the basic need for shelter for gambling chips — housing. The result in America?  According to an admittedly self-interested...

Shelter, a UK based charity, published New Civic Housebuilding 2017 to present an approach to building affordable housing using successful strategies from the past. The report argues that developing...

Further to an article recently published here, Can Private Enterprise Ever Support Affordable Housing? Amazon Action Demonstrates Otherwise, the City of Seattle has now watered down its affordable housing...

The story: In 2001, Maui development company got fast-tracked planning permission, concessions on parking and other benefits, together with the equivalent of fifteen+ million dollars to build an housing...

Governments currently in power the United States and Britain have been dismantling social housing in favour of a starry-eyed vision: a publicly financed affordable housing vehicle with a high...

A nationally respected housing developer has decided to tell it like it is: the huge financial burden of affordable social housing cannot be born alone by one business sector...

So you'd like to think your country might one day have enough affordable housing? Think about it as a drug for a social disease which could be called Shelter-itis. So...

Builders in western countries cry poor when it comes to building affordable housing. Without public support, the gap between development costs and reasonable profit margins are too great. Low...

There are circumstances in which it is easy to pity the 'missing middle.' The term 'workforce housing' is increasingly used to describe accommodation for those above-minimum wage workers in...

Ply Gem? A small town in Wales, we guessed when we first saw the name. Nope. It's a manufacturer and supplier of exterior housing materials based in Wake, North Carolina....

In America, public housing history helps to bridge the gap between 'don't be cruel to the very poorest' (accompanied by conservative eye rolling) and 'help the poor lift themselves...

Amazon, based in Seattle, Washington, and a seismic presence in that city, has taken issue with a new Seattle business tax. Naturally, that tax will cost one of the richest companies...

From the left: The United Kingdom At least some people in Britain, including those who vote labour, are looking forward to leader Jeremy Corbyn's regular promises of 1,000,000 new units of...

The flight of poverty in American cities has been towards the suburbs. Downtown affordable housing has evaporated in the face in urban renewal and gentrification. This has largely been...

Someone wants to build affordable housing in Whistler? There will be no NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) here. NIMBY doesn't work when there is only your back yard....

Hats off to a number of well-meaning citizens, bureaucrats and politicians in Joliet, Illinois. Not so much praise to those carping and foot-dragging, as well as suggesting the money...

With American conservatives pouring poison down the social housing well at a fearsome rate, the world — or at very least the North American continent — has been brainwashed...

Central Florida, once an inexpensive to place to live, has seen a dramatic drop in housing affordability. Fortunately in 1992, a bipartisan bill was passed in the Florida Legislature:...

With housing speculation a sacred right in western democracies, only the total collapse of the land and housing market can ensure the future return of affordable housing. That event,...

In the United Kingdom, affordable housing has been redefined to be anything up to 80% of market value. That makes the war on affordable housing 'a complete red herring'...

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina is not impressed with the lengthy time it takes to deliver a mere trickle of affordable housing for purchase. And...

Middle class families in New York City may qualify for affordable housing while making as much as $180,000 a year in income. The affordable houses for which they window...

It's abundantly clear that a national speculative housing markets are pushing housing prices beyond affordability in many countries. There is little real reason for any hope that housing prices...

Business managers, bureaucrats, civil servants and politicians seem quite capable of supervising the development of massive housing projects, and are able to factor in all kinds of long-term expenses,...

America's affordable housing crisis rapidly worsens. One of the key government supports for affordable housing since 1986 has been the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). It is estimated that...

A pillar of North American democracy (from a conservative viewpoint at least) is the right to speculate on housing. It has supposedly enriched homeowners of all stripes since World...

There once was, and still is, a universal standard of housing affordability that is recognized world-wide. If you yourself (no, not your average community member, just you) can rent...

Developers and Local Government alike are fond of blaming each other for lengthy delays in the planning of housing projects. In the United Kingdom, a Government draft proposal is...

Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) emerged from a British 17th century need to assemble land in order to create canals. In the 19th century they were used the same way...

In 2014, when the Australian government sold 293 properties of public housing in Sydney’s harbour area, it promised to build 1,500 new affordable housing units. At the time, there...

According to free market conservatives, American public housing is dead. It was the victim of its socialist anti-free-enterprise roots and of the lower class inhabitants who, in fits of...

With affordable housing demand far outstripping supply, what are we to make of government affordable housing incentives that produce stories like the following? "Developers in Richmond, VA are excited...

Corporate developers (are there any other kind?) pledge allegiance to shareholders, not fellow citizens. They are compelled to maximize profits and minimize losses. If involved in a public/private partnership...

From Builder, a magazine catering to the building industry, a recent article purports to provide THE REAL DATA ON ENTRY-LEVEL HOME BUYING AFFORDABILITY  (link below). For affordable housing advocates, one might...

Lack of affordable housing has always been a straightforward problem for 'company towns.' Almost always built in support of resource-based industries such as mining or pulp and paper mills,...

Hold onto your hats, ladies  and gentlemen, this one's an absolute stunner! Freddie Mac, the quasi-government financial agency which helped to lurch America into the 2008 Housing meltdown then...

Why does Lawford Village, Essex, need a housing trust? The answer begins with a proposed Labour government policy in 1959, one that would enshrine local council tenants the Right...

Financial assistance for home buyers can come in several forms. On the surface, government cash handouts or tax relief strongly appear to make housing more affordable. But those with...

The Battle of social housing is all but lost in North America. One by one the remaining project towers fall, ill-advised 'socialist' political tendencies sharing the blame with drug-addicted,...

With so many people hanging on for dear life to necessities such as food, health care and housing, its easy to suppose that everyone does it with the same...

Many private/public partnerships to build affordable housing do not pass the smell test with their handfuls of affordable houses or apartments in projects numbering hundreds of market rate or...

School Fees, hospital fees, sewer fees, sidewalk fees: with limited options for funding to pay for new housing development infrastructure, American cities have turned to the revenue they can...

U.S. affordable housing advocates have been nervously awaiting cuts to federal funding for affordable housing, thanks to several measures introduced in the new Tax Reform Bill passed in 2017. However,...

In a recent speech committing to more British affordable housing, Prime Minister Theresa May was quick to find culprits everywhere, but not so much on her own doorstep. The...

In a recent article, the Mayor of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island echoed a funding frustration that many lower level governments and non-governmental organizations face. Governments at all levels tend...

New Jersey towns and cities have had a long history of trying very hard to wriggle out of affordable housing responsibilities, so hard in fact that the courts have...

During recent Progressive Revenue Task Force public testimony, a homeless participant stopped breathing. Following many tense moments and an ambulance to hospital, his replacement explained that the recovering victim suffered...

Not NIMBY, but PLIMBY. Please in My Back Yard is becoming a social concern for the simple reason that the 'sense of unreasonable entitlement' underclass is growing beyond the...

Everyone knows you can't bail out a sea. And yet, when it comes to homelessness, city councils behave like children on a beach staring at the water with a...

Darling of conservative "do it with the private sector" thinking, affordable housing private/public partnerships are now revealing just who gets 'done.' Hint: its not the developers. Sure, developers are grumbling...

The recent great tax giveaway by President Trump and the Republican Party has provided long term delight for the wealthy. An insubstantial windfall will  blow very gently in the...

That's what Tokyo has done for the last ten years — build more housing. What counts for more in a city as huge as Tokyo? Say around 100,000 units...

It seems that the bloom is off the rose in the United Kingdom, as local councils confront the loophole built into the nation's public/private partnership initiative to fund and...

The great American public housing projects have failed. They became lawless, violent, unliveable. The great unanswered question: did the needy, with their brutish, immoral, uncivilized and criminal ways, cause...

Skeptical neighbours of a man hailed as "the greatest architect of our time" put Frank Gehry once again through the NIMBY wringer. He was promoting a revised Santa Monica urban...

What happens when the brave new affordable world of public/private partnerships meets only half the annual demand for affordable housing? What happens? It's obvious. The demand for affordable housing just...

Municipal handwringing would appear to be the sole, and all-too-frequent, response to privately-developed affordable housing that doesn't quite deliver on its promise. One example: a widespread tendency under new...

When building affordable housing, non-profits need to be wary of misguided, even false, messaging from governments that have failed at the task. In North America, the decline of large...

More and more growing cities are facing an affordable housing crisis brought on by gentrification — accommodating their population expansion by renovating or replacing poorer quality urban houses. The...

For all of its physically attractive qualities, gentrification of inner cities is becoming a barrier to affordable housing world-wide. In North America, government action is limited by 'hands off...

Are you friendly and outgoing? Shrewd, with a head for financial details and nose for business? Driven and hard-working? A team player with management skills necessary to effectively harness...

A series of economic miracles that definitely do not depend on government interference is apparently due to occur. It will benefit young people as well as seniors with little...

America's repeal of net neutrality has been greeted by much handwringing, and the spectre of giant telecom companies upping prices and limiting options for customers. But there is another way...

A story from a local Massachusetts paper illustrates the uphill battle against a long held government mindset: the best projects to fund are seed-money projects: those that grow wings...

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two US Congress-chartered GSE's (Government Sponsored Enterprises) have been blamed by many for causing the 2008 US credit crisis that brought the housing industry to...

With its fundraising skills and huge volunteer pool, Habitat for Humanity has become a powerhouse charity in the construction of affordable housing. Habitat for Humanity published its Annual Report...

As long as speculation and investment are allowed to drive up housing prices in major cities everywhere, those in search of affordable housing may have only one sensible solution:...

There has long been a reluctance to recognize housing as an important social determinant of health. Accepting the idea means facing the challenge of finding affordable housing for those...

A recent development by Singapore's public Housing and Development Board suggests an alarming future for public/private partnerships in countries who may be helping the needy to find affordable housing...

Is American eminent domain a sinister weakness of public-private partnerships? Imagine that you own a small, old family dwelling in a downtown neighbourhood that has seen better days. A young...