Housing And Health – The Problem Of Investigating A Cause-Effect Relationship
Do housing conditions cause health conditions? In individual cases, the answer has proven (after many meetings with coroners) to be yes. There is Awaab Ishak, who died from exposure...
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...
Neglected Social Housing Or Any Other Can Hound Older People Towards Long Term Care
Research has long shown that older people are more vulnerable to changes in their environment. For example, even though it may be more expensive and less efficient to allow...
The Fight For Trans Rights Shines A Light On Health Care Rights For Homeless Children
A great deal of so-called 'woke' energy around the world has been mobilizing to demand more recognition for 'trans' rights, together with legal mechanisms to create a physical and...
Asleep Near My Doorstep? The Matter Has Long Been Settled. Your Need For Slumber Is A Crime
The COVID pandemic resulted in a profound change — temporarily at least — in the way that homeless citizens were treated world-wide. Was it because communities were overwhelmed by...
Loosening The Hold Of Inequality In U.S. Cities
Do you remember the triple bottom line, a term invented to expand the bottom line? The bottom line was about money: the triple bottom line added social and environmental...
Funding Houses For All Homeless. An Enormous Expense Or An Amazing Money-Maker?
Spend money to end homelessness? Doing so will actually make more money than is spent. Isn't that the kind of fever-dream that propels gambling addicts until they become bankrupt? Nevertheless,...
Policy, Not Individual Choices, At The The Root Of COVID Inequities In Canada
Statistics Canada reached out to people living in Canada at the start of COVID and asked them to participate in an online survey as the pandemic progressed. Thousands of...
The United Kingdom Grits Its Teeth To Condemn … Anti-Social Behaviour(??)
With the waning of the COVID pandemic, what's happened to the United Kingdom's famous 'Everybody In' treatment of the homeless? The scramble to move the unhoused under hard roofs...
Community Land Trusts – A Route To Permanent And Deeply Affordable Housing
When it comes to adding housing that will be deeply affordable housing and permanent, community land trusts are in a good position to step up. When a community land...
Ethical Business Runs Headlong Into An Ethical Dilemma – Tenant Wellbeing
Shelby R. King, writing in Shelterforce, asks whether an investment firm that owns residential property and regularly evicts its tenants should be eligible for the coveted B CorpB Corp is a...
Study: Kids Roll With Punches Delivered By Bad Housing . . . ...
Some studies produce surprising results that are contrary to expectations. Others add important details to our knowledge of a particular subject.
And then there are studies that unfortunately confirm our...
NYC Adopts Common Torture Technique To Be Applied To Homeless Youth
It's truly astounding the cruelty that groups of self-important, out of touch bureaucrats and/or politicians can inflict on their fellow humans:
"Homeless youth are nothing but a nuisance. Let's torture...
Chronic Homeless Need Help, But Lived Experience Counters Incarceration
The latest fad(?) in solving homeless problems has been dominated by fed-up citizens endlessly encountering dangerous(?) chronic homeless people on the streets. Responding to the concerns of their citizens,...
Bruised But Unable Move Out? Spain Will Stop Domestic Violence Before It Starts
One of the most fraught housing crises anywhere in the world is the need to protect life and limb of individuals and family members suffering from domestic abuse. Escaping...
British Columbia Temporary Abuse Shelter: The Gift That Keeps On Taking
Five or so years ago, US media stories appeared on a regular basis that touted a clever Internal Revenue Service (IRS) program that purports to 'give' rather than 'take'...
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...
Can Government Break The Mould In UK Social Housing?
Parents Faisal Abdullah and Aisha Amin repeatedly complained about the mould in their social housing flat. Their landlord, a housing association in Rochdale, a city in Greater Manchester, was...
Yukon Considers: Who Deserves Social Housing When There’s Never Enough?
The following problem is a conundrum for all social housing suppliers virtually everywhere in the world. We're going to examine that problem in Canada's Yukon Territory, where the homeless...
Could A Montréal ‘EMMIS’ Squad Commit Homeless To Institutional Programs?
New York City and California are struggling to get mental health interventionist programs for the homeless off the ground. It hasn't been easy going for either initiative. On both...
“Rough Sleepers”: A Book That Triggers Thoughts On A U.S. Housing Crisis
Reviewer Judy Stone, an infectious disease specialist, uses a periscope of chronic homelessness to capture a view of a growing housing crisis in America. Stone focuses first upon a...
![exterior of Toronto]s Junction Place Shelter, a adapted one story commercial building with a windowed front](https://affordablehousingaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/toronto-junction-place-shelter-1-324x156.png "Positioning Emergency Shelters To Give The Best Possible Support To Their Clients")
Positioning Emergency Shelters To Give The Best Possible Support To Their Clients
Very few of us have the chance to work at an emergency shelter. If we did, we'd have a much better idea of what it is like to work...
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...
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...
Social Housing Mould Killed Awaab Ishak. Will Institutional Apathy Kill Others?
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...
Indigenous Leaders Turned COVID’s Gloomy Prospect Into A Toronto Opportunity
In Canada, witnessing decision after decision to undo measures that were put in place during COVID is cause for head scratching. The country's 2020 Community Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)...
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...
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,...
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...
Improving Supports For People Leaving Homelessness
Researchers in England have done a massive review of evidence about health and social care for people who are homeless. The justification for the review itself comes from evidence:...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 $$...
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...
Homeless Health Care In Harris County Stands Out . . . In A Good Way
Earlier this year, affordablehousingaction.org wrote about an employment program in Harris County, Texas. Employ2Empower offered employment to people who were homeless. In the pilot phase of the program, one...
Mobile Homes: Nifty, Thrifty & Growing Safer. But Climate-Change Safe?
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...
An Internet Light Illuminates The Dark Art Of Ignoring Public Housing Tenants
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...
Tomorrow’s Chest Pains Might Lead You To Nearby Public Housing
At affordablehousingaction.org, our posts are replete with the 'yes-no-maybe' issues surrounding existing social/public housing as it exists today. As well as being admittedly much-maligned, it offers potential benefits for...
Punishment For UK Public Housing Death: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Written in 1962, Sung by Bob Dylan without lyrics relating to a Vietnam-linked future ever expressly stated, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall nevertheless became a prophecy of the horrors...
Moulds Don’t Bother Many But For Some In Social Housing They Are Deadly
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...
ACEs – What Are They And Why Do They Matter For Homeless Children?
In child development, ACE refers to Adverse Childhood Experience. Witnessing violence or being sexually abused are two examplesMore details are available at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:...
Can The Lure of Farming Lift Women Out of Homelessness?
It is said by experts that long ago, pre-history in fact, the men hung about uselessly, drinking and carousing in Stone Age men's clubs, reluctantly picking up a spear...
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...
Help Us Out, Goldilocks! Gov MIA! Public Housing Needs Temperatures ‘Just Right.’
Global warming is sending a deadly message to those responsible for the well-being of public/social housing residents. We've had wakeup calls in Europe and America with extraordinary extremes of...
COVID Responses Deepen Our Understanding Of The Housing-Health Connection
The connection between housing and health came late to the table when researchers began studying the social determinants of healthTry: Connecting The Housing And Health Dots . Researchers have...
Challenging Number Crunchers To Say More About The Need For Deeply Affordable Housing
Canada's National Housing Strategy is about "giving more Canadians a place to call home:"
"The goal is to ensure Canadians across the country have access to housing that meets their...
Gentrification: It’s A Pleasure To See You, But Have You Outstayed Your Welcome?
Yesterday . . . a determination that lower class housing might confidently be labelled an eyesore. Meanwhile, those who occupied that housing might be viewed to be of little...
Time To Get Out Your Hip Waders And Plunge Into Sewer Socialism?
'Me Too, Me Too!' Canada has a tendency to behave like the annoying little kid on the block who hero-worships the Big Kid who lives one block south. For...
“The Poor Will Always Be With Us:” COVID Showed That To Be A Lie
When will America climb out of its 2001 foxhole? Not since the British burned the White House down in 1812 has the country collectively faced such a threat. Was...
Did COVID Interventions Make Us More Resilient?
Emergency planners, the people we task with preparing us for emergencies, often say, "the current plan is only as good as the last emergency." In other words, we're good...
Supporting Vulnerable Populations To Thrive By Changing Housing And Health Care Systems
This post starts with an article from New South Wales, Australia, where statistics about levels of domestic violence during COVID have just been published. As the reporter notes, the...
Fallen Women? The Church Can Provide A Pick-Me-Up For 1 or 2
An article linked below calls a California housing project for homeless pregnant women "a beautiful work of compassion." It is, at least in principle, if perhaps not practice. For...
Surprising Shopping Patterns In A ‘Food Desert’
The absence of food stores in urban regions gives rise to the idea of 'Food Deserts.' They are considered to be a particular problem for public/social housing residents who...
Homeless And Hospitalized — Where Next?
Jamille Whitlow is a journalism intern at NC Healthnews. She's winkled out this story about Samaritan House in Charlotte, North Carolina, an idea that is the brainchild of two...
Making Winnipeg A Safer Place To Live
"Winnipeggers deserve to feel safe where they live work and play" These remarks were made during a recent funding announcement by the provincial government in Manitoba.
Some of the funding...
Integrating Local Health and Housing Planning – Who Benefits?
Slowly but surely governments are coming to grips with the idea that housing affects people's health. This should be good news, especially for the people who pay excessive amounts...
You Know, I Think They Might Live On Our Floor . . .
When this writer moved to Toronto, he rented an apartment in a building with 150 units because he knew one person who lived there. When he moved out two...
Indigenous Knowledge And Experience Central To Housing, Homelessness And Urban Development
Katłįà (Catherine) Lafferty is a member of the Yellowknives First Nation. In an article in Policy Options, she illustrates how an aboriginal-led approach to child welfare would have made...
Seeking A Cooperative Route To Ending Food Apartheid In New York City
Poorer citizens in New York City have suffered a form of whiplash with the election of their new Mayor, Eric Adams.
Adams is both Black (hopeful hoorays) and a former...
Housing And Support – Foundations For Mental Health
The UK government is at work revamping its mental health strategy. Organizations are offering up studies and advice. There are calls to strengthen the connection between mental health care...
A Story Of Homelessness In Los Angeles – From Pregnancy To Motherhood To Loss
The following story was born when videographer Claire Hannah Collins made a proposal to the Los Angeles Times. As the video developed, Gale, a Staff Writer at the Los...
Social Tenants, Move Out For A While. It’s Good For The Planet
"Social housing tenants need reassurance on decarbonising homes." That's a headline that is revisited below in this post.
These days, it's also the punch line, as in ". . ....
Reparations In Evanston, Illinois Start With Housing
For 50 years, from 1919 to 1969, Evanston, Illinois turned its back on its Black residents. It withheld opportunities that were offered white residents. Today, residents living in the...
UN Calls On Canada To Help Its Children By Upping Its Housing Game
The UN regularly reviews Canada's performance on human rights issues. Most recently, the rights of the child have been the subject of scrutiny. In the review process, Canada reports...
Violence And Women’s Experiences Of Homelessness
For years, Canadian governments have responded to women's homelessness in two different ways. One provides supports to women living with a violent partner (domestic violence)When violence is part and...
Bridging The Communication Gap Between Academia And Popular Media
Seventy-two people died in the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. Today, thousands continue to live in buildings with unsafe cladding and substandard fire separations. Jenny Preece, who is based...
Pushing Supportive Housing To Do Better
Supportive housing is supposed to be part of the solution to homelessness, not contributing to it. It's supposed to be the magic space where people who have been homeless...
Community-Integrated Jailing For The Homeless Criminal Class?
Visit 'Ground Zero' in the world's homeless crisis, The City of Los Angeles (LA) in California. It's an encounter that every city with a homelessness problem should consider undertaking...
Some Compulsory Trivia For New(?) ‘Social Housing’ Activists
America has spent the better part of a century digging public housing into an economic hole from which it will, at least in its present form, never emerge. Parsimony...
Goosed By Pandemic: Walkers? Yes, Big Time! Bikers . . . Not So Much
The cost of housing is so high these days that ownership is prohibitive to many, if not most in the next generation. Meanwhile, rental housing costs can drive you...
Homeless On The American Murder Range: Shooter Or Target?
So what's the homeless score in Murderland?
How many upstanding citizens have been done to death by homeless people — angry, drug-fueled and/or otherwise crazed?
How many hapless homeless people have...
Indigenous Housing – Doing Better
Housing conditions in remote communities have been a personal issue for this writer, ever since working in Canada's north in the 1970's. At the time, the housing built for...
O Canada! The True North Weak And Diseased . . .
The headline above is a line from Canada's national anthem, unfortunately adjusted to circumstances.
The impetus for such an outrageous(?) modification comes from a book review in nature. The review...
National Crime Problems? Find Scapegoats. . . Or Up Social Spending?
When it comes to finding scapegoats for rising crime, America is hardly alone in demonizing the poor and vulnerable. Still, it's success over decades in pointing the finger towards...
Free To Be Completely Nuts? California Winds Homelessness Into The Issue
California is re-examining mental health problems 'solved' half a century ago as a way of dealing with some aspects of chronic homelessness.
Some chronically homeless people have such severe mental...
Gump Is Dead But Anonymous Donors Aren’t, Thank Heavens!
From abundance fifty years ago, the Christmas Island Forest Skink is now extinct. Gump died. She was the last of her kindTry:Extinction obituary: the sudden, sad disappearance of the...
Better Stories About American Public Housing? Yes, Please!
Best public stories about Cabrini-Green? Of course there can't be any, can there? That grotesque citadel of crime, depravity and lost souls — a Chicago public housing complex better...
Supportive Housing: What Is It? How To Add More That Is Needed
Canada and the United States need more supportive housing, the kind that is affordable for people with very low incomes and provides support to help with activities of daily...
Homelessness Shown To Be A Literal School Of Hard Knocks
At the beginning of the year, we published a post about the surprising prevalence of brain injuries among the homeless, based on research by Tiffany O'Connor at the Hamilton...
Refurbishing Refuseniks: Public Housing Tenant Self-Defence
Those dratted American public housing tenants who won't drink the Kool-Aid! With the Race-To-Replace currently under starter's orders, big bucks and bulldozers poised and ready, who are these selfish...
Breathing Health: Colorblind For All The Wrong Reasons
"You are what you eat" is a well known phrase that ties human well-being to healthy food. The deterioration of America's public housing in particular has added another important...
Government Broken Relocation Promises: Death Warrants?
Nursing homes have no desire to become custodians of tatty old furniture, near and dear to nobody's hearts but the owner's. But far from discouraging such an intake along...
The Wealth Gap Widened During COVID. How To Close It?
Researchers from Australia and the UK have teamed up to review and analyse what happened to the housing market during COVID. They extended their study to include New Zealand,...
California’s Rapid Housing Initiative For Homeless People – How’s It Working Out?
The Terner Center For Housing InnovationThe Terner Center For Housing Innovation is based at the University of California Berkeley. It has a long history of studying housing and homelessness...
NYC: Shelter Available. A Move To Housing? Unending Delay
The 'ahead of its time' horrors of George Orwell's book, 1984, has in some respects taken 40 years and more to catch up to the events predicted in its...
USA Climate Change: Who’s Got Junk? Everybody.
Climate change has brought new risks to America, as it has to every other nation in the world. One kind of risk, as yet little prepared-for, is debris from...
Homelessness: Après Moi, Le Déluge . . . Or Is It ‘Le Gulag?’
Louis XV of France is credited with the flood warning in the title above. Today the saying is interpreted as a giant shrug.
"After me comes the flood. But who...
Does A Papal Apology Bode Well For Indigenous Housing In Canada?
On April 1, 2022, Pope Francis apologized for the harms caused to children in the residential school system in Canada. The apology came at the end of a week...
Personal Perspectives On Stable Housing In California
In housing and homelessness circles, California is well known for its high housing costs and its tens of thousands of people who are living 'unsheltered.'
California's Project Homekey is an...
Pandemic Evictions In America – Some Good News
It is important to begin by saying that eviction is not a good situation under any circumstances. An eviction during COVID made a bad situation worse. For this reason,...
I Spy With My Video Eye — Social Landlord Dirty Deeds
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...
Envy Homeless Youth Backpacking Adventure? Don’t
They're young, sitting together laughing on the sidewalk. If only you could do the same, toss aside life's burdens for a few moments, be footloose and carefree!
Be careful what...
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,...
Black ‘Holocaust’? Community Heart? NPH Museum Covers Both
This post celebrates the advent of the U.S. National Public Housing Museum (NPHM). Physically, it is still a bright and glossy figment of the imagination. A visit to the...
Domestic Abuse Victims Must Stay Local: A Death Sentence?
The headline of this post suggests that a victim leaving a domestic abuser, but not that abuser's neighbourhood, could have fatal consequences. That might seem to be an idea...
Denver’s Space-Age Homelessness: Hiding In Plane Sight
Like the opportunistic grass that grows up through the cracks in a concrete sidewalk, the homeless prevail in their daily struggle to survive.
That they are bound to do so...
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