Violence

Research by Corinne BeaugardBeaugard is based in the School of Social Work at Boston University. and four colleagues studied a low barrier emergency shelter for women in Boston. Emergency...

Council housing estates in the United Kingdom have been portrayed in the media as dangerous and unlawful spaces. On the strength of this picture, government leaders have approved the...

So let's be honest here. How frightening are unhoused people? Sure, everyone has discomfort, even fear, when some person screams a loud and crazy litany of nonsense from (with...

In a recent publication, The Harvard Political Review details two forms pernicious ill-health that is killing increasing numbers of global citizens including Americans. Climate change is one. The other...

How much damage can politicians do? Can they kill people, directly or indirectly? Unfortunately, recent research is showing that in California at least that the answer is, intended or...

Reading the article attached to this post might put you in mind of banging your head against a brick wall. The article is about a project to calculate mortality rates...

Here are some images, with accompanying comments, taken during an encampment demolition in Halifax. The next steps, rendered inevitably off-camera, reflect the displacement of former encampment residents towards literally...

AHURI (the Australian Housing And Urban Research Institute Limited), the agency responsible for research about housing and homelessness in Australia, has just published a report about safety in emergency...

A team of researchers based in Toronto have just published an article about safety in homeless shelters. The research was triggered by accounts from homeless people who have stayed...

A recent study from the United Kingdom reports that the 'differentness' of autistic people hampers their ability to take advantage of resources that support health, education, and housing. What is...

The majority of women who experience homelessness in Los Angeles County have experienced violence during their current episode of homelessness. And one third of women experiencing homelessness in Los...

When New York's Mayor gave police new powers to involuntarily commit people to hospital for psychiatric treatment, advocates were worried. Can a person trained in public safety reasonably assess...

Housing ultimately solves homelessness. Outreach doesn't. Particularly when the outreach is accidentally or deliberately punitive. Next City has published an article that explores cities where the official intention is...

Architecture has been used to rebuff groups of people who society considers undesirableTry: Spotting Architecture That Encourages Homeless People To ‘Move On’ and Is There a Difference Between Hostile...

A partner dies from domestic violence every six days in Canada. Who are the unfortunate victims, and why don't they speak out before it is too late? When it comes...

The United Kingdom is currently preoccupied with asylum-seekers. Thousands of them arrive yearly, crossing the channel from Europe to instantly swell the UK's homeless population, already of crisis proportions. The...

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...

Research has taught us something about different experiences of homelessness. One word that comes up over and over again is violenceTry: Violence And Women’s Experiences Of Homelessness. The purpose of...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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'...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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:...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Here, from four experts in the UK, are answers to the question: "Why Don't Victims of Domestic Abuse Just Leave?" Cassandra Wiener discusses how abusers instill fear and exert control. Michaela Rogers...

If your cousin was being beaten by their partner, where would they go to live? This is a big question and regularly one for which there is no solution....

New York City, with homelessness mega-problems, is legally required to provide shelter for those homeless within its boundariesSee this article from the Coalition for the Homeless, which is the...

Two days ago, affordablehousingaction.org published a post about work by Akwatu Khenti, who teaches and studies at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto....

Recently, affordablehousingaction.org posted a story about mobile outreach teams, which pair police officers and health professionals. Together they respond to 911 calls where it seems likely that there could...

The number of single mothers becoming homeless in England is growing at an alarming rate, according to Shelter, a charity which supports people who are facing homelessness. Even though the...

A city such as Hamilton, Ontario, with a population of 560,000, fields an emergency call whose sketchy details suggest it might — just might be — triggered by a...

"Despite the profoundly divergent impacts of COVID-19 globally, it appears that diverse policy makers, scholars, and community leaders can agree on one thing — the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated...

The social stresses of COVID have been proposed in a number of countries as the reason for recent increases in domestic abuse. Whatever the reasons for the increase, the...

There are a variety of opinions on the causes of crime and violence in America's public housing. For example, the architects dunnit: their design failures with their low-budget, corner-cutting...

The Vancouver chapter of Soroptimist International owns two housing projects. One, a two storey project that was built in 1970, provides 21 units of housing for senior women with...

The Women's National Housing & Homelessness Network has just released a new study that documents how housing and homelessness affects women, girls and gender diverse populations in Canada. This...

A charity in Dublin, Ireland has issued a call for a separate space to offer services to women who experience homelessness in that country. The organization, Merchants Quay Ireland...

Equity Economics, a research consultancy that supports the non-profit sector in Australia, has just issued a report that recommends adding 16,800 units to the country's social housing stock. The...

When you're tackling something as complex as domestic and gender-based violence, it's helpful to have a roadmap. Women's Shelters Canada and others have just completed a Roadmap for the...

The stay at home orders, which were a key strategy to managing COVID 19, drew widespread attention to the violence that occurs at home. This post discusses who is...

Library Buses, Street Outreach Buses, Food Bank Buses, Disaster Displacement Recovery Buses: mobile social services has a long and distinguished career of providing low budget, temporary relief for human...

Victoria Gibson, who reports on affordable housing for the Toronto Star, has been watching the numbers of applications for social housing during 2020. The number of new households that...

This is part of a series about community. Growing and sustaining a community brings benefits to the participants, provides a means of personal development and builds hope and resilience....

Lineups to get into stores have become a fact of life with COVID restrictions. Our local grocery store gives preference to front line workers. All they need to do...

In the early days of COVID-19 we described temporary measures in Scotland to assist people experiencing domestic violence. Two groups led the design and the implementation of the temporary...

In the months leading up to COVID-19, two groups of researchers set out to investigate homelessness among women. The researchers were concerned that women's experiences were overlooked. Both groups...

Governments looking to ramp up their programming to help people living with intimate partner (aka domestic) violence have a new resource to help with their planning. Anova and Changing Ways...

Here's a senior's housing project in Portugal with a different approach to its personal alarm system. Retirement residences and nursing homes commonly have buttons for residents to push or...

In Australia, COVID-19 has dealt a double blow to people who experience domestic violence. The lockdowns have made it much more difficult to leave and/or avoid violent partners. At...

A group of mothers fleeing domestic violence took the council in Lambeth, England, to court. The issue? The moms’ right to be on a waiting list for social housing...

A colleague of mine always asks two questions: what are we missing and who is being left out? These questions are especially important in an era where funders and...

Tamara Loyer runs a drop-in for trans women in Vancouver. Loyer welcomed the announcement about a housing project that will be dedicated to people who are transgendered and people...

The National Government in England has joined other countries in announcing additional funding for programs to assist people who experience domestic abuse, which has risen significantly during the COVID-19...

Governments in Canada's far north have taken a different approach to the COVID-19 epidemic. They are encouraging residents to resume traditional practices of living on the land, rather than...

The COVID-19 response draws attention to our homes and how we live together. Some issues that we were struggling to fix before have been made even worse. Domestic violence...

A groundbreaking meeting was held recently between two UN bodies, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and UN Women (UN/Women). The two groups are talking about developing...

Being at home may avoid COVID-19, but it's not safe for people who live with a partner who is violent. The French media outlet MTV found that reports of...

Researchers based at Calgary's Elizabeth Fry Society have completed a report about how indigenous elders and knowledge keepers help people to forge paths to leave homelessness. The report focusses...

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has recently published a report about intimate partner violence in remote communities. The report reviews existing academic research and arranges it thematicallyThe themes...

The reports linked at the end of this post document the work of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada. They are based...

Remember 911? That was the number you were meant to dial in an emergency if you wished to summon the police? These days, you need to be careful what...

A recent Australian study explains how the lack of affordable housing condemns abused parents and children to domestic violence or . . . Or? Or homelessness. Which would you choose? Put yourself...

The Guardian has recently explored how domestic violence victims in the UK are assisted in escaping their misery. A somewhat surprising conclusion is that many of them are further...

A pregnant mom arrives at The Washington D.C. perinatal clinic Mamatoto Village. Is she homeless, or facing eviction, or couch-surfing? These are all important health questions. And if her housing...

Oops! Some of the best intentions don't pan out quite the expected way. Some twenty plus Cuyahoga County, Ohio communities have instituted what, on the surface, seemed to be a...