Rejuvenating The Housing-Rich Political Right? UK Evidence Suggests It Might Be Unlikely
It seems there's a price for hogging the 'housing ladder.' Countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand have received decades of political support for their...
Build A House Yourself: Unearthing The History Of Sears’ Home Kits
"Order for overnight delivery," says a contemporary on-line shopping site. It's a popular way to make purchases these days. It's also a revival, at least in the United States.
One...
Residual Land Value And Why It Matters
Today's first postTry: Ontario's Government: Fix Supply To End The Housing Crisis. Have They Backed The Winning Horse? talked about plans to unlock housing supply in Ontario. It explores...
Large UK Lender Stops Lending For Second Homes – Is This A Big Deal?
The Leeds Building SocietyBuilding societies are member-owned financial institutions. When you make a deposit with the Building Society, you become a member. They offer banking and related financial services,...
UK Youth: Pogo Got The Housing Crisis Right. It’s Our Fault!
Pogo?
Revered by a generation in North America, that comic book anti-hero some 50 years ago predicted the alleged culprit causing the current United Kingdom housing affordability crisis — at...
And Now For Something Completely Different: Affordability Via Free Land
Here's an idea sprung from the cramped (relatively) European countryside that might perfectly suit the wide-open spaces in countries such as the USA, Argentina, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Why...
Love Singapore Housing But Can’t Get There From Here. . . Or Maybe We Can
Much of the world is mightily taken with Singapore's victory in creating a workable social housing scheme with home ownership as its objective. It has been so fulfilling that...
“Advanced Nation” Housing Policy: If It Doesn’t Work, Patch It. Can We Do Better?
Current housing policy frameworks in many westernized countries resemble hospitals stocked exclusively with multi-coloured bandaids. Last week's solution is now this week's problem? Rip off the old plaster. Stick...
Crippling Real Estate Frenzy, Australian Version Of A Worldwide Problem
A news item about rising housing prices from Australia caught our eye. The reporter, Stephen Long, begins with a discussion of the rise in value of a home owned...
Understanding Racial and Spatial Inequity In The Housing Market
The Urban Institute has just released Who Owns The Twin Cities, which analyses residential ownership patterns in Minnesota's Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul). These communities have the largest...
Oopsy, Homeless: Covid Frontline Workers Give The Lie To Meritocracy
Lurking in the depths of conservative thought, the idea of a meritocracy is never far from the surface, at the very least as a convenient excuse for inaction. Merit-based...
How UK Housing Assistance Creates Ugly, Dodgy Investments
A recent article in The Guardian forms a basis for our headline. That article connects financial incentives for first time buyers to a plague of ugly, shoddy new build multi-unit...
So You Think It’s Tough To Rent In Your City? What About . . . ?
As cities cores become higher, denser, and more gentrified, the American dream is changing shape. What was once the lure of a single family home on a private lot...
Looking For Affordability? Try Success. Go North, Young Dreamer
Affordable can homes be realized from lower prices, but also higher income. Advice to young Americans once counselled to 'Go West" to make their fortune? These days, you might be better off going north.
Co-Ownership: Pride Cometh Before The Fall
Apologies for the doom-laden headline, but there's seldom a chance to use a pithy poetic-sounding phrase, particularly one that containeth that sophisticated 'eth' sound. After all, a sleazy single...
Tenancy In Common: Why is It Affordable, And Some Might Say, Detestable?
Tenancy In Common? Well, first we need to make liars out of ourselves by admitting that it's not really affordable, at least not so far as affordablehousingaction.org is concerned....
Repairs R Us: Habitat For Humanity Diversifies Onward
In the free markets of today's democracies, housing is an investment, not a human right. To build housing in this commodified environment is to pursue profit, not to reaffirm...
‘The Soo’ City Councillor Hammers Home Affordable Refurbishing Scheme.
Can't get elected as a city councillor in The Soo?The Soo is the nickname of Sault (pronounced 'Soo') Ste. Marie in the province of Ontario If you're a carpenter...
Habitat For Humanity Breaks New Trail In Kamloops British Columbia
Habitat for Humanity, arguably one of the most respected and successful affordable house building charities in the world, is undergoing a sea change.
Even with its ability to mobilize construction...
How Affordable Housing Might Add Substance To Talk of Segregation Reparations
Democratic candidates for the U.S. federal elections in 2020 have broached the subject of reparations for the continued mistreatment of black Americans that followed emancipation. So far, while there...
Inter-Governmental Wrangling: A True Menace To Affordable Housing?
From the Right: eliminate onerous government regulations and the free market will build us all out of affordable housing crises, providing the necessary housing for ownership by the "workforce,"...
Housing For Young Aussies: Buy A Home? Bad Choice. Rent? Worse.
Without a parents' basement to inhabit while saving for a house down-payment, millennial Aussies entering the housing market are facing a bleak future. Rising rents are taking such a...
New Zealand Employee Affordable Housing Supplied By An Unusual Company Town
Company towns have a special relationship with their citizens. They are usually, though not always, born out of necessity: their remote location.
Why create a town in the middle of...
UK Looks To Adopt Home Ownership Plan Based On What You Can Afford
Swedish construction company Skanska, in partnership with well-known furniture retailer Ikea wants to build affordable housing in Worthing, Sussex, UK. 30% of the BloKlok partnership's modular housing project will be set...
Who Buys Houses From Aging Boomers? Not Skint Millennials, That’s For Sure
The housing market, most unfortunately, is absolutely everywhere. As well, it's absolutely stuck in its everywhere place. (With rare exceptions, nobody buys a house — should they be able...
For Whom the Bell Tolls: Dare We Say For Revered Habitat For Humanity?
Habitat For Humanity is universally admired — a wildly successful hands-on religion which combines charity and sweat equity in its clarion call to service. Over the years, volunteers have...
Developers Discover ‘Missing Middle’ Housing Possible Without Subsidies
Thanks to housing industry lobbying, the affordable housing crisis that requires government subsidies has expanded upscale from traditional definitions of affordability. The gravy train of subsidies everywhere encompasses 'missing middle'...
Affordable Housing Details You Might Not Have Considered: Finding Two Houses Instead Of One
Affordable housing is not just a collection of construction material and land costs. It's a purse that must stretch to cover a rental or purchase . . . after...
Need Affordable Housing On A Tight Budget? Here Are 3 Things The Free Market Can Do For you
Eager to climb onto the first rung of the 'housing ladder'? Not convinced by the snarky attitude of blogs like affordablehousingaction.org, that spend column inches eye-rolling at the sanity...
Say It Ain’t So! Missing Middle Gobbles Up Habitat for Humanity Homes
Habitat For Humanity, the affordable housing fundraiser par excellence, the folks who perfected volunteer sweat equity, have thrown up their hands in California and cried 'uncle.'
The bottom line: in...
Pipedream Or Prescription? How Maine Government Might Loan Its Way Out Of Affordable Housing Crisis
With affordable homes at the mercy of the housing market, the basic human need for shelter is pitted against retirement savings and family wealth. The problem exists in Maine,...
While Home Ownership Guts Social Housing in the UK, Australia Tests A Hopeful New Ownership Model
In some western democracies the social housing experiment has been hampered by cold war attitudes, particularly in America. The national mindset: anything smacking in some way of big government...
The ‘Working Poor’ Who Can’t Afford Housing? Folks You Wouldn’t Expect
A Trulia Research Special Report recently updated an earlier exploration of professions which were struggling with affordable housing issues. For many it's a difficult choice: either impoverished by housing and living...
The Housing Ladder: Housing Prices + Down Payment + Student Debt = You Can’t Get There From Here
Across the ocean or close to home the dilemma is the same: unaffordable housing is killing the chance of young people ever making it to the first rung of...
American Exceptionalism Lives Proudly On, Building Habitat For Humanity Affordable Housing
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...
Limited-Equity Cooperative: What Is It? How Can It Help Finance Affordable Housing?
What is a Housing Cooperative?
It's a communal form of home ownership that allows cooperative members to buy an ownership share in a residential building. Those shares are bought at...
India->Trade Unions->Housing Co-ops->Thousands of Affordable Houses. Could It Happen Elsewhere?
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...
Young, And Want To Climb Aboard The Housing Ladder? How Long Before You Reach The First Rung?
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...
Stubborn Persistence Wins Support For Self-Help Housing In California
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...
“Manufactured” Homes: Inexpensive False Hope For Affordable Home Ownership?
With the prefabricated housing offering affordable housing possibilities worldwide, it's hardly surprising that 'mobile home parks', 'caravan parks', 'trailer parks' and similar solutions are being repackaged as 'manufactured home...
‘Naturally-Occurring’ No-Subsidy Affordable Housing. Too Bad It’s Dying!
In North America, it's a natural pastime to kick around trailer parks. Now playing on Netflix: 'Trailer Park Boys' — a festival of bumbling, lamebrain mishap-prone wanna-be criminals milking...
Yearn To Move To A City With Affordable Houses? Chase That Dream Quickly. It’s Disappearing.
Over time, different countries have evolved their own famous pockets of unaffordable housing. In America, San Francisco. In Australia, Sydney. In Canada, Vancouver. In the United Kingdom, London.
As time...
Manufactured Homes: Affordable Housing? Or A Dodge To Avoid New Construction?
Mobile home parks, a.k.a trailer parks, a.k.a manufactured home parks: call them what you will, over time they've attracted a reputation based on their failings, while their successes have...
Builder Mag Dishes On Who’s Who Affordability-Wise
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...