Personal Stories

Olivier M. reports that Toronto had a golden age of homelessness, from 2009 to 2013. He speaks from personal experience. In the golden age, he could find a bed in...

How can a nonprofit or a charity become significantly profitable? Answer: it can't. But non-profits can create a comfortable living for a group of employees. Some of them, with...

During its short life, affordablehousingaction.org has published 2,700 posts. The purpose of reporting this is not to puff out our chests, but to highlight a gap in our content....

Move on, move on. Nothing to see here except vegetation. Unless, of course, you're in the market for yummy organic veggies. A mini-miracle comes courtesy of a modicum of farming...

When you think about tenant organizing in Kentucky, you might visualize Black tenants calling out their housing authority for poor conditions. The article linked to this post tells a...

Much staff discussion and laughter erupted in the halls of a Toronto hospital while this writer awaited day surgery. Shortly thereafter, bouts of singing and more laughter filtered in...

IKEA is a commercial home furnishing company known by vast numbers of people in many countries, offering attractive living at bargain prices. In the UK recently it has taken...

So you're downtown, crossing with the light at a crosswalk. As you approach the middle, you take a wide tour around a shouting person man who is focussing a...

In 2022, the Better Government Association (BGA) reported on activities of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). The BGA looked at the number of homes that the CHA had demolished,...

There are some awfully ugly human behaviours out there in the real world. There are also bad habits that foolhardy local councils of one stripe of another can stumble...

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,...

No, this isn't about an influential person who experienced homelessness, saw the light, and embarked on a fight for the Human Right To Adequate Housing via the power of...

Well now, here's a convenience that nobody considered when Canada decided to allow mercy killing of those whose lives had become an unbearable torment. Physical pain was the torment...

The United Kingdom National charity, Shelter, laments something affordablehousingaction.org has moaned about for a long time: Canada's federal government, like the UK national government, has conspired with builders. They...

"When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose," sang the Bob Dylan in his famous song "Like a Rolling Stone." Dylan is renowned for his great lyrics. But...

The following Guardian article — a personal diary of one American with mental illness who was incarcerated against her will — is a vision of horror. . .  for...

So, what does a green bank do, anyway? According to the article linked below, green banks help make investments in climate change by facilitating loans to customers that banks...

In a country that is not yet a signatory to the United Nation's Right to Adequate housing, polls show that it has considerable support from the American population. All very...

Nothing like a little high-tech homeless help to provide a brightener for the day. This post features a modern day Buck Rogers . . . Wait, you've never heard...

In America, large numbers of homeless children do not receive schooling support to which they are entitled. Federal law requires it, but nationally, a considerable number of education districts...

Arguments can be (and are) made about the folly of easing the grinding hell of circumstance that imprisons those without housing: "Governments at every level need to address this homeless...

Princeton, British Columbia. Ed Farkas and his wife freely admit they came out as full bore NIMBYs, spitting fire and raging on at local council to deal with the...

The importance of pets to people who are homeless is well understood by some, and dismissed as an undeserved indulgence by others. Affordablehousingaction.org has voiced support for pets with...

Where, on a list of places to call home, does a prison fall? Right at the bottom for most. But, as it turns out, right at the top for...

Lived Experience? Some decision-makers need more of it. Recently, there has been a considerable push for lived experience to back up government and homeless/housing support agencies by those advocated...

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...

Consider an American veteran who fought for his country. Getting on now. A loner who led a successful life: money, home, car, etc, until bad investments brought him down...

In 2017 (around the time affordablehousingaction.org started posting), researchers from universities in Spain and Chile published a review of academic literature that investigated the connection between eviction, health and...

Potty: United Kingdom slang for someone who is a little bit daft. (Daft, in turn, is slang for someone who is somewhat potty) Its origins are not generally agreed...

Tent encampments are little islands of anarchy, with inhabitants attempting to survive in opposition to, or at best outside of, society's rules. Encampments of people experiencing homelessness in North...

As we swing off Toronto's Lakeshore Boulevard away from Lake Ontario, we are caught frequently in a left-hand turn lane, waiting for a green light. Parading beside our car...

Wales, which is part of the United Kingdom, is currently experiencing a 'right to adequate housing' crisis — one that is frequently ignored by countries that have signed the...

Ontario's Superior Court has issued a decision in a case with significant implications for the right to adequate housing. The case involves Nell Toussaint, who has been challenging the...

Middle class and up? You can afford to be wasteful. There's at least a little bit of money to burn. Very low — even no — income? Every penny has...

Bankers in the Boonies? This writer first encountered it as a marry-in to the poor relations of a cottage-owning family. We got a snippet of holiday this year in...

Gather round, public housing poor folks with toothpaste money to invest. Skip the rinse and spit and put those hard working cavity-prevention pennies into the black magic of cryptocurrency!...

A picture is often worth a thousand words of fun and fancy. When it comes to truly affordable housing we know this because, over the past few years, one...

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...

How quickly civilization fades in a deteriorating empire. Only a few decades ago, arguably the greatest country in the world could imagine a civilization without slums. To achieve it,...

"And who shall tidy this?" quoth the elders (not very old) their faces freighted with wisdom beyond their years. And lo, the others hung their heads and scuttled away,...

Fifty years ago, could one ego-driven man have seriously damaged the health and integrity of America's public housing tenants by accusing them all of being driven "mad" or "bad"...

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...

This post starts with an story about Mères avec pouvoir, which supports single moms in Montréal, Québec. The wraparound services include help with child care, education and housing. The...

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...

Jeanette Taylor was an 18-year-old single mum when she applied to the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). She was struggling to get through school — unthinkable that she wouldn't —...

It's not too hard to describe 'adequate housing.' The United Nations has done so. It shouldn't be all that difficult to get entire nations to commit to the principle...

Do we need more activist explanations that parse such critical details as 'visible' and 'invisible' homelessness, as well as the specific health challenges suffered by the 'chronic' homelessness (not...

As the public inquiry about the Grenfell Tower fire grinds onFor example, read this account in The Guardian: ‘A merry-go-round of buck-passing’: inside the four-year Grenfell inquiry , it...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) publishes a map with information about homelessness. The map indicates 161,548 people were homeless in California on any given night...

If the great social economist Karl Marx correctly identified the economic underpinnings of a 19th century world, the 21st century has surely morphed into an entirely new framework that...

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...

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...

The Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUD) has been touting the win/win value of its RAD (Rental Assistance Demonstration) program. By converting public housing to various forms of...

Bye Bye, Public Library. Something much better, more modern has crept up the inside rail and is already well past in a race to the finish of the 'Font...

Government-Planned Starvation of youth? Well, not technically, but let's detour on the subject via an oldster . . . me. Really, it's three months since my last small Canada Pension...

A CBS 8 San Diego video available on YouTube somewhat breathlessly explores three homelessness issues at once, all of which are interesting once you are used to the frenetic...

No, this is not a post about buying something at a flea market only to learn that it is priceless. It's about what happens when people have enough money...

Lived experience. Think about it for a moment. If you wanted to prevent homelessness, of which you had no direct knowledge, it would seem sensible to get advice from...

When one of the world's well known newspapers does an 'exclusive analysis' and concludes deaths among the homeless are surging, it's worth taking note. Studies that link early mortality and...

The following article tells a great story for anyone who has trained as an urban planner, architect or other design professional. It is written by a planner who went...

It can sometimes be pretty frustrating to present evidence and arguments in favour of public funding for social housing. The whole idea is often batted away, or the facts...

Oakville, Ontario's Norma Gamble is inventive. In existing single detached homes, she sees opportunities for shared living. And, with persuasion and an accommodating housing market, she's been able to...

In case you think you know what police officers are all about . . . Retired from a life as a community police officer, Paul VanHandel took a chunk of...

As we transition towards at COVID endgame (please go away soon, Omicron!) one consistent story is the impact that COVID's economic pressures are having on homelessness responses. These responses...

No, the majority of people who become homeless do not live in sidewalk tents, panhandle, shout obscenities, and take drugs. Here's a much more typical story of a couple of...

In the late twentieth century, prior to its demolition, the Cabrini Green public housing buildings in Chicago had become the poster child of all that was supposedly wrong with...

By now, most are aware that the unknown dangers of a COVID pandemic swept many, many people living rough off the streets and into the comparative luxury of hotel...

At least two models of public housing tenure exist. One was exemplified by an American home-building experiment that began during the Great Depression of the 1930's. The initial objective...

It takes a lot of money to fund a housing project for people who are homeless. Where does it come from? In the U.S., there are consultants who specialize...

In July, 2020, a Melbourne, Australia, drama played out in a group of public housing buildings — a drama that may fairly described as an incident of official panic. Faced...

The article linked below discusses the attitudes and actions of a man who is homeless and who needs an operation in hospital. He (not the young man pictured above)...

A group of Humboldt State University (HSU) Students have conceived an ambitious plan to document homelessness in Humboldt County, California. The following article link will take you to a...

It should come as a surprise to nobody that Canada has one of the colder climates in the world. It ranks number three after Antartica and Russia. As for for...

Action to house the homeless may ultimately depend on enough individuals prepared to first cherish them, and then to exercise their democratic will to end homelessness. We're keeping an...

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...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u08qmwGl90E&t=1s Try the above short video from the United Kingdom charity Shelter. Read more about its making at CREATIVE REVIEW: Shelter ad highlights the challenges faced by the homeless at Christmas

Michael Gove is The United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This is a new role for Mr. Gove as well as for the UK...

Recently, we published a post that featured an idea worthy of attention founded on a somewhat histrionic presumption that American democracy is in danger of going belly upTry: Mandatory...

What moves people to help people who become homeless? Some are moved by hands-on helping, however unusual it may be. Try, for example: London, Ontario: People Worth Crocheting For Homeless...

Here's an unusual "Waste Not, Shiver Not" way to support people who experience homelessness. It's nothing that will solve the the homelessness crisis that is plaguing communities around the...

Whether a product of climate change or not, some weather disasters have been with us forever. Flooding is one particular inevitability, thanks to human habitation near water for transportation...

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is featuring a series of explorations about climate change. It recently took that interest south to an in-depth exploration of the impact of two...

In the grand scheme of lower housing prices, Community Land Trusts (CLTs) have in America largely been exotic animals worthy of further study, rather than tried and true pack...

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...

COVID-19 has had some unexpected impacts on family relationships in the United Kingdom. And studies may soon show similarly unexpected consequences in other countries. The entire model of home ownership...

The Republican Party of America over the last election cycle has grown fond of chewing on its own appendages and mortally wounding itself with easy-to-apply, fits-all-sizes insults to fellow...

"Lived Experience" is experiencing a day in the sunTry: First Voice Advocates Speak Up For Housing. To fully appreciate what lived experience is, it's useful to consider what it isn't. A...

Governments in the United States (and likely pretty much everywhere else) depend on a docile underclass of unhoused and precariously housed citizens. In big cities, those applying for limited public...

News from Reuters appeared recently about low cost housing co-operatives in Thailand, which have been supported by the Thai government since 2003. As a consequence of climate change, more and...

How far can you take hip-hop? It seems to be a career without illegal limits: drugs, gun possession charges, assaults, maybe even the odd accidentally on purpose murder or...

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...

Yup. Some youth are happily homeless, backpacking towards adulthood, one friendly host-with-a-couch at a time. For a great many, however, homelessness is an uninvited nightmare. The young person may have...

In 1989, U.S. President George H.W. Bush memorably described a thousand points of light as  "...all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the nation, doing good." For...

The U.S. Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program is a hopeful attempt to combine a failing national housing voucher program with the profound failure of American public housing management and...

Hard to imagine benefits from a pandemic. But in the field of education, the reality of structured formal training at home have suggested new horizons for educational opportunity. Home schooling...

All of us on planet earth are johnny-come-latelys to our own genetic makeup, forged over thousands of years of bare subsistence, scratching a living where we can. Not surprising,...

When filmmaker and Photographer Jason Cipparrone encountered his city's poverty in a long lineup at Toronto food bank, it was a new experience for him. Cipparrone was struck by...

In the late 1800's in western countries, if people had problems they might seek help from family, neighbours or the local church. There were also hospitals, asylums, poor houses...

This post is part of a series about ways that people provide support to those who experience homelessness. The idea that "we treat everyone as kin" resonates through the...

A 10 year old boy in the U.S. isn’t homeless any longer. His remarkable skill at chess has turned his family’s fortunes around and allowed them to leave a...