Bulldozed Social Housing: Resident Input Under-Appreciated & Over-Ignored
"Sorry folks, you've got to go."
"Really? Some of us think not."
Recent articles from Australia suggest a more aggressive approach for social housing tenants allegedly 'living in squalor' who currently...
Local Homelessness Is A National Problem. Making Civic Duty A Crime Is No Answer
Of late, affordablehousingaction.org has been making the case that homelessness merely lives in communities. It is born, however, as a national disease that infects entire nations in all its...
Unhoused? Welcome To The Lemming-Land Of California.
With nearly a third of America's homeless crowded into the state, California's major league homeless problems are more likely to receive experimentation than any other region on the continent....
Highest Ever Fine Handed Out To Big UK Social Landlord. What’s Going On Here?
L&Q Housing is a social housing landlord that rents out some 105,000 homes in Britain. The United Kingdom's Housing Ombudsman, newly armed with the recently passed Social Housing Act, slapped...
Can’t Do The Time? Then Don’t Do The Crime – Really Bad Advice And Treatment For The Homeless
Affordablehousingaction.org recently highlighted two articles about homeless outreach teams operated by local governments in North America. One was based on a research from the United States, which found that...
Do Governments Mistakenly Support A Fantasy: That Voters Believe All Should Own Housing?
It was in a Toronto Fitness Centre locker room that a local University prof spilled the ugly beans to Affordablehousingaction.org about citizen self-protective(?) behaviour.
"Immigrants are only pro-immigration until they...
Police Are Trained To Get Stuff Done. Should That Include Finding Housing For Homeless People?
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...
United Kingdom: The Fatal Weakness Of Housing Allowance, Unmasked Yet Again
In an era of housing affordability crises, a variety of broken solutions have been adopted by a number of countries. The advertised success and persistent failure the solutions is...
UK Outdoor Homeless Won’t Be Missing Because Their Shelter Promise Will Be Missed
So, are government politicians and bureaucrats invariably duplicitous (as in: I say this all the time but I never really mean it)?
Or is government work a wonderful career opportunity...
Tiny Home Retrospective: When Portland Enticed Landowners To Welcome Aboard The Homeless
When affordablehousingaction.org was just starting to blog, we began searching (as we still are) for ideas that seemed to promise easing national homelessness crises. Five years ago there was...
Technology Stirs The Homeless/Child Welfare Soup Pot. Too Bad It’s Just Full of Water
Four researchers from Trent University in Peterborough Ontario, kick off a report on the benefits of technology with a warning published a century ago. Even that far back, some...
City Of Featherweight Affordable Housing Action Fumbles Coins Back Into Profiteering Pockets
When it comes to getting real action on building much needed affordable housing, momentary activist victories are no match for relentless pressure from financialization obsessed homeowners guarding their investments....
Getting To The Heart Of Unequal Housing Experiences In The United Kingdom
David Robinson, Jenny Preece and Glyn Robbins set out to study equality in housing in England, Scotland and Wales. They planned to include examples of best practices. The idea...
Up Against The Wiles of Free Enterprise: Who Suffers? The Vulnerable, Along With Everybody Else
Neoliberal politicans took the trouble to convince their constituents that governments (all good politicians, bureaucrats and assorted fellow-travellers) were utterly hopeless at just about anything. But the private sector,...
GOVT Emergency Code: ‘DO NOTHING’ . . . or, Declare ‘Homelessness Emergency’ (Same Thing)
Toronto columnist Lorrie Goldstein works up a heart-felt sneer at a recent declaration by the City of Toronto of a 'Homelessness Emergency.' She points out that such a declaration...
Mobile Homeless Sleeper? Religious Billboard? Can A ‘Dignity’ Bus Safely Help Your Town?
There may be an intersection between, on one hand, a 'just passing through the neigbourhood', non-polluting, sleep refuge for a handful of homeless people. On the other hand it...
Can’t Run The Homeless Out Of Town? Why Not Go After Their Enablers?
As the bloom comes off the COVID 'Everybody In!' rose, a nation's most vulnerable have largely returned from their moments of motel and hotel room pandemic safety to life...
Peering Into Rural Homelessness
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....
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...
Why Not Hand Landlords Billions To Improve Properties, Stimulate Rent Increases?
Many are concerned about the impact on human lives of scarce truly affordable housing.
Those same folks are well aware that in the face of growing affordable housing crises, neoliberal...
Foghorns Necessary To Avoid Federal Roadblocks To End Homelessness In US
One advantage of reading an unabashedly lefty publication such as Jacobin is its relentless weeding of high-bush vegetation thrown up by earnest-sounding politicians that hint at meaningful policy flowerings...
How Australia’s Housing Became ‘A Closed Shop’ Favouring ‘Already-Owners’
Currently around the world, country after country allows and/or actively encourages a gambler's haven — the use of housing ownership, not (or only incidentally) as shelter, but as chips...
Save Affordable Housing From the Free Market? Houston Had A Vision. It’s Blurring
The problem is obvious. The tentacles of profit-earning capitalism are enmeshed in the buying and selling of homes. These days, everyone wants to buy and sell housing. That includes...
A Century Late And A Squillion Short, Washington D. C. Considers Public Housing For All
This is a two-for-one story, based on a two-for-one political initiative.
'Green New Deals' are becoming a very sensible initiative in America, and one of the articles in this post...
Heading North To Fort St. John, Homeless, Penniless And Bussed?
Halfway up the Province of British Columbia from the U.S. border, a little north of the southern tip of the Alaska Panhandle but many kilometres east of it, the...
Stop Squabbling, UK MPs! Tail-Wagging Homeowners Need Petting
With the world's oldest and most successful political party now a sinking ship, the United Kingdom's Conservative Party members are in 'every person for themselves' mode as they race...
Increasing Citizen Homeless Concerns: Politicians Clueless About Them?
What's to know about unaffordable housing, homelessness, and the link between the two? A great deal, as we've been discovering ourselves at affordablehousingaction.org.
With the cost of living soaring along...
A Modest Query: Could Canada Use A National Brainfart Ombudsman?
A national Brainfart Ombudsman might only need to be a part-time job. The title-holder would toil in the fields of bureaucracy. Authority would trigger automatically upon evidence of particularly...
Study: Why The Homeless Yawn At Efforts To Move Them On
Worldwide, the endless stories of failed anti-homeless initiatives make us wonder at affordablehousingaction.org.
Just what does it take to make self-righteous citizens and their accommodating city councils realize what a...
Without More Funds For Shelter, Sacramento Homeless Plans Head For Rocks
Sacramento, the State Capital of California, first appeared on our news radar in 2021. The city was promising a departure from standards of international tent encampment brutality towards the...
Missing The Mark On Making Homes More Affordable In The United Kingdom
Liz Truss is one of the candidates to become the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She really doesn't like housing targetsAs posted on Twitter: Liz Truss: ‘I’ll...
Neoliberal Piglets In Straw Houses Self-Butcher For Wall Street Wolves
Neoliberalism? After 45 years, political parties of all stripes are still influenced by the heady siren call of 'small government' and 'private enterprise can do it better.'
As a result,...
Knight-Errant Error: Rootless Royalty Plagued By Missing Rent-A-Serfs
Pity the poor upper classes. The merchant classes (which run government) scurry to clear parade routes in all directions, hounding the serfs from pillar to post. But when royalty...
Public Housing May Be Healthier For Your Brain Than Free-Market Palaces
Hey, North American! How would you like to take a tour of a public housing building, get to view the playgrounds, the corridors, and even take a peek inside...
Garden Cities/Suburbs At The End Of A Rainbow? Alas, No ‘There’ There.
Once upon a time, the utopian dream of a 'garden city' was held up as the pinnacle of human community. Homes with pocket-sized personal green space were idealized as...
New Housing? Listless in Queensland . . . In Every Sense Of The Word
Let's be clear off the top. This a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Affordablehousingaction.org's home town, Toronto, Canada has getting on for more than three times...
Biden Affordable Housing Plan Creates Homes For Investors
The U.S. Biden Administration has floated a Housing Supply Action Plan designed to create some 800,000 'affordable' homes. It dips into an existing (and now profoundly out-of-date) toolbox that...
National Housing Crises Everywhere? Fix Them By Killing Neoliberalism
Fine to suggest killing it, but both left-wing leaning and right-wing leaning political parties in westernized nations have been enamoured with neoliberalism for the past thirty or forty years.
Is...
Vancouver, B.C. As A Public Landlord: One Hat in a Two-Hatted City?
The City of Vancouver, BC has, as a responsible landlord, found itself going head to head with the authority tasked with extracting the most profitable solutions for the development...
Indoor Homeless Sheltering Pricey? San Francisco Finds Outdoor Shelters No Bargain
What's in a name? Unofficial collection of tents together with a ragtag of people pick up tags such as "A Crime-Ridden Blight," or a "Danger to the Community." Here's...
Housing Conditions In Canada’s Far North: Bad Enough To Make You Sick
When compared with Canada as a whole, people in the Territory of Nunavut are four times more likely to live in a home in need of major repairs. Homes...
Housing Financialization And Homelessness Taints The Far Side Of The World
New Zealand's housing crisis received some mixed attention a couple of years ago, with the announcement of a national scheme to address the issue with the catchy title of...
Do NIMBY, Bylaws, Stand In Way Of American Social Housing?
The American public is generally far more receptive to the idea of new public housing than either the politicians they elect, or the lumbering behemoth that is the Department...
People Bins: The Heartbreaking Betrayal In A Helping Hand For The Homeless
What's to be said about "temporarily permanent" measures such as the "people bins" being deployed in the German city of Ulm? Unlike trash, the bin occupants will be able...
UK Footballer Takes On Child Starvation: Could Affordable Housing Be Next?
The United Kingdom is providing its citizens with an object lesson about the power of populist advocacy compared to traditional party politics much practiced in fudging any crisis towards...
A New-Born UK Child, Perceived And Treated As A Punishable Atrocity
Genital Mutilation? It used to happen. Still does.
Sterilization? It used to happen. Still does.
Deliberate infection by disease? It used to happen. Still does.
Slavery? It used to happen. Still does.
Child...
Poverty May Mean Hardship. Beyond Poverty, Destitution Is Life-Threatening
Poverty comes in many shades, from careful spending, through struggles to stretch limited income, serious belt-tightening and deeper into financial desperation. All the way to destitution.
Destitution has been defined as...
Tempest In An Unoccupied Teapot: Homeless-Ravaged UK Has Too Many Homes
Prior to and during the pandemic, United Kingdom builders have had the same attitude as North American Builders — "Build, Build, Build!" That attitude in the United States has...
NZ Study Probes Political Pratfalls At ‘Housing Crisis’ Hurdles
A 'housing crisis' implies that some kind of problem exists. Exactly what is that problem? The answer to this fundamental question shapes how people think about it, how politicians...
Affordable Housing Insanity: In Jersey City, You Can Be Too Poor To Be Poor
Too rich to be poor? Now that's a concept that's easy to understand.
Too poor to be poor? In all the world, it's apparently only possible in Jersey City, New...
‘Don’t Stop The Financial Music’ And Other Conservative Affordability Fixes
Free market devotees are getting rather boxed into a corner these days when it comes to proposing solutions for affordable housing crises.
There are still hopeful cries everywhere from the...
Manitoba Looks To Plow Affordable Housing Furrow With Tractors That Don’t Pull
You gets what you pays for, we guess. The Canadian province of Manitoba has apparently been snoozing through three decades of feeble Thatcherite Public Private Partnership (PPP) experiments in...
U. S. Housing’s Ben Carson, Maestro Of Medical Metaphor, Attacks California
Thanks to a FOXBusiness report, the world is aware that Secretary Ben Carson of HUDHUD — the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has recently 'called out' the...
A Crisis Of Shoes, Ships Or Sealing Wax? Florida Housing Money Can Fix It
In a time of growing housing crises, what possesses a state legislature to use its housing trust fund as a reserve to tackle other urgent matters, not once but...
Cozy Canada Missed 2008 Wake Up Call, Now Faces Housing Bubble Bath
2008 US/World Housing Crisis and beyond. What? Us Canucks Worry?
No need. We were proud of our doughty bank system that rode out the storm without risky mortgage investment holdings...
Canadians Try Under-Bridge Living For High Art And Fine Dining
In April 2019 we wondered, is it some kind of pointed April Fool's Joke highlighting the plight of homeless people forced to shelter under bridges? We'd already seen and...
Distracted Politicians — Beware Generation Rent!
UK politicians are distracted. An opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph, inadvertently tells us just how distracted they are.
The article itself is behind a paywall, but the headline and...
UK Quantifies An Immense And Intolerable Grey Area Between Housed And Homeless
"Lucy, I'm home!"
No, it's not a classic line from the historic "I Love Lucy" television show delivered in a Cuban accent by Band Leader Ricky Ricardo.
What is it?
It's a...
Housing A Bigger Concern In UK Than Brexit: No Priority for Election-Focused Tories
It seems that UK citizens are more worried about the nation's housing crisis than they are about Brexit. Parliament, meanwhile, has moved beyond obsession to a state of flat-out...
Bernie Sanders: A Godfather Of Affordable Housing With Feet Of Clay?
Bernie Sanders, the renowned Independent senator who turns Democratic when it suits him, has been a darling of American progressives since the runup to the 2016 presidential election, where...
America’s Non-Housing Crisis Spreads To Infect The United Kingdom
Recently, America has produced a couple of entertaining "There Is No Housing Crisis" stories, one from the left and one from the right.
On the left, a Mother Jones article...
Big Changes Cloud Horizon Of Fannie Mae And Freddy Mac
Two financial and housing industry giants, the federal government-created mortgage guarantors, Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac,The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), aka Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan...
Fire-Bombing Banks In Ireland: A Warning For Other Nations?
The Irish are quick to anger when the border with Northern Ireland is involved. Just recently, someone advised a Belgian bank to hire Unionist security people from the Republic...
Worried You Can’t Get Student Housing? You’re Just One More Whiner With A Bad Attitude
What do you say to a Howard University student who feels she is facing a choice between homelessness or heading elsewhere to school?
If you're speaking from the lofty heights...
