Canada’s Capital City: Advancing An Affordable Housing Agenda With A New Mayor
The City of Ottawa has a new mayor, who naturally wants to make an impression on his city. To that end, he's put together a task force to review...
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....
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,...
Unravelling The Mystery Of Government Housing Expenditures
Any time someone digs into public accounts, they deserve a medal in the estimation of this writer. Following the money is slow work.
In the case of the report linked...
Fifteen-Minute City? Bah! Humbug!
"What took us to the back 40, stays in the back 40." That was the thought of this writer, some years ago when renting a country cottage. Why were...
Report: The UK Needs Four Million New Homes
When this writer was growing up, there was a ridiculous ad for packaged mints. It featured two people arguing about whether the mint was a breath freshener or a...
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 North American Public Housing Might Be Too Valuable To Tear Down
Why tear down existing North American public housing? Why, to build mixed income housing to replace it. It can provide ample private enterprise profitability to attract free market enterprise...
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...
Ontario Wants To Fix Supply To End The Housing Crisis. Have They Backed The Winning Horse?
The Canadian province of Ontario is in the midst of a housing crisis. The number of people who are homeless is growing. A large number of people who have...
Amid UK Social Housing Energy Efficiency Sticks, There Be Carrots
Legal challenges to the UK government's foot dragging around the issue of the energy efficiency of social housing are increasing — either already in progress, or standing at the...
NIMBY ‘Just Say No’ Doesn’t Cut It. Condo Pitches In To Find Alternatives
It's 'same old same old' NIMBY protest in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Tent encampments under elevated Condo-dweller noses cause an inevitable stink. But a condo in Thunder Bay has added...
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...
A Self-Funding Form of Truly Affordable Housing? Seattle Says Yes Please
With its eye firmly fixed outside of America, Seattle, Washington has recently voted to explore a new form of government-supported housing.
The models for Seattle's newly initiated government supported...
Porto Gambles On Friendly Free Enterprise To Solve Affordable Housing Crisis
Portugal shares the Iberian Peninsula with Spain, which is currently in the affordable housing news for its 'Right to Housing' law. Spain's new law includes regulatory solutions for renters,...
Spain’s Right To Housing Law: Freedom From Housing Price Extortion. Or. . .Not!
Spain has just passed a Right to Housing law. The law allows rent controls in any and all housing markets that are deemed by local governments to be 'stressed.'
This...
Hong Kong: A View of Chinese-Funded Affordable Housing On Steroids
When it comes to affordable housing, centrally planned governments have one big advantage over the dispersed powers and inter-govermental squabbles of more democratic political structures.
The advantage: centrally planned economies...
Wealthy Incomers: Economy Boosters? Or Trojan Horses Bent On Plunder?
Countries, states, and cities, be careful what you wish for! Wealthy foreigners may boost your economy by dropping a trail of cash across companies linked to tourism. Ask Portugal,...
1 Magic Bullet To Create Affordable Housing? Amsterdam Looks To Many
Like so many cities around the world, Amsterdam has been gambling on shelter as a means to generating wealth for all. And like many other communities, it is discovering...
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...
Here’s A Serious Question: Can We Learn Anything At All From Social Media?
Good heavens, of course we can learn stuff from social media! Millions use it. Surely those millions must know something useful they can pass on?
But . . . how...
Notes From The Heat Pump Battlefront Lines
Forgetful as always, it's time to quiz our readers on what we've been reporting. We need all the help we can get.
Heat pumps? Yes, we know we've been there,...
Social Housing Naming And Shaming: UK Government Snarls, But Doesn’t Bite
Imagine, say, a dozen policemen hiding behind a bus shelter, just beyond a stop-signed intersection. A car drifts through without stopping. A single policeman, hand held imperiously up in...
The National Dream Parade of Housing Emperors: Becoming A Truly Naked Ambition
With the advent of the 50 year housing mortgage in the United Kingdom, housing wealth can be 'rented' from a bank or mortgage company, costing for many a lifetime...
Reforming Zoning To Build More Deeply Affordable Housing
In any program to add affordable and deeply affordable homes to housing stock, zoning comes into play. Zoning has been presented as the process to obtain "the highest and...
Can L.A. Mayor Karen Bass Pull The Plug On Homelessness, Drain The Wound?
Karen Bass is the new mayor of Los Angeles, California. She is putting her career on the line by committing to tackle effectively that city's mega-homelessness problem.
Already she's winning...
Getting Local Governments On Board With Building Affordable Housing
The State of California recently put its local governments on notice when it rejected virtually all of their housing plans. Faced with growing numbers of people experiencing homelessness, the...
US Government Supports Zoning Reform To End Homelessness
Affordablehousingaction.org frequently identifies the need for national leadership to end homelessness. The first article linked to this post, Few Mayors Connect the Dots Between Zoning and Homelessness (Few Mayors),...
Canadian Bank Speaks Up In Favour Of Social Housing
Canada has five big private banks. Each one is enormously profitable. Part of that profit comes from lending money to people to buy homes. When one of the big...
Tools For Housing Stability In A Hot Real Estate Market
The United Way of Greater Toronto has recently issued a report called Building Inclusive Communities: Learning from Programs and Policies that Work. Much of Canada's population growth in the...
Affordable-> Unaffordable. Temporary-> Permanent. UK Plays Name Change Game
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...
Come From Away? Don’t Cut No Ice With Us. Not Your Home, So Begone, Homeless
"Papers, please!"
Wouldn't it be great if a community could gold-braid and tin hat a cadre of officious, hopefully armed, bureaucrats. They would challenge those hoards of suspicious undesirables that...
Coming To Grips With The Financialization Of Housing
Since the 2008 mortgage crisis, more people have become aware of the financialization of housing. Housing has shifted from being a place where you live to become partially or...
Getting Good Data About Housing And The People Who Need It
Everyone is mad keen about data these days. Getting into the data business has told us important stuff already. There's a lot more to learn.
The expression "there are lies, damn...
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...
California: Exploring The Human Reality of Adequate Housing For All
The human right to adequate housing is a noble aspiration. And if communism and socialism have contributed nothing else to humanity, they have at least proven that determined governments...
The Role Of Tea When Facing Up To Renovations In Social Rent Housing
Does anyone brew tea in a pot any longer? And what about tea cozies, the padded and fitted covers that go over the pot to keep tea warm? With...
How Changing Public Decision Making Might Lead To Better Housing
In a democracy, elected representatives are supposed to reflect the interests of their constituents. That mission doesn't always match up with reality, partly because voters don't all hold the...
‘Missing Middle’ Housing Morphs Into An ‘Affordable Housing’ Fraud
Four or five years ago, U.S. 'Big Builder' scammers were on the mooch (as always) for government handouts. To do so, they were promoting the concept of 'Missing Middle'...
Green With Envy: Futuristic Benefits To Cities Elevate Citizens Unequally
Modernizing cities! Out with the obviously dirty, depressingly ugly, cough-inducing, environmentally-damaging old. In with the sylvan new: vegetative proliferation, babbling brooks, micro-forest canopies, peddle-mobility, awardable aesthetic standards, puffed and...
Big Landlords Beware: Activists In Berlin Celebrate The City’s Right To Expropriate
If you haven't been following the rental housing fight in Berlin, Germany, it's time to catch up. Berlin is a city/state where renters far outnumber homeowners. A considerable majority...
Will The ‘Crisis Of The Day’ Forever Delay The Human Right To Adequate Housing?
Waiting lists exist worldwide for those who need affordable housing but don't have it. Ultimately, do these lists represent a positive movement towards a human right to adequate housing...
Glasgow’s Changing World, Zeal To Knock Down Existing Social Housing Continues
In spite of clear evidence that some or all knocked down social housing is never replaced in redevelopments...Try: The Life And Death Cabrini-Green Public Housing Projects, 25 Years On
In...
U.S. National Green Bank Can Help Stretch Affordable Housing Dollars
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...
To Need Is To Plead: America’s Flirtation With Heat Pumps Gets Serious
Heat Pumps: just who is pleading for this trendy technology in America? Public Housing is who, and not just some potty little local Housing Authority with a handful of...
Does Australian Accounting End A ‘Kick Public Housing Down’ Era?
In North America these days, the commitment to public housing still tends to be drowning underwater, or perhaps buried meters-deep in the primordial mud at the bottom of the...
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...
UK Doubts: Having Your Human Rights To Housing & Enjoying Them
Civil society groupsRead more about Civil Society in the World Economic Forum: Who and what is 'civil society?' in the United Kingdom feel they have their finger on...
How Inflation Contributes To Canada’s Housing Crisis
Putting 'celebrating' and 'stalling housing prices' in the same phrase will probably ensure that people read at least a few pages of Generation Squeeze's new report: Celebrating Stalling Prices...
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...
Yesterday’s U.S. Business High Rises: Tomorrow’s Affordable Housing?
The City of Toronto's name for a needed subway extension framed yesterday's problems for many cities. It was called the downtown relief line. Relief from congested commuting to a crowded...
Once Again, NYC Forced To Consider Inadequate (Tent) Housing
With so much misery in the world today, asylum seekers are on the move in considerable numbers. The U.S. is seeing a share, including New York City with the...
How Can A Right To Housing Advance Without Preserving What We Have?
Both the United Kingdom and the USA soured on public/social housing coincident with the rise of Reaganism/thatcherism/neoliberalism and its emphasis on small government. In place of government incompetence, free...
Why Evidence Should Be Part Of The Strategy To End Homelessness
David Park's book "The Fire In the Eye: A Historical Essay On The Nature and Meaning of Light" reviews the history of ideas, debates and thinking about what light...
Approaching A Human Right to Housing Beyond Life In A Cold, Leaky Tent
In the words quoted from an article below by Morris Copeland, the Miami-made county administrator who oversees housing: “ should be a right, not an amenity.”
Alas for Americans, the...
“Housing First:” Hitting a Homeless Home Run With The Right Swing
Finland developed the Housing First model for "curing" homelessness. It recognizes chronic homeless as a disease closely linked to a lack of permanent personal shelter. The model proposes that...
Realizing The Right To Adequate Housing In South Africa
When it comes to housing rights, it is good to keep South Africa in mind. The right to adequate housing is part of its Constitution. In 1994, the official...
City Perspective: ‘We Need To Know More’ About Our Homeless Population
Here's 'more about the homeless population' of Kamloops British Columbia, as requested by its self-styled Armchair Mayor (a former city mayor and newspaper editor).
In response:
"homeless people who live in...
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...
A Kingdom For The Broken Housing Promises That India Must . . . Suffer???
In June of 2018, Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi announced an extravagantly ambitious national housing scheme — a home for every Indian by 2022.
India is a populous country....
P.E.I. YIMBY — Like The Province, Small And Beautiful
Indignant behaviour is undoubtedly worthy of a seat at the front table of the housing crisis. It is such a commonplace entry in the blame game that the acronym...
Reflecting Thoughtfully On Irish Housing And Homelessness Programs
A recent report has been published about housing and homelessness policy in Ireland. The report was commissioned by six voluntary agencies that are on the front line in delivering...
Humans Are Animals, Too. So, Let’s Have The SPCA Take Over Homeless Crisis
It seems that if you're a tent-living cat, you can sneak off, dial the Kootenay Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and get yourself housed. So how...
Waiting Lists And Adequate Housing
The post 5 Youth In Danger of Homelessness? Ireland To Make It 5 Times Easier To Avoid discusses a plan by the Irish government to make some of the...
Local Public Housing Climate Changes: Delivering Distress Or Support?
In societies where social/public housing tenants are treated more or less like dirt, governments have a low bar of behaviour to meet when change threatens to upend the status...
Ending Homelessness In Los Angeles – An Assessment Of Local Leadership In Action
Los Angeles has a large and growing number of people experiencing homelessness. To its credit, the city took steps in 2016 to increase the supply of housing that would...
A Form Of Self Loathing? SF Opinions Trash The City’s Homeless Solutions
Does this survey from a California city reflect the future of your urban region?
Human behaviour can be described by patterns. Opinion surveys are useful form of collecting patterns. So...
Take Comfort: You’re Never Too Old For The Crime Of Helping Others
The cop who arrested Norma Thornton knew perfectly well it was a public relations nightmare. Given the comments in media outlets all over North America, thousands, maybe even hundreds of...
Pardons Begin To Open Doors To Public Housing In The U.S.
A small, but significant piece of good news from the United States: a crack has opened in the zero-tolerance wall that continues to seal off public housing from those...
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...
The Potential Charm Of a Portland, Oregon Homeless Campus
Seniors, wearing scarfs in campus colours, stroll across the front lawn of one of Portland's giant homeless campuses. They have spent their undergraduate years waiting for a minuscule new...
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...
Affordable Housing: Thoughtful, Important Words About It. Only . . . What Is it?
Pardon us while we parse a truly useful way of thinking about 'affordable housing' proposed by the mayor of Edmonton, Alberta.
Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said, in relation to a political...
Corruption And The Homeless Industrial Complex: Does It Exist?
We know there are overwhelming problems where people who are homeless gather together in unofficial tent camps. Celebrity Dr. Drew Pinsky warns us of "tent encampments with 'multiple rodent-borne,...
At The Border Of ‘Too Expensive,’ An Entire Country Chokes On Housing Costs
Can you imagine housing costs so high (purchase or rental) that even with a job it is necessary to live, not just in a distant dormitory town, but in...
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...
Halifax, NS Official Tent Campsites Don’t Float Every Homeless Boat
Recently, we published a post about tentative baby steps that the Ontario region of Kitchener-Waterloo was taking by consulting the homelessTry: Psst! Wanna Become A Legit Homeless Tenter In...
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...
Just Who Are Those Folks Wielding Spears On Neighbourhood Battlements?
What do we know about residents who actively defend their neighbourhoods from the disruption of change — for example, a proposal for a tall public housing building to be...
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...
As The World Reconsiders Social Housing Need, Faint USA Cries of ‘Us, Too!’
Let's hear it for the activists calling for a brave new world of American social housing.
A special election will be held in Seattle, to consider a proposal to hire...
Outreach Police Officer Stabbed To Death In Homeless Encampment
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...
This Is Historic Wales. Does Just Anybody Have A Right To Live Here?
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...
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...
Spotting Architecture That Encourages Homeless People To ‘Move On’
A recent affordablehousingaction.org post featured a town seemingly hell-bent on destroying its own quality of life — anything to get rid of those drug-crazed, brain-fried homeless folk who just...
Want To Erase Homelessness? Turn Your Township Into A Hellhole
Two stories about how to 'end' homelessness have emerged from a clever New Jersey township.
The first: invite the police, well-known for their expertise in community planning and design, to...
Point-In-Time ‘Census’ For The Homeless: A Good or Bad Thing?
The harsh reality we all face in civilized countries: you can't opt out of the census — often not legally, anyway. And why should you want to? It's the...
Fatal Flaw In Point-in-time Homeless Counts?
What's the point-in-time count in your particular district? Conveniently, whatever it suits you to say it is. That's one possible answer to a necessarily haphazard, volunteer-rich process of lifting...
A Plan To Lift Canadians Out Of Poverty
Autumn in Canada is filled with coloured leaves, cooler temperatures and harvests. It's also the time of year when the Federal Government starts preparing its budget for the next...
Public Housing: You Can Fool Some Of the People All Of The Time
You can fool 'some of the people all of the time' is part of a common sayingYou can fool some of the people all of the time, and all...
Dispatches From The Front Lines Of The NIMBY Vs. YIMBY Wars
Affordablehousingaction.org generally considers NIMBY and YIMBY to be two entirely different animals. The first of these — Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) is a pop-up defensive castle guarded...
Bankers In The Boonies, Goat Farms In The City: A New Topsy-Turvy World?
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...
London, Ontario City Council Pulls Rank on Church Homeless Welfare Staffing
Consider a spat between a London, Ontario church on one hand and that city's council on the other. It brings to mind a recent spat between a historic English...
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...
England ‘Business As Usual’ Housing Bangs Head-On Into Climate Change
'Business as Usual?'
The YIMBY movement — Yes in MY. . . OK, YOUR Back Yard?
Or maybe best to use those generally politically desirable (for builders) terms: kill the by-laws,...
UK Taxpayers Scammed! Overpaying For Services Supporting The Poor
Where does the gravy go that the scammers skim off the top of United Kingdom services to the poor? As a matter of fact, it can go to you,...
Solving Homelessness With Coordinated Action. Can It Happen?
American President George H.W. Bush's evocative description of charity — a thousand tiny points of light — has a problem. The lights wink on and off at different times....
