Getting Approval

So you want to build an apartment tower and you've borrowed the bucks to cover construction . . . you think. Of course you've been hopeful in your budgeting,...

Like many cities in the United States, the vast majority of its residential land was zoned for single family homes. In 2020, Portland City Council approved the Residential Infill...

A detailed article in The Guardian unpacks the issue of relaxing building codes and neighbourhood bylaws in the United Kingdom. Removing this unnecessary "government interference" will allow the private building industry...

Sprinkled across the western world there are housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and other forms of collective ownership and decision making. Elsewhere, we've discussed some of the benefits of...

Vegetation, it seems, has a history as effective housing insulation. Straw bale houses were not uncommon as first residences during the settlement of the American WestStraw bale houses are...

The Tyee has published a five part series about a green new deal for housing. The Tyee is based in Vancouver, where high prices are making housing unaffordable for...

The Tyee has published a five part series about a green new deal for housing. The Tyee is based in Vancouver, where housing prices are pricing out more and...

When it comes to the creation of affordable housing, particularly truly affordable social housing, neoliberal government thinking still prevails after 50 years of questionable results. The tried but not-so-true...

Montréal, Québec is like communities everywhere that recognize a need for secure, truly affordable housing for low- and no- income citizens. And like many, many communities, Montréal would far...

Local Housing Solutions is a web site designed to help people who want to take action to help make housing more affordable to people with very low incomes. It...

Zoning laws were developed to prevent anybody, including builders, from building just anything anywhere. Reasonable enough to prevent housing next to health-endangering industry, and to build buildings to basic...

At affordablehousingaction.org we've not been overly impressed by the blanket condemnation of zoning bylaws by the housing industry. NIMBY neighbourhood attitudes, perfectly understandable, have become a convenient 'fall guy'...

Bureaucrats must sigh with relief when one of the half-dozen or so major homebuilders the United Kingdom walk through the door with a project proposal. The same sentiment is undoubtedly...

These days, city governments must work to balance the demands of residents of all stripes, from the comfortable and complacent to the needy and struggling. They are forced to...

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...

A state with particularly serious housing problems, California is exploring as many ways as possible to increase a supply of affordable housing. California, as well as several other states, have...

What might those most concerned about affordable housing have expected from the recent Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, held in the shadow of a crash-out Brexit powered by a...

What are conservatives actually conserving? Some hold the idea that conservatives are conserving endearing and enduring values of liberalism.If you can handle all the flips and flops and mixups...

A series of councillor exchanges reported from Markham, a satellite city of Toronto, add up to nothing much on their surface. The subject is about a set of 'back-to-back...

In California, the Democratic Party owns veto-resistant super-majorities in both houses of congress, together with the governorship. American governments just don't get any more powerful than this! And yet, faced...

So we're shining the sweat-inducing perp spotlight on some badly behaving city council. Which one, in which country? Consider this a blanket indictment of too many municipal councils facing affordable...

The National Review article that follows points to a very useful, if somewhat despair-inducing laundry list of planning considerations that may come to bear on a particular municipal housing...

Public funding, foundation grants, sweat equity, donated land, land trusts, all these and more play a part these days in attempts to piece together affordable housing projects aimed at...

In April of last year, we published a story about the Florida State Legislature's woeful record of plundering its affordable housing trust fund for a succession of apparently much...

So what is the point of showcasing a modest-sized city council proclaiming self-congratulatory definitions of 'affordable' about the chamber? Manteca is just such a modest size city, and some on...

Upzoning is a convenient way to describe a zoning change that increases the density of housing within an existing residential zone. There are a limited number of ways that urban...

Nobody, particularly a well-off nobody, readily embraces change that may disrupt their comfortable home and life. In that sense, neighbours who vigorously defend zoning moats which protect their neighbourhoods...

NIMBY: Not in My Back Yard. Part of an ongoing collection of articles exploring some of the many ways that a worldwide affordable housing crisis is opposed. A new national...

What tail? Why that stunted, useless appendage that abounds in all cities: unused, under-utilized 'lazy' land that has by design or by accident become the property of the city....

New York City's affordable housing crisis faces a major problem. Regardless of what kind of housing is built (social/public, market rate, luxury) the geography of the city means available...

Edmonton, Alberta likes the idea of doing its own online video channel to promote the programs that City Council has approved. However, a recent opinion piece in the Edmonton Journal uses...

Getting on for 20 years ago, Peel Region (next door to Toronto) contracted with a private business to build an emergency shelter on a municipally owned site using modular...

California, liberal as it may be, is ground zero for activist NIMBYites. They have made it difficult or impossible for communities to make progress in the face of both...

Where the road meets the water at the end of a long British Columbia fijord, the magnificent scenery of Bella Coola is little comfort for indigenous men from the...

According to free market conservatives, American public housing is dead. It was the victim of its socialist anti-free-enterprise roots and of the lower class inhabitants who, in fits of...

We take our hats off to the commitment, enthusiasm and admirable intentions of Mayor Michele Martinez, Mayor Pro Tem of the City of Santa Ana, Orange County, California and...

Skeptical neighbours of a man hailed as "the greatest architect of our time" put Frank Gehry once again through the NIMBY wringer. He was promoting a revised Santa Monica urban...