Hot Air: Two Kinds Of Deadly Poison Killing The Most Vulnerable Unhoused
In a recent publication, The Harvard Political Review details two forms pernicious ill-health that is killing increasing numbers of global citizens including Americans. Climate change is one. The other...
COP28: Green Energy Costs And The Challenge of Worldwide Nuclear ‘Rehab’
COP28 was the world's latest climate change conference. The fooferaw about a phase-out of decidedly 'ungreen' fossil fuel energy somewhat obscured some other developments at the conference, including consideration...
The Hurricane Is Over But The Emergency Has Just Begun
We're all familiar with the damage that a hurricane can leave in its wake. People with damaged properties scramble to get temporary accommodation. Repairing and cleaning a property can...
Thermodynamics: An Evaluation Tool For Pie-In-The Sky Energy Futures
Without pretending to be exhaustive in any way, this is a post that offers some assistance to folks looking to understand which way a 'green energy' future lies.
Such issues...
Tomorrow’s Heating Energy To Save The World? Hot Rocks. . . Sort Of, Maybe?
It's hard to pick a winner in tomorrow's great affordable energy race to avoid overheating the planet.
Scotland is sure that the future belongs to Heat Pumps. They are already...
Australia’s Housing Crisis: How It Happened And A Path Forward
Reading the news these days informs us that we are facing multiple crises: climate change, housing and political discord are three examples. The level of political discord makes it...
Lessons From An Ambitious Retrofit In A Glasgow Tenement
This writer has never been to Scotland, but 107 Niddrie Road in Glasgow has become a familiar address. The building is over 100 years old and belongs to the...
World Petrolheads Forever Impoverished By ‘Greening’? Can Luxembourg Help?
At the price of considerable criticism, United Kingdom Prime Minister Sunak has delayed the end of purchaseable new petrol power as a means of transport. It will be delayed...
Improving Tenant Health In Public Housing
Two students who are enrolled at Harvard Medical School have collaborated on an article in which they speak up for the people who live in public housing. The students,...
Social Housing: We Know What It Means. Is It Time To Understand Social Energy?
A considerable number of folks in the United Kingdom, as well as other European countries, have been inclined to think of the human right to adequate housing as an...
Bye Bye ‘COVID Safety’ For All. Hello ‘Pay As You Can’ From Parking To Electric Power
How does the current economic climate affect housing and homelessness?
One direct effect is the wind-down of COVID emergency measures that saw "everybody indoors" safety measures which provided temporary housing...
Heat Pumps: Political Darlings, Practical Poop-0uts?
Heat pumps. Greener than green? Indeed. Saving the planet one lukewarm sip at a time? Maybe.
But heating? You want to know if they keep people warm? Well now, that's...
A Deep And Wet Dive Into The Strengths of Passivhaus Technology For Building Social Housing
“PassivhausPassivhaus and Passive House refer to a standard for setting levels of energy use in new buildings. EnerPHit does the same for buildings that are being renovated. We're using...
Heat Pump Heaven? Much Of The United Kingdom Shivers At the Thought
The use of the word 'admits' in a newspaper headline rather suggests that the confessor has hitherto engaged in some kind of coverup. That's an unfortunate meta-message in this...
Refurbish Social Housing? How To Find Out If It Is Dollar-Cheap But Carbon-Expensive?
Aging Social Housing: Pull it down and build something better? Or refurbish it?
Over the past few decades, some countries influenced by neoliberal political thought have dodged the practicalities of...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
Half-Baked Solutions? Cooling Shelters Or Permanent Dorm Living?
The foundation of Soviet recovery post World War II was to rebuild the housing that had been destroyed in the war. Massive home-builds in the West pale by comparison,...
Men’s Nipples Visible Through Shirt? Time For New Housing Standards!
This post is hardly good news for citizens of the United Kingdom. Other nationalities may view it with a sigh of relief together with head-scratching curiosity. As far as...
Why Not Confront The Sweltering Homeless With Frosty Love?
This summer of 2022, the media in Europe is replete with advice for mad dogs and Englishmen planning to go out in the midday sunRead in The Guardian: Why...
Windsor, Ontario Takes On ‘Green’ Public Housing Refurbishment
In North America, providing housing for the most vulnerable has been achieving limited success in 'mixed' income housing projects. Decaying public housing is torn down and replaced with new,...
Scoping The Challenge Of Reducing Energy Emissions In Our Homes
The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University annually issues a 'State of the Nation's Housing' report. A release 'event' is convened where the results are reported and...
‘Go Green’ Bleeds Life Into Public Housing ‘Demolition By Neglect’
Why should New York City, and a lot of other cities for that matter, refurbish existing public housing when knocking it down and building anew would be cheaper?
Because it's...
Carbon Emissions: A Death Knell For On-Site Public Housing Construction?
When it comes to housing construction these days, it's more than a challenge to keep up with the Green Revolution and its requirements to prevent climate change. That's to...
Goosed By Pandemic: Walkers? Yes, Big Time! Bikers . . . Not So Much
The cost of housing is so high these days that ownership is prohibitive to many, if not most in the next generation. Meanwhile, rental housing costs can drive you...
Energy Retrofits In Older Homes: A Case Study
Climate change is a compelling argument for doing things differently. In northern climates at least, our homes contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures. Researchers have...
Bristol UK Social Housing Bootstraps Wind Power
The world is scheduling the abandonment of gas and petroleum power. So bring on electricity! That demand is being energized by activists and, increasingly, by government. And when governments...
What Happens If NIMBY Takes Aim At Net Zero?
Net ZeroSee the United Nations Net Zero Coalition for more on this term: Climate Action , Social Housing and NIMBY: what lies at the intersection of these murky futures?...
USA Climate Change: Who’s Got Junk? Everybody.
Climate change has brought new risks to America, as it has to every other nation in the world. One kind of risk, as yet little prepared-for, is debris from...
A ‘Green’ Opportunity To Make Homes Accessible
Disability rights activists have been pointing out that despite international agreement about accessibility rights, much of the built environment is not accessible. One of those activists, Graham Findlay, sees...
After Suitable Caution, We’re Pumping Our Fists For Norwegian Heat Pumps
Are there reasons to be cheerful about heat pumps? That's the story from Norway. Being apartment renters all, the staff of affordablehousingaction.org's own cheeriness about heat pumps is entirely...
Pricey Climate Broil: Global Crisis With Different Strokes For Different Folks
For the hot, hot, hot citizens of Phoenix, Arizona, climate change is cranking up the weather thermostat. A recent report describes rising local temperatures as "expensive," and outlines some...
Deadly Cold, Deadly Heat: North America Threatens A Continent’s Homeless
A life-ending threat to the homeless is a familiar one over large swaths of North America in the depths of winter: deadly cold. With homelessness on the increase as...
Too Young To Fret? Social Housing Provides Outlet For Youthful Worrying
Why should children and youth worry about major world conundrums such as ongoing deadly pandemics, or human-triggered climate change that promises to soon broil more and more life on earth?...
Manchester UK Breaks New Ground In Building Social Housing To Green Specs
Social housing activists on both sides of the Atlantic from USA across to the UK and Europe, fight an uphill battle against persistent remnants of neoliberal thought.
By now, everyone...
Water You Waiting For? Climate Change Disaster That Needs Fixing Now
Peering south from the top half of the North American continent, a casual observer might be inclined to believe that climate-change driven floods are a crisis for the south,...
Why Parks Are Needed For The Poor, More Than Middle Class Or Rich
"Plant Blindness" — it's an affliction you may well never have heard of. But plants play an important role in human health. Plant blindness prevents us from taking advantage...
Housing in The Far North: Familiar Unaffordability With An Ugly Climate Twist
Recently, we reported on a CBC special series that examined the financialization of rental housing in Canada's far north, which was making life difficult — often next to impossible...
Permanently Overwhelmed By Climate Change? For Some It’s Already Happening
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...
A Rhode Island Public Housing Collective Becomes An Electricity Farm
The earliest forms of energy conversion for human use were granular — many small conversions using wood or peat or coal in a fireplace for warmth or a stove...
Public Housing Vertical Forests in North America: Future or Fad?
As far as North America is concerned, vertical forests are not quite the future or the current fad. It seems none have arrived here yet.
In Europe, it's another story....
Climate Change And The Pandemic Drive Interest In Land Trusts and Co-operatives
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...
Scientists Champion Measures To Improve Indoor Air Quality
Thirty-nine scientists contributed to an article about indoor air quality in the May 2021 issue of Science. Their major concern is that indoor air quality is largely unregulated and...
Green Building Materials: Not 1 But 3 Little Pigs Can Be Winners
Remember the three little pigs and their variously constructed houses, only one of which survived the huffing and puffing of the big bad wolf?
Well, modern, eco-aware societies need pigs...
Public Housing: “Lean And Mean” Clashes With “Green”
American public housing over the last few decades has been an underfunded study in ignoring basic tenant health and safety. But with a growing outcry about everything from lead...
Can Vertical Forest Splash Save Netherlands Social Housing Cash?
There can be little argument that Milan's pioneering "Vertical Forest" building is a striking feat of architecture.Or rather, it will become one at some time in the future. Built...
Green New Deal Part For Housing 3: Overcoming The Zoning Barrier?
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...
Green New Deal For Housing Part 2: Getting To Yes
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 more...
Green New Deal For Housing Part 1: Connecting Housing Prices And Climate Change
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 beyond the reach of...
Tenants Call For Green Kitchens In NYCHA Buildings
Tenants living in housing owned by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) have come up with a great idea to get the ball rolling on a Green New...
Aussie Power Project Turns Social Housing Tenants Into Sun Worshipers
Dismissing a useful future for social housing these days works most dramatically when raising the spectre of high rise projects. President Trump, as part of his 2020 campaign, has...
Green Social Housing: Impossible Dream Or Old News?
One way or another, many feel that social housing is too expensive for America, even as many other nations find ways to utilize this truly affordable form of housing....
Landlords Vs. Climate Change: How Will Renters Weather The Clash?
Australia already appears to be suffering from the dramatic and devastating effects of climate change while being led, like America, by a government that refuses to see any sign...
3 North America Countries Make A Chicken & Ostrich Climate-Burger
The buns of our proposed climate burger features the famous Chicken Little twins. That would be Mexico and Canada, running around the barnyard and crying "Climate Change is coming,...
Time To Recognize The Need For A ‘Green New Deal For Housing?’
At affordablehousingaction.org we've expressed some concern that climate change activists may find themselves competing for limited funding with affordable housing activistsTry: Saving The World One Tree? Affordable House? At...
Housing Literally Under Water Might Burst A Housing Bubble, Trigger Recession
The housing market collapsed in 2008 and caused an economic recession in the United States, which spread to other countries. It was triggered when new homeowners found themselves 'under...
Cowichan Climate Change Prep: Best of Intentions Tangled in Reality
Duncan, British Columbia, Canada's tiniest city mired in a much larger Cowichan Valley suburban sprawl, has seen fit to declare a climate emergency. Our hats are off.
Earnest, well-meaning and...
North York, ON: Intersecting Crises And The Parking Lot Conundrum
A local government is responsible to its citizens for carefully weighing important decisions. It therefore cannot be expected to respond rapidly to the changing nature of some crises it...
Climate Change Threatens Another Knockdown Blow To Affordable Housing
"Hurricane Sandy was the greatest natural disaster to ever impact public housing residents in New York City". So begins the abstract of Public Housing on the Periphery: Vulnerable Residents and...
Plucky Norwich Council Bridges The Energy-Affordability Divide
One of the arguments levelled against energy efficiency in affordable housing is the increased cost of construction. Savings realized through lower energy bills in the long term require higher...
Saving The World One Tree? Affordable House? At A Time
An article about a 'green' project on the Island of Montreal reflects a conflict pitting two well meaning and determined groups of activists against each other, something we'll undoubtedly...
Housing Vs. Environment: Early Skirmishes Signal All-Out Battle To Come
Consider the American housing sector, together with its political and activist support, which is concerned with building both market rate and affordable housing. Needless to say, it prefers to...
World Wide Survival Wrestling: Green New Deal Versus Affordable Housing
The article linked below provides a taste of battle-royals to come.
On one hand are activists who champion the plight of today's children, struggling tomorrow as grownups to survive in...
Unholy Partnership Of ‘NIMBY + Environmental Review’ Proves Toxic To Speedy Affordable Housing Development
Developers and Local Government alike are fond of blaming each other for lengthy delays in the planning of housing projects. In the United Kingdom, a Government draft proposal is...
