UK Social Housing Health & Safety: Who Pays The Politician Piper?

Some outside the United Kingdom are aware of a young dragon-slayer who materialized on that national stage in 2022. He was close enough to penniless, but enjoyed photography. And...

The U.S. Moves On From The Grants Pass Ruling – Part III

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on the case of Grants Pass v Johnson, what’s next? This post is the third in a four-part series about post-decision...

The U.S. Moves On From The Grants Pass Ruling – Part II

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on the case of Grants Pass v Johnson, what’s next? This post is the second in a four-part series about post-decision...

In Canada, No Legal Need To Bully The Unhoused. It’s Just A Trend

Here in Canada, sleeping beside the United States, we are sometimes cautious in our departures from the latest loony tunes that trickle north across the border. Canada seems sensibly committed...

Sleeping Pods and Shower Trailers? Your Local Homeless Should Be So Lucky

It would be nice to always snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but sometimes we just have to make the most of grabbing a useful defeat from what...

No, I Don’t Want Your Sandwich

If Shakespeare lived in a modern multimedia universe and wrote about extreme poverty instead of kings, would a part of his work product look anything like "Sandwiches?" Sandwiches is one of...

Gunfights At The Not-So-OK Tourist Corral

After a dramatic rescue of a tourist-serving essential service (an ice cream van), who can doubt the admirable heroism of sea-going splurgers from outa town? Here's an example in...

Bringing Housing Rights To Cape Town, South Africa

Apartheid in South Africa officially ended 30 years ago. Even though the country's constitution confirms that all citizens have a right to adequate housing, cities are still physically divided...

The UK Needs To Rediscover Social Rent, Does Your Jurisdiction?

The housing storm growling on the horizon is now overhead, beating down upon the United Kingdom and impacting significantly on its recent national election. The New Economics Foundation (NEF) offers...

Homeless In Winter? Maybe Take A Chip Off A Cold Block!

Did you know that a potato chip packet might survive for thousands of years in landfill, or alternately adrift on wind or ocean currants, literally helping to trash the...

A Life Of Homelessness Starting At Age 19

What price shelter? It sure as heck doesn't come free. Whether you rent or own what many countries in the world see adequate shelter as an basic human right,...

A Lyrical Housing Protest In Ireland

Standing in front of parliament buildings and singing is not usual response to an eviction notice. But that's what Martin Leahy did. Leahy plays guitar, sings and composes. When he...

Tomorrow’s Next Peasant Revolt? Okay, Maybe Not ‘Til The Day After

If your first language is English, you may be satisfied that the true peasant's revolt — the Peasants' Revolt — happened in England in the 14th centuryWikipedia offers a...

Who’s Standing Up As UN Right To Adequate Housing Falls Flat In Canada?

North America's growing rental housing housing crisis can be found expressed in its three major languages, English, Spanish and French. The third language, French, is prevalent in the province...

Housing Costs For Citizens In Spain Dragged Through The Roof By Tourists

In 2017, the Spanish anarchist group, Arran, undertook a series of actions against tourists. These added up to some frightening encounters in which international visitors imagined themselves on the...

NYC Mayor’s Message To The Unhoused: Don’t Come Here, We’re Full up.

A combination of events makes New York City an excellent example of why every mayor and council of every town and city in every world democracy should think seriously...

Film Celebrates How Determined Housing Activists Triumphed Against New York City

Would you take on one of the world's most powerful mayors of one of the world's most powerful city councils, while it played ball with powerful building developers dead...

U.S. Federal Department of Justice OKs Compassion For The Hungry — If It Is A Religious Practice

Perhaps you believe that demonstrations of human compassion are always worthy of social acceptance, permission, even praise. Not, however, in California, where feeding the hungry has arguably no merit...

Pardon Us If We Engage in A Little Tweneboa Worship While Social Landlords Quake

Tweneboa who? That would be Kwajo Tweneboa, arguably the United Kingdom's most powerful social housing activist. A year ago, he was 'trending' everywhere. We'd hate to think he might...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Public Housing Authorities, Please Justify Your Pernicious Stock Shrinkage

In 2019, a group of mothers, together with children and supported by activists, occupied an empty home in Oakland, California. At affordablehousingaction.org, we wrote a post about their invasion,...

Evictees Unite! You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Debt

America is facing an extraordinary debt crisis. Before the COVID pandemic, it was already a new 'normal'. Overwhelming debt creeps up on people in differing ways. Where housing rental is...

Housing => Wealth: But China’s Home Prosperity Bootstraps Are Breaking

Is ever-build, free-market, middle-class housing the sacred cow of modern western civilization? Follow housing news in a variety of nations and expect to be told what a large and...

Housing Help? You Could Kick Ass And Take Names Like Kwajo Tweneboa

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...

Canada Needs To Guarantee Oldsters Won’t Die In The Gutter

"Wanted: successful house-owner-capitalist who bought early but is willing to forego selling up and reaping a juicy profit — prepared instead to merely break even, or even to take...

Reflections On The U.S. Housing Crisis In The Great Depression

The 1930's were a desperate time in the U.S. Years of drought meant repeated crop failures. Work sites were shuttered. Hundreds of thousands of people lost work and their...

Pointed Housing Protest In Montréal vs. Canuck Truckers Needling Ottawa

It was recently encouraging to see protesters in the province de Québec (PQ) with a clear sense of purpose. It happened at the same time as disgruntled Canadian truckers...

UK Council Invokes Third Monkey: Social Tenants Furious

Sandwell, UK, Social Housing tenants can practice seeing no evil, as well as hearing no evil as much or little as it suits them. Council doesn't care about that....

Glued To Their Charitable Task, “Insulate Britain” Has The UK Infuriated

Affordablehousingaction.org has as its principal interests ending homelessness,  preventing people from becoming homeless and providing truly affordable housing for the most vulnerable. How can we be expected to resist the...

Housing Activists Vs. Mega-Landlords: How To Be More German About It

In the war of attrition against hostile housing forces, the city state of Berlin, Germany recently gave housing activists world-wide something to cheer about. The hostile forces were (and still...

Where In North America To Find A German Housing Thunderbolt? Look To Montréal

When it comes to affordable housing, Canada might well have been holding two federal elections last month, not one. Cheerleading for the country's housing and homelessness activists, the consortium known...

Naughty Housing Action: One Time Only? No, A Template For Activism

When Moms 4 Housing illegally occupied an Oakland, California company's empty house, many (including affordablehousingaction.org) thought their action was fruitless. No law prevented the company from buying and selling...

A Price Of Mixed Income Neighbourhoods: Soulless Density

What's a budget-conscious local government council to do? Spending on social housing is to be avoided at all costs, even when the locality already owns the land. It's too...

Housing Stands Empty? Desperate Homeless May Change That

Moms 4 Housing invaded a vacant Oakland, California home a year and a half ago, targeting the "housing bankers"Land banking is a fairly old term to describe housing industry...

Oakland Carpe Diem: When “Seize The Day” Became “Seize The Empty House”

When affordablehousingaction.org opts to post about news events, we try to find those that showcase ideas and concepts that can provide encouragement about positive future change. One news event that...

Rep By Pop, or Rep by Wealth (Or Lack Of It)? Lived Experience For Pols

Of all the formulae we hear about parliamentary (or congressional) representation, one of the least mentioned is a test based on the wealth of the candidates. Normally, Rep by Pop...

Occupier California Moms Evicted Quietly, Peacefully. (They Must Be Canadians!)

A far cry from the raucous civil disobedience housing occupations more than a year ago in Berlin, California's 2 moms + kids illegal occupation of an empty housing investment...

California Eviction Fight: Is The Housing Owner Blameless — Not A Villain?

We recently posted an article about two women and their children who were squatting in an empty house in Oakland, California, in defiance of the building's owners. The women...

Housing: Asset Or Necessity? Disobedience May Define It, Along With The Future of Capitalism

Two homeless mothers together with children have occupied an empty house in Oakland, California. Currently, there is more housing held empty by investors speculating in Oakland than there are...

Community Vs Diversity? NYC Affordable Housing Study Reveals No Right Answer

For years, the City of New York fought to keep hide a study that investigated the impact of affordable housing on neighbourhoods. A judge has now ended the secrecy....

Turn Menace Into Myth: How To Bigfoot An Affordable Housing Crisis

How Can We Solve A Housing Crisis That Doesn't Exist? That's the headline of a recent Mother Jones article. Indeed! Why not abominalize the affordable housing crisis — send it...

NIMBYite Baby Boomers Go Out With A Bang, Not A Whimper

"Affordable Housing? How quaint. Of course. Only take it somewhere else. Otherwise I personally guarantee to shove your XXXX up your YYYY until you bleed buckets and scream for...

For The Birds: California Union Lawsuit To Prevent Human Housing

On one hand are environmentalists concerned with planet's decaying health. On the other, an ever-swelling world population that requires shelter. The clash is inevitable. Environmentalists focus on human activity that...

Does A High Density Planet Demand High Density Housing?

Rabbits, it might be said, can't breed fast enough to keep up with humans. Look at our world population increasing by the billions. Even in Australia, where rabbits are...

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...

A Modest Proposal: See How The UK Housing Market Actually Works!

It's affordablehousingaction.org's decision to call the following news story 'a modest proposal.' That's partly because the word 'modest' pops up in the article here and there, as in: "Industry analysts...

Taking Control: Updates To Economics And Human Rights Thinking For Today’s Housing

Can there be any benefit to affordable housing efforts in dusting off old chestnuts? This post takes a look at the spheres of economics and human rights. It also...

Amazon Falls. How Many Outstretched Consumer Feet Were Needed To Trip A Retail Giant?

How many New York City activists does it take to unscrew a multi-billion dollar commercial lightbulb? Not as many as one might expect, certainly not a majority of people...

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...

Roots Of A Revolution: How Amazon Is Helping Build A New Socialist Movement

The almost incomprehensible failure of Amazon to support the attempts of its headquarters city to build affordable housing has been the subject of ongoing posts on this blog. Given the...

Karl Marx: Renaissance Bound?

Perhaps you know Karl Marx as the spawn of the devil who invented the Soviet Union, winner of the free world's Top Evil Empire Prize year after year for...

A La Carte: A Piece Of Activist Art Designed For The Homeless

Here's an easy-to-solve urban mystery: a repurposed shopping cart appears, piled high with grab bags of belongings as well as bags of various somethings which may defy description but...

What’s The Matta, Piñata? Affordable Housing, That’s What.

Are you concerned about Affordable Housing? Start a blog — we did. Stage a protest — many have. Or, you could make a piñata . . . .? ....
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