Student Housing Woes: Worthy Of Worry Or Wrong-Headed Whining?

To an American student complaining about unaffordable housing, a sensible college administration might point out that earning a degree can well add an extra million dollars or so to...

Affordable Housing Path Forward: Don’t Assume Shelter & Investment Are Compatible

Affordable Housing discussions in modern capitalist nations begin with a faith-based assumption: that the human need for shelter can be compatible with the capitalist right to invest in a...

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...

‘Housing First’ Programs To End Homelessness Are Challenged By Boom Economies

Rapid housing and client choice are two of the hallmarks of Housing First programs. For an introduction to Housing First, try: What Is Housing First? Why Is It So...

Public Housing Tenants, Private Landlords, HUD: A Circular Firing Squad Shooting Blanks?

Before World War II, America never had the political will to allow low-income employed persons to live in public housing. Unfortunately, by immediately turfing newly employed wage-earners out, the federal...

Canada Squeezes Human Right To Housing Into Omnibus Budget Bill

Canada would seem to share an enthusiasm with its more populous neighbour to the south: cramming all kinds of goodies and baddies into omnibus bills. You might think that acknowledging...

Adrift & Engineless, AU City Councils Waggle Affordable Housing Rudders

Many Australian communities still lack serious affordable housing strategies. But even those with the vision and the will to tackle the problem can do little without a healthy shove...

Santa Monica Truly Affordable Housing Trickle? Nix. Not This Way.

What do you call a council decision to actually ban the inclusion of truly affordable housing in the city's approved housing projects? (By truly affordable, we mean housing within...

“I Felt Like A Criminal,” Says Airbnb Client. Sympathy For The Devil?

For anyone involved in the hunt for affordable housing, it's hard to work up tears for short term rental (STR) clients forced to skulk around pretending to be long-lost...

Vancouver Students Go Luxury To Beat The Affordable Housing Blues

The housing industry in North America has been reminding us ad nauseam for the past few years that it can't afford to build affordable housing.The American Housing Industry’s Addiction...

Amsterdam To Plug Loopholes That Gobble Up Affordable Rental Housing

Build on surplus city land! It's an idea growing in popularity in different countries as a way of addressing the world-wide affordable housing crisis. That crisis reflects an ever-decreasing stock of...

Housing First Or Homelessness Prevention? Stop! You’re Both Right

There are plenty of media reports that homelessness is growing. Point in time counts document the rise in the number of people who are living outdoors or emergency shelters...

A Constitutional Barrier To Public Housing Approvals In California

Institutional racism at the highest level is not at all distant in America's past. Earlier this month (February 2019) Virginia's governor admitted to a youthful yearbook appearance in blackface....

Affordable Housing Econsplaining: No More Persuasive Than Mansplaining?

Be calm and patient, ditzy little person, and try to follow my baby step explanations of Econ 101. Yes, that would be Adam Smith Econ 101 — the LAW of...

High Income Earners Add To Affordable Housing Rental Woes

Apartment List has just published a report documenting an explosion of higher income renters in the United States. Rental households earning more than $100,000 (US) increased by 48% from...

UK Affordable Housing Targets: You Can’t Fool All The People, All The Time

The UK government has entirely oversold its public/private scheme in which Private Enterprise Saves the Day. For a couple of decades now, or so the fable goes, the broad shoulders...

National Irish Success At Building Social Housing Matched With History Middle Class Housing Support

The government in the Republic of Ireland will shortly unveil new plans for affordable housing. While waiting, The Irish Times offers a review of the state's role in housing over...

Irish National Newspaper Toys Cautiously With A Fix For The Nation’s Affordable Housing Crisis

It's an era when most responsible senior governments are scrambling to come up national initiative to tackle a global disease: the affordable housing crisis. (We'll leave aside the U.S.,...

Human Right To Housing? Canada Sneaks In A Class Test And A Means Test

Canada is a signatory to the UN-backed International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This document recognizes “adequate” housing as a right. That's left many Canadians wondering when Canada...

Canada’s ‘Progressive’ Party Blue-Sky’s Massive Affordable Housing Election Promise

Through the lens of current U.S, politics, Canada's dyed-in-the-wool 'progressive' party is heading for rock star status. Not that the New Democratic Party (NDP) has apparently noticed how its...

Strong Calls For National Affordable Housing Leadership On Both Sides Of The Atlantic

At last! Solutions to the affordable housing conundrum have coincidentally been offered in both the United States and the United Kingdom that match the scale of this ever-widening crisis. The...

Ontario Housing Minister: Axing New-Unit Rent Controls Will Flood Rental Housing Market With Fresh Building

Yeah, Sure. In a warped example of 'those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, the Conservative Party currently forming Ontario's government hasn't learned, so Toronto renters...

From Vancouver, BC: Housing Unaffordablity From A Human Rights Perspective

In North America, the bragging rights for "Most Disgustingly Expensive Big City to Live in" are hotly contested. A perennial frontrunner in the competition is Canada's Vancouver, long a...

Canadian Campaign To Make Housing A Human Right

Canada's national government issued a National Housing Strategy in 2017. The strategy is founded on a commitment to housing as a human right and Canada's obligations as a signatory...

Aging National Populations Now Face Unique Affordable Housing Challenges

Some 70 years ago, a number of nations put their other national priorities on hold while sending a large segment of their young male population off to fight World...

Trendy YIMBY Affordable Housing Activists Are Sheltered In A House Of Straw

YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) should more appropriately be named a finger-pointing Yes In YOUR Backyard, as YIMBY activists between the lot of them are unlikely to have enough...

Can Crowd-Funding Solve The Affordable Housing Crisis? East Malaysia Thinks So.

The Government of East Malaysia is taking steps to implement a world-first peer-to-peer funding mechanism that more or less cuts conventional lenders out of the financing of affordable housing....

In Georgia, Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Affordable Housing That Isn’t Any Longer

Affordable housing financed by tax credits doesn't really become unaffordable when the tax credits expire. That's because the housing never was affordable in the first place. Tax credits help...

Why Are Palatial Dreams Not Downsized In Densely Populated Bangladesh?

Tiny countries, such as Singapore, Monaco and Bermuda, dominate the list of most densely populated countries in the world. Below tenth in that list, the first sizeable country shows...

UK Universal Credits + Pathetic Rollout = Homelessness Disaster For Many

On the surface, the United Kingdom's Universal Credit plan appears to streamline government support credits and income supplements by rolling them into a single credit. That "universal" credit replaces some...

Windsor, Canada Points To Affordable Housing As A Cause Of Local Homelessness, Must Therefore Sit On Its Finger

Windsor, Ontario believes that it has become a magnet for homeless people because newspaper reports either accurately or inaccurately rate the city as one of the most affordable in...

Negative Gearing: What Is It? How Does Make Housing Less Affordable?

Sections below with a light blue background are excerpts from an Australian Labor Party publication entitled Positive plan to help housing affordability Negative gearing Negative gearing refers to the situation where...

Public/Private Affordable Housing Partnerships: A Spoon Too Short For Supping With The Devil?

'Therfor bihoveth him a ful long spoon/ That shal ete with a feend,' thus herde I seye.' (Canterbury Tales: The Squire's Tale, c1386). In more up to date English:...

A Landlord Slurry Of Awfullness Floods Untouched Over UK Preventive Barriers

Somewhere out there at the end of the renter rainbow, there exists a landlord pot of gold. Nobody has ever reached it. Most likely nobody ever will. It's a...

Who To Blame For The Absurd Notion That Private Enterprise Does Affordable Housing Best?

Who to blame, indeed? The 'neoliberals,' apparently. For those living in countries with political parties called 'liberal',  the root of neoliberal is at least somewhat familiar, if not always...

India to Share Innovative Affordable Housing Technology On The Web

India has announced that it will establish a web-based 'knowledge lab' to share developments in affordable housing technologies with states and local governments throughout the country Why is this important,...

Milwaukee’s ‘Worm Ouroboros’ (That’s The Snake Eating its Tail): The Affordable Housing Study That Ends Where it Began.

Low incomes are the greatest barrier to affordable housing. This is the position of affordable housing reports from time to time. On this occasion we've felt compelled to comment. The...

Helping To Repeat UK History: Meet MAIDIC

MAIDIC came into being in 1841 to build affordable housing for the working classes. By 1900 it owned and rented more than 6000 dwellings in the London, England area....

A Call For Creative Housing Solutions In Charleston Flat-Out Dismisses The Only One Which Ever Worked!

The Charleston, SC, author of an opinion piece on the need for imaginative housing solutions waxes nostalgic about his upbringing in a neighbourhood of purpose-built affordable housing. In the midst...

Affordable Housing: Can A City Be Both An Advocate And An Honest Broker?

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...

My Way Is The Highway: Toronto Renters & Buyers Losing Faith With Government, Consider Heading For The Hills

In all housing matters affordable, Toronto has disappointed in recent years. The City has an affordable housing office that has studied the city's housing problem while churning out reports...

California Votes Yes Or No On Rent Control. Ontario Went Both Ways: It’s A Useful Perspective

The second to last time the Province of Ontario tinkered with rent control, it galloped madly off in all directions. All right, it galloped madly off in two directions,...

Why Can’t Municipal Government Stay Out Of Rental Housing Regulation?

Municipal governments in Canada's larger cities are starting to pay attention to rental housing. A low vacancy rate is the incentive for a market rental policy in Richmond, British Columbia....

India Leads The World In Affordable Housing Dreams. But Are They ‘Castles In The Air?’

India is not just dreaming about affordable housing. They are making a staggeringly-expensive nationwide drive to provide 'housing for all' by the year 2022. And they are doing so...

Pull On A Pair Of Worn Shoes And Follow Families Down The Path To Homelessness

Battles are fought for and against homelessness initiatives as well as affordable housing initiatives. These battles often play out in hearing rooms, committee rooms, legislative chambers, and particularly local...

Right-To-Buy Program At Risk. Well Duh! What Would You Expect, If Only 1/3 Selling Price Stays in Housing.

So the brilliant Margaret Thatcher era scheme to buy your UK council rental home is unravelling. Really, it only ever could unravel. With only a third of the sale price...

United Kingdom Civic Housebuilding – History Shows How To Build

Shelter, a UK based charity, published New Civic Housebuilding 2017 to present an approach to building affordable housing using successful strategies from the past. The report argues that developing...

Public/Private Partnerships, Formal or Informal? Amazon Teaches Us Why Not

Further to an article recently published here, Can Private Enterprise Ever Support Affordable Housing? Amazon Action Demonstrates Otherwise, the City of Seattle has now watered down its affordable housing...

Rooming House Reputation Rehabilitation Problem? Trendy Co-Living To The Rescue!

For a city like Toronto, Ontario, amalgamated in 1998 from 6 separate municipalities, rooming houses are a festering affordable sore on the tender underbelly of urban housing. Pre-amalgamation Toronto...

Top UK Housing Developer: Public / Private Affordable Funding Is Crazy!

A nationally respected housing developer has decided to tell it like it is: the huge financial burden of affordable social housing cannot be born alone by one business sector...

Affordable? The Private Market And Public Intervention Conundrum

So you'd like to think your country might one day have enough affordable housing? Think about it as a drug for a social disease which could be called Shelter-itis. So...

Social Housing In Three Nations: Three Recent Government Attitudes on Display

From the left: The United Kingdom At least some people in Britain, including those who vote labour, are looking forward to leader Jeremy Corbyn's regular promises of 1,000,000 new units of...

Small Town: Tens. Big City: Thousands. USA: Millions: 4 Million Young People Homeless

Toronto is the fourth largest metropolitan area on the North American Continent. With something of a social conscience, it has developed a Housing First program (known locally as Streets...

Can Churches Survive Without Socialism?

Strange headline . .  was there a typo? Did we mean 'can churches survive without social justice'? That seems a much better headline. Churches have long claimed to practically own...

The Affordable Housing Titanic: Lottery Winners To The Lifeboats

Life or Death by Lottery? Consider: it's well understood that housing is truly a matter of life or death. Try: Women Die Young in the Country of Homelessness Every day, more...

NYCHA 25 Billion Repair Estimate: Bad Management Or Weird Flaw Of Human Nature?

What is it about social housing that attracts neglect? Building Management 101 says "put enough money aside for repairs, and for eventual replacement." Notwithstanding this, New York City Housing...

“Affordable Housing: The State Must Lead.”

During World War II, housing was devastated across Europe, all the way from Britain to Russia. Elsewhere, in countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, the war...

Connecticut Sinks The Affordable Housing Hook Into Slippery Communities

In the midst of a global affordable housing crisis affecting many nations, NIMBY is a rallying cry for entire communities. A major defensive weapon is zoning — manipulating the...

Ghetto-busters: Project Towers… Nope. Section 8 Subsidies… Nope. So Federal Judge Orders ‘Plan C’

Opportunity: an elusive, unattainable dream for those trapped in poverty-stricken inner city neighbourhoods which are predominantly black. Opportunity? Opportunity to live in good neighbourhoods, send children to good schools,...

Struggling Against The Public Seed Money Cop Out

A story from a local Massachusetts paper illustrates the uphill battle against a long held government mindset: the best projects to fund are seed-money projects: those that grow wings...

It’s All About Us: City Politicians/Experts Navel-Gaze The Future of Government Housing Support

An international movement to broaden the social and economic classes eligible for affordable housing support is gaining steam. Make housing affordable for everyone, not just those most in need! Hardly...

The Elephant In The US Election Room: Affordable Housing

Growing larger and more frightening day by day, the Affordable Housing Crisis in America should be a major topic of debate in the run-up to last year's elections. But...

An American Godfather Of Affordable Home Ownership On Public Land

Thousands of homeowners have purchased affordable homes in Burlington, Vermont, beginning in the 1980's when senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders — then mayor of Burlington — introduced a land...
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