Taking Control

The American news publication Politico has decided to reflect political and economic developments that may influence European as well as American concerns, for better or for worse. Here's a headline...

As the 10th most expensive city in the world to live in, Toronto has been trapped in a no-win nightmare of rental housing unaffordability. The price is being paid...

A collection of residents in Ontario, Canada, have been meeting to discuss how public policies and programs could end homelessness and make housing more affordable. The group includes people...

Unhoused, or in danger of becoming so? What are you at risk of losing? Some things are perfectly obvious: for example, a waterproof roof you can call your own. Not...

The article linked to this post is about Finland's remarkable achievement in reducing homelessness. The success lies in its country-wide adoption of Housing First, an evidence-based program to end...

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . . ." Joanie Mitchell's famous words featured 'paradise' destroyed by car culture. Times have changed, and parking lots have earned...

Every country creates its own responses to homelessness. The Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping (the Kerslake Commission) is one of many initiatives in the United Kingdom. The...

A recent essay by Mario Polèse provides an opportunity to consider the usefulness of making comparisons of housing costs in different jurisdictions. Polèse is professeur émérite at the Institut...

Last month, we shared the work of FRAPRU, a organization made up of 80+ national, regional and local organizations active in the Province of QuebecFRAPRU aligns with the organization's...

If you accept that non-profit and co-operative housing are a drag on your country’s economy, the following report is here to make you think again. It tackles the question:...

NIMBY? YIMBY? Affordablehousingaction.org is based in Canada. We have taken the attitude that, where it comes to affordable housing, it is possible to learn from what's going on in...

It takes a certain amount of courage, or perhaps more accurately, desperation, to call yourself the 'Worst Landlord' in the state. This is particularly true if you are a...

When Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965 it had aspirations to become a regional and world-beating economy.  In 50-odd years it has achieved that goal. From the word go, Singapore...

What do you call the realization that your supposedly advanced country lags behind an imagined global backwater? Humiliating? It's the kind of reaction that can happen when you holiday in a...

Duncan Maclennan is an economist who has studied housing in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. He says that housing is a 'wicked' problemFor more on the definition of...

Mariana Mazzucato and Leilani Farha have collaborated on a roadmap to achieve the right to adequate housing. The roadmap starts with a mission. Mazzucato and Farha argue that having a...

Social Housing, newly minted for America! What is it? How does it offer to mitigate and, hopefully one day, end a current national housing crisis? This post introduces an...

Affordablehousingaction.org has been following one of the few currently active 'social housing' projects in the USA. With a touch of good old American self-interest, activists have decided that a...

The average age of young people leaving home in Spain? Nearing 30. Many, if not most, simply cannot afford to leave home, given the impossibly high cost of both...

Homelessness happens for a number of reasons. Eviction is one. This post is about three different ways that people in the United States have been working to help people...

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,...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

An article linked below offers a number of insights, large and small, about the global nature of 'financialized' housing. One immediate small insight: a preferred spelling — Türkiye —...

The Housing Crisis? What is it? These days pretty much every nation has one. Every region, city, town, village has one, too. Even still-communist countries such as China have one,...

Can Canada create 2 million homes that are affordable for the people in greatest need? Carolyn Whitzman says, "sure!" Whitzman is an Expert Advisor to the Housing Assessment Resource Tools...

Not every post affordablehousingaction.org publishes, but surely every second post, reflects a concern about 'a' or 'the' housing crisis. For any media publication, as well as every concerned city...

'Mixed' income housing projects are currently a popular home-building fad(?) that appears to feature governments at all levels getting truly 'stuck in' to solving growing affordability problems in many...

There are many ways that land and/or buildings can fall into a government's hands. Bequests and tax delinquency are two examples. These windfalls ideally swell a portfolio of wealth...

Canada's first Federal Housing Advocate began accepting claims about the right to adequate housing on June 1, 2022. The Advocate’s office confirmed to us that they received nearly 200...

Here's an idea sprung from the cramped (relatively) European countryside that might perfectly suit the wide-open spaces in countries such as the USA, Argentina, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Why...

With inflation soaring in many countries, looming bank rate increases are threatening to leave mortgage holders under water. Meanwhile, investors are gobbling up suitable properties to buy and then...

If you’ve ever wondered how systems and structures contribute to discrimination, this is a great story to read. It’s about a property tax auction in Baltimore. The City holds...

Renters Rising and the Center For Popular Democracy have published a vision document for social housing advocates in the United States: Social Housing For All. The document sets the stage...

Nearly a year ago now, the Texas legislature with the stroke of a pen turned the homeless into criminals. Of course, the law didn't quite say that. Instead, it...

New York City is blessed with an enormous amount of public housing that has so far withstood the test of time. Yes, it needs 40+ billion dollars for repairs....

Who knew that democracy could be so easily subverted by a few angry, determined voices? A recent article in The Atlantic explores in depth how America's democratic system can...

Affordablehousingaction.org frequently trots out Singapore and Vienna as examples of 'how social housing could be done better.' Nor is this some unique trend. Governments support fact finding missions. As...

In North America, we're accustomed to Police Associations as reactive. Defending this officer or that from allegations of this or that. Lobbying this jurisdiction or that to prevent reduction...

Over the last year, California's state capitol, Sacramento has been working hard to balance a responsibility to find or create shelter for the city's homeless. It has been a...

We think re-inventing this particular housing wheel is a very positive thing. The activists themselves are understandably wary of admitting their ambitions for very good reasons, because it will...

In modern democracy, to what degree can activism from the "bottom" result in meaningful change at the "top"? Here's a Canadian question, with an American analysis — the same...

The histories of many North American cities are marred by institutional acts of unfairness and cruelty towards a catalog of colors, races and religions. In this current world of war...

The Australian State of Victoria appears to be bucking international trends by not only announcing a massive social housing (rent geared to income) build, but actually taking the necessary...

The State of Victoria in Australia has come up with an astonishing plan to actually fight homelessness with housing. It intends to do so by rapidly building some 10,000...

Halifax, Nova Scotia's largest city, has been exploring for some time how to counter unpalatable social housing decisions made by the provinceIn this post, "social" housing refers to non-market...

"Free" enterprise must be something of a bewilderment for those in search of western "freedom." There would seem to be millions of people in this category, directly linking, without...

The City of New York recently declared an emergency following Hurricane Ida, which flooded homes and apartment buildings in low lying areas. Eleven of the 13 people who died...

How many public housing tenants does it take to screw in a lightbulb? In the wrong light, this question might be viewed as a joke. To make it more serious,...

The unremitting bumpiness of a worldwide affordable housing crisis hit a smooth patch momentarily with referendum news from Berlin that puts corporate landlords on notice that real change might...

A year in to the COVID-19 emergency, the Maytree FoundationHere's how Maytree describes itself: "Maytree is committed to advancing systemic solutions to poverty and strengthening civic communities. We believe...

As Canada sails into a snap election, a move approved only by a quarter of the populationRead at CTV News: Just 26 per cent of Canadians support a federal...

Berlin, Germany is a city/state of many renters, ever-rising rents, and few means for renters to challenge the economic self-interests of landlords. Years of protests about increasingly unaffordable rents across...

There is almost nothing as powerful as a free-market speculator in a democracy where the laws of the land favour — to the point of worship — the predatory...

Expropriation of private property is legal in many countries. If the needs of a community are considered paramount, they trump the rights of individuals and corporations. In many western...

Why should anyone except New Zealanders care about New Zealand's ownership housing crisis, its rental housing crisis and its rent-geared-to income (social/public/state housing) crisis? Well, New Zealand's housing history roughly mirrors...

Advocates across the U.S. are calling attention to renters and their financial struggles during COVID. Some renters who are in arrears have been protected by eviction bans, although the...

There is no question that the internet has made it easier for people to stay connected during the COVID pandemic compared, for example, to how it was during the...

Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Formentera. Familiar names to holiday makers who flock there in summer. These are part of the Balearic Islands off the Mediterranean coast of Spain — just...

Toronto City Council has crunched the numbers and come up with a plan to build more supportive housing in that city. The plan will provide homes designed for people...

This is the final post covering the Tyee's five part series about a green new deal for housing. The Tyee is based in Vancouver, where high prices are making...

Leilani Farha may no longer be the UN's Special Rapporteur on Housing,To check out the Special Rapporteur's mandate, see the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights: Special...

Who can best build truly affordable housing for low- and no- income citizens? The private sector? That's been a popular government assumption, tried and tested in Public Private Partnerships...

Recruitment for Canada's first Housing Advocate is underway. The deadline for applications is December 31, 2020. The Housing Advocate's position was created as part of Canada's commitment to make housing...

2020 has brought more flurries than usual to the Canadian city of Hamilton. With the onset of the pandemic, commendable flurries of activity have removed people experiencing homelessness from...

Could your local city or regional council build its own housing? Why would it want to? One compelling argument is that, when it comes to truly affordable housing, it may...

In a 1939 alternative universe of extreme federalism, United Kingdom's Home Counties voted to go to war with Nazi Germany. Scotland did not, which is why, in present-day Schottland, loyal...

Is it a new development to help Dublin solve its social housing crisis, or a developer boondoggle to turn a tidy profit with slight-of-hand shell game in which it's...

A new book, "Housing Policy In Australia" calls for a national housing program and building more social housing. This is a direction the current government has stubbornly resisted. The authors...

Much of the world, if not all, is addicted to housing, even to the point of declaring it a human right. It seems to be part the natural human...

The following article provides readers with an insight into the current state of national housing crises across Europe. For largely unilingual North Americans, the article is a window into a lot...

During the 2016 American Federal Elections, we called Affordable Housing the 'Elephant in the Room'.See: The Elephant In The US Election Room: Affordable Housing For all that it was...

That there is a 'need' for housing across the American nation is largely self-evident. Housing developers would be heading out of business otherwise, and the largest of them at...

In October 2018, Canadians went to the polls. No party emerged as a clear winner. Advocates with long experience are saying this presents an opportunity to make housing more...

It's not our fault. More reputable media made us do it. So we are reporting a 'Mickey Mouse' affordable housing solution in the world's most expensive city, Hong Kong. The...

You don't have to be wealthy to look down your nose at others. For example, a movie title was co-opted to describe an entire generation of unionized British industrial...

Incompetence? Bad Faith? Obsessive fealty to shareholders?  Whatever the reason, local United Kingdom councils are starting to finger one of the 'P's in their Affordable Housing Public Private Partnerships...

For the past few decades, governments and businesses alike have made forceful claims that private enterprise can manipulate the free housing market to better house the world, from the richest...

It's a world in which a great many nations pay lip service to the human right to adequate shelter. There are some, including the United States, that don't acknowledge...

A slightly more fast and loose post, ranting completely understated

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...

Governments are vital agents of social and economic change, not foot-dragging deep state bureaucracies committed to interfering with visionary private enterprise. Really? Mariana Mazzucato, an American economist, has earned growing international...