Renting

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...

The strains of the COVID-19 pandemic have laid bare the increasing crisis faced by America's renters that is now reaching into the middle classes. The U.S. Biden administration plans...

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...

ShelterforceShelterforce is a U.S. based non-profit dedicated to community development, affordable housing, and neighbourhood stabilization. recently convened a discussion about corporate investment in rental housing and tenant protections in...

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...

The Centre for Homelessness Impact (the Centre) has issued a report about renting homes in the private marketThere is certain irony in the timing of this report. For years,...

In a country that is not yet a signatory to the United Nation's Right to Adequate housing, polls show that it has considerable support from the American population. All very...

Is there any agreed-upon human right for people to get rich? It's certainly an underlying premise of unfettered capitalism. Many, if not most who live in capitalist societies see...

In 2017 (around the time affordablehousingaction.org started posting), researchers from universities in Spain and Chile published a review of academic literature that investigated the connection between eviction, health and...

The Spanish region of Catalonia will soon be taking a kick at the Universal Basic Income (UBI) can. UBI is invariably of interest to idealists, not to mention individuals...

America, with its world-class incarceration ratesRead, for example, this article in the Clarion Ledger: 'Foolishly sticking with failed system': Mississippi leads the world in mass incarceration , has over...

The article linked below actually sets out with a more ambitious agenda than 'a collection of thoughts.' It considers Why the rental housing market is so deeply broken. As...

For some years now, there has been an informal world-wide agreement that 30% of family income is a reasonable upper limit for 'truly affordable' rent. Above this, an individual...

Affordablehousingaction.org, has been consistently down on Section 8, a.k.a. Housing Choice, vouchers — once upon a time touted as the solution to America's truly affordable housing woes. The current federal commitment...

United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher popularized a political philosophy of small government, together with a free market for all manner of goods and services. The political theories that...

"Winnipeggers deserve to feel safe where they live work and play" These remarks were made during a recent funding announcement by the provincial government in Manitoba. Some of the funding...

If a tenant is behind in their rent, how important is financial assistance in preventing an eviction? It might seem that the answer is obvious, but as six researchers...

The Welsh Government is giving local governments more the power to control the use of homesLocal residents are having more and more trouble finding homes they can afford. Tempers...

For landlords, there's no such thing as a no-risk tenant. This writer lives in a 60 unit building and considers the superintendent a friend. The super has plenty of...

Is the private housing rental market a fall guy for blame-game government failure to live up to its social responsibilities? There's seems to be an argument, based on number crunching...

"Low income renters face long waits for public housing. What happens to those who can't wait?" That question is posed as the headline of the article linked below. 'Wait,' like...

The world's populations are more and more denied access to adequate affordable housing. The primary — and growing — barrier to renting or owning a home is 'financialization' —...

Is it time to abandon the neoliberal religion? The coming of its messiahs were prophesied some 40 or so years ago. These saviours of society would be the financier-angels,...

Do you rent? Suppose you found an eviction notice in your mail. Reason: failure to pay your rent. But that can't be! You've paid it faithfully for . . ....

Current Miami-Dade local politics feature some efforts to at least consider changes to the legalities of landlord-tenant relationships in an era when rents are increasing far faster than wages. City...

Imagine for a moment that you own a home and you've lived there for 10 years. In that time, the value of your home has gone up. Depending on...

'Small government' is the opposite of the 'nanny state,' where bumbling bureaucrats supposedly bludgeon struggling citizens with overmuch interference in their lives. 'Thatcherism,' 'Reaganism,' and 'Neoliberalism' are celebrations of...

Affordablehousingaction.org is featuring two posts about housing for renters in Canada. The first post is about is a remarkable production by students from Ryerson University. This one is remarkable in...

Housing prices are going up. Housing prices are going up. Housing prices are going up. Not very catchy, but certainly a consistent reprise in the media. Many of these...

The magic 30% rule has its difficulties. We're speaking about the housing affordability rule that 30% of gross income is a reasonable amount to pay toward housing costs. Research...

The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence has just published a report about rent control. The report reviews evidence published in academic journals and grey literatureFor a good discussion...

It is important to begin by saying that eviction is not a good situation under any circumstances. An eviction during COVID made a bad situation worse. For this reason,...

The entire housing advocacy community in North America is holding its breath as we wait to see what will happen with evictions in the days, months and years following...

The war in many countries between short term rentals (STRs) and 'affordable' housing have been placed on a back burner during the COVID pandemic. Over the last two years, the...

Governments are well-versed in the art of seizing land. This isn't just a comment on autocratic non-democracies. Modern democracies know how to do it, too, simply declaring that a...

As we are learning in Canada, adopting the Human Right to Adequate Housing marked an ending and a beginning. It's an ending because after decades of work, Canada's government...

This year, affordablehousingaction.org is covering reports about rental markets in Canada and the United States in one post. Annual reviews are completed in each country. Both reports cover the...

Canada is so enamoured with the importance of human rights as embodied in United Nations declarations, that it has built a museum to showcase the lofty heights of its...

What if Canadian homeowners had suffered the same calamities of the 2008 mortgage meltdown as Americans? Many homeowners in other nations also suffered. Canada largely crested the waves of...

Boondocking? What is it? Who does it? What has it got to do with homelessness? Some might argue that boondocking is homelessness, or at the very least, rootlessness. In America,...

“We’ve developed a culture where people don’t tend to avail themselves of protections afforded to them.” The comment comes from Brent Thompson, executive director for East River Legal Services, representing...

A recent article in i relates that landlords in the U.K. want a makeover. Apparently landlords, like everybody else, just want to be loved and the term 'landlord' is...

Amidst calls for urgently needed social rent housing in England, the Parliamentary Secretary of State for Housing, Levelling Up and Communities has tabled a White Paper. It discusses the...

Don Layton is a Senior Industry Fellow at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. He has just published two papers about housing policy in the United States. His...

What are we to make of an equivalence between airBNB-type short-term holiday rentals (STRs) on one hand, and the social housing shortage on the other? A United Kingdom charity...

Lots of talk worldwide about affordable housing crises. Is there any action, though? Most governments are building little or no affordable housing, and of that much may be affordable in...

Collective Action? Isn't that what government does to favour tenants when it imposes rent controls upon landlords? Unfortunately, no. Rent controls can, and do, cut both ways — in favour...

Jon Stanhope is perplexed. He led the government in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) from 2001 to 2011. Since retiring from the scene, housing in the ACT has become...

Affordable housing winds of change blow across borders. It's especially true in Canada, with most of its population in a long narrow strip that hugs the U.S. border. And given...

Late in the 20th century, economic theorists in the U.S. came to the conclusion that those with low and no incomes did not need to be housed in government...

International investor/speculator-fuelled propaganda leans on neoliberal "small government" ideas. One product is a picture of social/public housing as incompetent government-run disaster still limping along on undeserved life support. A new...

If you are the slightest bit business-minded, you might well imagine that in the housing rental business, evictions are nothing but a particular kind of business expense — those...

This is the second of two posts that report on a conversation with Martine August, who teaches in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. Her research...

Martine August teaches in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. Some of her early research drew attention to the redevelopment of public housing projects and how...

Here is a new report that adds another piece to an understanding of evictions in Canada. The data for this study comes from a national survey, which is carried out...

The Housing Crisis Research Collaborative recently hosted a webinar about the impacts of COVID for tenants and landlords in the United States. It included two panel discussions, one about...

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...

The Vancouver chapter of Soroptimist International owns two housing projects. One, a two storey project that was built in 1970, provides 21 units of housing for senior women with...

The Center For American Progress has just published a report which comprehensively discusses the impact of evictions. It also considers legal remedies to limit their cascading effects. The report lays...

Should such a headline as the one above reflect some radical New York City makeover policy, the outcry would be truly global, given the mythical status in world imagination...

Mobile Homes, from bus-sized RVs to the back seat of a car, offer another vision of homelessness, one which can be useful to both the homeless themselves and well...

Researchers at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba undertook a comprehensive review of evictions in Canada. The final report was published in 2020, but the news it has to...

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...

Elijah de la Campa, a senior research associate in Economics and Urban Analytics at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, has teamed up with others to expand on earlier...

Pima County, Arizona elects its constables. Constables have different responsibilities in different American states. In Arizona, they are officers of the county justice courts. One of the jobs of...

Any governments with housing responsibilities or any national housing activists with housing concerns should give a look to a CBC News four-part series on housing in the Canadian North....

Shelterforce is taking a crack at reimagining a functional Section 8 voucher program in the United States. The central premise is "universality:" the idea that such financial support to pay rent...

Featured below, a no-doubt well-meaning article about the American housing, long and earnest, explains why that country can only manage its affordable housing crisis by building so-called "luxury" market...

Affordable housing is not just a collection of construction material and land costs. It’s a purse that must stretch to cover a rental or purchase . . . after...

Facing a criminal charge? Theft perhaps? In the U.S., the Constitution protects your right to counsel. Completely broke and can't afford a lawyer? The court appoints one for free....

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has just published research about renovictions in TorontoRenovictions refer to evictions that are initiated because extensive renovations are planned or a building is...

It is disheartening to watch local governments warily circling an imagined threat like a dog sizing up an opponent, then pounce suddenly and brutally. This is particularly true when...

In North America, particularly the U.S., unions have suffered badly as "small" governments, no longer neutral arbiters, have promoted excessively friendly partnerships with business to achieve social objectives. At the...

Matthew Desmond came to our attention when "Evicted" — his book on the subject — was published in 2016. He's an expert on eviction as well as the destructive...

What makes a human being healthy, with a long life expectancy? There are as many answers as there are proponents of important influences. Modern medicine (including vaccination) has the...

Canada's second largest city, Montréal, has some features rare to the North American continent. Besides its Francophone culture, it is a city dominated by renters. And, truly unique among...

The Urban Institute has just released Who Owns The Twin Cities, which analyzes residential ownership patterns in Minnesota's Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul). These communities have the largest...

  A "shake of the head" series of posts entitled "who dreams up these crazy rules anyway?" The CDC eviction ban (challenged in the courts) will end July 31, and the...

There's an interesting housing campaign underway in the United Kingdom. A push is on to give tenants in the private rental housing sector more protection. Why is the campaign needed? The...

On the face of it, President Biden's new plans to help low and no income citizens in America seems reasonable: more Housing Choice (Section 8) housing vouchers. Unfortunately, housing vouchers...

How Do I Love Myself? Let Me Count the Ways . . . In Canada, some 13-ish. America goes a full 50-ish. In the United Kingdom, having their cake and...

There are important ideas that have a wide theoretical application to housing, but practical examples can be few and far between. Any single new step forward may be worthy...

A Federal Court judge has ruled against landlords who fought an eviction ban in Philadelphia. The landlords maintained that the ban was unconstitutional because it conferred a benefit only...

London, Ontario currently licenses student accommodation and smaller private rental buildings. The City's Council recently debated whether to expand its licensing system to include rental apartments and townhouses. The...

The Wellesley Institute is a champion for the social determinants of health in Canada. The Institute has focused considerable attention on the link between housing and health. One example...

Elijah de la Campa has done some interesting research about rental arrears among small landlords during COVID. He used racial characteristics of neighbourhoods to make comparisons about the extent...

Give. Keep it simple. Keep it coming. Keep your data. These simple rules, together with explanations, lay out how jurisdictions that wish to provide housing security can help their...

In the arena of housing, the pandemic has in spectacular fashion pitted two classes of people against each other: Shelterers, and Investors. Who comes out on top? Employing the classic...

With the good news of increasing numbers of vaccinated citizens in many countries, there are hints of life possibly returning to normal in the not-too-distant future. This news, however...

In the U.S. during the pandemic, Wake Forest University Law Professor Emily Benfer has become an expert much in demand to help make sense of a tangled thicket of national...

Ken Gibb and Alex Marsh are investigating the academic literature about rent controls. It seems there hasn't been a comprehensive review for 20 years. The final report will be...

New Zealand has taken steps to ease a housing crisis it shares with many nations, all of whom are suffering from the financialization of housing — speculative buying and...

A report has just been issued that calls on the Canadian government to assist tenants who are behind on their rents. A Rights-Based Proposal To Address The Arrears And...

An international group of researchers has pulled together a list of the actions that have been taken to help protect people from being infected by COVID-19. All of the...

Speculation in housing places temptation in the path of investors in England. You have a three bedroom house. You could rent it to a mum with three kids. They...

Canadians have a reputation of being bland and cautious, but you can be sure that we look for reasons to counter with smugness. Unfortunately, on the lookout to recast...

In order to fix a public housing problem, it seems that we need to identify a culprit. Classically, tenants point the finger of blame at management. Management returns the...

People looking for evidence of racial inequity in the United Sates need look no further than the National Equity Atlas. Data is organized using 31 indicators, of which three...

Recently, we posted a storyTry: Biden-Harris: Timely Dawn Of A New Day For Public Housing? Unlikely that assessed the chances that Public Housing would see a revival in America...