Affordable Renting

A rent supplement program in the Canadian province of New Brunswick excludes people with disabilities. This seems odd, as people with disabilities have higher housing costs and lower incomes...

Successful and predominantly middle-class countries are nevertheless uniquely different around the world. Take investors, for example. Some 90 percent of them in Australia are 'Mum and Dad' investors. Small...

Worldwide, this year has brought Spain into focus as a country suffering from a housing imbalance caused by tourism. This post is NOT principally about that story — a...

The American Dream may well be anchored in your very own pot of gold that supports your Housing Ladder, offering you wealth and prosperity. Turns out, however, that earning...

Renter-capabilities for an Oxbridge U. graduate with a plummy accent and impeccable manners? A breeze. Renter-capabilities for an average UK young adult of average colour (beige?), unimposing academic credentials (GCE),...

Okay, So what has admirable Vienna, Austria done now to earn our applause? Only got itself accolades for being the most livable city in the world, from a list...

After a long search to rent a home in Los Angeles using a Section 8 VoucherSection 8 refers to a rental subsidy program in the United States, where qualifying...

You know, for such a small planet, we can be pretty blind to opportunities. Take housing design for example. For reasons that are explained in the article linked to...

In the United States, Section 8 (Housing Choice) Vouchers are issued to a lot of people with very low incomes. The Section 8 Voucher provides financial support to reduce...

Late in life, I'm pleased to learn a little about property guardianship. Seems I was a property guardian and never knew it. So was my daughter, at least in...

When you think about tenant organizing in Kentucky, you might visualize Black tenants calling out their housing authority for poor conditions. The article linked to this post tells a...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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 analyses residential ownership patterns in Minnesota's Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul). These communities have the largest...

Everybody knows that the older little piggies get, the more small-c conservative they become. Older piggies drift away from a youthful idealism and the need for change towards the...

The much-worshipped self-regultory mechanics of the Law of Supply and Demand are failing to deliver the affordable housing that free market nations need. America announced its determination to pass the...

As cities cores become higher, denser, and more gentrified, the American dream is changing shape. What was once the lure of a single family home on a private lot...

The focus of the article linked below is the United Kingdom. But the problems it explores are mirrored in nations experiencing a housing crisis that national and regional governments...

This post features a "good news" public housing story. It comes from Germany. We'll admit it right up front, part of the story is a little stale. It's about...

Zoning laws were developed to prevent anybody, including builders, from building just anything anywhere. Reasonable enough to prevent housing next to health-endangering industry, and to build buildings to basic...

Imagine a railway sleeper car with its upper and lower bunks set up nightly, complete with privacy curtains and a ladder to the top bunk. If you've had the...

Too rich to be poor? Now that's a concept that's easy to understand. Too poor to be poor? In all the world, it's apparently only possible in Jersey City, New...

With renting a home becoming the flavour of reality (if not desirability) everywhere, it's tough to stand out when would be renters flock and squawk around scarce opportunities, like...

Two important factors are gradually swinging the attention of house builders in a number of countries away from the 'National Dream' of home ownership — a mantra that has...

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...

The fundamental nature of the world's most successful homeless-to-housing program is embodied in its name: Housing First. First implies that there is at least a second step. And housing is...

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), grannie flats, garden suites, call them what you will, can be highly affordable. Better still, in a crowded urban landscape they have a residential footprint...

"I'm sorry, Mr. Brewster Twillingate-Smithers III, but I will not rent one of my apartments to you because your income is zero, not withstanding your weekly million-dollar subsidy from the family trust."

National governments on both sides of the Atlantic obsess about the home-ownership dream, even as households are shifting away from home ownership towards renting their housing, permanently. Part of...

Plaudits to the Kuehn Charitable Foundation for their efforts in Massachusetts to help develop a statewide user-friendly register for affordable housing. Read more about their initiatives in The Boston Globe:...

For Atlanta, Georgia's homeless population, persistence has paid off. The city lays no claim to a magic formula for getting people out of the streets and into homes. Other...

If you are a renter, what use are you getting out of your security deposit? None. Your landlord is holding your security deposit as a trust. So, in theory at least, a...

It seems that UK citizens are more worried about the nation's housing crisis than they are about Brexit. Parliament, meanwhile, has moved beyond obsession to a state of flat-out...

The Canadian Housing and Renewal Association (CHRA) has just released a report about non-profit affordable housing that is provided and operated by indigenous organizations. The housing is spread across...

A United Kingdom housing project has achieved the unlikely: PassivhausPassivhaus, a tough but voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building. Read more: What Is A Passive House? standards generally...

Want to know how renters in Canada are faring? Now you can. A coalition of agencies has teamed up to produce a Rental Housing Index for Canada. The project was...

America is a country that remains responsive to human needs, even in spite of the fiercest attacks to dismiss them. One example: poll results following three years of U.S....

The Broadbent Institute has added its voice to the groups who identify affordable housing as an issue for Canadian voters when they go to the polls on October 21,...

The public face of much-touted public private partnerships (PPP) is a local county council. For several decades now, local councils have been expected to maintain rental housing stock for...

Yes indeed, the leopard may change its spots. And the scorpion crossing the river on the back of the frog may not sting it, so that they both drown....

When Canada's sleeping giant (in this case, its federal government) finally awoke to a variety of housing crises in 2017, it did so with a 10 year, 40 billion...

America is where social housing went to die. Poisoned by the cold war that tarnished all things that remotely hinted of socialism or communism, social housing's slow death was,...

Perhaps one day we'll overhear disparaging remarks such as "Oh, he's just Land Trust Trash (maybe even 'Commie Land Trust Trash)" Why? Well, land trusts are a lot like trailer...

These days, two pressures steer home seekers towards the apartment rental market. Plan 'A' may be to own a home, but temporary or permanent lack of a mortgage down payment...

Without a parents' basement to inhabit while saving for a house down-payment, millennial Aussies entering the housing market are facing a bleak future. Rising rents are taking such a...

The CBC recently reported that the high cost of living will be biggest issue for Canadians leading up to the federal election which is scheduled for later this year....

Two important factors are influencing rental housing in cities across North America. The 'millennial' age group is now facing the lifetime challenge of finding employment and shelter. The average millennial...

Swedish construction company Skanska, in partnership with well-known furniture retailer Ikea wants to build affordable housing in Worthing, Sussex, UK. 30% of the BloKlok partnership's modular housing project will be set...

For the past few years, the American housing industry has been open and unapologetic about the focus of its members, both corporations and individuals. The industry prefers to profit...

Should Government take any role, let alone a direct one, in creating or maintaining affordable housing? For conservative-dominated capitalist governments, it is a topic of hot debate. That in...

On one hand "Make India Great" is coming close to providing true housing for an entire population of one and a third billion over a span of 7 years.Try:...

An unusual phenomenon takes place every July 1 in Canada's second largest city, Montréal. It is a city where renters are in the majority (493,000 or 63% of all...

What Are Housing Co-operatives? When you start to look into housing co-operatives, you might be struck more by their diversity than what they share. Their contribution to a country's housing...

Two years ago, after a two year process, the City of Boulder approved by a vote of 7-2 an ordinance to allow housing co-operatives as dwelling units. Opponents felt...

When it comes to affordable housing, New Jersey's bickering between municipalities and the state have set a national benchmark for the lowest possible standard of government commitment to a...

Simple solutions have a way of finding themselves. Some reports suggest that at ground zero of the affordable housing crisis — the state of California — grand schemes for generating...

The affordable housing crisis is creating a new class of perpetual middle-income home ownership hopefuls. They'd love to own a home, but year after year, the possibility of doing...

For many years, Republican majorities in the New York State Legislature have blocked efforts to provide better protections for the state's housing renters, particularly those  suffering from predatory landlord...

An individual or an agency interposes itself between you and your objective and offers to help. Sure, you can hope for convenience, but hardly ever a cost saving. Help when...

It's election promise season in America. (With U.S. political campaigning practically all year, every year, when is it not these days?) Leading up to the 2016 U.S. elections, there were...

Apartment List, a private sector web-based rental housing listing service in the United States, has just released its report tracking trends in income and housing costs from 2008 to...

"Hospital treatment bookings wait for no person," I reasoned before beginning cancer radiation therapy in downtown Toronto. I planned to travel to my appointments by subway (No sane person...

Today, we're serving up a still warm-brace of stories that expose the rape of a word that threatens senior citizens world-wide. That word is 'affordable.' The deliberate and callous...

A California 'homelessness housing' design competition has announced winners from some 53 developers who entered a Los Angeles County innovation challenge. The winners are expected to use their prizes, which...

The plucky Scarborough Community Legal Clinic is back in the news, reminding Torontonians about people living in rental housing that is illegal in most residential districts in the city:...

Most people live in urban, rather than rural, areas in all developed countries. Not surprising, therefore, that an affordable housing crisis is seen as an urban problem, not a...

There are not that many homeless people, but those few are persistent in putting themselves in our faces, sleeping in our city doorways, panhandling on our streets. Wrong. Young people...

Temporary low income workers? Too bad for Detroit that the world doesn't work that way. Because temporary low income workers would perfectly suit America's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Low Income...

Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics, stirs a fat chicken into the red-hot American housing pot, with an analysis of factors that are threatening housing in America, particularly...

The title of this article pays homage to a much more impressive one which we'll get to in a moment. It's partially entitled " . . from Stalin to...

We are in an era of proliferating definitions for affordable housing. They have multiplied to the point of utter confusion, not only for those who discuss and attempt to...

Apartment List is an American private company that specializes in apartment rentals. Because of its size, it's in a position to gather broad statistics concerning rental accommodations in the...

Take yourself back twenty or thirty years (or less, if strictly necessary due to age considerations) and reading apartment-for-rent ads in the newspaper (remember them?) for say, '2 bdrm...

So why would a landlord ever want to rent a market rate apartment to a homeless person? It's exactly what you thought. They don't. Small and large studies in America show...

Public private partnerships (PPP) for developing and managing affordable housing have demonstrated a powerful allegiance to profit before public good in several western countries. Indeed, everywhere you look these...

In Canada it seems, anybody who is anybody owns a home. The country has one of the highest rates of home ownership in the world. By contrast, renters are either:...

Criticism of a new Toronto plan to deal with homelessness shines light upon some of the rhetoric that clouds the meaning of 'affordability'. Toronto's recent civic election rang loud with...

Public/Private partnerships are 'Fake News' bringing hope to the solution of national affordable crises in many countries. What's fake about it? The final delivery, it seems, never quite matches...

How can a government, a province or state, a municipality, discharge its responsibilities to its citizens and be perfectly fair? By lottery. Everyone who enters has the same chance as...

A Trulia Research Special Report recently updated an earlier exploration of professions which were struggling with affordable housing issues. For many it's a difficult choice: either impoverished by housing and living...

Vancouver, Canada is a city of world class unaffordable housing. And yet it possesses some $10 billion dollars in real estate holdings which include social housing. Most big cities own...

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...

For many towns blessed with a college or university, there is a certain pride in hosting an institution of higher learning. Far more important for the health of the...

Hand-wringing about the rising cost of affordable housing is by far the most common way of identifying 'the target' of the affordable housing crisis. But housing is almost always paid...

"We've been empty nesters for years. We don't need this much space. Let's cash in, downsize and rent." It's common enough and perfectly sensible discussion for retired seniors on...