The Powerful And Persistent Presence Of An Unpretentious Personal Pooch
In a world of desperation and disappointment, a group of ever-hopeful homeless people find comfort and inspiration in the enduring, goofy face of a dedicated dog.
Read/view more in this...
Homeless School Children: Uncountable Numbers, Inadequate Education
It may seem strange to case the world for bad news, rather than good news, in order to tackle social problems. Education is one field where observing the trials...
How Efforts To Crush A Tent City Produced An Enduring Record Of Their Value
People who experience homelessness have a lot to contend with. Where will they go to eat, sleep, get clean, do laundry? With these basics up in the air, it's...
Study: Autistic Brains Are ‘Wired Differently.’ Housing and Social Support Suffers
A recent study from the United Kingdom reports that the 'differentness' of autistic people hampers their ability to take advantage of resources that support health, education, and housing.
What is...
Housing Design With Human Connection In Mind
A journalist in the United Kingdom, David Ramsay, makes the case that community planning needs to give more attention to connections between neighbours. He argues that if we do,...
Yes, Internet Is Essential For All Citizens: World Leader Proves It Out. Unh . . . Who?
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...
Non-Equity Rental Cooperatives … And A Whole Lot More
In Australia, Skynews recently interviewed Melina Morrison, the CEO of the Business Council of Cooperatives and Mutuals. Morrison was up to bat in order to speak about housing cooperatives,...
Social Housing Group Goes The Extra Mile In Support Of Its Tenants
We recently published a post about L&Q Housing, a large social housing landlord in the UK, which manages some 105,000 homes. It seems they have lost the plot, thrown...
Ohio Folks Look Outward To Solve Local Problems
A group of 40 people in Ohio are all fired up about worker co-operatives. Why? They travelled to the Basque region of Spain to learn about these businesses, which...
Merry Xmas For All? Hardly. 40% Believe The Poor Should Not Have Holidays
There are apparently significant consequences for those trapped by economic circumstances away from human pleasures we all might cherish — such as Christmas, or Hanukkah, or a well balanced...
Yes, Homeless People CAN Use A Helping Paw Or Four
What possible use is a dog when you're penniless without a roof over your head? It hints of a self-inflicted wound when a homeless person has been turned away...
Priorities For Women Experiencing Homelessness In Los Angeles County
The majority of women who experience homelessness in Los Angeles County have experienced violence during their current episode of homelessness. And one third of women experiencing homelessness in Los...
Housing – A Wicked Problem
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...
Affordable Homes For The Neurodivergent: A Profound Challenge Everywhere
People who are 'physically divergent' — different from the current physical norms — are often easy to spot. The person who carries out normal day-to-day activities in a wheelchair...
‘Expert’ Leadership Has Failed Social Housing. Time To Let Tenants Build A Better System?
When Affordablehousingaction.org started exploring affordable housing six years ago, the general feeling was that public housing in the United States was a dead duck. Due to the outsized influence...
Affordable Housing – Rethinking The Magnet Concept
When new affordable housing is under consideration, community leaders can be apprehensive, fearing that the new housing will be a magnet. They worry that the housing will attract more...
Vienna: The Social Housing Good Penny That Keeps On Turning Up
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...
What Does Child Care Have To Do With Clearing Outstanding Arrest Warrants?
Affordablehousingaction.org has published some encouraging stories about court programs and servicesTry: Homeless <-> Jail <-> Homeless<-> Jail . . . Breaking The Cycle that help people to clear...
In Welsh Social Housing, Feeling Low? A Few Lucky Folks Can Grow To Glow!
In the gloom-occluded world of social housing in the United Kingdom, there are occasional tiny flashes of sunlight. Literally.
But first, let's get the bad news out of the way.
UK...
Western University Experiments With In-Shelter Medical Team For Homeless People
This post is about medical residentsResidents are fully qualified doctors who are completing post-graduate training. in Windsor, Ontario, who are rotating through a one month posting to a clinic...
Food And Housing Costs Stress Household Budgets – Something Has To Give
This is a post about food. It is a basic necessity, but frequently sacrificed in the face of paying for housing. Welfare cuts in 1995 drew attention to a...
City Of Featherweight Affordable Housing Action Fumbles Coins Back Into Profiteering Pockets
When it comes to getting real action on building much needed affordable housing, momentary activist victories are no match for relentless pressure from financialization obsessed homeowners guarding their investments....
Should Housing Be A Wealth Creation Tool Or A Social Benefit? An Aussie Medical Perspective
In case you hadn't noticed that your own national housing emergency looks a lot like Australia's, an InSight article by Caitlin Wright describes some conditions that you will probably...
A Foundation For Learning That Supports Single Moms And Their Kids. It Starts With Housing
Young moms living on their own with their kids are great role models for resilience. Compared with other families, they get by with very low incomes, even as they...
Can Social Housing Pets Piggyback On New Renter Rights In England ? Alas, Not Yet
Private sector landlords in England will likely soon be forced to abandon their right to kick out tenants for any reason or, no reason at all. That's hugely important...
Changing The Conversation About Poverty In A Wealthy Country
An eviction can change your life. It certainly changed Matt Desmond's. He witnessed sheriffs evicting a group of siblings who had been orphaned when their mother died unexpectedly. Desmond...
Speaking Up For People Who Are Waiting For Social Housing In Toronto
Some people who are living in social housingThis is housing where rent is geared to income. in the Toronto area feel they should move out in order to...
A New Pipeline For Incarcerated People – It’s Not What You Think
Pipelines are a popular image these days where people get directed to a specific outcome, regardless of what they might want. There's the public-housing-to-prison pipeline and the prison-to-homelessness pipeline....
Loosening The Hold Of Inequality In U.S. Cities
Do you remember the triple bottom line, a term invented to expand the bottom line? The bottom line was about money: the triple bottom line added social and environmental...
Fifteen-Minute City? Bah! Humbug!
"What took us to the back 40, stays in the back 40." That was the thought of this writer, some years ago when renting a country cottage. Why were...
Can Social Media Smooth The Path To Housing For People Leaving Homelessness?
Time was, if you were short on a household item, you'd ask a neighbour to help you out. In today's world, the idea might seem laughable. Would your neighbour...
Report: The UK Needs Four Million New Homes
When this writer was growing up, there was a ridiculous ad for packaged mints. It featured two people arguing about whether the mint was a breath freshener or a...
The United Kingdom Grits Its Teeth To Condemn … Anti-Social Behaviour(??)
With the waning of the COVID pandemic, what's happened to the United Kingdom's famous 'Everybody In' treatment of the homeless? The scramble to move the unhoused under hard roofs...
Young People In Winnipeg: Fixing Service Gaps That Lead To Homelessness
How would you feel if a paramedic advised you to "call us when somebody dies?"
Confused: I thought paramedics were there to save lives.
Angry: that paramedic should be...
Residual Land Value And Why It Matters
Today's first postTry: Ontario's Government: Fix Supply To End The Housing Crisis. Have They Backed The Winning Horse? talked about plans to unlock housing supply in Ontario. It explores...
Ontario Wants To Fix Supply To End The Housing Crisis. Have They Backed The Winning Horse?
The Canadian province of Ontario is in the midst of a housing crisis. The number of people who are homeless is growing. A large number of people who have...
Sing Out For Joy And For Housing
Much staff discussion and laughter erupted in the halls of a Toronto hospital while this writer awaited day surgery. Shortly thereafter, bouts of singing and more laughter filtered in...
One Shape of The Human Rights of Children In A World Of Homelessness
Those countries that advertise themselves (or at least believe in themselves) as 'lands of opportunity' are living the lie when they can build battleships but not housing for the...
Porto Gambles On Friendly Free Enterprise To Solve Affordable Housing Crisis
Portugal shares the Iberian Peninsula with Spain, which is currently in the affordable housing news for its 'Right to Housing' law. Spain's new law includes regulatory solutions for renters,...
1 Magic Bullet To Create Affordable Housing? Amsterdam Looks To Many
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...
US Government Supports Zoning Reform To End Homelessness
Affordablehousingaction.org frequently identifies the need for national leadership to end homelessness. The first article linked to this post, Few Mayors Connect the Dots Between Zoning and Homelessness (Few Mayors),...
A Seattle Quickie For 10,000 Public Housing Folks — 35mph & More — Free Transit!
There's a kind of deliberate blindness when it comes to understanding the meaning of "living in comfort — poor," versus "living in comfort — middle class and up."
Accommodation may...
Worldwide Events Have Trashed The Honour Of Public Service. Time For A Change!
How did the reputation of public servants gurgle down the drain? In America today, teachers are included in this question.
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Clever little...
Will Neoliberalism Self-Destruct? Housing For All Is The Ultimate Challenge
Those of us who are immersed in Western society may well consider ourselves as comfortable frogs immersed in slowly heating water, unlikely even to notice being slowly cooked to...
Rebooting U.S. Public Housing: Hard Aground, Can It Be Refloated?
As things now stand, public housing in America is being hung by the neck until dead.
Some last minute reprieves are being granted to Housing Authorities prepared to sell their...
California: Exploring The Human Reality of Adequate Housing For All
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...
America IS World Class. But Could It Ever Create World Class Social Housing?
For the past two or three years there have been activist rumblings in America about the possibility of successfully creating world class social housingTry: West Coast U.S. Activists Struggle...
How Changing Public Decision Making Might Lead To Better Housing
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...
Penny-Pinching From Poorest? Or Incompetence? Always Worth A Check
Perhaps you've heard of the Homeless Industrial Complex? At the very least it seems to be a phenomenon on North America's west coast. It's hardly as financially fattening as...
Green With Envy: Futuristic Benefits To Cities Elevate Citizens Unequally
Modernizing cities! Out with the obviously dirty, depressingly ugly, cough-inducing, environmentally-damaging old. In with the sylvan new: vegetative proliferation, babbling brooks, micro-forest canopies, peddle-mobility, awardable aesthetic standards, puffed and...
London, Ontario: Does A Civic Emergency Require Light At The End Of The Tunnel?
Ho Hum, Another Day, Another City Emergency. That's what London, Ontario might be trying to sell in order the access federal and provincial funds available to cities that are...
Corporate Landlords And The Fight To Protect Tenants
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...
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...
Will The ‘Crisis Of The Day’ Forever Delay The Human Right To Adequate Housing?
Waiting lists exist worldwide for those who need affordable housing but don't have it. Ultimately, do these lists represent a positive movement towards a human right to adequate housing...
U.S. National Green Bank Can Help Stretch Affordable Housing Dollars
So, what does a green bank do, anyway? According to the article linked below, green banks help make investments in climate change by facilitating loans to customers that banks...
Major UK Housing Associations Struggle With Shaky Finances
In 2021, the United Kingdom government published The Social Housing White Paper serving notice that tenants deserved to be on the same page as their landlords. While not expecting...
Helping Homeowners With Low Incomes To Avoid Homelessness
In the United States, there are homeowners with very low incomes. Their housing costs are high when compared with those incomes. Even for someone who owns their home without...
Why Living in Skellefteå, Sweden, Might Be Everybody’s Cup Of Teå
The Human Right to Housing commitment of the United Nations has evolved to include the addition of an all-important word: 'adequate.' The Human Right to Adequate Housing is a...
Finding The Connection Between Housing And Health Outcomes
Since starting affordablehousingaction.org, we've been watching and reporting on the relationship between housing and health. We're aware that in the 1980's, when health research began noticing that additional $$...
A Form Of Self Loathing? SF Opinions Trash The City’s Homeless Solutions
Does this survey from a California city reflect the future of your urban region?
Human behaviour can be described by patterns. Opinion surveys are useful form of collecting patterns. So...
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...
Pardons Begin To Open Doors To Public Housing In The U.S.
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...
High Interest Rates Add To Financial Woes Of People With High Housing Costs
Businesses that charge more than 60% interest on money they lends to customers are committing a criminal offence in Canada. Sounds pretty high, doesn't it? It turns out that...
Corruption And The Homeless Industrial Complex: Does It Exist?
We know there are overwhelming problems where people who are homeless gather together in unofficial tent camps. Celebrity Dr. Drew Pinsky warns us of "tent encampments with 'multiple rodent-borne,...
Garden Allotment Wars: Something Public Housing Needs To Support?
Potty: United Kingdom slang for someone who is a little bit daft. (Daft, in turn, is slang for someone who is somewhat potty) Its origins are not generally agreed...
A Proposal To Raise Incomes For Canada’s Poorest Adults
Some people may dread reaching the age of 65, but it's a good news day for others. Why good? People who receive social assistance in Canada can look forward...
Universal Basic Income — Cherry-Picked. A Contradiction In Terms?
Recently we featured a post on a Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiment in Spain. We raised a question: why do Universal Basic Income plans seem to always be the...
Outreach Police Officer Stabbed To Death In Homeless Encampment
Tent encampments are little islands of anarchy, with inhabitants attempting to survive in opposition to, or at best outside of, society's rules. Encampments of people experiencing homelessness in North...
This Is Historic Wales. Does Just Anybody Have A Right To Live Here?
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...
Assessing The Potential Of Co-operatives To Expand The Supply Of Non-Market Housing
What is the potential for limited equity housing co-operatives to add to the supply of the non-market housing stock? The two kinds of housing co-operatives that get aired in...
Shelter Or Starvation? Tough Choice On An Empty Stomach
Middle class and up? You can afford to be wasteful. There's at least a little bit of money to burn.
Very low — even no — income? Every penny has...
“The Poor Will Always Be With Us:” COVID Showed That To Be A Lie
When will America climb out of its 2001 foxhole? Not since the British burned the White House down in 1812 has the country collectively faced such a threat. Was...
Did COVID Interventions Make Us More Resilient?
Emergency planners, the people we task with preparing us for emergencies, often say, "the current plan is only as good as the last emergency." In other words, we're good...
How Canada’s Housing Crisis Affects Newcomers
Canada made a big deal of welcoming refugees from Syria in 2015. Settlement services and communities geared up as the country prepared for a host of new children in...
Spanish Economic Dancers To Take A Whirl At Universal Basic Income
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...
Who Cares? Barcelona Knows, And Is Setting Out To Care For Carers
A study by the Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies of Barcelona has identified some 355,000 citizens who spend at least a portion of their time caring for the...
Boosting Tenants’ Safety And Stability
Have you ever been in the situation where someone told you with great authority that you had to do some particular thing? Whatever it was, you didn't want to...
Experience Points The Way To Ending Homelessness in Canada
2022 marks the halfway point in Canada’s 10 year National Housing Strategy. It’s an occasion for reviewing and renewing the Strategy.
Housing is something we all need, but despite being...
You Know, I Think They Might Live On Our Floor . . .
When this writer moved to Toronto, he rented an apartment in a building with 150 units because he knew one person who lived there. When he moved out two...
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...
Lifting Up A Vision Of Community Through Gardening
Jacob Beaton and Jessica Ouellette were rookie gardeners when they bought a property near Kitwanga in a rural part of British Columbia. In the first year, the garden produced...
Substance Use With Homeless Buddies: Better Than Housing First?
How to best rehabilitate people who are chronically homelessThe folks who sleep rough for lengthy and/or repeated periods of time are considered to be chronically homeless. into functioning citizens...
Seeking A Cooperative Route To Ending Food Apartheid In New York City
Poorer citizens in New York City have suffered a form of whiplash with the election of their new Mayor, Eric Adams.
Adams is both Black (hopeful hoorays) and a former...
Welsh Government Tips Housing Scale To Favour Local Residents
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...
Feds Do Warfare. Time To Attack Unaffordable Housing?
The Canada Mortgage And Housing Corporation (CMHC) is the country's federal housing agency. In the roughest sense it is the equivalent of the US Department of Housing and Urban...
Housing Opportunities In The Midst Of Extreme Poverty In Texas
Brownsville, Texas borders on Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. It sits in the delta of the Rio Grande River. It is low and flat, floods regularly and "gets...
Could Affordable Housing Support Help Poor, Inspire Church Growth?
The Church of England's R number is too low. That suggests its long term survival is in question. Could a social program, such as providing housing for the poor,...
A Garden That Grew Out Of The Tragedy Of The Grenfell Tower Fire
As the public inquiry about the Grenfell Tower fire grinds onFor example, read this account in The Guardian: ‘A merry-go-round of buck-passing’: inside the four-year Grenfell inquiry , it...
O Canada! The True North Weak And Diseased . . .
The headline above is a line from Canada's national anthem, unfortunately adjusted to circumstances.
The impetus for such an outrageous(?) modification comes from a book review in nature. The review...
Energy Retrofits In Older Homes: A Case Study
Climate change is a compelling argument for doing things differently. In northern climates at least, our homes contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures. Researchers have...
National Crime Problems? Find Scapegoats. . . Or Up Social Spending?
When it comes to finding scapegoats for rising crime, America is hardly alone in demonizing the poor and vulnerable. Still, it's success over decades in pointing the finger towards...
Building An Alternative Future For Women With Low Income
The Resilient Cities Network assists cities that are looking for assurances that they will continue to prosper in the future. The Network's assessment tools requires cities to evaluate shocks...
Libraries Are Going To Seed In A Good Way
Some libraries in the United States are adding a new lending feature: seeds. Bridget Shirvell, writing in Civil Eats, shares stories from public libraries in Mystic Connecticut, from Oakland...
Better Stories About American Public Housing? Yes, Please!
Best public stories about Cabrini-Green? Of course there can't be any, can there? That grotesque citadel of crime, depravity and lost souls — a Chicago public housing complex better...
United Kingdom Energy Security Strategy – What’s Missing?
To mark Earth Day this year, the National Housing Federation (NHF) summarized developments in energy saving activities among social housing providers. We've chosen to pair the first subject covered: "Electric...
Bristol UK Social Housing Bootstraps Wind Power
The world is scheduling the abandonment of gas and petroleum power. So bring on electricity! That demand is being energized by activists and, increasingly, by government. And when governments...
Dealing With The Opposite Of Homelessness: Dementia Lockup
In North America, when someone is diagnosed with dementia, people often think in terms of care facilities with locked doors.
In the Netherlands, it's another story. Some of the elderly...
Tackling Winter Food Insecurity With Low Tech ‘Green’ Innovation
Social housing landlords are often well-placed to help stretch the food budget of their tenants by providing/allowing space for tenants to 'grow their own.' Tips abound for community gardens...
Government Planned Youth Starvation: Pardon Our Rant
Government-Planned Starvation of youth? Well, not technically, but let's detour on the subject via an oldster . . . me.
Really, it's three months since my last small Canada Pension...
Black ‘Holocaust’? Community Heart? NPH Museum Covers Both
This post celebrates the advent of the U.S. National Public Housing Museum (NPHM). Physically, it is still a bright and glossy figment of the imagination. A visit to the...