Community Resilience

Stories that discuss how affordable housing affects the economy and community.

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...

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...

‘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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

“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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Toronto Area: Local Studies Support Calls For Housing Rights

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...

Boondocking Lifestylers, Meet The Boondocking Homeless

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,...

Love Singapore Housing But Can’t Get There From Here. . . Or Maybe We Can

Much of the world is mightily taken with Singapore's victory in creating a workable social housing scheme with home ownership as its objective. It has been so fulfilling that...

What’s It Like To Provide Homelessness Services? Ask Front Line Workers

Who are the frontline workers in the COVID emergency? Hospital workers? Yes. Paramedics? Sure. The staff who work at emergency shelters and drop-in centres? Really? We know it is difficult...

Can We Find The Spirit To Create Post-Pandemic Veterans Housing?

Post-world war II, there was an explosion of home building. The destruction of war necessitated the replacement of destroyed housing in countries that were active theatres of hostilities. The...

Public Housing Heroes From New Orleans

While there are a lot of stories about public housing in New York City and Chicago, those from the US south are much less common. This one comes from...

Renewing The Call For Universal Basic Income

There is a longstanding international interest in Universal Basic Income which can be traced back as far as the year 1516Try: Universal Basic Income Part 1: Applying A Justice...

Gardens And Grocery Stores: Tickets To Better Health

When schools closed at the start of COVID, community organizations jumped in to make sure that students in Baltimore's Cherry Hill neighbourhood had food to eat. One of the...

Community Cooperation Builds A New Rwanda

Rwanda has a dark period in its history, when the Tutsi minority population was targetted and killed and large numbers. Is it possible for such a rift to be...

US Public Housing Renaissance: Not All The News About RAD Is Bad

The Ventura County Housing Authority in California is starting to redevelop its oldest public housing site, with support made available through the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. Amid a slew...

Putting Deeply Affordable Housing On The UK Agenda

Michael Gove is The United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This is a new role for Mr. Gove as well as for the UK...

Thinking Small And Useful: Helping Senior Homeowners Sit Tight

Recently, we published a post that featured an idea worthy of attention founded on a somewhat histrionic presumption that American democracy is in danger of going belly upTry: Mandatory...

Strategies That Erode Housing Security: Part I – Social Mix

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...

Teens Hanging Out: Does This have ANYTHING To Do With A Housing Crisis?

At Affordablehousingaction.org, we are often given to pauses and head scratching about stories we'd like to present, often because we're uncertain as to whether they really have anything to...

Mandatory Volunteerism To Save Democracy: Goofy? Or Food For Thought

One of America's two predominant political parties has recently been cherishing the big government activism that carried President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal from the depression era 1930's into...

Working For “The Man” Can Be A Heavy Burden, Unless “The Man” Is You

For those of us who are on the lower end of the income scale, it's critical that we extract the best value for the money we spend. This principle...

Updated – Signs That COVID Sustains Historic Discrimination

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...

Fiercely Dependent! Reporting The News The Way YOU See It

Fiercely Dependent? Well, it certainly makes a change from the more usual journalistic pronouncement: "Fiercely Independent: Reporting the news the way WE see it." The Halifax Examiner is looking for a little...

A Traditional Response To Homelessness In An Age Of Internet Influencers

A modern, successful community? It is one led by a glossy, stylish eye-twinkler, sometimes with pouty lips, sometimes without. The community numbers in the thousands, tens of thousands, or...

Strengthening Community With A Taste Of Fulfilling Employment

This is part of a series about community. Growing and sustaining a community brings benefits to the participants, provides a means of personal development and builds hope and resilience....

Scotland Steps Up On Social Rent Housing

The Scottish Government has issued a 20 year housing policy. This time frame, which extends well beyond typical election cycles, is unusual in itself. The document states unequivocally that...

Social Housing: You Are Where You Park, So Make That Park Yours

Energy efficiency is not the only important green future for us all. We should also look to health benefits of biophillia. Biophillia is a fancy word to describe the positive...

The Green Challenge For Social Housing Apartments (And Others)

What do you think of the changes that will need to happen to your apartment by 2030, whether social housing or free market housing? If you are roughly 79,999th on...

Strengthening Community: Lifting Up Local History

This is part of a series about community. Growing and sustaining a community brings benefits to the participants, provides a means of personal development and builds hope and resilience....

Housing Equity: The Potential Of Community Land Trusts

Shelterforce, which supports community development initiatives across the United States, is running a series about community land trusts. The series includes an entry level article that explains what community land...

How Government Landlords Can Trash The Value Of Co-op Housing

Housing Co-ops are a tried and true means of creating affordable housing and shielding that affordability by keeping the enterprise away from the free market. Co-ops can protect both...

A Legal Centre That Enables Land Trusts And Co-operative Housing

Sprinkled across the western world there are housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and other forms of collective ownership and decision making. Elsewhere, we've discussed some of the benefits of...

U.S. Social Insurance: Where That Octopus Might Touch You

If you're not American, the country's social insurance complex of programs will most likely not touch you at all. But this post, and the following article/report from the Brookings Institute,...

Strengthening Public Housing Community With Cooking

This is part of a series about community. Growing and sustaining a community brings benefits to the participants, provides a means of personal development and builds hope and resilience....
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