Community Resilience

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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),...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 $$...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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? 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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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? 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 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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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....