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The author of the following article, Mukta Naik, describes a basic human rights dilemma this way: "We live in a world where the truth has turned into a chimera. It...

This is part of a series that looks at housing and homelessness in South Africa and Canada. It might be a source of inspiration/direction for housing efforts in either...

Look to business capitals of the world for what's coming down the pike towards the uber-wealthy. In a couple of bellweather cities, famous for pandering to the gods of...

The following Youtube video created three years ago explains how Minneapolis became the first major North American city to break the ironclad, almost universal bylaw 'protection' of single-family neighbourhoods....

Six years ago Roxbury a neighbourhood in Boston, Massachusetts, was being eaten alive by the local tech industry. Roxbury residents were losing housing to well-paid tech employees who moved...

The issue of workforce housing has been getting more attention. When local public servants (fire fighters, paramedics and police officers) can't afford housing, governments pay attention. The same is...

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,...

The stories that sell news are the disasters and things gone wrong. As someone said elsewhere, "it's not news when a plane lands safely." In the housing business this means...

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...

When affordablehousingaction.org was just starting to blog, we began searching (as we still are) for ideas that seemed to promise easing national homelessness crises. Five years ago there was...

The YIMBY breakthrough that everybody is buzzed about has delivered results to the City of Aukland, New Zealand. Unlike other major New Zealand cities, Aukland bit the YIMBY bullet...

At the height of New Zealand's 2017 fever dream of 100,000 new housing units, we were perplexed. Us Canadians had duly noted that New Zealand lacked the resources to...

Zoning is often named as the culprit in shaping cities in North America. There are vast areas of low density, with single detached homes, along with areas of high...

A contemporary study of almshouses in the United Kingdom has found evidence that they may stretch an individual life expectancy by 2.5 years. How long have we known about...

Our lives depend on transportation. Stuff needs to get shipped into and through the communities where people live. People need transport to get to work, shop for essentials and...

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...

Churches have a history of speaking up for people who are oppressed in society. Faith based organizations have charitable arms that provide services and supports. Religious instruction also directs...

Do housing conditions cause health conditions? In individual cases, the answer has proven (after many meetings with coroners) to be yes. There is Awaab Ishak, who died from exposure...

"Broadband is no longer a luxury that only a few people need; it is a critical service that supports . . . economic opportunity, health, education, recreation, and well-being." We...

COVID has created an unexpected crisis facing the commercial real estate market. Worker flight to the relative safety of the home office has hollowed out the insides of shiny...

The architect Le Corbusier had a dream so dramatic and forceful that it influenced far too many people, including those responsible for constructing a wave of North American public...

Over the past decade at least, it's been easy to view housing circumstances in Hong Kong as otherworldly. There, a combination of limited land and total devotion to free...

With a surfeit of downtown empty office high-rises, a lightbulb has winked on the brains of developers who see a way of cashing in by converting office buildings to...

From . . . temporary affordable housing that isn't housing anyone at all while it takes a lengthy snooze. Read more in The Seattle Times: The story of Seattle’s homeless...

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...

The City of Toronto's name for a needed subway extension framed yesterday's problems for many cities.  It was called the downtown relief line. Relief from congested commuting to a crowded...

Seniors, wearing scarfs in campus colours, stroll across the front lawn of one of Portland's giant homeless campuses. They have spent their undergraduate years waiting for a minuscule new...

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,...

Update: the Region of Waterloo is pressing on with its plan to open supported tent encampments for people who are homeless. The location has yet to be determined. Read...

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...

The answer to the question posed in the headline above is a qualified and rapidly eroding 'maybe' heading towards the spectre of a probably soon-to-become universal 'no.' Up until a...

Affordablehousingaction.org generally considers NIMBY and YIMBY to be two entirely different animals. The first of these — Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) is a pop-up defensive castle guarded...

Yesterday . . . a determination that lower class housing might confidently be labelled an eyesore. Meanwhile, those who occupied that housing might be viewed to be of little...

Consider a spat between a London, Ontario church on one hand and that city's council on the other. It brings to mind a recent spat between a historic English...

Homeless Boinking? We're trying to imagine the worst here. What could be the result of Los Angeles voting to allow the homeless to overnight in unused hotel rooms? With...

An article linked below offers a number of insights, large and small, about the global nature of 'financialized' housing. One immediate small insight: a preferred spelling — Türkiye —...

Researchers at Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies have picked up the idea of food desertsFood deserts are areas that lack access to affordable and nutritious food. Read more...

We were hiking industriously along a country dirt road a good hour's drive outside of 5th most populated urban conglomerate in North America (or 4th or 6th, no matter)....

Public Private Partnership 'mixed income' construction projects have been generally considered a success. Their biggest drawback is often that they lack enough units of truly affordable social housing in...

Pity the poor upper classes. The merchant classes (which run government) scurry to clear parade routes in all directions, hounding the serfs from pillar to post. But when royalty...

In 2018, Canada began taking the gloves off to deal with speculators who are buying and selling housing as casino chips, rather than homes. With some of the highest...

Once upon a time, the utopian dream of a 'garden city' was held up as the pinnacle of human community. Homes with pocket-sized personal green space were idealized as...

For 50 years, from 1919 to 1969, Evanston, Illinois turned its back on its Black residents. It withheld opportunities that were offered white residents. Today, residents living in the...

A number of American cities have been looking hopefully towards free public transport as a cure for a whole collection of urban evils. Not the least of these are...

Shelterforce's "Under The Lens" series do deep dives on urban issues. The latest one is about ADUs — accessory dwelling units. ADUs are sometimes presented as a solution to...

One of the most distressing features of the financialization of housing is the disdain that investors hold for housing as anything other than a potential investment bonanza. How do...

Does living near affordable housing boost property values or lower them? Christina Stacy and Christopher Davis, who are based at the Urban Institute in the United States, reviewed existing...

Net ZeroSee the United Nations Net Zero Coalition for more on this term: Climate Action , Social Housing and NIMBY: what lies at the intersection of these murky futures?...

Tiny Homes? Hug 'em and Love 'em! The Media seems to, including us. They're forever popping up as cozy little bandaid stories about the housing and homelessness crisis in...

'Naturally affordable' housing is the the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker of urban housing. (Not quite as likely to be extinct, true enough. The last recorded Ivory-Bill sighting in its Louisiana swamp...

Bye Bye, Public Library. Something much better, more modern has crept up the inside rail and is already well past in a race to the finish of the 'Font...

Suburban wealth and automobile culture have produced three-quarters of a century of downtown commercial erosion. Pedestrian convenience gave way to suburban/exurban shopping centres and box stores more easily accessed...

". . .you in your small corner, and I in mine," is an evocative phrase from a children's hymn, proposing that individuals might shine in the light of a...

A builder in the U.S. northwest argues that it is possible to lower construction costs, using conventional methods, without sacrificing quality. In the article below Mike Steffan, the builder,...

Mixed income communities have been the clarion call of progressive city planners trying to harness the income and influence of wealthier neighbours in the downtown 'hood, without driving out...

Minneapolis shocked America, as well as some other westernized nations, when its city council decided unanimously in 2018 to allow multifamily dwellings in any residential neighbourhood. The increased density...

Urban golf courses have long been a target of class resentment. Often built on the outskirts of towns and cities that have expanded to engulf them, they can be...

Israel is suffering from the same rampant financialization of housing afflicting capitalist societies around the world. And, like other suffering nations, it has taken what seems to be the...

AJ Golio, a PhD candidate at Tulane University, has penned a thoughtful article in Shelterforce about gentrificationFor an explanation of gentrification, try: Gentrification: What is it? How Does It...

The demolitions of Cabrini Green in Chicago and Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, two very large public housing projects, reflect decisions made by people who had never lived there. Some...

Over the last few years, fascination with tiny homes has grown beyond cutesy love-ins for a lifestyle akin to living in a clothes closet. (And along with our own...

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...

In America during the last century, bank lending practices discriminated against poor neighbourhoods, often predominantly black. The process became known as "redlining." The term comes from insurance maps where...

In a dog eat dog housing world, those who can afford housing compete in a low-choice social universe that offers the suburban dream home sprawl versus gentrified shoe box...

New home builders are extraordinarily powerful. It is not uncommon to hear the industry described as the engine that drives the city, state, even country. That's certainly the case...

A story follows, which is dear to affordablehousingaction.org hearts, because we made a wrong call on a similar problem that played out in Oakland, California. That was a year...

There is persistent advocacy in many countries that is fuelled by housing development interests. It can be summed up by the idea of "just build more." In The U.S. there...

A recent article from London, Ontario expresses a problem made more acute in the pandemic. That city is home to a successful program based on getting housed immediately (Housing...

Ten years ago, the last building of Chicago's Cabrini-Green public housing project was torn down. During its lifetime, the 23 buildings housing more than 15,000 mostly black residents became a...

World-wide, it might seem that there are few opportunities to bring meaningful architectural design to the budget constraints of public housing construction. Certainly this lament can often be found...

Empty houses plague not only cities, but the countryside. Some are empty because speculators are holding them for a quick turnover in a hot housing market.Try: City Of Vancouver...

Slowly but surely, communities are looking towards internet access as a key infrastructure component of housing. Expressed as a part of the United Nations right to adequate housing, infrastructure...

Kindness to strangers has given birth to a means of sharing library internet services for those with low and no incomes in Ontario's Regional Municipality of Niagara. Familiar to most,...

Infrastructure? Two Internets? This post is premised on the idea that the events of the current pandemic have decisively demonstrated the internet as basic infrastructure for housing, as defined in...

How to explain what seems to be a middle class romance with the idea of getting away from it all by hiding in your own closet — one transported...

U.S. President George H.W. Bush's description of charities as "a thousand tiny points of light" has taken a rightful place in history and literature as a truly hopeful and...

The Wizard of Oz musical was short on housing details, but long on vital housing infrastructure. The yellow brick road carried everyone from their dwelling (admittedly not highly featured in...

A recent article in Mother Jones recounts a story from Los Angeles about 10,000 units of public housing that were never built. The article is about Frank Wilkinson, who worked...

Adequate housing as a basic human right? Many countries have formally accepted this United Nations-promoted vision.Here's a discussion of adequate housing in UN Terms: Fact Sheet No.21, The Human...

Two years ago, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company delivered a controversial report to King County, Washington. It called for spending a quarter of a billion dollars a year...

A report from Dallas Texas enumerates some of the pros, cons, and one-day-hopeful pros again in a city that is a giant festival of sprawl. The report focuses on the...

North America is a land of large housing lots. Not surprising therefore that their potential for doubling density causes affordable housing activists to pump their fists in the air...

Housing For Humanity: a world-beating affordable housing charity now approaching middle age, which is no longer able capable of keeping up with the changing times? We certainly hope not. But...

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...

In a lengthy, entertaining and informative article, Miles Howard explores the past, present and future of one form of dinky living. He focuses particularly on high tech gingerbread cottages...

The tourist industry is vital to the economies of many countries. Orlando, Florida is one of those places in the U.S. However delightful it can be for visitors, working...

Vancouver, BC is the least affordable city in North America, with a high proportion of households with low incomes compared to Canada as a whole. As well, it's a...

Entites? Whether you belong to a for-profit, non-profit, or a TDHETDHE — Tribally Designated Housing Entity entity, two other corporate 'entities' have an affordable housing challenge for your consideration. Wells...

Groan. Mutter. Snarl. Pardon us while we work up a mad-on at the headline of an article from Sightline: "2019: THE YEAR ABUNDANT HOUSING TURNED THE CORNER" Surely Sightline means:...

A slightly more fast and loose post, ranting completely understated

From California comes word of more, not less, zoning restriction. That's rare good news for existing affordable housing in America's rapidly-declining stock of trailer parks. Governments from the feds (think...

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...

In the free markets of today's democracies, housing is an investment, not a human right. To build housing in this commodified environment is to pursue profit, not to reaffirm...

Before getting into The Guardian Housing and Public Service Awards, an affordablehousingaction.org Top Affordable Housing Newspaper award to The Guardian itself. The Guardian is right up there in quality with the top handful...

The headline seems a little churlish, doesn't it? Sneering at charitable contributions? We thought so. And yet it forms the core of a similar headline from the electronic publication:...

There have been hints that months of unrest and riots in Hong Kong have been triggered in part by the high cost of cramped housing in an overcrowded city. Is...

Safely 'transitioning' homeless people from living in their vehicles is a praiseworthy long-term objective, one driving efforts to gain approval for a first San Francisco parking lot catering to...

First there were the middle class inner city suburbs, which slowly degenerated into near-downtown depressed areas as wealthier folks moved to one acre lots in the further suburbs, until...

Influenced perhaps by its physical location in North America, affordablehousingaction.org finds itself in constant pushback against a simple-minded housing industry view: if governments would only eliminate regulations, builders would...

From Manteca, California come tales of the hard lives of the middle and upper classes, together with the tribulations of the housing developers who serve them. Viewed from a...