Finding Room

The New Zealand locations may be unfamiliar, but the housing crisis there is locally familiar within many wealthier nations around the world. From The New Zealand Herald: "Census data reveals...

In 2020, New Castle County in Delaware found itself the proud owner of a multi-storey hotel. It was the early days of COVID, and the building was quickly repurposed...

Home Sweet Fashionable Home! Out In Lawn mowers Bird's eye views from teeny balconies Polyethylene tricycles 15 minute walks to any/everywhere important Commutes Live theatre, noisy mufflers, sirens Cars Elevators Meaningful female existence (childbirth and children) Meaningless females - Cat-ladies according...

Morning constitutionals at affordablehousingaction.org occur often and usually take place among houses in a leafy neighbourhood. A fair number of churches dapple this leafy neighbourhood, and many have not...

There is a debate about why people become homeless in the United States. Some people see the rental market as the issue. Others think that personal factors, such as...

We've heard it all before. Zoning is blocking the path to building new housing. But when you read this article from National Public Radio (NPR), you begin to get...

While there is general agreement that there is a housing crisis, there are longstanding debates about how to fix it. One of those debates is about where new housing...

'Gentle Densification' is one way (in the United Kingdom at least) to build more housing in a world gone unaffordably mad as housing 'financialization' forces housing prices up and...

Hat's off and sunscreen on for members of Hong Kong's Fanling Golf Club, the oldest in the region. They've just managed to win a prestigious UNESCO (United Nations Educational,...

There certainly exists evidence that 'cross-subsidy' is an affordable housing liability rather than a benefit. Architect Anna Minton and others have gone so far as to suggest that cross-subsidy...

Like everyone else, those from social and cultural minorities can be attracted to both the anonymity and opportunity of large cities. A voyage of discovery to such a place...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

Cities in more advanced countries have made do for decades with handfuls of emergency shelters for the homeless, their number expanding in the winters of harsher climates. In many...

Unaffordable? Affordable? Regardless of the kind of housing that needs to be built, running out of space to build it has emerged as a concern of many large cities. The...

The City of Toronto has been suffering a predictable outcry when a federal crown corporation decided to sell off a parcel of Toronto waterfront land without requiring an affordable...

A new study has emerged that indicates there are far more unsuitably housed people in the UK than previously thought. Read more in The Guardian: More Than 8 Million People...

Living a precarious financial existence? One misstep away from homelessness? Join an growing club, as in many countries affordable housing just can't be found. So here's a question: can you...

This modular housingHouses, or components of houses, that are constructed at an off site factory and transported to their final destination. initiative intrigued and impressed us here at affordablehousingaction.org....

Quirky Architectural Think-Toy For an affordable housing solution? Or barely habitable concentration camp cage for homeless children? It would seem that shipping container housing can be both. Just as a pile...

A scramble to protect ourselves and our environment from climate change will almost certainly spawn geographic and technological benefits that will can make housing more affordable. A recent article in...

A short time ago we explored with tongue in cheek a phenomena that supposedly originated in Thailand called 'seasteading'. It's hard to tell whether 'seasteading' — the idea of...

Company towns have a special relationship with their citizens. They are usually, though not always, born out of necessity: their remote location. Why create a town in the middle of...

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...

It's nice to imagine that somewhere in the world, a group of concerned neighbours might get together to protest a new parking lot, on the grounds that the extra...

Don't you really want to know what a zombie property is? We confess that we did. A mobile haunted house perhaps, decaying, dilapidated, lurching down the street late at...

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:...

Urban sprawl is beginning to receive a technical analysis that threatens its existence. It is the very foundation of the so-called "American Dream" — a single house on a...

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...

Just a quicky . . . Seems it's the silly season for acronyms. The latest is YIGBY. To get the full flavour of this new affordable housing acronym, you may wish to work up to it by reviewing your knowledge of:

Headline: Spokane Police To Turn 5 West Central Nuisance Homes Into Affordable Housing. Nuisance homes: one way of describing derelict, abandoned buildings that become crash pads for drug use and...

Forget tempting financial carrots to coax developers into supporting affordable housing. Montreal, Quebec is planning to bring the big stick to multiple housing developments in the city. Incumbent mayor Mayor...

‘Best and highest use', it seems, is a land use appraisal term. Putting it bluntly into a financial context, it means ‘selling for maximum bucks.’ The term reflects a dilemma...

By all means, let's hear it for true YIMBY. Hold that thought. We'll be coming back to it. True YIMBY? Does that mean there's a fake YIMBY? Of course there...

Rabbits, it might be said, can't breed fast enough to keep up with humans. Look at our world population increasing by the billions. Even in Australia, where rabbits are...

What do you put on a triangular handkerchief of city land that has been vacant for decades? If New York City finds the right design, it will be affordable...

Consider the American housing sector, together with its political and activist support, which is concerned with building both market rate and affordable housing. Needless to say, it prefers to...

Ongoing celebration of a city often turns on the preservation of old, smallish buildings that served a unique role in the community's history. When entire buildings cannot be saved,...

Municipalities world-wide are betting on increased density, via a wide range of construction projects and zoning re-regulation, in order to create more affordable housing. A Swedish architectural firm is...

With so many towns and cities built close to rivers, or close to coasts, why do we hear little or nothing about municipalities eyeing land on flood plains for...

Flex space usually refers to room within buildings that might be used for multiple purposes: an office/bedroom/den in a house, a light manufacturing unit/wholesale outlet/call centre in an industrial...

Gaze upwards through the reinforced skylight of your condo high-rise tower, one that has been tipped to the horizontal and is buried under a major airport runway. The sky...

Question for cruise affectionados: where do you get to enjoy the sea air, the company of hundreds if not thousands, a guarantee of no waves large enough cause motion...

These are not easy times for big box store realtors. Some of the biggest users of box store space are switching to Amazon and other buy-from-your living-room internet retailers. The...

An international architectural magazine with slightly dubious design senseCheck out the article link. All lower case. Really? Surely this is publishing art as an exercise in obscurity, not clarity....

In a remarkably lopsided Council decision, Minneapolis, Minnesota has made American history by shafting detached-house zoning in every city neighbourhood, even the most upscale and exclusive. This comprehensive decision is...

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is considering a profoundly generous and undoubtedly controversial way of fulfilling its mandate to provide education for all children and youth, regardless...

In spite of affordable housing being an urgent crisis in many nations, there remain major, perhaps unavoidable, delays in approving property development, whether it includes affordable housing or not. Zoning...

In Toronto, Ontario, shared housing hangs on stubbornly, like weeds in a well-kept lawn. Rooming houses, boarding houses, single room occupancy hotels and other forms of shared accommodation are...

NIMBY: Not in My Back Yard. Part of an ongoing collection of articles exploring some of the many ways that a worldwide affordable housing crisis is opposed.

In the spirit of its 'NICE' acronym, Canada's National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly is embarking on an admirable and extremely ambitious affordable housing initiative. The charitable...

Some homeowners actually want to install their granny (or an insufferable teenager or two) in a tastefully tiny house at the foot of the garden. For those kinds of...

Increasing density seems the only option for building affordable housing in the downtown core of many cities. Even smaller homes in higher towers may only temporarily be affordable, if...

The postwar housing boom that brought Norman Rockwell's idealized America to a ring of suburbs around every North American city was not built upon 2000-3000 sq ft. ranch houses...

Can you imagine your own government pledging affordable housing for everyone in the country within a decade? Could such an undertaking be undertaken in that time frame, even in...