Why Social Housing Fear And Loathing? After All, It Works For Everybody

Works for everybody? How on earth can social housing, which doesn't directly benefit you personally, be touted nevertheless as a personal benefit to you? It may well be impossible to...

An Account Of Housing Support For People With Mental Illness

Imagine that you are a mental health worker in Trondheim, Norway (population 210,000). With your mental health colleagues, you began a pilot project in 2018. You asked 34 residents...

Capital Grants For Social Housing Deliver A Long Term Benefit

Michael Marshall, a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield, has been looking into the effects of giving capital grants to support the construction of social rent housing in...

If The Housing Shoe Fits, Let Them Wear It — Scottish No-Brainer?

Unfortunately, it's not a no-brainer in Scotland or anywhere else. If there was ever a definition of 'churning,' a blog post by Jimmy Black offers up a useful example. Black...

Another Good Result For Housing First, This Time In England

Manchester's Mayor Andy Burnham has good news for the people in his city, where the number of homeless families in temporary accommodation is going down. The city is also...

Community Land Trusts – A Route To Permanent And Deeply Affordable Housing

When it comes to adding housing that will be deeply affordable housing and permanent, community land trusts are in a good position to step up. When a community land...

Homeless & Qualify For Help But Can’t Figure How? Ask “Just Do It”

There seems to be nothing quite as exasperating as government bureaucracy acting under some mysterious 'holier than thou' procedural framework that for some reason absolutely cannot, and indeed will...

Diving Into A ‘Wheelie Bin,’ Not For Free Food But For Precious Personal Belongings

Communities around the world are only slowly realizing that homelessness cannot simply be wished away, nor even aggressively bullied away by tent encampment raids, seizure of personal belongings included...

Struggling To Keep Your Home? You’re Not Alone

Many people are struggling to pay their bills. It's a hard reality to face, often because people believe it's their fault and reflects poorly on their character. Even though...

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 Evidence Should Be Part Of The Strategy To End Homelessness

David Park's book "The Fire In the Eye: A Historical Essay On The Nature and Meaning of Light" reviews the history of ideas, debates and thinking about what light...

Can NIMBYs Change Their Spots? Yes! (But It May Take A Little Work)

Princeton, British Columbia. Ed Farkas and his wife freely admit they came out as full bore NIMBYs, spitting fire and raging on at local council to deal with the...

A Kingdom For The Broken Housing Promises That India Must . . . Suffer???

In June of 2018, Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi announced an extravagantly ambitious national housing scheme  — a home for every Indian by 2022. India is a populous country....

Homelessness and Housing – Strategies To Integrate Experience And Research

People with experience of homelessness can tell us a lot about ending it. This might sound obvious, but for some reason it's been largely ignored. Slowly, listening to them...

Want A Civilized, Low Key, Homeless Tent Clearance? Ask A Peer To Do It.

Seattle Lawyer Lisa Daugaard is no foe of the police. In 2019 she won a MacArthur “genius” award for her assistance in developing a police-involved court diversion program. It...

I Wouldn’t Leave A Dog Out On A Night Like This. Not Alone, Anyway

Would you leave a dog out shivering in a downpour? Why would it be necessary? Why not bring the poor pooch in? Because the friend with whom you are...

Changing Modern Libraries: Needs To Suit, And Suits to Need

Over the years, different city libraries have experienced long-standing relationships with the poor and the homeless. For the quieter down-and-out visitors, or those prepared to put a lid on...

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...

Gump Is Dead But Anonymous Donors Aren’t, Thank Heavens!

From abundance fifty years ago, the Christmas Island Forest Skink is now extinct. Gump died. She was the last of her kindTry:Extinction obituary: the sudden, sad disappearance of the...

A Rare(?) Thumbs-Up For HUD/NYCHA Public Housing Repair

America has been carelessly discarding its public housing for decades now, but is coming to two important realizations about the future of truly affordable housing: Nobody is building truly...

Connecting Messaging And Evidence To Build A Case For Housing

The article linked to this post is about messaging: that dynamic interaction between the way an issue is presented and the way that it is received. In the advertising world,...

Apologies: We Celebrated A Venerable Public Housing Birthday A Year Early

Those of us who are aging surrounded by aging family and friends often need forgiveness for getting birthday dates slightly wrong. So we're hoping we'll be forgiven by joyously...

Question: If You’re Food Insecure But Won’t Tell Us, How Can We Help?

Answer: Learn how to do a better job of asking. A food equity advocate in Charlottesville, Virginia had been armed with long cherished advice from his mom about how to...

Arizona Constables Reduce Evictions By Making Courtesy Calls

Pima County, Arizona elects its constables. Constables have different responsibilities in different American states. In Arizona, they are officers of the county justice courts. One of the jobs of...

Getting To The Roots Of The COVID-Poverty “Link”

Eight months ago, The Neighborhood Developers (TND), a non-profit housing provider in the city of Chelsea, Massachusetts, shared news about the COVID infection rates at their properties. Chelsea residents have...

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...

Mixed Income Social Housing A Success in Denmark For Many Decades

There are those who can imagine the benefits of truly affordable housing in a post-Thatcherite"Thatcherism," "small government," and "neoliberal" all refer to political thought that seeks to minimize the...

Ontario’s Disastrous COVID Care Home Response: For-Profit Did It Worse

In the great contest over who does housing better, "for-profit" developers and managers compete against government managed construction and maintenance. The referee is . . . one of the above?!?!...

Investor Defence In A Pandemic Battle: Preserving The Thin Red Bottom Line

In the arena of housing, the pandemic has in spectacular fashion pitted two classes of people against each other: Shelterers, and Investors. Who comes out on top? Employing the classic...

U.S. Eviction-Prone Tenants! Know Your Landlords . . . Except, Like, How?

Beginning drivers face restrictions. Beginning landlords, not so much. For a moment, let's briefly honour landlords for their historic role as some of society's first good Samaritans. When fearful citizens...

A Drop-In Centre With A Housing Mission

Here's an article about the sale of a heritage rooming house building in a Toronto neighbourhood. The new owner is bucking the trend to gentrification and will continue to...

Canada’s National Inquiry Of Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women

The reports linked at the end of this post document the work of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada. They are based...

Tiny Points Of Light Can’t Put Housing Humpty Dumpty Back Together, But…

The much-worshipped self-regultory mechanics of the Law of Supply and Demand are failing to deliver the affordable housing that free market nations need. America announced its determination to pass the...

Seattle Does The Section 8 Two-Step: A Vastly Improved Housing Voucher Plan

The fundamental nature of the world's most successful homeless-to-housing program is embodied in its name: Housing First. First implies that there is at least a second step. And housing is...

Manitoba Looks To Plow Affordable Housing Furrow With Tractors That Don’t Pull

You gets what you pays for, we guess. The Canadian province of Manitoba has apparently been snoozing through three decades of feeble Thatcherite Public Private Partnership (PPP) experiments in...

Connecting The Housing And Health Dots

Health researchers Diana Hernandez and Carolyn Swope from Columbia University have recently published two important articles that connect housing with health. We have much more access to information about health...

Can Collaboration Make A Difference In Affordable Housing Policy?

In 2016, when the government of Canada decided to re-frame its role in affordable housing, it sought advice from the public. The National Housing Collaborative (the Collaborative) was formed...

Persistence, Not Perfection, Plucks Homeless From Atlanta Streets

For Atlanta, Georgia's homeless population, persistence has paid off. The city lays no claim to a magic formula for getting people out of the streets and into homes. Other...

Is Government, Not Free Enterprise, The Engine Of Innovation?

Could the solution to the world's collection of increasingly serious affordable housing crises find a solution in the risky, adventurous initiatives of your everyday garden variety government? The free-enterprise promoted...

Public Housing Residents Want It Just As It Is, Not ‘Improved’ By Developer

In the face of anti-council housing attitudes and 'private enterprise does it better' hollow promises, residents of a London council housing estate have long been under threat of eviction...

Will Award Make UK Social Housing Tenants House Proud?

Some council house tenants in Norwich, UK, recently woke to discover they are living in homes with award-winning style. We're not talking about "top of this year's public housing,"...

Homelessness: Why Does Research Matter?

Dr. Bernie Pauly and colleagues at the University of Victoria in British Columbia have published a highly readable paper about research methods in homelessness programs. In it, they talk...
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