In North America these days, the commitment to public housing still tends to be drowning underwater, or perhaps buried meters-deep in the primordial mud at the bottom of the sea. After decades of public housing structural neglect, the gleeful mantra still seems to be ‘too old, too tired, knock it down.’
After which, witness a feast of profitable new market-rate housing and/or retail business adventurism, paired with a grudging scatter of truly affordable housing units so few in number they will only be available to the lower incomes after years or even decades of waiting.
How refreshing, then, to see an alternative emerging from the ‘business-does-it better’ gold-digging swamps of neoliberalism. The article featured below is an invitation to acquire truly affordable housing that does not channel all government funding support through the pockets of free-market new-builders whose prosperity is guaranteed by theft of housing from the poorest.
A new era of hope for public housing? Well hardly new. There have been those committed to refurbishing rather than destroying for many years1. At any rate, we can expect to see more of protection rather than destruction as ‘green’ financial accounting adds in the carbon costs of refurbishing rather than demolishing/rebuilding construction of any kind2.
Here’s a refreshing opportunity to read more of in The Guardian: Refurbishing not demolishing Port Melbourne public housing estate could save Victoria $88m, study finds
