At last! Solutions to the affordable housing conundrum have coincidentally been offered in both the United States and the United Kingdom that match the scale of this ever-widening crisis.
The demands from each side of the Atlantic are not the same-old same-old boutique private/public partnership weddings in which a mere handful of units representing some narrow flavour of affordability trail into view, clutching at the hem of a large market rate subdivision with obscene prices.
The demands for realistic practical solutions are directed towards national government, the only possible leadership in such a crisis, and the only institution capable of actually gathering the resources and people to accomplish the difficult task of creating millions, not handfuls, of affordable housing units.
In America, the new governor of California is calling for a post-war recovery style solution to solve the crisis, an appropriate response to the scale of a crisis that threatens to deny millions of citizens one of the most basic human needs: shelter. Read more in Curbed San Francisco: Gov. Gavin Newsom Calls For ‘Marshall Plan For Affordable Housing’
In the United Kingdom, the shocking tragedy that was the Grenfell Tower Fire has raised fundamental questions about the moral as well as fiscal degradation of the country’s social housing policy. A study commissioned to look at the implications of this entirely preventable disaster has identified no less than 3.1 million housing units needed to redress the crisis, once again, a scale requiring commitment and leadership at a national level. Read more at Reuters: Britain urged to build millions of social homes after Grenfell
