Speaking Up For People Who Are Waiting For Social Housing In Toronto
Toronto’s flag. The City needs much more deeply affordable housing and more people to speak up about it. Some people who are living in social housing in the Toronto area feel they should move out in order to provide a home for someone else who needs one. It is easy to understand this line of …
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Landlords Take Note: Discrimination Is Costly. Tenants? The Law Can Be A Valuable Friend
It’s still widely allowed to discriminate against animals in housing. Signs aren’t permitted to discriminate against people. But hidden discriminatory policies are, alas, still practiced. In the United States, Section 8 (Housing Choice) Vouchers are issued to a lot of people with very low incomes. The Section 8 Voucher provides financial support to reduce rents …
Landlords Take Note: Discrimination Is Costly. Tenants? The Law Can Be A Valuable FriendRead More
CDFIs Shouldn’t Act Like Banks, But Too Often Do — Shelterforce
With support from Pacific Community Ventures, a CDFI, Rita Forte opened her first brick-and-mortar business in East Oakland and created quality jobs in the neighborhood where she grew up. Photo courtesy of PCV The Civil Rights Movement sought to eradicate racial discrimination and injustice, but they unfortunately still persist today throughout many American systems, including …
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LA Isn’t Enforcing Its Section 8 Discrimination Ban. Could This Lawsuit Change the Tide? — Shelterforce
Photo by Flickr user Tim Green, CC BY 2.0 Robert Gardner has used a federal Section 8 housing voucher since 2010. In 2021, when someone broke into his apartment, the now-32-year-old reached out to a Section 8 counselor and secured a new Section 8 voucher that allowed him to move to a different neighborhood. But …
Asian and Pacific Islander-headed households face higher housing payment burdens than any other race
Asian mortgage applicants have low denial rates overall, but those who are denied are disproportionately denied because of a high debt-to-income ratio (DTI). Largely concentrated in more expensive areas, Asian mortgage borrowers in 2022 purchased homes that were 42% more expensive than the U.S. median mortgage buyer overall. Pacific Islander-headed households have the lowest homeownership …
Part Of The Solution Or The Problem? BC Children’s Ministry Calls Missing Children “A Nuisance”
M According to a new report by Jennifer Charlesworth, B.C.’s representative for children and youth, the poor handling of children who go missing in British Columbia can be partly blamed on prejudice embedded in the missing child policy of the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD). Calls to the MCFD “identifying late-returning home youth …
A New Pipeline For Incarcerated People – It’s Not What You Think
Grilled cheese? Pipelines are a popular image these days where people get directed to a specific outcome, regardless of what they might want. There’s the public-housing-to-prison pipeline and the prison-to-homelessness pipeline. And now there’s a prison-to-grilled-cheese pipeline. Yes folks. In Minnesota the people in this pipeline are ex-prisoners. And yes, they are making grilled cheese …
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Who Can Afford Housing in Madison, Wisconsin? — Shelterforce
Photo by Flickr user Alan Wolf, CC BY-NC 2.0 Doug Holtz starts his workday at 8 a.m. He manages underwriting for Madison, Wisconsin’s community radio station, WORT. On the first Monday in April, Holtz had been at his desk in the basement of the station for about an hour when an email came in from …
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Refurbish Social Housing? How To Find Out If It Is Dollar-Cheap But Carbon-Expensive?
At one time, you’d need to identical buildings to compare renovation strategies. Aging Social Housing: Pull it down and build something better? Or refurbish it? Over the past few decades, some countries influenced by neoliberal political thought have dodged the practicalities of the question by demonizing truly affordable housing. The United States is an example. …
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Washington State Funds Two Knights To Tilt With Seattle’s Social Housing Windmills
Arguably, Seattle is getting too much of our attention these days. Yes, we’re perhaps over-emphasizing the ‘social housing’ events that are currently occurring there. Our enthusiasm probably comes from reading about those marvellous cities somewhere over the rainbow, where folks rich and poor, actually enjoy life together in rental homes side by side regardless of …
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To Hell With Home Ownership, You Government Touts! Help Give Us A Break On Renting
Landlords are so kind that it’s easy to forget that every year there’s a monthly rent increase. Then there’s the brother-in-law, needing to replace an old porch door. Alas, it’s old enough to be a non-standard size and so needs to be custom-ordered, skyrocketing the cost. But then, pulling down the old door framing revealed …
To Hell With Home Ownership, You Government Touts! Help Give Us A Break On RentingRead More
Get A Job, Ya Bum! But An Entire Industry Has Jobs. It’s Not Enough To Prevent Homelessness
$15/hour wages: a protest to keep working people housed. The ultimate small-c, lift-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps conservative has a supposedly bullet-proof sneer at those unfortunates sleeping on the sidewalk. “Don’t ask me to solve their problems if they don’t have jobs.” But jobs, it seems, are no longer a solution to homelessness, not in California at least. A …
Get A Job, Ya Bum! But An Entire Industry Has Jobs. It’s Not Enough To Prevent HomelessnessRead More
Churches Roll Out The Housing Carpet
Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google LLC, used with permission. New affordable housing built on a site owned by the United Church. 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 …
Housing And Health – The Problem Of Investigating A Cause-Effect Relationship
Housing in England circa 1960. Does poor housing cause poor health? Researchers dig in on this question. 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 to mould in his home. Also Ella Kissi-Debrah, who …
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Where Public Housing Residents Can Become Millionaires, Most Of You Might Want To Live There
Homes developed by Singapore’s Housing and Development Board. Some housing activists in North America are hoping to rekindle the importance of public housing as a solution to their local version of a world’s ever-deepening affordable housing crisis. Philosophizing about the shape and nature of such a public housing rebirth has been re-branded as ‘social housing’ …
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Tells A Whopper. It Helps Price The Cost of Solving Homelessness
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared homelessness an emergency on her first day in office. The whopper: 1.3 billion dollars. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appears to be committed to telling homelessness like it is. For example, in a recent speech aimed partly at the federal government, Bass stated that solving the homelessness problems of …
Perspectives On Housing Rights In Canada – Experts Weigh In
Today’s post is about housing rights in Canada, where the United Nations’ right to adequate housing was affirmed in law in 2019. In addition to providing a definition of adequate housing, the National Housing Strategy Act directed the creation of a National Housing Council and a National Housing Advocate. The Council and the Advocate are …
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Homeless Or Not, Your Belongings Frame Who You Are. Losing Them Can Be Devastating
Identification on display at a war memorial. If that person happened to be homeless today, could he be assured that his possessions would be protected? Not all that long ago, it was against the law to be homeless in Canada. That changed in 1972, when vagrancy laws were repealed. So, imagine a currently homeless person …
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Radical Urban Planner Chester Hartman (1936-2023) — Shelterforce
In 1960, Chester Hartman, then a graduate student in city planning at Harvard, received a notice from his draft board informing him that he had lost his student deferment and was reclassified 1-A. Rather than get drafted (the United States was calling up troops because of the Berlin crisis), Chester enlisted in the Army Reserve, …
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How A Needy Family’s Future May Be Assured By Broadband
Income sources and expenses that make up the official poverty measure in the United States. Note the absence of broadband internet anywhere in this picture. “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 …
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Homelessness – We Don’t Need Experience To Take Action
Mobile health services make it easier to access health care and other supports. This one screens for breast cancer. What is it like to be homeless? Even if they want to know, people who have housing may have limited opportunities to find out. This post offers two perspectives, one from Ontario and another from British …
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Philanthropy Has Been Trying to Buy Buildings for the Arts for Years. Now We Know It Works. — Shelterforce
80 Turk St. Photo by Cesar Rubio An underwater banquet hall. A stage for experimental dance. A nightclub for the disabled. A venue for immersive percussion. In San Francisco, 80 Turk St. will take on all of these identities this spring as the home of experimental performing arts organization CounterPulse. Housed in a red building …
A Human Right To Adequate Housing: Thunder Bay Wrestles With Homelessness In This Light
Thunder Bay, Ontario. Like virtually all North American cities, Thunder Bay, Ontario faces the reality of persistent homelessness. Like a smaller number of cities, indigenous people make up a portion of Thunder Bay’s homeless population, and also provide some alternative solutions for the homeless. Thunder Bay activists and City staff have been working together to …
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Can’t Run The Homeless Out Of Town? Why Not Go After Their Enablers?
But not if you’re helping people who are homeless. As the bloom comes off the COVID ‘Everybody In!’ rose, a nation’s most vulnerable have largely returned from their moments of motel and hotel room pandemic safety to life on the sidewalks. With shelter (if any) reverting to rip-stop nylon encampments in inconvenient places, the glow …
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Spain Tackles Affordable Housing Crisis With 50,000 Foreclosed Homes And Properties
Thousands of homes in Spain were abandoned following the 2008 mortgage crisis. The average age of young people leaving home in Spain? Nearing 30. Many, if not most, simply cannot afford to leave home, given the impossibly high cost of both rental and purchase housing in much of the country. This situation is worst in …
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Thinking The Unthinkable: Truly Affordable Housing Rescued By Commercial Building Meltdown
Future housing site? 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 great high rises in cities everywhere. Post-COVID, workers are not flocking back in sufficient numbers to roost in the high rise heaven of …
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UK Youth In Care + Private Care Homes = Toxic Combo: The Dregs of Failed Neolibralism
“Neoliberalism: Toxic, for man, for the planet” – a sign of the times? What is it about the attraction of governments to the almost guaranteed predation caused by funding private-enterprise care homes? The title above reflects a United Kingdom report on dreadfully bad care for youth with special needs. But all ages needing care seem …
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Eviction And The Rights Of Renters In The United States
City Hall in Pasadena, California. Voters in this city recently approved amendments to their city’s charter to include some eviction protections for tenants. Homelessness happens for a number of reasons. Eviction is one. This post is about three different ways that people in the United States have been working to help people fight evictions at …
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What LA’s New Shelter Program Can Learn from Statewide Efforts — Shelterforce
The Cadillac Hotel in Venice, one of Los Angeles’ Project Roomkey properties. Photo courtesy of Abt Associates On the campaign trail, Mayor Karen Bass promised to address homelessness in Los Angeles. Since taking office in December, she has launched the Inside Safe initiative, which has already housed over 1,000 people in hotels and motels in …
What LA’s New Shelter Program Can Learn from Statewide Efforts — ShelterforceRead More
Canada’s Capital City: Advancing An Affordable Housing Agenda With A New Mayor
Ottawa City Hall, where newly elected Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is pondering the City’s priorities. The City of Ottawa has a new mayor, who naturally wants to make an impression on his city. To that end, he’s put together a task force to review the City’s spending and decide priorities for this term of office. The …
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Spreading The Word About Housing Co-operatives
La Borda housing co-operative in Barcelona, Spain. The post features stories about housing co-operatives. First up is a workers’ cooperative in Chicago, which was founded in 2020 to provide employment for people who had been incarcerated. ChiFresh Kitchen provides prepared meals for day cares and schools in low income neighbourhoods. ChiFresh’s owners were having a …
HUD Awards More than $22 Million to Expand Access to Affordable Housing; Homeownership
HUD No. 23-094HUD Public Affairs(202) 708-0685 FOR RELEASEThursdayMay 11, 2023 HUD AWARDS MORE THAN $22 MILLION TO EXPAND ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING; HOMEOWNERSHIP $12.5 million in Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity (SHOP) Grants; $10 million Rural Capacity Building Grants WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today awarded $12 million in grants to …
HUD Awards More than $22 Million to Expand Access to Affordable Housing; HomeownershipRead More
HUD Announces More than $837 Million from President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda to Improve Housing Quality and Reduce Energy Costs for Underserved Communities
HUD No. 23-093HUD Public Affairs(202) 708-0685 FOR RELEASEThursdayMay 11, 2023 HUD ANNOUNCES MORE THAN $837 MILLION FROM PRESIDENT BIDEN’S INVESTING IN AMERICA AGENDA TO IMPROVE HOUSING QUALITY AND REDUCE ENERGY COSTS FOR UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES New funding from Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and $4 billion in loan commitment authority will make HUD-assisted multifamily housing more …
The Ugly Truth Behind “We Buy Ugly Houses” — Shelterforce
Max Erwin for ProPublica This story is co-published with ProPublica. Sign up to receive their investigations as soon as they’re published. Cory Evans was well-versed in the HomeVestors of America playbook when he arrived at a suburban Los Angeles home on Nov. 4, 2016. His franchise with the “We Buy Ugly Houses” company had executed …
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What Thrive Alabama and Housing Have Done for Me – On the Home Front
by Danny Cullum I moved into my current house in 2020. My so-called friends didn’t think I would stay because I had just stopped doing cocaine and had been homeless eight long years prior. This house I love is my shelter and has become my home away from heaven. I have surrounded myself with positive …
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