Government policy has not, on the whole, failed. It has been a huge success insofar as protecting the opportunities for speculative investment and profit for homeowners and private landlords.
Demand for housing in South Africa continues to outstrip supply despite the government having made more than three million houses to poor households.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
The dismally slow provision of housing in South Africa is such that more than 2.2 million households live in 2700 informal settlements. Waiting is the norm and can take years, even decades.
Cameron’s pledge may help some in social housing, but it offers no hope for everyone else who’s locked out of the market.
New homes like this one in Sydney’s south-west would be within reach for more first-time buyers in New South Wales if the state government supported shared home buying schemes.
Dean Lewins
New South Wales is Australia’s most populous state, with the most expensive capital city – yet it’s done less than many other states to develop cost-effective options for aspiring home owners.
Mixed-income developments replace Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Homes: Old Town Village West townhouses rise in front of the last remaining towers (since demolished) in this 2009 photograph.
Lawrence Vale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) e Shomon Shamsuddin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
For decades, public housing stood as the most architecturally visible and politically stigmatized reminder of urban poverty in many American cities. Originally built to accommodate an upwardly mobile segment…
Two issues papers give a recipe to reforming federalism, if we care to follow it.
Flickr/Nick Wheeler
Australia’s Reform of the Federation taskforce has released two major issues papers on the scrambled roles and responsibilities of governments in the areas of housing and homelessness, and health. The…
Governments can provide environments that encourage physical activity.
Emily Orpin/Flickr
Almost two-thirds of Australian adults and one in four children are overweight or obese. Excess weight is responsible for 7,200 deaths each year in Australia, as well one in five heart attacks, half of…
The largest study of poverty ever conducted in the UK has laid out the dire state of British deprivation – and seriously undercut the government’s claim to be lifting people out of poverty through work…
On budget night there will be winners and losers when it comes to housing subsidies.
Alan Porritt/AAP
The great Australian dream to own a house has long been underwritten by the great Australian housing subsidy. Whether you are a public or social housing tenant, a private renter or a homeowner, chances…
The Glasgow Red Road flats will not feature in the Commonwealth Games ceremony.
Graeme Maclean
Should we be celebrating the Commonwealth Games organisers’ decision not to demolish Glasgow’s iconic Red Road Flats as part of the opening ceremony, where the live footage was to be beamed on huge screens…
Affordable housing in China is usually clustered into fenced housing estates of 1000 to 4000 dwelling units.
Rebecca L.H. Chiu
The sudden dismissal of Australia’s National Housing Supply Council last month suggests we may be entering a new housing policy vacuum. This is bad news for aspiring first home buyers, whose numbers have…
Public housing never used to be the centre of disadvantage. What changed?
Dean Lewins
A good job, like where you get like heaps of money. I’d be like a decent mum, like a husband with no violence and everything, so it could be a happy family, you know, but like that would never happen…
PhD Candidate, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania, and Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney