'Degrowth', a type of 'postgrowth', is becoming a strong political, practical and cultural movement for downscaling and transforming societies beyond capitalist growth and non-capitalist productivism to achieve global sustainability and satisfy everyone's basic needs. This groundbreaking collection on housing for degrowth addresses key challenges of unaffordable, unsustainable and anti-social housing today, including going beyond struggles for a 'right to the city' to a 'right to metabolism', advocating refurbishment versus demolition, and revealing controversies within the degrowth movement on urbanisation, decentralisation and open localism. International case studies show how housing for degrowth is based on sufficiency and conviviality, living a 'one planet lifestyle' with a common ecological footprint. This book explores environmental, cultural and economic housing and planning issues from interdisciplinary perspectives such as urbanism, ecological economics, environmental justice, housing studies and policy, planning studies and policy, sustainability studies, political ecology, social change and degrowth. It will appeal to students and scholars across a wide range of disciplines.

The Autonomous City is the first popular history of squatting as practised in Europe and North America. Alex Vasudevan retraces the struggle for housing in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Detroit, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, and Vancouver. He looks at the organisation of alternative forms of housing-from Copenhagen's Freetown Christiana to the squats of the Lower East Side-as well as the official response, including the recent criminalisation of squatting, the brutal eviction of squatters and their widespread vilification. Pictured as a way to reimagine and reclaim the city, squatting offers an alternative to housing insecurity, oppressive property speculation and the negative effects of urban regeneration. We must, more than ever, reanimate and remake the urban environment as a site of radical social transformation.

"A must-read for anyone interested in solutions to America's housing crisis."-Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City An in-depth look at America's largest rental assistance program and how it shapes the lives of residents in one low-income Baltimore neighborhood Housing vouchers are a cornerstone of US federal housing policy, offering aid to more than two million households. Vouchers are meant to provide the poor with increased choice in the private rental marketplace, enabling access to safe neighborhoods with good schools and higher-paying jobs. But do they? The Voucher Promise examines the Housing Choice Voucher Program, colloquially known as "Section 8," and how it shapes the lives of families living in a Baltimore neighborhood called Park Heights. Eva Rosen tells stories about the daily lives of homeowners, voucher holders, renters who receive no housing assistance, and the landlords who provide housing. While vouchers are a powerful tool with great promise, she demonstrates how the housing policy can replicate the very inequalities it has the power to solve. Rosen spent more than a year living in Park Heights, sitting on front stoops, getting to know families, accompanying them on housing searches, speaking to landlords, and learning about the neighborhood's history. Voucher holders disproportionately end up in this area despite rampant unemployment, drugs, crime, and abandoned housing. Exploring why they are unable to relocate to other neighborhoods, Rosen illustrates the challenges in obtaining vouchers and the difficulties faced by recipients in using them when and where they want to. Yet, despite the program's real shortcomings, she argues that vouchers offer basic stability for families and should remain integral to solutions for the nation's housing crisis. Delving into the connections between safe, affordable housing and social mobility, The Voucher Promise investigates the profound benefits and formidable obstacles involved in housing America's poor.

Danielle Gluns examines how urban housing governance reacts to the onset of urban growth in an internationally comparative perspective. The study is based on in-depth case studies of Washington, D.C., which is an example of primarily market-based interactions, and Vienna, which has traditionally pursued an active steering role of the local state. The author assesses the goals of urban development formulated by local actors and analyzes their translation into housing policies within the respective governance structures. She demonstrates that path dependence is an important feature of urban housing governance, with relationships, ideologies, and physical urban structures leading to stability. Even so, change is possible, as both systems integrate new policy elements. At the same time, both structures perpetuate inequality in the urban housing system by excluding some of the most disadvantaged groups from decision-making.

While homeless young people (HYP) are typically perceived as irresponsible and morally suspect individuals who lack essential social skills to navigate their lives, this book offers an alternative and more positive perspective. It demonstrates that HYP improvise with resources available on the streets to improve their social and financial status, although they experience significant social structural constraints. This ground-breaking text provides an analysis of social processes that contribute to young people's homelessness, their engagement in sex work, their establishment of intimate partnerships, and sexual practices which may increase their risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The book demonstrates how the ongoing social and financial instability and insecurity neutralises HYP's knowledge of HIV/STIs, and how financial considerations, fear of violence by clients, and social obligations in intimate partnerships contribute to their sexual risk-taking. The author argues that the conventional approach of promoting health through raising awareness regarding HIV/STI prevention may continue to bring less than promising outcomes unless we focus on how structural and contextual conditions operate in the backdrop and produce conditions less conducive for young people. Included in the coverage: factors that contribute to youth homelessness factors that shape sexual practice a Bourdieusian analysis of youth homelessness and sexual risk-taking a health promotion approach that can potentially reduce youth homelessness and their risk of HIV/STIs Homeless Youth of Pakistan: Survival Sex and HIV Risk will attract undergraduate and postgraduate students, and researchers interested in exploring issues such as youth homelessness, sexual risk-taking, and HIV/STIs.

Socially engaged architecture is a broad and emerging architectural genre that promises to redefine architecture from a market-driven profession to a mix of social business, altruism, and activism that intends to eradicate poverty, resolve social exclusion, and construct an egalitarian global society. The Routledge Companion to Architecture and Social Engagement offers a critical enquiry of socially engaged architecture's current context characterized by socio-economic inequity, climate change, war, increasing global poverty, microfinance, the evolving notion of professionalism, the changing conception of public, and finally the growing academic interest in re-visioning the social role of architecture. Organized around case studies from the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Thailand, Germany, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan the book documents the most important recent developments in the field. By examining diverse working methods and philosophies of socially engaged architecture, the handbook shows how socially engaged architecture is entangled in the global politics of poverty, reconstruction of the public sphere, changing role of the state, charity, and neoliberal urbanism. The book presents debates around the issue of whether architecture actually empowers the participators and alleviates socio-economic exclusion or if it instead indirectly sustains an exploitive capitalism. Bringing together a range of theories and case studies, this companion offers a platform to facilitate future lines of inquiry in education, research, and practice.

This book discusses land and housing controversies in Hong Kong, which offer a point of reference for the comparison and analysis of similar or contrasting cases overseas from the perspective of social values. It enhances readers' understanding of the social values, philosophical and theoretical issues that underpin land and housing controversies, as well as their policy implications. The discussion in each chapter goes beyond mere substantive and contextual analysis, and is explicitly positioned and theorized within the broader context of social values, with a theoretical and philosophical framework for assessing the issue concerned. The book is interdisciplinary in nature, with each chapter integrating two or more disciplines to examine various controversial land and housing issues.

Our experiences of the city are dependent on our gender, race, class, age, ability, and sexual orientation. It was already clear before the pandemic that cities around the world were divided and becoming increasingly unequal. The pandemic has torn back the curtain on many of these pre-existing inequalities. Contributions to this volume engage directly with different urban communities around the world. They give voice to those who experience poverty, discrimination and marginalisation in order to put them in the front and center of planning, policy, and political debates that make and shape cities. Offering crucial insights for reforming cities to be more resilient to future crises, this is an invaluable resource for scholars and policy makers alike.

Cities play a major role in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic as many measures are adopted at the scale of cities and involve adjustments to the way urban areas operate. Drawing from case studies across the globe, this book explores how the pandemic and the policies it has prompted have caused changes in the ways cities function. The contributors examine the advancing social inequality brought on by the pandemic and suggest policies intended to contain contagion whilst managing the economy in these circumstances. Offering crucial insights for reforming cities to be more resilient to future crises, this is an invaluable resource for scholars and policy makers alike.

The federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed in a time of turmoil, conflict, and often conflagration in cities across the nation. It took the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to finally secure its passage. The Kerner Commission warned in 1968 that "to continue present policies is to make permanent the division of our country into two societies; one largely Negro and poor, located in the central cities; the other, predominantly white and affluent, located in the suburbs and outlying areas". The Fair Housing Act was passed with a dual mandate: to end discrimination and to dismantle the segregated living patterns that characterized most cities. The Fight for Fair Housing tells us what happened, why, and what remains to be done. Since the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the many forms of housing discrimination and segregation, and associated consequences, have been documented. At the same time, significant progress has been made in counteracting discrimination and promoting integration. Few suburbs today are all white; many people of color are moving to the suburbs; and some white families are moving back to the city. Unfortunately, discrimination and segregation persist. The Fight for Fair Housing brings together the nation's leading fair housing activists and scholars (many of whom are in both camps) to tell the stories that led to the passage of the Fair Housing Act, its consequences, and the implications of the act going forward. Including an afterword by Walter Mondale, this book is intended for everyone concerned with the future of our cities and equal access for all persons to housing and related opportunities.

Winner of the ACSA/AIA Housing Design Education Award! There is an increased interest among architects, urban specialists and design professionals to contribute to solve "the housing problem" in developing countries. The Invisible Houses takes us on a journey through the slums and informal settlements of South Africa, India, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti and many other countries of the Global South, revealing the challenges of, and opportunities for, improving the fate of millions of poor families. Stressing the limitations of current approaches to housing development, Gonzalo Lizarralde examines the short-, mid- and long-term consequences of housing intervention. The book covers - among others - the issues of planning, design, infrastructure and project management. It explains the different variables that need to be addressed and the causes of common failures and mistakes, while outlining successful strategies based on embracing a sustained engagement with the complexity of processes that are generally invisible.

'We had our hardships, and there were times that we didn’t have a lot of food and didn’t have a lot of money. But that didn’t stop me having the time of my life.'

Making It is an inspirational memoir about beating the odds and turning things around even when it all seems hopeless. In this book, Jay shares the details of his life, from his childhood growing up sheltered and innocent on a council estate in Hackney, to his adolescence when he was introduced to violent racism at secondary school, to being brutalized by police as a teen, to finally becoming a beloved star of the hit primetime show The Repair Shop.

Jay reflects on strength, weakness and what it means to be a man. He questions the boundaries society places on male vulnerability and how letting himself be nurtured helped him flourish into the person he is today. An expert at giving a second life to cherished items, Jay’s positivity, pragmatism and kindness shine through these pages and show that with care and love, anything can be mended.

This book, the first comprehensive overview of housing policy in Australia in 25 years, investigates the many dimensions of housing affordability and government actions that affect affordability outcomes. It analyses the causes and implications of declining home ownership, rising rates of rental stress and the neglect of social housing, as well as the housing situation of Indigenous Australians. The book covers a period where housing policy primarily operated under a neo-liberal paradigm dominated by financial de-regulation and fiscal austerity. It critiques the broad and fragmented range of government measures that have influenced housing outcomes over this period. These include regulation, planning and tax policies as well as explicit housing programs. The book also identifies current and future housing challenges for Australian governments, recognizing these as a complex set of inter-connected problems. Drawing on its coverage of the economics, politics and administration of housing provision, the book sets out priorities for the transformational national strategy needed for a fairer and more productive housing system, and to improve affordability outcomes for the most vulnerable Australians.

This book discusses homelessness policy in the UK from 1945 to 2019. It identifies five key factors that have driven policy: the favoured explanations for homelessness, distinctions between different groups of homeless people, demand for social rented housing, geographical differences and the forms of prevention preferred by policy makers. The account analyses how these factors have influenced key pieces of legislation such as the 1948 National Assistance Act, the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act and the 2002 Homelessness Act. It also identifies the key issues that policy has sought to address at different times, including children being taken into care because of their parents' homelessness, rough sleeping, the use of bed and breakfast hotels as temporary accommodation, social exclusion and welfare reform. In addition to published sources and archival material, the book draws on the experiences of two former Ministers and other key figures in the development of homelessness policy.

This book marks a critical contribution in assessing and extending the evidence base on the causes and consequences of women's homelessness. Drawing together work from Europe's leading homelessness scholars, it presents a multidisciplinary and comparative analysis of this acute social problem, including its relationship with domestic violence, lone parenthood, motherhood, health and well-being and women's experience of sustained and recurrent homelessness. Working from diverse perspectives, the authors look at the responses to women's homelessness in differing cultures and regions, and within various forms of welfare states. They focus in particular on relating the gender dimensions of welfare and social policy to women's experiences when they become homeless. This innovative and timely edited volume will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, social policy, anthropology, and gender and women's studies, along with international policy-makers.

This volume examines the public/private sector mix in a variety of national healthcare systems and their interface with the goals of health equity and quality of healthcare. By examining the mix of public and private sector funding of healthcare services as well as the mix of public and private sector delivery of healthcare services in various national contexts, the authors will address the question of how various national systems are affected with respect to their ability, or the lack thereof, to achieve goals of health equity and quality of healthcare in an efficient manner. The significance of this collection of national studies involving the public/private sector mix is that it will provide insights into the factors that enhance the public/private sector mix in fulfilling the goals of health equity and the quality of healthcare services as well as an understanding of the circumstances in which elements of the public/private sector mix may be harmful for the achievement of such goals. This volume will examine these issues as they have arisen in the United States, France, The Netherlands, Sweden, The Russian Federation, Italy, Brazil, Uruguay, and Japan. An additional set of three comparative chapters will examine two or more nations, collectively in Canada, Israel, Australia, Germany, The United Kingdom, Chile and Mexico.

Built environments are complex, emergent, systemic, and require contextual analysis. They should be understood before reconsidering how professionals and researchers of the built environment are educated and trained to reduce the gap between knowledge, practice and real-world circumstances. There is an urgent need to rethink the role of policy makers, researchers, practitioners and laypeople in the construction, renovation and reuse of the built environment in order to deal with numerous environmental/ecological, economic/financial and social/ethical challenges of providing a habitat for current and future generations in a world of continual change. These challenges are too complex to be dealt with only by one discipline or profession. Combinations of different types of knowledge, knowing in praxis and tacit knowledge are needed. This book presents and illustrates recent innovative contributions with case studies focusing on five strategic domains and the interrelations between them. These transdisciplinary contributions apply concepts, methods and tools that facilitate convergence and concerted action between participants collaborating in policy definition and project implementation. The methods and tools include experiments in living-labs, prototypes on site and virtual simulations, as well as participatory approaches including citizen science, the development of alternative scenarios, and visioning plausible futures.

Engendering Cities examines the contemporary research, policy, and practice of designing for gender in urban spaces. Gender matters in city design, yet despite legislative mandates across the globe to provide equal access to services for men and women alike, these issues are still often overlooked or inadequately addressed. This book looks at critical aspects of contemporary cities regarding gender, including topics such as transport, housing, public health, education, caring, infrastructure, as well as issues which are rarely addressed in planning, design, and policy, such as the importance of toilets for education and clothes washers for freeing-up time. In the first section, a number of chapters in the book assess past, current, and projected conditions in cities vis-a-vis gender issues and needs. In the second section, the book assesses existing policy, planning, and design efforts to improve women's and men's concerns in urban living. Finally, the book proposes changes to existing policies and practices in urban planning and design, including its thinking (theory) and norms (ethics). The book applies the current scholarship on theory and practice related to gender in a planning context, elaborating on some critical community-focused reflections on gender and design. It will be key reading for scholars and students of planning, architecture, design, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, geography, and political science. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy makers, providing discussion of emerging topics in the field.

The book that has been waiting to be written - how Ireland's housing policy has locked an entire generation out of the housing market and what we should do about it. "Clear, cogent and persuasive" - Fintan O'Toole Millennials are the first generation in Ireland to be worse off than their parents. Trapped in a game of rental roulette, stuck living at home as adults, and many on the brink of homelessness, the Irish housing crisis has defined the lives of an entire generation - and it is set to continue. With housing costs in Ireland the highest in the EU, the property ladder has been kicked from under thousands. So how did we get here ... and how do we break the cycle? In Gaffs, housing expert Rory Hearne urges us to think about the people behind the statistics, and shows us that there is a way towards a future where everyone has access to a home.

This book, uncovers the lived experiences of street-frequenting young people in Fiji. Typically viewed as 'out of place', these young people disturb what it means to be young and Fijian. Despite their marginal existence, they through their activities demonstrate the need to belong. The book adopts a critical postmodern perspective to explore this reality and propose ways of engaging with street-frequenting young people. Candidly written, Street-Frequenting Young People in Fiji identifies issues that provoke the conscience of Fijian hierarchy and its leaders. It will appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines- including sociology, childhood and youth studies, and social work- as well as practitioners and policy analysts.

The ways that social advocates organize to fight unaffordable housing and homelessness in Los Angeles, illuminated by a new conceptual framework for studying collective action How Civic Action Works renews the tradition of inquiry into collective, social problem solving. Paul Lichterman follows grassroots activists, nonprofit organization staff, and community service volunteers in three coalitions and twelve organizations in Los Angeles as they campaign for affordable housing, develop new housing, or address homelessness. Lichterman shows that to understand how social advocates build their campaigns, craft claims, and choose goals, we need to move beyond well-established thinking about what is strategic. Lichterman presents a pragmatist-inspired sociological framework that illuminates core tasks of social problem solving, both contentious and noncontentious, by grassroots and professional advocates alike. He reveals that advocates' distinct styles of collective action produce different understandings of what is strategic, and generate different dilemmas for advocates because each style accommodates varying social and institutional pressures. We see, too, how patterns of interaction create a cultural filter that welcomes some claims about housing problems while subordinating or delegitimating others. These cultural patterns help solve conceptual and practical puzzles, such as why coalitions fragment when members agree on many things, and what makes advocacy campaigns separate housing from homelessness or affordability from environmental sustainability. Lichterman concludes by turning this action-centered framework toward improving dialogue between social advocates and researchers. Using extensive ethnography enriched by archival evidence, How Civic Action Works explains how advocates meet the relational and rhetorical challenges of collective action.

The story of the rise of the segregated suburb often begins during the New Deal and the Second World War, when sweeping federal policies hollowed out cities, pushed rapid suburbanization, and created a white homeowner class intent on defending racial barriers. Paige Glotzer offers a new understanding of the deeper roots of suburban segregation. The mid-twentieth-century policies that favored exclusionary housing were not simply the inevitable result of popular and elite prejudice, she reveals, but the culmination of a long-term effort by developers to use racism to structure suburban real estate markets. Glotzer charts how the real estate industry shaped residential segregation, from the emergence of large-scale suburban development in the 1890s to the postwar housing boom. Focusing on the Roland Park Company as it developed Baltimore's wealthiest, whitest neighborhoods, she follows the money that financed early segregated suburbs, including the role of transnational capital, mostly British, in the U.S. housing market. She also scrutinizes the business practices of real estate developers, from vetting homebuyers to negotiating with municipal governments for services. She examines how they sold the idea of the suburbs to consumers and analyzes their influence in shaping local and federal housing policies. Glotzer then details how Baltimore's experience informed the creation of a national real estate industry with professional organizations that lobbied for planned segregated suburbs. How the Suburbs Were Segregated sheds new light on the power of real estate developers in shaping the origins and mechanisms of a housing market in which racial exclusion and profit are still inextricably intertwined.

By the early 1900s, the poor farm had become a ubiquitous part of America's social welfare system. Megan Birk's history of this foundational but forgotten institution focuses on the connection between agriculture, provisions for the disadvantaged, and the daily realities of life at poor farms. Conceived as an inexpensive way to provide care for the indigent, poor farms in fact attracted wards that ranged from abused wives and the elderly to orphans, the disabled, and disaster victims. Most people arrived unable rather than unwilling to work, some because of physical problems, others due to a lack of skills or because a changing labor market had left them behind. Birk blends the personal stories of participants with institutional histories to reveal a loose-knit system that provided a measure of care to everyone without an overarching philosophy of reform or rehabilitation. In-depth and innovative, The Fundamental Institution offers an overdue portrait of rural social welfare in the United States.

The Routledge Handbook of Housing Policy and Planning provides a comprehensive multidisciplinary overview of contemporary trends in housing studies, housing policies, planning for housing, and housing innovations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Continental Europe. In 29 chapters, international scholars discuss aspects pertaining to the right to housing, inequality, homeownership, rental housing, social housing, senior housing, gentrification, cities and suburbs, and the future of housing policies. This book is essential reading for students, policy analysts, policymakers, practitioners, and activists, as well as others interested in housing policy and planning.

A shortage of affordable new housing, builders choosing to build larger, more profitable houses, and a diminishing stock of cheap houses for rent. All this sounds very familiar today, but at the end of the Great War, scarcely any houses had been built for four years and there was political pressure to build 'Homes for Heroes', impelled to a degree by fear of revolution. Council housing, supported by central government funding, was the chosen solution in 1919, and this study by Malcolm Graham, a leading Oxford local historian for many years, examines the consequences in Oxford, then a university city on the cusp of change. Behind the city's Dreaming Spires image, housing for the working population was already in short supply, but an economy-minded and largely non-political City Council had always been reluctant to intervene in the housing market. In 1919, there was no hint of the city's industrial future, and the City Council saw the replacement of substandard houses as its main challenge. The meteoric rise of the local motor industry in the early 1920s led to rapid population growth and created a massive new demand for cheap housing. Dr Graham examines the uneasy partnership between the City Council and Whitehall which led to the building of over 3,000 council houses in Oxford between the Wars. The provision of these 'wholesome dwellings' was a substantial, and lasting, achievement, but private builders were in fact catering for most housing need in and around the city by the 1930s. The notorious Cutteslowe Walls, built to exclude council tenants from an adjoining private estate, reflected the way in which the growing city was being socially segregated. Dr Graham provides a fascinating insight into how modern Oxford evolved away from the university buildings and college quadrangles for which the city is internationally renowned.