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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Homelessness
There is a large shortage of affordable housing across Europe. In high-demand urban areas housing shortages lead to unaffordable prices for many target groups. This book explores innovations to support a sufficient supply of affordable and sustainable rental housing. Affordable housing is increasingly developed, financed and managed by a mix of market, state, third sector and community actors. Recent decades in large parts of the Western world have consecutively shown state-dominated, non-profit housing sectors, an increased role for market forces and the private sector, and the rise of initiatives by citizens and local communities. The variety of hybrid governance and finance arrangements is predicted to increase further, leading to new affordable housing delivery and management models. This book explores these innovations, with a focus on developments across Europe, and comparative chapters from the USA and Australia. The book presents new thinking in collaborative housing, co-production and accompanying finance mechanisms in order to support the quantity and the quality of affordable rental housing. Combining academic robustness with practical relevance, chapters are written by renowned housing researchers in collaboration with practitioners from the housing sector. The book not only presents, compares and contrasts affordable housing solutions, but also explores the transferability of innovations to other countries. The book is essential reading for researchers and professionals in housing, social policy, urban planning and finance.
Though New York's Lower East Side today is home to high-end condos and hip restaurants, it spent decades as an infamous site of blight, open-air drug dealing, and class conflict an emblematic example of the tattered state of 1970s and '80s Manhattan. Those decades of strife, however, also gave the Lower East Side something unusual: a radical movement that blended urban homesteading and European-style squatting into something never before seen in the United States. Ours to Lose tells the oral history of that movement through a close look at a diverse group of Lower East Side squatters who occupied abandoned city-owned buildings in the 1980s, fought to keep them for decades, and eventually began a long, complicated process to turn their illegal occupancy into legal cooperative ownership. Amy Starecheski here not only tells a little-known New York story, she also shows how property shapes our sense of ourselves as social beings and explores the ethics of homeownership and debt in post-recession America.
Britain in 1946 witnessed extraordinary episodes of direct action. Tens of thousands of families walked into empty army camps and took them over as places to live. A nationwide squatters' movement was born and it was the first challenge to the 1945 Labour government to come 'from below'. The book examines how these squatters built communities and campaigned for improvements; how local and national government reacted; the spread of squatting to empty mansions and hotels, and the roles of political activists. Further, it discusses what these events reveal about the attitude of the 1945 government to popular initiatives.This book describes how those most affected by inadequate housing conditions and shortages responded to them and how their actions helped to shape policies and events. It examines and records something summed up in the recollection of one of the organisers of the London hotel squats of 1946: "...The thing I'll never forget is that if I'd ever had doubts about the problems of working people taking on and managing their own affairs, I lost them forever during this squatting thing. Because without any hassle, fuss, argument, they found what they could do, and collectively decided that it should be done, and then went off and did it."
The riveting story of control over the mobility of poor migrants, and how their movements shaped current perceptions of class and status in the United States Vagrants. Vagabonds. Hoboes. Identified by myriad names, the homeless and geographically mobile have been with us since the earliest periods of recorded history. In the early days of the United States, these poor migrants - consisting of everyone from work-seekers to runaway slaves - populated the roads and streets of major cities and towns. These individuals were a part of a social class whose geographical movements broke settlement laws, penal codes, and welfare policies. This book documents their travels and experiences across the Atlantic world, excavating their life stories from the records of criminal justice systems and relief organizations. Vagrants and Vagabonds examines the subsistence activities of the mobile poor, from migration to wage labor to petty theft, and how local and state municipal authorities criminalized these activities, prompting extensive punishment. Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan examines the intertwined legal constructions, experiences, and responses to these so-called "vagrants," arguing that we can glean important insights about poverty and class in this period by paying careful attention to mobility. This book charts why and how the itinerant poor were subject to imprisonment and forced migration, and considers the relationship between race and the right to movement and residence in the antebellum US. Ultimately, Vagrants and Vagabonds argues that poor migrants, the laws designed to curtail their movements, and the people charged with managing them, were central to shaping everything from the role of the state to contemporary conceptions of community to class and labor status, the spread of disease, and punishment in the early American republic.
***Winner of an RSL Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction*** 'Part memoir, part howl of fury' GUARDIAN 'Enrich[es] our impoverished sociological imagination' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Raw and compelling' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Shows the human cost of a genuinely Kafka-esque bureaucratic system' NEW STATESMAN At once a powerful memoir, unflinching polemic and probing investigation into modern homelessness in the UK, by award-winning investigative journalist Daniel Lavelle Daniel Lavelle left care at the age of nineteen, and experienced homelessness for the first time not long after. So began a life spent navigating social services that were not fit for purpose, leaving Daniel and many like him slipping through the cracks. In Down and Out, Daniel draws on his own experiences - as well as those of the witty, complex, hopeful individuals he has encountered who have been shunned or forgotten by the state that is supposed to provide for them - in order to shine a powerful light on this dire situation. Down and Out is a true state-of-the-nation examination of modern homelessness: assessing its significance, its precursors and causes, as well as the role played by government, austerity, charities, and other systems in perpetuating this crisis. Ultimately, it seeks to ask how we as a society might change our practices and attitudes so that, one day, we can bring this injustice to an end. More praise for Down and Out: 'Ruthless and raw ' DAVID LAMMY, author of TRIBES 'A vital voice . . . A book for every politician, policy maker and reader who wants a fairer and kinder country' FRANCES RYAN, author of CRIPPLED 'Anyone interested in homelessness should read this book' SIMON HATTENSTONE, journalist 'A valuable and damning personal tale of how the system fails our kids' EMILY KENWAY, author of THE TRUTH ABOUT MODERN SLAVERY
After centuries of economic activity based on extraction, exploitation, and depletion, we now face undeniable environmental threats. New business models that save or restore natural resources are critical. But how can we translate that insight into more sustainable practices?"Building the Green Economy shows how community groups, families, and individual citizens have taken action to protect their food and water, clean up their neighborhoods, and strengthen their local economies. Their unlikely victories over polluters, unresponsive bureaucracies, and unexamined routines dramatize the opportunities and challenges facing the local green economy movement.Drawing on their extensive experience at Global Exchange and elsewhere, the authors also: Lay out strategies for a more successful green movementDescribe how communities have protected their victories from legal and political challengesProvide key resources for local activistsInclude conversations with Rocky Anderson, Lois Gibbs, Anuradha Mittal, David Morris, Michael Shuman, and other activists and leaders."
Drawing on first-hand accounts of action research in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, The Heart of Community Engagement illustrates the transformative learning journeys of exemplary catalysts for community-based change. Practitioners' stories of community engagement for social justice in the Global South elucidate the moments of insight and transformation that deepened their practice: how to deal with uncertainty, recognize their own blind spots, become aware of what is emergent and possible in the moment, and weave an inclusive bond of love, respect, and purpose. Each successive narrative adds a deeper level of understanding of the inner practice of community engagement. The stories illuminate the reflective, or inner, practice of the outside change agent, whether a planner, designer, participatory action researcher, or community development practitioner. From a shantytown in South Africa, to a rural community in India, or an informal settlement in peri-urban Mexico, the stories focus attention on the greatest leverage point for change that we, as engaged practitioners, have: our own self-awareness. By the end of the book, the practitioners are not only aware of their own conditioned beliefs and assumptions, but have opened their minds and hearts to the complex and dynamic patterns of emergent change that is possible. This book serves as a much-needed reader of practice stories to help instructors and students find the words, concepts, and examples to talk about their own subjective experience of community engagement practice. The book applies some of the leading-edge concepts from organizational development and leadership studies to the fields of planning, design, and community engagement practice. Key concepts include the deep dive of sensing the social field, seeing the whole, and presencing the emergent future. The book also provides a creative bridge between participatory action research and design thinking: user-based design, rapid prototyping, and learning from doing.
Economic inequality is a defining issue of our time, with a handful of individuals in the United States today owning more wealth than half the population in the country. What are the psychological consequences of living in a profoundly unequal society? This comprehensive textbook is among the first to examine poverty, wealth, and economic inequality from a psychological perspective. Written by two leading scholars in the field, it provides an intersectional analysis of the impact of economic inequality on cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, intergroup, physiological, and health outcomes. Students are introduced to the diverse methods used to study poverty, wealth, and economic inequality and the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches, while the text focuses on solutions at the individual, community, and national levels to restore optimism and encourage action. Chapter features include exercises and reflection questions that help students think critically about the implications of research findings for their own lives.
Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots-and therefore requires a radical response.
Breaking the country-specific boundaries of traditional housing policy books, Remaking Housing Policy is the first introductory housing policy textbook designed to be used by students all around the world. Starting from first principles, readers are guided through the objectives behind government housing policy interventions, the tools and mechanisms deployed and the outcomes of the policy decisions. A range of international case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas illustrate the book's general principles and demonstrate how different regimes influence policy. The rise of the neo-classical discourse of market primacy in housing has left many countries with an inappropriate mix of state and market processes with major interventions that do not achieve what they were intended to do. Remaking Housing Policy goes back to basics to show what works and what doesn't and how policy can be improved for the future. Remaking Housing Policy provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the objectives and mechanisms of social housing. This innovative international textbook will be suitable for academics, housing students and those on related courses across geography, planning, property and urban studies.
Breaking the country-specific boundaries of traditional housing policy books, Remaking Housing Policy is the first introductory housing policy textbook designed to be used by students all around the world. Starting from first principles, readers are guided through the objectives behind government housing policy interventions, the tools and mechanisms deployed and the outcomes of the policy decisions. A range of international case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas illustrate the book's general principles and demonstrate how different regimes influence policy. The rise of the neo-classical discourse of market primacy in housing has left many countries with an inappropriate mix of state and market processes with major interventions that do not achieve what they were intended to do. Remaking Housing Policy goes back to basics to show what works and what doesn't and how policy can be improved for the future. Remaking Housing Policy provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to the objectives and mechanisms of social housing. This innovative international textbook will be suitable for academics, housing students and those on related courses across geography, planning, property and urban studies.
In recent years many nations have asked why not enough housing is being built or, when it is built, why it isn't of the highest quality or in the best, most sustainable, locations. Politics, Planning and Housing Supply in Australia, England and Hong Kong examines the politics and planning of new homes in three very different settings, but with shared political traditions: in Australia, in England and in Hong Kong. It investigates the power-relationships and politics that underpin the allocation of land for large-scale residential schemes and the processes and politics that lead to particular development outcomes. Using a comparative framework, it asks: how different systems of urban governance and planning mediate the supply of land for housing; whether and how these system differences influence the location, quantity and price of residential land and the implications for housing outcomes; what can be learned from these different systems for allocating land, building consensus between different stakeholders, and delivering a steady supply of high quality and well located homes accessible to, and appropriate for, diverse housing needs. This book frames each case study in a comprehensive examination of national and territorial frameworks before dissecting key local cases. These local cases - urban renewal and greenfield growth centres in Australia, new towns and strategic sites in England, and major development schemes in Hong Kong - explore how broader urban planning and housing policy goals play out at the local level. While the book highlights a number of potential strategies for improving planning and housing delivery processes, the real challenge is to give voice to a broader array of interests, reconstituting the political process surrounding planning and housing development to prioritise homes in well-planned places for the many, rather than simply facilitating investment opportunities for the few.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. The number of people experiencing homelessness is rising in the majority of advanced western economies. Responses to these rising numbers are variable but broadly include elements of congregate emergency accommodation, long-term supported accommodation, survivalist services and degrees of coercion. It is evident that these policies are failing. Using contemporary research, policy and practice examples, this book uses the Irish experience to argue that we need to urgently reimagine homelessness as a pattern of residential instability and economic precariousness regularly experienced by marginal households. Bringing to light stark evidence, it proves that current responses to homelessness only maintain or exacerbate this instability rather than arrest it and provides a robust evidence base to reimagine how we respond to homelessness.
The story of a personal housing crisis that led to a discovery of the true value of home. *'You will marvel at the beauty of this book, and rage at the injustice it reveals' George Monbiot* *'Incredibly moving. To find peace and a sense of home after a life so profoundly affected by the housing crisis, is truly inspirational' Raynor Winn, bestselling author of The Salt Path* Aged thirty-one, Catrina Davies was renting a box-room in a house in Bristol, which she shared with four other adults and a child. Working several jobs and never knowing if she could make the rent, she felt like she was breaking apart. Homesick for the landscape of her childhood, in the far west of Cornwall, Catrina decides to give up the box-room and face her demons. As a child, she saw her family and their security torn apart; now, she resolves to make a tiny, dilapidated shed a home of her own. With the freedom to write, surf and make music, Catrina rebuilds the shed and, piece by piece, her own sense of self. On the border of civilisation and wilderness, between the woods and the sea, she discovers the true value of home, while trying to find her place in a fragile natural world. This is the story of a personal housing crisis and a country-wide one, grappling with class, economics, mental health and nature. It shows how housing can trap us or set us free, and what it means to feel at home.
Are Arab Gulf cities, the likes of Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Doha, on their way to extinction? Is their fate obsolescence? Or, are they the model for our urban future? Can a city whose very existence is predicated on an imported labour force who build and operate these gleaming urban centres remain a viable urban entity? Could the transient nature of this urban model, its temporariness and precariousness, also be its doom? In this wide-ranging book Yasser Elsheshtawy takes on these tough, but necessary, questions aiming to examine the very nature of the Arab Gulf city and whether it can sustain its existence throughout the twenty-first century. Having lived in the region for more than two decades he researched its marginalized and forgotten urban settings, trying to understand how a temporary people can live in a place that inherently refuses to give them the possibility of becoming citizens. By being embedded in these spaces and reconciling their presence with his own personal encounters with transience, he discovered a resilience and defiance against the forces of the hegemonic city. Using subtle acts of resistance, these temporary inhabitants have found a way to sustain and create a home, to set down roots in the midst of a fast changing and transient urbanity. Their stories, recounted in this book through case studies and in-depth analysis, give hope to cities everywhere. Transience is not a fait accompli: rather the actions of citizens, residents and migrants - even in the highly restrictive spaces of the Gulf - show us that the future metropolis may very well not turn out to be a 'utopia of the few and a dystopia of the many'. This could be an illusion, but it is a necessary illusion because the alternative is irrelevance.
Utilizing innovative ethnographic research, "Swept Up Lives?" challenges conventional accounts of urban homelessness to trace the complex and varied attempts to care for homeless people Presents innovative ethnographic research which suggests an important shift in perspective in the analysis and understanding of urban homelessnessEmphasizes the ethical and emotional geographies of care embodied and performed within homeless services spacesSuggests that different homelessness 'scenes' develop in different places due to varied historical, political, and cultural responses to the problems faced
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.
San Francisco is being eroded by waves of cash flowing north from Silicon Valley. Recent evictions of long-time San Francisco residents, outrageous rents and home prices, and blockaded "Google buses" are only the tip of the iceberg. James Tracy's book focuses on the long arc of displacement over almost two decades of "dot com" boom and bust, offering the necessary perspective to analyze the latest urban horrors. A housing activist in the Bay Area since before Google existed, Tracy puts the hardships of the working poor and middle class front and center. These essays explore the battle for urban space--public housing residents fighting austerity, militant housing takeovers, the vagaries of federal and state housing policy, as well as showdowns against gentrification in the Mission District. From these experiences, "Dispatches Against Displacement" draws out a vision of what alternative urbanism might look like if our cities were developed by and for the people who bring them to life. James Tracy is a Bay Area native and a well-respected community
organizer. He is co-founder of the San Francisco Community Land
Trust (which uses public and private money to buy up housing stock
and take it out of the real estate market), as well as a poet and
co-author of "Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black
Power."
Mayflower Street runs between Jamaica Road and the Thames in Bermondsey, South London. In 1939, 34 houses and 121 residents occupied the street. Between 1940 and 1941 bombs fell on 7 of these houses and at the end of war, the street - with its corner shop, was demolished. The London Bubble Theatre backs on to Mayflower Street overlooking the new houses and flats that now stand there. Over the past year members of our drama groups have been researching the history of the Blitz, consulting the electoral roll and interviewing residents who grew up nearby. BLACKBIRDS is the drama that has emerged from this process. Using personal testimony, physical theatre and the combined skills of a cast of contemporary Londoners, ranging in age from 7 to 78, the project aims to share some of the experiences and events that made our city into the place we know today. Suitable for use in schools, colleges, youth theatres and community groups.
Encountering Poverty challenges mainstream frameworks of global poverty by going beyond the claims that poverty is a problem that can be solved through economic resources or technological interventions. By focusing on the power and privilege that underpin persistent impoverishment and using tools of critical analysis and pedagogy, the authors explore the opportunities for and limits of poverty action in the current moment. Encountering Poverty invites students, educators, activists, and development professionals to think about and act against inequality by foregrounding, rather than sidestepping, the long history of development and the ethical dilemmas of poverty action today.
This book takes a behavioural approach to examine six important housing questions: tenure decision, gentrification, place attachment, housing bubbles, housing wealth, and residential satisfaction. Using experimental and field data, the book demonstrates the effects of six behavioural biases and heuristics (i.e., anchoring and reference dependence, loss aversion, mental accounting, endowment effect, herd behaviours, and social comparison) on these housing decisions. The first part of the book introduces the questions and provides a behavioural science toolbox before the second part adopts a real-world case study approach. Real data sets and suggested answers are provided, and the cases come from the UK, USA, and China. Background information is given in each case to facilitate the understanding of the case data and question, as well as the discussions on the results. This book is ideal supplementary reading on a variety of courses such as housing studies, economics, real estate, research methods, and for students and academics who are interested in the application of behavioural science in housing decisions.
Squatting is currently a global phenomenon. A concomitant of economic development and social conflict, squatting attracts public attention because - implicitly or explicitly - it questions property relations from the perspective of the basic human need for shelter. So far neglected by historical inquiry, squatters have played an important role in the history of urban development and social movements, not least by contributing to change in concepts of property and the distribution and utilization of urban space. An interdisciplinary circle of authors demonstrates how squatters have articulated their demands for participation in the housing market and public space in a whole range of contexts, and how this has brought them into conflict and/or cooperation with the authorities. The volume examines housing struggles and the occupation of buildings in the Global "North," but it is equally concerned with land acquisition and informal settlements in the Global "South." In the context of the former, squatting tends to be conceived as social practice and collective protest, whereas self-help strategies of the marginalized are more commonly associated with the southern hemisphere. This volume's historical perspective, however, helps to overcome the north-south dualism in research on squatting.
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.
This book examines examples of rural regeneration projects through the public administration lens, analysing how governance arrangements in rural settings work. In particular, the author focusses on the role of communities, business and tiers of governance (local, regional, national, and supra national) in terms of delivery and funding. By drawing on a range of case studies from the UK, US, Australia and South Africa, the book identifies best practice in governance, applicable to both academic conceptual debates and to practitioners engaged in real world governance of regeneration. While there are substantial political science, sociology and geography debates within the existing academic literature around food security, fair trade, urban-rural divides and supply chains, little has been written on the way in which governance in comparative global case study settings operates in achieving or underpinning rural renewal programmes. Through the inclusion of dedicated sections in each chapter summarising both the links between academic debate and practice, this book will be of great interest to researchers and policy-makers in the field of rural development, and environmental politics and governance in general.
Written from an 'in house' perspective in response to the UK Government Housing White Paper released in February 2017, Housing Regeneration: A Plan for Implementation presents sustainable solutions to Britain's housing crisis and will be a useful practical guide for anyone involved in the process of regeneration. Taking as its starting point an idea for a housing regeneration scheme, it provides an overview of each of the issues to be considered and the options for addressing them. In clear and concise language, it explains the issues and work involved in a regeneration scheme, answering questions such as who is involved, how is it paid for, what options are available and, importantly, what are the risks. It will appeal to lawyers, councillors, town planners, surveyors, chief officers, finance officers, procurement officers, project managers and students, amongst others. |
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