Category Archives: Housing

Athens police poised to evict refugees from squatted housing projects

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A self-governing community in central Athens which has helped house refugees is threatened by a government crackdown

It’s just after 5am in the central Athens neighbourhood of Exarcheia. A group of Afghans and Iranians are sitting down together for breakfast in the middle of the street, with a banner that reads “No Pasaran” (“They shall not pass”) strung between the buildings above their heads. They laugh and joke as they help themselves to bread and cheese pies from the communal table.

The public breakfast is outside Notara 26, a self-organised refugee accommodation squat. Since opening in September 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis, it has provided shelter to over 9,000 people. These ‘‘Breakfasts of Resistance” – held in the early hours when police-led evictions are most likely – have become daily events since Greece’s New Democracy government assumed office in July.

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Homeless children put up in shipping containers, report says

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Children’s commissioner for England condemns ‘scandal’ of family homelessness

Thousands of homeless children are growing up in cheaply converted shipping containers and cramped rooms in former office blocks, putting their health and wellbeing at serious risk, according to the children’s commissioner for England.

Anne Longfield said it was scandal that at least 210,000 young people in homeless families in England were put up by councils in temporary housing and bed and breakfasts or forced to “sofa surf” with friends, often for long periods.

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Homeless woman says Centrelink took entire $3,500 tax return for disputed robodebt

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Couch surfing 50-year-old says welfare agency told her she wasn’t in financial hardship

A Melbourne woman battling homelessness says her entire $3,500 tax return was swiped by Centrelink last month, despite the fact she disputes the alleged robodebt.

But when Sue Prgic, 50, complained to the agency that the money had been taken without her knowledge, she said staff had asked to know what she would do with the cash if it were returned.

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Are artificial islands the answer to Hong Kong’s housing crisis?

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Will a $60bn development to house 1.1 million people help to ease the world’s most unaffordable property market or is it simply ‘pouring money into the sea’?

“Reclamation is unavoidable,” Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, told journalists in a Q&A session on land supply last year. “In the long term, many developing cities have to adopt this choice.”

Hong Kong suffers from chronic overcrowding and housing shortages – a situation made worse by the 150 residence permits a day that have been issued to mainland Chinese citizens since 1997. Additionally, 62% of land is “locked up” or “semi-locked up” by law or regulatory constraints due to environmental reasons in terms of land development, according to the thinktank Our Hong Kong Foundation.

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We built this city: the 90-year-olds who made a metropolis

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In 1947, 50,000 volunteers helped create Dimitrovgrad, a new city that symbolised the brave new world of communist Bulgaria. Many still live there

In her flat overlooking the main square of Dimitrovgrad, 90-year-old Maria Oteva casts her mind back more than seven decades to the foundation of the town in the early years of Bulgaria’s communist era.

“Back then, 50,000 volunteers built this city because they believed in something,” she says. “Nowadays, you wouldn’t find 50 people to come and clean up the dirty streets.”

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Uber co-founder buys record-breaking LA mansion for $72.5m as drivers fight for wages

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Los Angeles sees a spike in the homelessness population while homes the size of football fields are selling for more than $100m

Two massive luxury real estate deals in Los Angeles have shone a harsh light on the wealth gap in a region where tens of thousands of people live on the streets while mansions the size of football fields sell for more than $100m.

On Monday, Variety reported that the Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and his partner Eliza Nguyen have purchased a Beverly Hills mansion for a record-breaking $72.5m, in what is believed to be the largest-ever sale of a home in the neighborhood.

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Humans v the city: the staggering scale of Chongqing – in pictures

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Chongqing’s population is estimated at just below 10 million but that rises to more than 31 million if the built-up surroundings are included. Belgian photographer Kris Provoost finds that in a city so large, individuals can get lost

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‘This is everyone’s problem’: protests fail to save Taipei veterans’ village

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Fewer than 30 of 879 villages built to house nationalist KMT soldiers and their families remain in Taiwan. After a lengthy battle, Daguan is to be demolished this week

At 22, Cynthia Tang was one-third the average age of the other people crowded into the abandoned Taipei storefront that served as the office of the Daguan Anti-Eviction Movement.

Looking fervently through the frames of her large round glasses, Tang, a student at the prestigious National Taiwan University, addressed the small crowd. “Two of our student activists have been arrested,” she said. “Now the government is suing them. This is not only their problem – this is everyone’s problem.”

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Cracked up: how can apartment buyers guard against a defective purchase?

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The Owners Corporation Network’s advice is blunt: ‘Don’t buy a new apartment over three storeys’

With faults and cracks discovered over the weekend in Sydney’s Mascot Towers apartment complex – and similar cracks in Opal Tower six months ago – the spotlight is back on the quality of New South Wales apartment buildings.

Research from the University of NSW in 2015 found that 85% of new apartment buildings had defects at completion – mostly with waterproofing and fire detection systems – and the certification system had “broken down”.

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The story of Grenfell United – podcast

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Natasha Elcock and Ed Daffarn escaped from Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. Karim Mussilhy’s uncle died in the fire. Together with other survivors and bereaved people, they formed Grenfell United. They talk about their work over the past two years, while the Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, Rob Booth, discusses government inaction

In the early hours of 14 June 2017, a fire broke out at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, west London. It killed 72 people, including 18 children. In the chaos that followed, survivors and the bereaved felt abandoned by local authorities and the government, and began to organise into a community group, which became known as Grenfell United.

Today, on the second anniversary of the fire, Natasha Elcock, Ed Daffarn and Karim Mussilhy discuss the work the group has been doing and their attempts to tackle what they see as one of the most devastating aspects of the fire: government inaction. The Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, Rob Booth, has been covering the story of Grenfell since the blaze. He talks to Anushka Asthana about why more progress has not been made.

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‘It’s a miracle’: Helsinki’s radical solution to homelessness

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Finland is the only EU country where homelessness is falling. Its secret? Giving people homes as soon as they need them – unconditionally

Tatu Ainesmaa turns 32 this summer, and for the first time in more than a decade he has a home he can truly say is his: an airy two-room apartment in a small, recently renovated block in a leafy suburb of Helsinki, with a view over birch trees.

“It’s a big miracle,” he says. “I’ve been in communes, but everyone was doing drugs and I’ve had to get out. I’ve been in bad relationships; same thing. I’ve been on my brother’s sofa. I’ve slept rough. I’ve never had my own place. This is huge for me.”

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Peterborough prepares for byelection that could elect first Brexit party MP

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A decade ago it was the UK’s fastest growing city, but hit by cuts and buy-to-let, support for Nigel Farage’s party is high

On Thursday, voters in Peterborough will take part in one of the most intriguing parliamentary byelections in recent memory. The constituency saw a knife-edge duel between Labour and the Conservatives at the 2017 general election and at last month’s European poll, 38% of voters in the city backed the Brexit party. A first seat in the House of Commons for Nigel Farage’s party is a distinct possibility. If that happens, it will send tremors through middle England, of which Peterborough is typical in many ways, not just geographically.

Economically, Peterborough performs averagely amid struggles with productivity. Wages are stagnant and it has been reshaped by migration, with foreigners arriving to work in the surrounding farmlands and distribution depots, contributing to a decade as the UK’s fastest growing city between 2001 and 2011.

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Goodbye to Gomorrah: the end of Italy’s most notorious housing estate

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Famous as the setting for the hit film and TV series Gomorrah, the towers of Le Vele became synonymous with poverty and organised crime – until residents took charge

“When I think of my life in Le Vele, my skin crawls with rage,” says Omero Benfenati.

He looks out from a dark, narrow passageway framed by suspended steel stairways that block the natural light and lead up to abandoned apartments. Most of the windows are bricked up, and liquid leaks from split pipes on to the sewage and refuse-strewn asphalt several storeys below.

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Federal election 2019: Labor’s Belinda Hassan target of suspected arson attack – politics live

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The ALP’s candidate for Dawson confirms ‘scary incident’ where the fuel tank of her car was broken into. All the day’s events, live

And then it ends with this:

PK: Finally, you want to remove Josh Frydenberg, who fought hard for the National Energy Guarantee and for a compromise to move forward on climate change and energy. Is that a smart move?

Patricia Karvelas: One of the critiques of you is past involvement in Link Energy’s purchase of fossil fuel assets in 2010. Do you regret that?

Oliver Yates: I think the question is you need to see it was a company who bought them before I was even on the board. This is part of the Liberal dirt sheet. It’s round to everybody...

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Labor says it will match Coalition’s deposit scheme for first home buyers

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Chris Bowen says the opposition can afford the policy because it is ‘closing loopholes’ for the wealthy

Labor will match Scott Morrison’s election pitch to first home buyers, saying it can afford to support the government’s home deposit scheme because it is “closing loopholes” for the wealthy.

After the Coalition used its campaign launch on Sunday to announce the new housing affordability measure, Labor’s shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, criticised the government for the 11th-hour decision, but supported the proposal.

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Housing in sub-Saharan Africa improves but millions of people live in slums

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Study identifies major transformation in quality of living conditions, but governments urged to improve urban sanitation

From cities to the countryside, Africa has undergone a dramatic transformation in living conditions over the past 15 years, according to a new study.

But the research, based on state of the art mapping and published in science journal Nature, also found that almost half of the the urban population – 53 million people across the countries analysed – were living in slum conditions.

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Australian house prices down in every capital city except Adelaide and Hobart

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ABS data shows capital city prices fell 2.4% in December quarter and 5.1% over 2018

Home prices across Australia’s capital cities fell by 2.4% in the three months to December, trimming the total value of the country’s dwellings to $6.7tn.

Prices fell 5.1% across the whole of 2018, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Residential Property Price Index, released on Tuesday.

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‘Beggars in our own land’: Canada’s First Nation housing crisis

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In January, an isolated reserve declared a state of emergency over dangerously poor housing conditions. A resident has now died – what will it take for meaningful change?

A caravan of trucks carrying material for new homes is currently winding through northern Ontario, on its way to a remote Indigenous community. The trip along a seasonal winter road is a slow one, passing over frozen lakes and muskeg, and involves cutting down trees along the way for the vehicles and their trailers. Members of the isolated reserve, Cat Lake First Nation, say there is no time to waste.

Home to roughly 700 people, the reserve declared a state of emergency in January over excessive mould, leaky roofs and other poor housing conditions. The crisis then deepened when one of its residents, 48-year-old Nashie Oombash, died from respiratory issues. Her family blamed the death on extensive mould problems in her home.

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Sale of portable cabins booms in New Zealand amid housing crisis

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People turn to tiny structures that can be placed in the gardens of family or friends’ properties

The sale of portable cabins is booming in New Zealand, where a housing crisis means hundreds of thousands of Kiwis can no longer afford a home, or even a rental.

Soaring property prices in New Zealand’s largest cities and a slow pace of new builds has seen many low and middle income New Zealanders struggling to afford basic housing, with some forced to sleep in shipping containers, tents and cars.

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Lisbon’s bad week: police brutality reveals Portugal’s urban reality

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A viral video of police violence has brought national attention to the long-ghettoised community in Bairro da Jamaica

From time to time, cars of curious people drive slowly though Bairro da Jamaica, craning their necks for a peek at the neighbourhood that’s been in the headlines across Portugal for several days now. None of them step out of their vehicles.

They’re here to look at the broken glass, the smashed roof tiles and the evidence of last week’s violence. The tallest of the bairro’s self-built housing towers is now derelict, fenced off with yellow tape and awaiting demolition; the others are also scheduled to be torn down, but are still occupied for now.

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