Tens of thousands of hard-working families will be forced to leave their council homes and find themselves unable to afford a local alternative as a result of government plans to restrict social housing to the poorest, according to research obtained by the Observer.

The devastating figures...show that almost 60,000 households in England will be unable to afford to remain in their council properties from April next year, as a result of George Osborne’s reform, called “pay to stay”. — the Guardian

what exactly does housing justice look like in a metropolis where the wealthiest commute via helicopters while the poorest live in shantytowns perched on riverbanks? [...]

“The new master plan tries to resolve one of São Paulo’s biggest challenges, which is its decentralization" [...]

The master plan calls for ... transit-oriented development ... [and] expanding and honing the controversial Zonas Especiais de Interesse Social... swaths of the city defined as having “special social interest.” — nextcity.org

Santa Ana is the latest to embrace the granny flat; earlier this month, its city council directed staff to rewrite city code to make it easier to have granny flats, and to allow them to be larger. [...]

"It really is meant to expand people’s ability to help their families and to reduce the overcrowding" [...]

Berkeley city officials relaxed regulations to encourage granny flats in March. Pasadena and Los Angeles have also flirted with the idea of loosening restrictions on such units. — scpr.org

What would you do about the drought if you were Jerry Brown? A new 2-3 player board game by Bay Area-based graphic designer Alfred Twu allows you to play the politics of water in California.

Twu specializes in designing games that try and have fun with complex issues. Currently, he is developing one called “California Housing Crisis” that deals with San Francisco’s runaway housing costs, and he previously designed a fantasy map for a U.S. national high speed rail system that went viral. — blogs.kcrw.com

The California Supreme Court decided unanimously Monday that cities and counties may require developers to provide below-market-rate housing as a condition of a building permit.

The decision is expected to make it easier for Los Angeles and other cities with housing shortages to force developers to build or pay for affordable housing. — LA Times

Loath to lose more housing, Los Angeles lawmakers are now taking steps to help legalize 'bootlegged' apartments that have long existed without municipal blessing...The goal, City Councilman Felipe Fuentes said, is to 'maintain affordability and try to get folks into stable, dignified housing.' Both tenant and landlord groups praised the budding plan as a 'win-win'...But the idea has already raised concerns among some residents who see it as a reward for flouting the law. — Los Angeles Times

Different policy debates come into play throughout the game and the player is tasked with making choices that will affect the final rent – for instance build in high-cost neighborhoods, pay workers prevailing wages, expend public money to subsidize the building, or to give in and accept higher rents than desired. — chpcny.org

Protestors against low-income housing demolition are not just fighting for their homes, but often for their ability to stay in London at all. The small amount of “affordable” housing being discussed as a replacement is really a figleaf. — citylab.com

Egypt is in the throes of a severe housing shortage [...]. But one thing the country has an abundance of is lonesome desert, and developers are turning there to construct immense projects that stick out in the emptiness like skyscrapers on Mars.

London-based photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro has a yen for the monumental [...] naturally he was interested in the colossal structures rising on the outskirts of Egyptian cities. — citylab.com

A newly completed 125 ft high mural painted by Stik on a condemned council owned tower block in Acton, West London is the tallest street artwork in the UK.

The artwork depicts a mother and child looking forlornly from their condemned council block at the luxury apartment complexes being built around them. [...]

Charles Hocking House was built for low income families in 1967 and is earmarked to be torn down in 2016. — streetartnews.net

Whenever a campaign wants to stop some new development it will use the phrase "tower block". This isn't what the developers would call them – they prefer "stunning developments" or "luxury apartments".

There is a national campaign afoot against new towers, specifically against the astonishing 230 mostly residential ones planned for the capital. Inevitably, the campaign has referred to tower blocks and "the mistakes of the 1960s" knowing this is emotive language [...]. — theguardian.com

To make housing affordable again, we need to catch up to decades-worth of unmet demand, over the next few years. In many cities, this means goals measured in the tens of thousands of new homes; in the fastest-growing cities, it means hundreds of thousands. Build enough housing and (economists and experience both tell us) prices should at least stabilise. Want social justice? Build a lot more housing. — theguardian.com

As for what she wants visitors to get out of the exhibit, Koumoundouros just hopes it will help them think about -- even question -- how much our economy is based on the housing market.
'Ownership and consumption are linked to how much our economy is consumed based," she argues. "[This view of housing] is so specifically American. And I love digging that out, and I think questioning it is part of maybe a shift.' — Marketplace.org