Shola Olatoye – Be Our Guest: The Road To Ending Homelessness Starts With A Plan To Provide Affordable Housing

nydailynews.com. October 6, 2013. The nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners says New York’s next mayor should support a plan that invests in and builds affordable housing, and provides funding and services to keep families from becoming homeless.

The next mayor of New York City will inherit quite a lot: a growing local economy, historically low crime rates, shiny new developments peppered throughout the city — and perhaps most importantly, an unprecedented homelessness crisis.

Tonight, roughly 57,000 New Yorkers will sleep on the street or in a shelter, an all-time high. The number of homeless families in the city’s shelter system has risen a staggering 73% since 2002. There are currently enough homeless kids in the city to fill Madison Square Garden and still leave a few thousand for the Barclays Center.

While there are several reasons for this spike, the primary culprit is a lack of decent, affordable housing, especially for the lowest-income New Yorkers. Median rent in the city has increased by almost 9% over the past half-decade while wages have dropped by about 7% after adjusting for inflation.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/guest-solution-homeless-housing-article

The Africa Report: Africa’s Social Housing: Homes For All

theafricareport.com. October, 2, 2013. With a housing shortage across Africa, governments and developers are creating new models that enable people on modest incomes to buy their own homes.

Shantytowns, slums, squatter set­tlements – everyone has a word for it, but solutions are less easy to come by. Booming African cities and towns are drawing in rural migrants eager for jobs.
Urban dwellers are sett­ ling down and starting families. Often based on colonial­ era plans and infra­ structure, African cities are struggling to cope. Informal settlements flourish both beyond the city limits and tucked within established urban architecture: under bridges, next to highways and in marketplaces.

African leaders have not always been receptive to the plight of the poorly housed – the view from the windows of State House is often of manicured gardens rather than plastic­strewn, open­gutter tenements. But the North

African uprisings have focused minds at the highest levels. Though by no means the only factor, it is pertinent that the Moroccan government, which survived protests by angry citizens, has the most active social housing policy in the Maghreb.

Read more: http://www.theafricareport.com/

Uttar Pradesh – India: 33% Of Slum Population Live Without Basic Facilities

economictimes.indiatimes.com. October, 3, 2013. New Delhi: Over a third of the slum population in India lives without any basic facility being provided by the state as the slums are not recognized. In the case of some states like Rajasthan, Gujarat and Bihar, the entire slum population of several lakhs remains unrecognized by the state governments.

For the first time, the census data on slums identified slum dwellers as the people living in compact areas with a population of at least 300, in unhygienic environment with inadequate infrastructure and lacking proper sanitary and drinking water facilities. Earlier, only people in areas notified or recognized as slums by state or local authorities were counted.

Read more: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/slum-population-literacy-rate