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![]() SHELTER - HOME - SPACE - SAFETY - HAVEN "... imagine a future where humans, just as other animals, own their shelter free and clear and don’t have to pay a “tax” their whole lives just to stay protected from the elements?"
Dan West Home is an essential need. Home is the physical location where we shelter, live, relax, sleep, regenerate, relate and ideally, find safety and peace. it is an essential both to our survival, our health and our ability to recharge and come out into the world with the energy to live, participate and respond to life.
Allowing a housing system that is marketised to the extent this one is where there is such an unbalanced shifting of resources from those that need them to those that don't. We will go into all the details in due course, but it doesn't take a genius to work out that pressurising so many people's essential needs progressively disables their ability to spend in other sectors, to regenerate and be able to work at full capacity and costs huge amounts in benefits of many kinds. It's greed gone insane. Though it seems that more and more people are waking up to it. It's possible even the government might one day wake up to just how devastatingly incompetent they have been for so long on this issue, one can only hope! ISSUESWe suggest that using the phrase 'housing market' precisely demonstrates an endemic problem in how we have come to think about housing. How housing came to be a 'commodity' while the actual reality that it is an essential need is frequently overlooked to the clear advantage of banks, landlords and 'investors' and it does seem that it is always the market in any sector that is being maintained as the priority. Things appear to be changing for a number of reasons, but one key reason stand out. This is that as wages stagnate and prices rise, the reality on the ground of essential need becomes increasingly untenable, communities break apart under the ceaseless march of gentrification, homelessness increases exponentially and slowly but surely the situation which is already a disaster for many catches up with the few that have their heads firmly planted in the sand of personal proifit. The writing is on the wall now, but as with any addiction, it will probably have to reach catastrophy before something is actually done, rather than the token and often incompetent actions currrently being proposed by people who are effectively but temporarily insulating themselves from the largely untold suffering that burns while they fiddle.
SOLUTIONSWe suggest it is time for a collaborative discussion on what it is that we really need to re-boot a foundation of a safe, healthy and productive society and how that starts at the basic need level, first with housing/home and then with food, relationships and community. We are aware that society and it's complex approach to economic structure accepts an extraordinary systemic reality that on the one hands disusses the problem and shortage of housing while on the other hand promotes housing as a market that is considered to be healthy when prices are going up, which they are gauranteed to do when there is a shortage of housing. How are these two situations being managed in a way that can work for everyone? We are also aware that there are increasing initiatives in the USA and Canada that are beginning to grasp this issue and solve at least the basic foundation of it. (see Canadian City Completely Eradicates Homelessness With Brand New Approach KEY ISSUES : SOLUTIONSRegaining an understanding of the essential need and right of home.* KEY INITIATIVESLand/Housing Project/Affordable Homes
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