Articles

SHELTER - HOME - SPACE - SAFETY - HAVEN
protection - environment - resource - food - recharge - energy - creativity

 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.

We propose that a person's health, security, sense of community and ability to participate fully and effectively in the workplace and society is based on the quality and sense of haven and peace in their home. That these realities are the foundation of any truly civilised and *aligned* society.

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!

ISSUES

We 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. 
It is one thing to introduce zero hours and we suggest the logical compliment to this which would be zero rent.

SOLUTIONS

We 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 suggest that homelessness should be against the law, not for those that suffer fom it, but for those that allow it.
Alternatively we suggest that a home is a human right and that we could easily rememebr that people have successfully built their own homes for thousands of years and that we could allevite this unsustainable and crucial situation very quickly by treating it as a full scale disaster.  Bring in temporary shelters and eastablish a zero tolerance of any form of homlessness, tonight.

It is baffling, and needs to be understood, as to why homelessness and poverty do not appear to serve anyone's interest be they poor or rich and yet are accepted and largely ignored.

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
& Utah is ending homelessness by giving people homes)

KEY ISSUES : SOLUTIONS

Regaining an understanding of the essential need and right of home.*

The health of the individual that derives from a fulfilled sense of home that then largely contributes to the health of a society.

Affordable accommodation: de-marketizing housing. Radical and urgent serious attention to a problem, if not a scandal, that simply should not be tolerated, period.

KEY INITIATIVES

Land/Housing Project/Affordable Homes
Understanding and Solving homelessness.(and the threat of)

“The financial crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money.”  Charles Eisentstein