The New York Times
Original Here
January 16, 2007
An Experiment and a Protest in Shantytown for Homeless
By LAURA RIVERA

MIAMI, Jan. 15 — When an emaciated, gray-haired woman staggered into the ragtag encampment complaining of a toothache the other day, Eugene Simpkins fed her peanut butter sandwiches from the communal kitchen and fetched her aspirin from the makeshift medicine cabinet.

As night fell, the woman slept on a urine-stained couch, while Mr. Simpkins fried batches of cornmeal-dusted fish over a campfire. He pointed out four sick people he had been tending to since joining Umoja, a settlement of formerly homeless people in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, last month.

“I know someday I’ll be old like her,” said Mr. Simpkins, 43, who said he was an ordained Baptist minister and had lately been serving as Umoja’s unofficial cook. “I just hope that when that day comes, there will be someone to take care of me.”

With 16 huts cobbled together from plywood, discarded closet doors and cardboard, Umoja is a shantytown in the shadow of the biggest construction boom Miami has seen since the 1920s. Started in October by an advocate for low-income housing, it is part social protest and part social experiment, with nightly meetings where decisions on whether to evict people or how to split up chores are determined by consensus.

Most of the 40 residents said they had been sleeping on the streets before moving into Umoja’s colorful shacks. The eyesore has become a warm community, with a resident poet entertaining regularly, and has won over some neighbors, including those who now bring by homemade sweet potato pies, despite previous complaints about trash and noise.

The city commissioner who represents the area, Michelle Spence-Jones, had tried to shut the settlement down with an ordinance to require a permit for gatherings on public land. But after several visits to Umoja, she withdrew the ordinance and instead promised to arrange for trash pickup at the site three times a week.

Ms. Spence-Jones stopped short, however, at the group’s request for a mailbox. “That sends a whole other message,” she said.

Umoja, which means unity in Swahili, is the brainchild of Max Rameau, 37, a stay-at-home father who selected the site, at NW 62nd Street and NW 17th Avenue, because Miami-Dade County razed a 62-unit low-income apartment building there in 2001 and never replaced it. The shantytown is based on a 1998 court ruling in which a federal district court judge said Miami could not criminalize homeless people for conducting “life-sustaining acts” including eating, sleeping, lighting a fire and building temporary structures on public land if local shelters were filled.

Mr. Rameau and others said the settlement was a symbol of Miami’s growing housing crisis.

With apartment vacancy rates at 1.7 percent, down from 4.7 percent three years ago, and rents rapidly rising amid gentrification of poor neighborhoods, a report in October by the Miami-Dade County planning department estimated that the area would need 294,200 new housing units by 2025, 42 percent of them for “very low- or low-income households.”

A separate 2006 study by Florida International University found that half the families in West Liberty City could not afford a studio apartment in the area.

Sam Gil, a spokesman for Camillus House, one of Miami’s oldest homeless shelters, said that the local homeless population had decreased to about 5,000 from its peak of 7,000 in the 1980s, but that the county had just 1,350 emergency shelter beds.

Michael Stoop, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said shantytowns like Umoja were “indicative that shelters are not the solution, and that homeless folks want to have themselves treated in a more dignified way.”

The shacks, many covered by blue tarps, are ringed by a row of earthen plots where residents grow cabbage, collard greens, kale and papaya. A portable toilet, stacks of firewood, and the kitchen and pantry are lined up along one side, and an improvised shower sits in the back.

Mr. Rameau dismissed the notion that Umoja was a publicity stunt. “There’s a protest element to it, but this is fundamentally not a protest,” he said. “At a protest, you go to a place, you make your demands heard and then you go home. Here, this is home.”

This story was reported and written as part of the New York Times Student Journalism Institute.

France to create 'legal right' to housing
Original Here

by Emma CharltonWed Jan 3, 1:42 PM ET

The French government announced plans to create a "legal right" to housing in response to a snowballing campaign that has seen a tent city for the homeless spring up in the heart of Paris.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told a press conference a bill would be presented to the cabinet on January 17 and hopefully adopted before parliament breaks up ahead of April's presidential election.

The law, if passed, would make France the second European country to guarantee the right to housing, after Scotland which adopted similar measures with its 2003 Homeless Act.

President Jacques Chirac used his New Year's address to promise swift government action on a "right to housing" -- a key demand of protestors who have mounted a headline-grabbing campaign in support of France's estimated 100,000 homeless.

Villepin said the government wanted the right to become legally enforceable by 2008 for "people in the most difficult situations: the homeless, but also the working poor and single women with children."

"That is the time necessary to ensure that all the people concerned can be provided with decent lodgings, whether in a transitional shelter or an individual home," he said.

By 2012, the government wants the right to housing to be legally enforceable for all, with a guarantee provided by the state, or in some cases regional or local authorities.

From that point onwards, "every person or family housed in unworthy or unsanitary conditions" will able to take legal action to have their rights enforced, he said.

Villepin said the law would "make France one of the most advanced countries in terms of social rights". Housing would become the third legally enforceable right in France, along with access to education and healthcare.

Four months ahead of presidential elections, with the homeless issue thrust centre-stage, the housing measure was seen as a bid by the centre-right to underscore its commitment to social justice.

The protest wave started last month when a small group of campaigners -- called Les Enfants de Don Quichotte ("The Children of Don Quixote") -- pitched a 200-strong tent camp along a trendy Paris canal, housing homeless people as well as well-heeled citizens prepared to sleep rough for a few days out of solidarity.

Makeshift camps have since sprung up all over France, including in the Mediterranean port of Marseille, the historic town of Orleans, and the southern cities of Lyon and Toulouse.

On Tuesday a group of eight struggling families, backed by campaigners, moved into a vacant office block near the Paris stock exchange, a giant squat they have dubbed a "ministry" for the homeless and ill-housed.

Politicians of all stripes -- including presidential frontrunners Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and Segolene Royal on the left -- had responded on cue, lining up with pledges to tackle the plight of the homeless.

According to the charity Emmaus, one million people in France do not have a home of their own: 100,000 sleep rough, while the rest live in campsites, hotels or shelters. Another two million people have housing "problems".

The "right to housing" measures come in addition to a 70-million-euro (90-million-dollar) emergency plan for the homeless announced last month.

But a spokesman for Segolene Royal, the Socialist presidential frontrunner, warned the government against making "great announcements", saying what was needed was a massive commitment to build more public housing.

CBC January 16th, 2007
Rents still a good deal despite hot Vancouver housing market: CMHC
Original Here

Despite record-low vacancy rates and rising rents, tenants in Greater Vancouver get better value for their money than almost anywhere else in the country, says the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

CMHC analyst Brian Yu said rents in Vancouver are still comparable to many other cities in Alberta and Ontario.

He also noted that rents don't reflect the fact that homes in Vancouver are the most expensive in the country to purchase.

He cited the example of a two-bedroom condo in Calgary that costs almost as much to rent as it does in Vancouver, even though real estate prices in Vancouver are up to 40 per cent higher than the Alberta city.

He also noted that rent increases in Vancouver averaged four per cent last year, which was much lower than Calgary's.

"If we compare this to other markets like Calgary, which had [a] 19½ per cent increase in rent, what we see is really the increase in rental is really quite moderate."

Yu said part of the reason for the difference in rent increases is the fact that B.C. has legislated rent controls, while Alberta does not.

Edited by Tavis on Tuesday, January 16, 2007, 2:31 PM.

Tory retreat to focus on royalty review, housing
Last Updated: Monday, January 15, 2007 | 10:18 AM MT
CBC News
Original Here

A provincial housing strategy and an oilsands royalties review top the agenda for Premier Ed Stelmach and Tory MLAs during a two-day caucus retreat in Calgary that starts Monday.

Stelmach says the agenda will include discussions about government priorities in the short and long term.

Most notably, he wants a discussion about a provincial housing strategy. He also hopes to get a better idea of how to proceed with a review of royalty revenues the province receives from companies operating in Alberta's oilsands.

The review is the responsibility of Finance Minister Lyle Oberg, who says they're still deciding whether the committee should be made up of experts in the oil sector or a public panel.

Oberg said he will put the review together early next month and believes it will take about a year to complete.

Stelmach says he's hoping for a co-operative atmosphere at the caucus retreat following the appointments to cabinet last month.

"Everybody had some time over the holidays, and came to grips with the change in government and the downsizing and some of the issues, but I'm really looking forward to working with my caucus members."

He also hopes to work on improving relations between the caucus and the party.

In the past, there have been complaints from Tory party members that policies forwarded at annual general meetings were ignored by the government.