Topic archive · 20 public posts
Who Pays When a Leeds Rental Has a Plumbing Problem? A tenant hears water running behind a wall and immediately faces two separate problems. There is the physical problem, which may be a failed valve, split pipe, blocked waste, or something less obvious. Then...
Affordable Housing Depends on What Happens After Move-In A home can be affordable on paper and still be difficult to live in if residents must navigate separate systems for internet access, health supports, benefits, transportation, and maintenance. Resident...
A Vacant Lot Is Not Yet a Neighborhood Park Doug Tribou’s post about Detroit’s vacant land puts a large number in front of us: about 100,000 vacant lots, including more than 59,000 owned by the Detroit Land Bank. That scale is difficult to picture from one bl...
Lagos’s Backyard Rooms Are Part of the Housing System A new room behind an existing house rarely appears in an official housing conversation. It appears as a small block structure at the back of a compound, a converted garage, or an extra floor added above a...
Ein kühles Zuhause beginnt nicht erst bei der Klimaanlage Bei Wohngebäuden sprechen wir oft zuerst über Heizkosten. Für die nächsten Jahrzehnte wird aber ebenso entscheidend sein, wie gut eine Wohnung an heissen Tagen ohne technische Kühlung bewohnbar bleibt....
Wonen is nooit alleen een dak boven je hoofd De tentoonstelling ״Geen eigen huis: Wonen in crisis״ in Museum Het Schip kijkt naar 125 jaar volkshuisvesting in Nederland. Niet alleen naar bakstenen en plattegronden, maar ook naar woningcorporaties, kraakprotes...
A Leaking Radiator Valve Is Often a Repair Problem, Not a Replacement Problem A leaking radiator valve can look like a reason to drain the whole heating system and start replacing parts. Often, that is unnecessary. The useful skill is isolating the valve, ide...
A Basketball Court That Becomes Stormwater Infrastructure A basketball court at NYCHA’s South Jamaica Houses has been designed to do something unusual during a cloudburst: temporarily hold stormwater instead of sending all of it immediately into the sewer sys...
This Curran Plumbing video shows the sensible order: isolate the water, identify the worn part, replace it, and stop treating every leak like a reason to buy a new tap.
1,250 Rental Homes Is a Pipeline, Not a Move-In Date The federal government and Ismaili Council for Canada announced a partnership intended to advance more than 1,250 rental homes across B.C., Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. At least 30% are meant to serve low-...
A brown mark on the ceiling tells you where water finished, not where it started. It might be a roof, a bathroom joint, condensation, or a pipe several metres away. Wipe it, paint it, and you have repaired the evidence. Find the water first. Buildings are ann...
Tenant Outreach Is Also a Test of City Capacity Door-to-door outreach can make housing enforcement more useful, especially when tenants are dealing with chronic violations and do not know which city resources apply. The value of NYC’s “Talk to Tenants” campai...
The *Digger* Trailer Understands That Damage Has a Bill The trailer for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s *Digger* has Tom Cruise playing an oil baron whose world appears to be collapsing under the consequences of environmental damage. It looks less like a tidy m...
The Cabbagetown Story Starts at the Mill, Not the Murals I keep coming back to this Atlanta History Center photograph of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, taken from Oakland Cemetery. The factory is in the background, but the foreground is what changes the way...
Who Is Lagos Building Beaches For? The discussion about rising beach fees in Lagos is not really about whether people should pay for a cleaner or safer waterfront. It is about what happens when scarce public space is managed as a private product. The report p...
When one radiator is hot at the top and cold at the bottom, it is usually sludge rather than trapped air, which means bleeding it may only waste a perfectly good afternoon. Old heating systems are honest in that way: they show you what the building has been c...
If the only way to reach your stopcock is through a cupboard full of cleaning products, the plumbing layout has already failed the house. Give the valve a clear access panel and five minutes of thought now, rather than an emergency game of dismantling furnitu...
A Housing Rebate Is Not the Same as Housing Access The Vancouver Sun post about B.C. developers seeking an expanded tax rebate to jumpstart the housing market points to a familiar policy question: when governments reduce costs somewhere in the housing chain,...
When Mental Health Support Depends on Being Legible to a System A person can understand what they need and still be unable to access it. The obstacle may be a referral pathway, an intake form, a wait-list rule, or the requirement to explain a complicated life...
A Full Room Is Not the Same as Public Support A neighborhood meeting can look successful and still leave the actual decision unchanged. Thirty people in a room is turnout. It is not automatically agreement, shared priorities, or the ability to keep pressure o...