All posts tagged: housing

Hemspan pioneers sustainable housing with hemp solutions

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Hemspan is advancing sustainable construction using hemp, proposing a large-scale climate-positive community, achieving cost parity with traditional building methods, and developing innovative technologies and products for eco-friendly construction materials. Seeking sustainable solutions to environmental challenges, Hemspan is dedicated to harnessing the potential of hemp as a viable alternative to traditional construction. By activating the cultivation of hemp at scale, they are paving the way for sustainable materials. In the 19th edition of The Innovation Platform, we spoke with Founder and CEO Matthew Belcher to discuss the potential for hemp and its applications in construction. Almost a year later, we caught up with Matthew to discuss the key takeaways, results and milestones achieved in advancing climate-positive housing. A milestone contract Over the past year, we have made substantial strides through various proof-of-concept projects, showcasing the versatility and effectiveness of hemp in both small and large-scale applications. Hemspan has secured a direct design and build contract with a prominent client to create a traditional, ultra-high-performance, climate-positive house. The house will have a lifecycle carbon footprint (A1 …

‘Forced Mixing’ Housing Plan To Integrate Migrants Pushed By Sweden’s Social Democrats

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[ad_1] Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News, The Swedish Social Democratic Party has approved a new integration strategy that aims to forcibly diversify the country’s residential areas, pushing for what party officials call a “socio-economic mix” of Swedes and migrants in housing developments. The policy, adopted at the party congress ahead of the 2026 general election, includes proposals to limit immigration to vulnerable areas and to use housing construction to engineer a more integrated society. “We are serious about the fact that we intend to break segregation and use housing policy as an engine in that work,” said Lawen Redar, the party official responsible for designing the new platform, as cited by Aftonbladet. Redar described the shift as a “U-turn” in the party’s approach, acknowledging that past strategies had failed. The new policy includes scrapping the right of asylum seekers to choose their own accommodation and banning municipalities from placing new arrivals in already struggling districts. Instead, migrants will be relocated to wealthier areas in an effort to engineer demographic diversity and “repay the integration …

Beyond the Asylum | Jay Neugeboren

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] My brother Robert, for whom I was advocate and caregiver, spent more than fifty years in and out of facilities where he was overmedicated, beaten up by aides, and frequently put in isolation—which is to say left, sometimes for several days, in a small room with only a sheetless iron bed, a treatment the staff called “reduced stimulation.” Such “treatments,” in what are now called psychiatric centers but were previously called lunatic asylums, left him with lifelong side effects, including drug-induced parkinsonism, diabetes, congestive heart failure, and the loss of all his teeth. In the 1990s, when Robert was in his fifties, he lived for two years at the Bronx Psychiatric Center in New York City, where Oliver Sacks had earlier worked for more than two decades. “As at all such hospitals,” Sacks wrote in a 2009 essay in these pages, the facility had “great variations in the quality of patient care: there were good, sometimes exemplary wards, with decent, thoughtful physicians and attendants, and bad, even hideous ones, marked by negligence and cruelty.” …

Housing associations Bromford and Flagship complete merger

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Bromford Housing Group and Flagship Housing Group have completed their merger. Tewkesbury-based Bromford Housing Group is one of the UK’s biggest housing associations which has more than 47,000 homes spread across central and south west England. Norwich-based Flagship Housing Group has more than 32,000 homes. This merger into the newly-named Bromford Flagship is a key milestone in the housing provider’s strategic aim of unlocking additional capacity to deliver more affordable homes. Completion follows extensive due diligence, regulatory approvals, and engagement with key stakeholders. The newly formed Board of directors and executive team has been confirmed. Peter Hawes, former Chair of Flagship Group, will chair the Board, while Bromford’s Robert Nettleton has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer for the entire group. Paul Walsh has been appointed as Chief Finance Officer of the new organisation, continuing in the same role he previously held at Bromford. This leadership structure ensures continuity, strong governance, and a blend of expertise from both organisations. Mr Nettleton said: “The need for affordable homes, the quality of service we provide to customers, …

A Proven Way to Ease L.A.’s Housing Crisis

Published by José

[ad_1] States around the country are showing Southern California how to rebuild. Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Getty. February 16, 2025, 9 AM ET The Los Angeles metro area began 2025 with one of the worst housing shortages in the country: more than half a million units, by some estimates. The deficit has multiplied over many years thanks in part to the obscene amount of time it takes to get permission to build. According to state data, securing permits to construct a single-family home in the city requires an average of 15 months. Countywide, receiving planning approvals and permits for a typical apartment takes nearly a year and a half. And that was before the fires. Last month, more than 16,000 homes and other structures burned down, and fire damage may have rendered many thousands more uninhabitable. The devastation magnified L.A.’s already desperate need to speed up permitting, but local policy makers responded by fast-tracking only identical rebuilds. Families who want to build in less fire-prone areas or add space to shelter displaced neighbors are …

What the Grenfell report gets wrong – structural racism is evident in access to safe social housing

Published by Sam

[ad_1] The damning final report from the Grenfell inquiry lays bare the failings that led to the deadly fire. It has been rightly praised for highlighting the “systematic dishonesty” of companies, decades of government failure and the tenant management organisation’s culture of hostility towards residents. Although broadly well received, there is a glaring omission in the report. It is yet another example of failure to address race and class in the discussion of housing. The report said the inquiry into the Grenfell disaster has “not brought to light any evidence” that racial or social prejudice played a role in the fire. This absence has been criticised by Grenfell families, who say their questions about race and the fire’s impact specifically on ethnic minority communities were sidelined throughout. The inquiry did find “some evidence of racial discrimination” after the fire. Namely they highlighted a lack of support for those without English as a first language, and that Muslim survivors observing Ramadan were denied halal food. However, the inquiry makes clear that because this was after the …

On Heroism and On the Housing Crisis Books Release

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[ad_1] Essay collections are the latest paperbacks in the Atlantic Editions imprint, from The Atlantic and Zando September 3, 2024, 11:30 AM ET Today is the publication date for two new books from Atlantic Editions, an imprint of The Atlantic and the independent publisher Zando: On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump, by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic and host of Washington Week on PBS; and On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy, by Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer and host of the new Atlantic policy podcast, Good on Paper. Both books are available to buy at local bookstores and online, and are the tenth and 11th titles in the Atlantic Editions collection. Previous editions are by Elizabeth Bruenig, Lenika Cruz, Caitlin Flanagan, Megan Garber, Sophie Gilbert, Spencer Kornhaber, Jennifer Senior, Derek Thompson, and Kaitlyn Tiffany and Lizzie Plaugic. More on both titles is below. On Heroism With On Heroism, Goldberg expands on his explosive reporting about former President Donald Trump’s contempt for and repeated disparagement of military …

New towns and old ideas: Labour’s housing plan – podcast | News

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[ad_1] Labour’s key housing pledge is to build 1.5m homes if it wins the general election. Its plan includes a promise to build new towns but what would it take to pull it off? “I think the new towns idea is very grabbing,” Robert Booth, the Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, tells Hannah Moore. “To build genuine new settlements, which are sufficiently large to have all the infrastructure, all the character, all the sense of place of a town or even a small city, rather than just another housing estate.” However, it’s not clear how Labour would achieve this policy. “The level of detail that Labour have put out about this is thin,” says Booth. “We don’t know where these might be, we don’t know very much about how they would be funded or delivered, and how long it would take to do that.” Booth explains how Labour plans to change the planning laws to allow for more building, including on some greenbelt land. He reports from Hitchin, North Hertfordshire, where former greenbelt land is already …

Inside the last of New York’s original artists’ lofts – in pictures | Art and design

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[ad_1] Documentary film-maker and photographer Joshua Charow sought out the creatives still inhabiting New York’s former industrial spaces – factories, warehouses and theatres – as the last of the art scene holds out against gentrification. The introduction of the “loft law” in 1982 gave legal protection and rent stabilization to people living in non-residental buildings [ad_2] Source link