University of Notre Dame: Open-access database offers insights into U.S. congressional candidates. “The database contains the biographies of more than 5,000 major-party candidates who ran for the U.S. House of Representatives between 2018 and 2022. Representing nearly 87 percent of all ballot-eligible contenders across both primary and general elections, CampaignView offers an unprecedented […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/08/06/university-of-notre-dame-open-access-database-offers-insights-into-u-s-congressional-candidates/

British Columbia is in the throes of an election, and high on the list of problematic issues is housing. All of the candidates have seized on the moment and the problem, and all of their platforms include mention of affordable housing. It has become a trigger phrase.

I don’t think I’m alone in being troubled by the phrase, by its implications, by the problems it represents, and by the many unstated assumptions bound up in the expression. At the same time, I don’t think we all imagine the same things when we read it or hear it.

At face value, there are just two words: affordable and housing. I have issues with both. What is affordable to some may not be affordable to others. In fact, affordability has been made remote by the escalation of prices in real estate throughout the country.

When you think of affordable housing, do you think of the housing you can afford? The housing afforded by a person who serves you at a restaurant? Someone who harvests vegetables?  A teacher? A nurse? A lawyer? For whom is affordable housing supposed to be afforded? And, how much income is required for them to afford it?

Similarly, the word ‘housing’ encompasses myriad forms of shelter. Are we talking about a single family home, and apartment, a ranch, a row house, or a tent under an overpass? It seems to be a concept with which we can all agree, but it doesn’t take much thought to realize it is an unhelpful blanket term.

Even more significant than the definition of the words, however, are the assumptions that go along with their combination. When a politician, or a political candidate, espouses affordable housing as a part of their platform, some of us imagine homeless people living in apartments, and some of us imagine families living in 50’s-style suburbia. Sometimes we think it means newlyweds being about to buy a first home, and sometimes we think it means middle-class people being able to play with their children in a large back yard.

We don’t all think of the same ‘affordable housing’, and most of us don’t imagine having to pay more than 50% of two incomes to get a roof over our heads. At some point in the distant past I told one of my children that they could expect to pay 30% of their income on housing. I was wrong. We are way beyond that now.

Affordable housing today is whatever the bankers, mortgage brokers, insurance companies, and realtors decide it is. Of course, the people selling their properties have a role to play, too, but something has shifted in that universe so that now individual homeowners are in the same property market as speculators.

Unless and until we decide as a society to create and pay for housing for those in need, housing will not be affordable for everyone. Then we will have a whole different set of problems to talk about.

https://snowbirdofparadise.com/2024/10/17/affordable-housing/

#affordability #affordable #affordableHousing #assumptions #costs #housing #housingCrisis #politicalCandidates #politicians #realEstate #shelter

Has Anyone Noticed That Trump Is Really Old?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/donald-trump-old-age-biden/676052/?gift=-AhisN9o5xgYTzfxur9XgSmU2z3NBG0iVJ2ideFrjP8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

#TrumpOldAge #Biden #USPolitics #Election2024 #Ageism #PoliticalCandidates #Politics #News