Affordable Housing Institute : US

“Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.” — James Baldwin
 
After months of electoral uncertainty, Turkey has a new President: Abdullah Gul.  As reported in The Washington Post:
 

Mr. Gul can smile now; he’s in
 
Aug. 28 — Beaming as the votes were counted, a veteran government figure with roots […]

Watch the feet, not the hands, coaches intone when they teach basketball defense, because while the hands are where the opponent wants you to look, the body goes where the feet go.
 
The French riots are a catastrophe, but does the French government see the catastrophe as mainly political (optical) or policy (substantive)?  Or, said more […]

With the violence waning under the heavy sedation of a state of emergency, the French have bought themselves a winter of quiet desperation.  But time is useless … unless one uses it to act.
 
 

Interesting definition of ‘normality’
 
So what is the prescription for fixing France’s bankrupt urban housing policy?
 
 

Paris public housing high-rises
 
Tear them all down.
 

 
Tear down […]

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
–Edmund Burke (1790)
 
 
 
A mother and her child walk through what once was her bedroom and is now burning after her house was set on fire by Zimbabwe police at Porta farm in Harare on June 30. (Photo: STR / AFP-Getty […]

How to fix French urban policy?
 
 
 
As car torchings taper off due among other things to a substantially increased police presence …
 
 
The chart is out of date: just under 10,000 cars torched but a continuing downward trend 
 
… President Chirac’s ninety-day extension of the state of emergency has bought the French government a brief respite — but to […]