 | Stuart Woolgar on Property Guardians – a r… |
Continuing my tour of rented housing laws. This time I took at look at Brazil, which is notorious for its Favelas (shanty-towns), but a rising power in the world.
“Last time I looked at how renting works in Germany. This time I thought Iâd turn my attention to the Global South, and examine the system in Brazil. According to UN Habitat, in 2010 73% of Brazilians are owner-occupiers, and 18% are tenants (7.8% are âshared householdsâ).” Read the full post here.
Germany has one of the biggest private rented sectors in the developed world. Yet they seem to make it work with a set of strong rights for tenants. I did a brief profile for the Landlord Law Blog. I’m hoping to do another one or two on how other countries approach private rented housing.
“We in the UK often like to borrow our policies (good and bad) from other countries. Weâve got Elected Mayors and Academy Schools from the US, Free Schools from Sweden, and Feed-in Tariffs from Germany. What, if anything can we learn from the country with the biggest private rented housing sector in Europe, Germany?” Read the full post here.
This is something a bit lighter I did for The Guardian as part of their Clip Joints series. The idea being to pick around five clips from films within a theme. As I’m quite into cycling I thought I’d do one on depictions of bicycles. Read it here.
Here in the UK we haven’t seen as dramatic a rise in repossessions as in the US, where it is a major problem. I interviewed Gayle McLaughlin, the Mayor of Richmond, for The New Internationalist. Mayor McLaughlin and her City Council are about to start using the ‘power of eminent domain’ (similar to compulsory purchasing orders in the UK) to stop foreclosures. Read the full interview here.
I’ve been very busy for the past few weeks, so I’m catching up on posts.
After the announcement that Estate Agents had seen a massive rise in employment, I set my sights on picking apart current housing policy.
“A few months ago, several news organisations announced a âJOBS BOOMâ as unemployment dropped from 7.8% to 7.7%. Many of the new jobs created were in estate agents, which grew by nearly 10% in just three months. However, we should be careful of building our economy (again) on the sand castle of the housing market.” Read the full article here.
Samir Jeraj - Freelance Journalist 