Housing Quotes

“It was the American middle class. No one's house cost more than two or three year's salary, and I doubt the spread in annual wages (except for the osteopath) exceeded more than five thousand dollars. And other than the doctor (who made house calls), the store managers, the minister, the salesman, and the banker, everyone belonged to a union. That meant they worked a forty-hour week, had the entire weekend off (plus two to four weeks' paid vacation in the summer), comprehensive medical benefits, and job security. In return for all that, the country became the most productive in the world and in our little neighborhood it meant your furnace was always working, your kids could be dropped off at the neighbors without notice, you could run next door anytime to borrow a half-dozen eggs, and the doors to all the homes were never locked -- because who would need to steal anything if they already had all that they needed?”
― Michael Francis Moore, Here Comes Trouble

“A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. Separate entrance it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Myth: US housing market is in recovery. Fact: Big banks have been hiding their bloated home inventory, seized by virtue of home foreclosures.”
― Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics

“When we say ‘housing for all’ and the government responds with ‘the homeless are
being temporarily housed in hotels to avoid the spread of the virus’, they are building a linguistic structure that defines the realm of the possible, that implicitly tells us to want less, to expect that total reconfiguration is out of the question. Like a poorly designed building, linguistic structures affect how we think, breathe, move and act. The mould sticks to our skin. We are familiar with a particular kind of linguistic structure: the preservation of a system of organisation that places capital before all else. This system ties our hands and feet together.”
― Lola Olufemi, Experiments in Imagining Otherwise

“To live and strive in modern America is to participate in a series of morally fraught systems. If a family’s entire financial livelihood depends on the value of its home, it’s not hard to understand why that family would oppose anything that could potentially lower its property values, like a proposal to develop an affordable housing complex in the neighborhood.”
― Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

“It is time for housing owner associations to move past old prejudices and prioritize making community life fully accessible and inclusive for individuals with disabilities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“In a large townhouse, a family is spread out across its rooms, each living in their own state but under one flag”
― Libby Page, The Lido

“When we say ‘housing for all’ and the government responds with ‘the homeless are being temporarily housed in hotels to avoid the spread of the virus’, they are building a linguistic structure that defines the realm of the possible, that implicitly tells us to want less, to expect that total reconfiguration is out of the question. Like a poorly designed building, linguistic structures affect how we think, breathe, move and act. The mould sticks to our skin. We are familiar with a particular kind of linguistic structure: the preservation of a system of organisation that places capital before all else. This system ties our hands and feet together.”
― Lola Olufemi, Experiments in Imagining Otherwise

“The end result is that the United States is today a more segregated country in many respects than it was twenty years ago. Problems of education, transportation to jobs and decent living conditions are all made difficult because housing is so rigidly segregated. The expansion of suburbia and migration from the South have worsened big-city segregation. The suburbs are white nooses around the black necks of the cities. Housing deteriorates in central cities; urban renewal has been Negro removal and has benefited big merchants and real estate interests; and suburbs expand with little regard for what happens to the rest of America.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“How is it I'm begging you for housing,
when you burnt my building down?
You all ain't even playing fake-nice, like those
other murderers. You are all cut-eye and snarls,
all straight jargon, and nothing but the jargon.”
― Roger Robinson, A Portable Paradise

“What was atrocious was the fact that, like every other building in the new towns, they were dumped almost at random; the leakage of escaping gas scented the so-called gas-house districts, and not surprisingly these districts frequently became among the most degraded sections of the city. Towering above the town, polluting its air, the gas tanks symbolized the dominance of 'practical' interests over life-needs.”
― Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

“In both the old and the new quarters a pitch of foulness and filth was reached that the lowest serf's cottage scarcely achieved in medieval Europe. It is almost impossible to enumerate objectively the bare details of this housing without being suspected of perverse exaggeration. But those who speak glibly of urban improvements during this period, or of the alleged rise in the standards of living, fight shy of the actual facts: they generously impute to the town as a whole benefits which only the more favored middle-class minority enjoyed; and they read into the original conditions those improvements which three generations of active legislation and massive sanitary engineering have finally brought about.”
― Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

“We are motivated by radical love of country.
We fight for universal healthcare because of love.
We fight for a livable planet because of love.
We fight for equitable housing because of love.

(7/31/2020 on Twitter)”
― Ilhan Omar

“Stop saying "we can't afford" Homes for All, Green New Deal or Medicare for All. If we didn't spend trillions on endless wars and tax breaks for millionaires, we could afford to house our homeless, care for our seniors, and save our planet. We suffer from greed, not scarcity.

(7/29/2020 on Twitter)”
― Ilhan Omar

“It was hard to force people to give up their rights to apartments, and predictably, this radical Utopian ideal failed. But it does illustrate how the concept of social injustice in a communist society works: those who have are exceptions, and they should feel guilty and ashamed - the others are entitled to have, too, because it has been promised to them.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Café Europa: Life After Communism

“Decoupling the housing market from speculation and setting up a separate financing model would be needed. The current out-of-date corporate model needs attention.”
― Gordon Roddick

“In November and December 2023, the popular Maui Kaanapali beach was filled with local wildfire victims that were ‘fishing for housing’.”
― Steven Magee

“The two-story dwellings of this city are, beyond all question, the best, as a system, not only owing to the
single family ideas they represent, but because their cost is within the reach of all who desire to own
their own homes. They have done more to elevate and to make a better home life than any other known
influence. They typify a higher civilization, as well as a truer idea of American home life, and are better,
purer, sweeter than any tenement house systems that ever existed. They are what make Philadelphia
a city of homes, and command the attention of visitors from every quarter of the globe”
― Frank H. Taylor

“The two-story dwellings of this city are, beyond all question, the best, as a system, not only owing to the single family ideas they represent, but because their cost is within the reach of all who desire to own their own homes. They have done more to elevate and to make a better home life than any other known influence. They typify a higher civilization, as well as a truer idea of American home life, and are better, purer, sweeter than any tenement house systems that ever existed. They are what make Philadelphia a city of homes, and command the attention of visitors from every quarter of the globe.”
― Frank H. Taylor

“Accessibility in housing communities is an essential duty, not a negotiable option, for the complete and equitable inclusion of persons with disabilities in all walks of community life.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Housing owners' associations need to ensure that persons with disabilities can join in all social and cultural events in the community, just like everyone else by facilitating accessibility.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Imagine a community where everyone truly belongs. Housing owners' associations can make this a reality by ensuring that people with disabilities have full access to social and cultural activities within their communities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“The call to action for housing owner associations is clear: abandon ingrained discriminatory mindsets and commit to facilitating an environment where people with disabilities can enjoy full and equal participation in community activities.”
― Dr. Kalyan C. Kankanala, Understanding Accessibility

“Every neighborhood must be allowed to grow and change... The reality is that a place that is not changing is dying.”
― Charles Marohn

“Keep the lights off. They live in the dark anyway.”
― Niedria Dionne Kenny

“any house they’d chosen would have become the very thing they sought”
― Kristin Hannah, Magic Hour

“Housing is out of reach to the masses!”
― Steven Magee

“We went from banning certain kinds of people from our communities to banning the kinds of housing in which those people lived - namely, apartment buildings designed for multiple families - achieving the same ends.”
― Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

“Everyone deserves a place to live--including low-income people and the unhoused. Poverty shouldn't be a crime. I'm tired of watching people of color and queers be driven away from the places they helped to build. We need to change who we think of as a stakeholder.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster