In the first comprehensive book on the topic since the 1970s, former Toronto mayor John Sewell considers housing issues in Canada. Writing in a style that is accessible and direct, Sewell considers public, private, and social housing. He looks at affordability and need, discusses definitions of good housing and good neighbourhoods, and examines the various approaches that governments have taken since World War II to increase the stock of reasonably priced housing. He shows why these approaches have consumed large amounts of public dollars yet have often failed. Indeed, homelessness is a larger problem in Canadian cities than ever before. In a time of shrinking public expenditures, he proposes the kinds of solutions necessary to ensure that all Canadians are well housed.. As chair of the Metro Toronto Housing Authority in the eighties and, more recently, as chair of the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario, Sewell has played a unique role in increasing public awareness of housing issues. His thought-provoking analysis will be of interest to all who believe that Canadians deserve affordable housing.

The houses far from home featured in this book are located in Vanuatu, a chain of islands between Fiji and Australia in the southwest Pacific. Once known as the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, the islands were jointly administered by the British and French from 1906 to 1980. In this innovative and revealing study of a unique colonial project, Margaret Rodman tells the stories of these houses, exploring the profound differences of perspective, experience, and power that domestic spaces reveal and offering a novel look at the history of British colonialism in the Pacific. Each chapter has at its heart a house where readers can explore dimensions of race, gender, and power that domestic spaces reveal. Moving across time, between different islands and actors, between oral memories and archival documents, Margaret Rodman provides a richly documented "multi-sited ethnography" of the social history of the New Hebrides.