How Mill Creek mobile home residents bought the land under their feet

Many subprime borrowers in the United States are financially unable to buy a home themselves. An unconventional lender is trying to make it easier for low-income people to buy houses despite the tighter requirements that other lenders adopted after the mortgage bust.

At least 25 percent of female veterans were sexually abused in childhood, making it more difficult to reenter civilian life. Volunteers of America runs a holistic housing program for homeless veterans in the U.S.

Boston aims to end chronic homelessness by 2018 by paying special attention to veterans. The city is working with private agencies to find housing units and offer homeless veterans a case worker to ensure that they find somewhere to live.

An innovative program by an unusual bank allows low-income people in Cambodia to take out a 15-year fixed mortgage with little or no documentation - contradicting traditional loan assumptions and creating means for some of the country's poorest people to completely change their lives. The bank and its investors are now making a profit, and more than 700 mortgages and building loans have been provided.

Thirty-five percent of Americans will never own their home and risk a rent increase or eviction. Owned Communities USA enables working-class families to become home owners through manufactured homes, loans, and legal aid.

Renovating and furnishing a home can be hugely expensive. Homeowners who are renovating on a budget, and want to do so in a way that is evironmentally friendly, can find recycled luxury kitchens and other lightly used fixtures at stores like Green Demolitions.

Unlike many other countries who have found public housing facilities to be highly prone to crime and toxic loan practices, Singapore uses a mix of resident home ownership, policing, and mixed-income developments to create thriving, clean housing options that may provide a model for other countries.

Rates of recidivism in Pennsylvania have dropped substantially in recent years. Part of this decrease is due to the efforts of the Union County Justice Bridge Housing Program, which assists ex-offenders with housing. Other counties across the state are trying to replicate this success, yet face geographic and socioeconomic barriers.

Years of misrule and a subsequent dearth of hard currency, along with crippling bank-fostered debt cycles and exorbitant home mortgage interest rates, have created immense suffering for Myanmar's poor. But with the guidance of a local NGO, Women for the World, a pilot project helped women in some of Yangon's poorest neighborhoods capitalize on their cultural "head-of-household" status. It helped them form and manage community savings cooperatives, secure land, build homes, buy food, and even generate profit through loans to families' business enterprises.

The national affordable housing crisis is creating challenges for rural areas. Low-income residents in rural towns struggle to find quality, affordable housing, and government subsidies for housing have decreased in recent years. However, two examples show potential. In Elkins, West Virginia, the Randolph Housing Authority helps people buy affordable homes that are funded by the USDA rural development division and built by a youth training program. In Woodland, California, agricultural workers are moving to Spring Lake, a growing community whose energy usage is net-zero.