Though slumlords are not directly to blame for our nation's wealth disparities, they profit from them. Seizing their property and giving it to tenants would produce a more just and equitable outcome than what has been practiced in the past.
Setting Aside Housing for Frequent Health Care Users
Housing specifically for those who frequently use health care services makes sense on many levels, but it also raises questions about privacy and lining up who pays and who benefits.
Sitting on a Porch Can Be Good for Your Health
To help combat isolation and reweave the connecting fabric that had been lost, a neighborhood arts center launches an initiative that eventually became a movement.
Starting Conversations with Public Art
An arts collaboration comes up with a creative spark to facilitate discussions about neighborhood change.
The Jobs-Housing Hamster Wheel
A deeper dive into the cause of high housing prices reveals that it is not the price of lumber, bricks, or labor that accounts for high or low housing prices—the controlling factor most often is the price of land.
Q: Can Prohibiting Source-of-Income Discrimination Help Voucher Holders?
A: Yes. Currently landlords in most places can discriminate against voucher holders, and many do. For example:An African-American female tester using a voucher was denied...
A Year Later, Can the Grenfell Tower Fire Be a Catalyst...
Glyn Robbins talks about what led him to view U.K. and U.S. housing policy as intertwined, how public protest stifled the Conservative Party’s 2016 Housing Act, and what’s changed in the wake of Grenfell Tower fire.
Housing, Not Warehousing—A Victory 10 Years in the Making
Warehousing is one of real estate’s best-kept secrets, and a crucial piece of how the housing market can keep supply low and demand high. One New York City organization rallied to prove warehousing still posed a problem, and pushed the boundaries of what was politically possible.
A Review of The Fight for Fair Housing
The collection of 17 essays captures and explains the dynamism of the fair housing movement with its remarkable contributors.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Sept. 21
News from—and affecting—the community development world.
Bold Political Leadership on Housing Policy? In 2018? You Heard Right
Local elected officials are having to re-examine the risks and rewards of making housing and housing affordability a political priority. Could one mayor's bold steps on housing policy be a national bellwether?
Fair Housing at 50: At the Root, It’s Still Race Over Place
We should have known better. The Kerner Commission taught us that race matters most, not place. But it also embedded in our psyches the equation of Black = central city and the similarly absolute equation of white = suburbs.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Sept. 14
Whole Foods Employees Seek to Unionize, Your Job Won't Save You From Homelessness, Rent-to-own May Equal Jail Time
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Sept. 7
What driverless trucks will mean for drivers, public toilets as a human right, disappointing Democratic leadership, and more.
The Most Important Housing Law Passed in 1968 Wasn’t the Fair Housing Act
At the Aug. 1, 1968 signing ceremony, President Johnson proclaimed “Today, we are going to put on the books of American law what I genuinely believe is the most farsighted, the most comprehensive, the most massive housing program in all American history.” He was right.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Aug. 31
HUD hosts listening tour for landlords, inmates protest exploitation of labor with prison strike, a payday loan alternative, and more
HUD Continues to Retreat From Fair Housing Duties
In the name of “local control,” the federal agency has abandoned enforcement of civil rights law because it believes it's too troublesome.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Aug. 24
Philly's Fight for Affordable Housing | HUD Targets Facebook In Complaint| An Eviction App | A "Massive" Multifamily Housing Fraud
Is a Home with Lead Hazards Really “Affordable”?
The cost of housing is not simply the mortgage, rent, and utilities, but the individual and community health, education, and social costs associated with low-quality, unstable, and unhealthy housing.