Community preference policies, which give current residents preference for new affordable housing in their neighborhood, have become increasingly controversial. Supporters say these types of policies are a crucial way to fight displacement, but fair housing advocates argue that the policies are exclusionary. Different cities are balancing these two concerns in different ways.
Helping At-Risk Homeowners Stay Put With a Land Trust
For some homeowners at risk of losing their home, City of Lakes Community Land Trust has been able to keep them in place by bringing their home into the land trust.
NJ Pays Hospitals to Build Affordable Housing
New Jersey’s Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency offers significant subsidies to encourage local hospitals to build housing for low-income residents and frequent users of hospital services.
Generating Civic Power in North Philadelphia
An organization embarks on a community-driven design process to transform two vacant row homes into a site for residents, artists, and law enforcement to collaborate on new public safety strategies rooted in care rather than control.
Q: Why Don’t People Who Get Rental Assistance Get a Job?
A: More than half are elderly or disabled. Of the rest, most of them do have a job! Ninety-four percent of rental assistance receipts are ...
The Inside World of ‘Change Makers’
Reading Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman alongside Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas is a fascinating thought experiment.
“Welcome to Little Tokyo, Please Take Off Your Shoes:” Remembering Dean Matsubayashi
Sustained resistance to gentrification and displacement requires more than antagonism. It requires a community organized around an open, positive alternative vision that has both big ambitions and achievable, intermediary steps.
A Home After Prison: There’s No Place Like Homecoming
Formerly incarcerated people are nearly 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public. The Homecoming Project imatches those returning home with a community host for six months.
In Atlantic City, the Legacy of Segregation and Redlining Endures
The legacy of racist housing policy shapes—and disempowers—Black, largely urban, neighborhoods to this day, and can be seen in places like the Northside neighborhood of Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Rural Hospital Struggles are Also an Economic Development Issue
Aside from the health implications, the closure of a hospital in a rural community deeply impacts the area’s economic wellbeing. But in some cases, it can be avoided.
Talking About Revitalization When All Anyone Wants to Talk About Is Gentrification
Strategies for turning the conversation back to places where gentrification is not only *not* present, but not impending.
Habitat for Humanity Steps into Housing Politics
The primary image evoked by the Habitat for Humanity name remains that of President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter working with volunteers to build or...
Q: Is Rental Housing a Rural Issue?
Yes! Although homeownership rates are higher in rural areas, there is still a significant rural population that needs rental housing.
The Community Land Trust Movement Imagines Its Future
The 50th anniversary of New Communities was an opportunity for celebration and reflection—some of it critical—about the CLT movement.
Storytelling Makes the Case for Affordable Housing
To increase public support for investment in affordable housing, we must build a broader coalition by amplifying new voices and creating channels to build awareness of affordable housing needs.
Small Numbers, Great Expectations: A Case for Rural Investment
“Drop dead” wasn’t an acceptable answer to urban decay in the 1970s. And it isn’t the right answer for struggling rural areas today.