Examples of projects around the country that are infusing community development with creativity and collaboration and stimulating the potential for unique mental health benefits.
Preserving Affordable Housing by Buying, Not Building
Two organizations are quietly furthering income integration in higher-income Chicago neighborhoods without new development.
Can Investing in a Community’s Growth Boost Health Outcomes?
ProMedica and LISC team up to fund place-based investments in the hope of improving health outcomes for residents. How do they do it?
Working with Local Artists
In response to an influx of high-profile street art, one Brooklyn community development organization decided to invest in homegrown art and artists, and learn how to support them.
Q: Does Airbnb Cause Rents to Increase?
A: Yes! Since hosts can make 50 to 200 percent more on short-term rentals than on long-term rentals, Airbnb affects purchase prices as well.
Fair Housing Policy Approaches Exacerbate Inequality
A review of The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities, by Edward G. Goetz.
The Collaboration Behind California’s Successful Statewide Ballot Campaign for Housing
As housing becomes ever more urgent an issue, California's model for running a statewide ballot campaign offers insights to organizations around the nation.
Meeting Individual Social Needs Falls Short of Addressing Social Determinants of Health
While individual-level interventions are beneficial, characterizing them as efforts to address social determinants of health conveys a false sense of progress.
A Hole in our Vision: Race, Gender, and Justice in Community Development
In years past, the community development field imagined how to change the world. So, what would it take to change anew? Nancy O. Andrews argues that it takes asking ourselves the right questions.
Time to Delink Homeownership from Asset Building
Using homeownership as an asset-building mechanism and retirement plan might not be a great thing for our society.
Racial Diversity in Community Development Leadership: A Roundtable Discussion on the Field’s Past, and...
Several national organizations in the community development field have experienced transitions from white leadership to people of color.
Can We Ditch Tax Incentives and Support True Economic Development?
Because recent advocacy has succeeded in achieving a change in government accounting standards that led many cities and states to disclose the total costs of the tax abatements they provided last year for the very first time, we now are gaining a better sense of just how much these abatements take away from education and other public services.
Organizing for Water Security in Detroit
A coalition's comprehensive study on the Detroit region’s water ills also acts as a road map to organizers' work around water justice.
The Connection Between Water, Justice, and Health
Our talk with Radhika Fox, the CEO of the US Water Alliance, about water justice and ways to build stronger communities.
Fearing Privatization: Public Housing Activists Push Back Against RAD Plans
As their city rapidly gentrifies, a group of public housing residents are anxious about potential RAD and Section 18 conversions and battling the public housing authority to resist them.
Fixing a Regressive Tax Structure that Perpetuates Inequity
In Washington state, the dilemma for advocates is how to ask city and county elected officials to significantly increase public resources for housing when their only current choices are regressive tax tools.
Shelter Shorts
The Week in Community Development—April 19
Making cities good places for children, A Black arts and culture district in Baltimore, A test for universal basic income, Nonprofit developers get a win, The politics of housing in California, more.