The path to winning a pro-equity, pro-growth majority involves more (not less) investment in fighting displacement.
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.
Community Building Despite Trauma
The trauma caused by poverty and the systems that reinforce it can short-circuit standard efforts to build community. A new method called “trauma-informed community building” aims to change that.
Flipping the Script
A nonprofit forgoes the typical community meeting for a "living charrette," which leads to greater neighborhood feedback about a proposed 24-acre development in Austin, Texas.
Participatory Budgeting: Why Not Fix Everyone’s Sink?
Participatory budgeting offers a glimpse of how a more civically engaged society might work, but it’s also a distraction.
Q: Can Supporting Community Development Improve Outcomes for the Health Sector?
Yes! Over 50 percent of premature deaths in the U.S. can be attributed to preventable non-medical factors, specifically behavioral, environmental, and social conditions.
New Money on the Block: Funders for Housing and Opportunity
A new funding collaborative, Funders for Housing and Opportunity, has just launched. The collaborative, officially a project of the New Ventures Fund, involves (so far) nine large and well-known foundations.
Public Land Should be Used for Public Good
When a vacant lot in Oakland was close to becoming the home of a 24-story, market-rate development, local activists worked together to prevent it from happening.
Advocacy for Social Change: Coalitions and the Organizations that Lead Them
Many books discuss the corrosive effect of money in politics and lobbying organizations, but few are devoted to how those representing the have-nots organize on a national level to fight for laws and regulations that seek to empower communities.
It Takes Strong Roots to Achieve Climate Justice
Throughout 2018's six day Sol-2-Sol climate justice convening, indigenous people from the occupied U.S. territories and lands from around the world led many of the actions and activities, especially those directly impacted.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Dec. 7
News from—and affecting—the community development world. This week: ride-hail drivers win living wage, NYT headline gaff, NJ police use of force exposé, Airbnb as developer, more.
Decommodifying Housing Without Reproducing American Apartheid
Though the idea of social housing is gaining traction among advocates and policy experts, the path of least resistance for its production in the U.S. is also the path of the perpetuation of residential racial segregation.
Where Banks and the Public Agree on CRA . . . and Disagree
Despite a CRA exam pass rate of 98 percent, the major thrust of bank comments is that they want easier exams with fewer moving parts and less uncertainty.
What Happens When a CDC Pivots to a Health-First Focus?
Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation in Cleveland finds that being an early adopter of a community health focus has its advantages.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Nov. 30
The country's political realignment, taking income protections national, CVS buys Aetna, cities can learn from Nashville, more.
Taking the Bus: Nonprofit Conferences and Integrity of Purpose
Nonprofits advocate for local transit spending, but annual conference logistics don't typically include bus route information for attendees.
Small Investments Can Yield Big Returns. Review of A Few Thousand Dollars
Over a dozen stories of how Americans from all different backgrounds have managed to leverage a few thousand dollars to lead lives that have helped thousands of other people, and strategies to reinvigorate a movement to influence asset building policy nationally.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Nov. 23
From hospital to housing, the toll of CA's wildfires, gerrymandering's famous enemy, Medicaid to the rescue, more.
What the Fight for Universal Rent Control in New York Can Learn from Prop...
Voters have set up an unprecedented fight between progressive housing groups and real estate interests. It will be a brutal fight. For proof of this, housing advocates in New York need only to look at California.