Can Organizing Resuscitate Community Development?
There has been a lot written about the uncertain future of community development and the way forward for community development to survive—about capital flows, about the need for scale, for […]
Future CDCs Should Be Organizers, Not Developers
October is Filipino History Month. It won’t have its official grand opening before the end of the month, but Larry Itliong Village in Los Angeles’s Historic Filipinotown (the HiFi) got […]
Don’t Evaluate Community Development on Poverty Rates
Right now, in community development and in the nonprofit/charitable/public service sector more broadly, there is a push to incorporate more hard numbers, more metrics, into our evaluation of our performance. […]
Hey Supposed Economic Recovery, You Missed a Spot
The economic recovery is not reaching all people in all places. I suppose this should be obvious. But as a resident of the mostly affluent Silicon Valley, I found the […]
The Racial Wealth Gap and the Great Recession
In 2005, according to the U.S. Census Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the median Asian American household had a net worth of over $150,000. This was compared to […]
Dismantling the Model Minority Myth Should be Everybody’s Project
The National Coalition For Asian Pacific American Community Development (CAPACD) recently released a report that gives a demographic profile of poor Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) and highlights the […]
HUD’s New AFFH Rule Could Hurt Low-Income Communities of Color
I believe in promoting opportunity and social/economic equity. And I believe that all of us should have the opportunity to live in a place where we can maximize our families’ […]
We Can’t Eliminate Poverty, And We Can’t Stop Fighting
“We have spent $15 trillion from the federal government fighting poverty, and look at where we are, the highest poverty rates in a generation, 15 percent of Americans in poverty.” […]
It’s Our Race Relations, Not the Economy, that Need Healing
Last Thursday, I was listening to Bruce Katz on NPR talk about Detroit’s recent bankruptcy and the set of metropolitan-oriented strategies/practices that he thinks represents the way forward for the […]
Neighborhoods or Regions? A Trick Question
There is a narrative out there about how much of community development has lost its soul — community development has become too much about Development and not enough about Community, […]
Scale-up? Not So Fast
I think about Dunbar’s number when I hear people talk about community development needing to “scale-up.” In the early 1990s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar made a series of observations and […]