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Miriam Axel-Lute

480 Posts

Miriam Axel-Lute is CEO/editor-in-chief of Shelterforce. She lives in Albany, New York, and is a proud small-city aficionado.
Image description: Webinar title “Getting to More Accessible, Affordable, Inclusive Housing" in a yellow banner.Below, from left to right are headshots of the speakers: Anita Cameron a woman with brown skin and dredlocks, Chelsea Hayman, a woman with pale skin, straight light-brown hair and glasses, Hunter Herrera-McFarland, a woman with long straight black hair, dark-framed glasses and light skin, Shelly Richardson, a woman with short reddish hair, clear-framed glasses, and Miriam Axel-Lute, a woman with curly dark medium-length hair, angular purple glasses and earrings.
Disability

Getting to More Accessible, Affordable, Inclusive Housing, a Shelterforce Webinar

Four disability advocates and experts explain what’s needed to house Americans with disabilities and some of the work that’s being done to get there.

Close up view of rock, scissors, and a sheet of white paper on a red table or desk. The rock is oval gray rock with a band of white quartz through it, the scissors have purple plastic grips and metal blades. The scissors are positioned such that they appear to have just cut the paper, and the rock is resting on the paper, half concealed by a portion of it.
Housing

Legitimate Debate or Short-Sighted Complaints? 5 Reasons Affordable Housing Is Expensive to Build

There’s no denying that affordable housing can be expensive to build. But we need to look at the long-term benefits of those investments to see the bigger picture.

A small homemade ramp made of a white board with "RAMP" painted on it in black covers the gap in a street-level doorway of a brick building. The door is of vertical black boards and is dirty with dust and splashed mud.
Affordability

All New Homes Should Be Accessible

Because so many old buildings are hard to fully retrofit, new homes need to fill in the gap.

Graffiti of green housing overlapping each other.
Housing

The Only Tool in the Box: What It Means That LIHTC Dominates Affordable Housing

Even those who praise the tax credit program and what it has accomplished are concerned that there are so few sizeable alternatives to it.

A graphic showing buildings, some shaded in red, to illustrate Shelterforce's new Under the Lens series, LIHTC: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Complicated
Affordability

LIHTC: How It Started, How It’s Going

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit was created in a moment when other real estate tax preferences were going away—but at the time, no one expected it to grow into the main source of affordable housing finance in the country.

Equity

Holding Redlining’s Perpetrators Accountable

Richard and Leah Rothstein talk about their new book, Just Action, inspired by readers of The Color of Law who asked what could be done about the enduring effects of a century of unconstitutional housing discrimination.

Organizing

Tenant Organizing in Unexpected Places, a Webinar

Tenants aren’t just organizing in places like California and New York—hear about tenant organizing in small and mid-sized cities from Maine, Maryland, Texas and Kentucky.

Close-up of the word NO stencil-painted on blacktop
Disability

Accessible Housing Is Not Just About How Buildings Are Built

The ways in which buildings are managed after they are built also affects how accessible and inclusive they are.

A composite picture that includes blueprint-style drawings on blue, a row of apartments in pink and a tall tower in blue. Large figures are a smiling young woman with long black hair and a smiling young man in a wheelchair. Smaller images include people with canes and in wheelchairs, and two men seated on a bench at a bus stop, the older one wearing dark glasses and holding a cane.
Disability

Disability Justice and Equity in Housing

Welcome to Shelterforce’s newest Under the Lens series, Not Just Ramps—Disability and Housing Justice. This introductory article lays out why the connection between disability and affordable housing is so strong, and why it’s so important for housers to understand.

Fair Housing

AFFH: Third Time’s the Charm?

What’s the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing provision? How has it been enforced in the past? And what do fair housing advocates think of the proposed changes? Shelterforce’s new Under the Lens series—New AFFH Rules: What You Need to Know—explores that and more.

A person holding eggs.
Housing

Egg Prices and Rents—What Do They Have in Common?

Avian flu gave companies cover to price gouge. Could the attention to lack of housing supply do the same for landlords?

Two women in a crowd of protesters hold a big hand-lettered sign that says "Power to the tenants." Other people near and behind them are also holding signs.
Organizing

Biden’s Renters Rights Blueprint: Meaningful or Not?

What should we make of the administration’s tenants rights announcement?