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Miriam Axel-Lute

503 Posts

Miriam Axel-Lute is CEO/editor-in-chief of Shelterforce. She lives in Albany, New York, and is a proud small-city aficionado.
Federal Policy

Two Presidential Affordable Housing Platforms!

Though they haven’t made them central to their campaign, Clinton and Sanders have each released affordable housing platforms.

Community Development Field

Harvard Planners Talk Race, Design, and St. Louis

In our recent interview with long-time urban planner and racial equity advocate Chester Hartman, he told us he thought that urban planning programs were not “taking race and poverty into […]

Housing

Two Sneaky Reasons Why Building More Housing Isn’t Helping

The discussion about how much building more housing will help with affordability, and the nuances of the neighborhood and regional effects and what to do about them is alive and […]

Interview

Interview with Chester Hartman, Radical Urban Planner

As he retires, the founder of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council reflects on the fields of urban planning, community development, and fair housing.

Housing

Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted” Supports, Challenges Housing Field

With Evicted, Desmond is taking a powerful argument that housing matters beyond the usually circles where that is discussed.

Housing

So, About That Anti-Inclusionary “Study”

Last week, I submitted the following letter to the editor of the LA Times in response to a vicious, and more importantly, extremely misleading op-ed, decrying inclusionary housing as a development […]

Editor’s Note

Community Development and the School Reform Fight

In the community development field there are innumerable conversations about improving a struggling neighborhood or moving toward economic equity that have been ended abruptly by the observation, “Well, but it […]

Dripping faucet.
Equity

Attitudes Toward Exploited Cities Helped Poison Flint

Flint’s water crisis started long before corrosive river water starting running through its pipes. Though there’s no question that those who signed off on the decisions and covered up the […]

Cars on downtown New York City street.
Equity

Rich Neighborhood in NYC Actually Gets a “Noxious” Use

A core environmental justice fight has long been the fair distribution of necessary nuisance uses throughout a city. Poor neighborhoods tend to be over-burdened with unpleasant parts of public infrastructure […]

Uber-noxious

At the PolicyLink Equity Summit the last week of October, Orson Aguilar of the Greenlining Institute was taking a poll of the room at the workshop on the “Gig Economy.” […]

Neighborhood Change

Place Matters, But Place Changes

“Place matters, but place changes,” University of Southern California professor Manuel Pastor observed at the opening plenary at PolicyLink’s 5th Equity Summit, held this week in Los Angeles. This can […]

Equity

Is Rags to Riches the Right Measure?

Comparative income quintiles don’t tell us very much about the material conditions of people’s lives. When someone rises into the top fifth, someone else falls into the bottom fifth.