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It’s time for more coordination between the community development field and veterans groups.
Funding the City
Property taxes were set up at a time when cities were regional centers of wealth. Times have changed. We need to another look at how we’re funding cities.
Economic Security First
Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. Times Books, 2013
We May Be Small, But…
Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World, by Catherine Tumber. MIT Press, 2012
Interview with George McCarthy, President of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
After 14 years at the Ford Foundation, George “Mac” McCarthy became the fifth president of the 41-year-old Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Time to Learn from Europe on Housing?
Since we recently had bloggers squaring off on the question of whether expanding homeownership really is an important policy priority in and of itself (Alan Mallach: Yes, Tony Roshan Samara: No), I thought it was interesting to throw this New Yorker article into the mix—a reminder that many of our tax subsidies ($200 billion a […]
Would Just Letting the Hot Markets Build More Help Affordability?
As people move back into the cities, and rental housing demand goes up, it's been an interesting time for people wrestling with the problems of highly unaffordable areas to live. Some people are arguing that limits on development—whether it's density restrictions like Washington, D.C.'s height limits, or the kinds of geographical, historical, or quality of […]
Maybe We Should Call Them Trailers
It is an article of faith among advocates for residents of manufactured housing that one of the most important things we can do to get over the stigma that this form of housing carries is to stop using the term “mobile homes” (they aren't really mobile) or “trailers/trailer parks” (ditto). Shelterforce has used “manufactured housing” […]
How Much Money Is Your City or State Losing to “Economic Development?”
Have you ever wondered how much money your city or state is actually losing when it gives a 20-year tax break to a developer in exchange for a handful of jobs? You might soon be able to find out. As Shawn Escoffery of the Surdna Foundation and Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First explain in […]
On Beyond Income: Asset Building and Union Organizing Go Together
I wrote earlier this week about how the current increase in labor organizing among service workers calls for a conscious choice by other nonprofits who work with low-income households to offer our solidarity to those campaigns. Beyond the fact of supporting workers in their struggle for self-determination, there are some other opportunities for cross-pollination there. […]
On Progressives and Picket Lines
The story was very different, depending who told it. To the organizers of the I'M HOME and National Manufactured Homeowners' Assocation conferences, news that the Seattle Olive 8 hotel, which they had booked for their annual conferences this past November, was under boycott by the hotel workers union UNITE HERE for refusing to allow workers […]
A RADical Change for Public Housing?
Earler this month, we published an op-ed from HUD in which the authors declared the Rental Assistance Demonstration project a success, calling for a lifting of the cap on the number of units that could go through the process. The idea behind RAD is to address the massive backlog in capital improvements in public housing by […]