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Miriam Axel-Lute

483 Posts

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

Finally! A Concrete Proposal to Address Gentrification-Driven Displacement

I, and others, have sometimes felt that the fair housing community can be too focused on opening up the suburbs, overlooking the return of city neighborhoods as neighborhoods of opportunity […]

Easing into Investment?

Joe Kriesberg of Mass. Assoc. of CDCs recently took a trip to Cuba with a group of community development colleagues. He's written up his varied observations of that unusual island […]

Housing

Boston Squanders Opportunity to Keep Itself Affordable

This, my friends, is exhibit A in why we still need good old-fashioned investigative journalism—and journalists who will not just chase national stories, but sit through and sift through the […]

Arts & Culture

Educate, Motivate, Organize

An Interview with Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, Mississippi

Eds and Meds and the Three-Legged Stool of Economic Development

My first reactions to Richard Florida's recent attempt to tip the sacred cow of “eds and meds” (universities and hospitals) economic development were quite similar to what Steve Dubb wrote […]

Fair Housing

Will Newly Residential Downtowns Become Luxury Enclaves?

I was traveling a lot this fall, as usual. Back in September, I attended a pre-conference strategizing session on inclusionary housing at the National Housing Conference's Solutions 2013 event in […]

Community Development Field

CDFIs: The Boom Sector in the Community Development Field?

Three weeks ago I went to Philadelphia to attend the annual conference of the Opportunity Finance Network, the trade association for CDFIs, or community development financial institutions. I go to […]

Housing

AirBnB: Way to Make Ends Meet or Destroyer of Affordable Housing?

Confession time: Despite the work that I do, when I began using AirBnB as a business traveler, I didn't think much about its affordable housing implications. To me, it was […]

Housing

Tenants’ Return to Rehabbed, Preserved Birthplace of Hip Hop

1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx was not your average building purchased by a speculative real estate investor in the housing crisis aftermath. It's known as the birthplace of hip […]

Don’t Assume

If you work in any field for a substantial amount of time, you will hear certain story lines and beliefs repeated over and over. For example: public housing towers are […]

Role-Playing for Energy Efficiency

Connecticut experiments with a “megacommunity strategic simulation” to move the needle on residential energy efficiency—providing a look at a tool that could also apply to other community development challenges.

Who’s After the Park?

Edge of Albany: A Warren Crow Mystery,
by Kirby White. Fox Creek Press, 2012. 218pp. $20 (paper).