Community Control

There’s a growing number of manufactured housing owners who are joining together to buy their mobile home parks. We chat with residents, advocates, and technical assistance providers about the ins and outs of buying land together.

For decades, a group of Cambodian refugees worked to improve and upgrade their Stockton, California, affordable housing complex. While they technically own half of the property, they’re still waiting for HUD to approve their full ownership. Why hasn’t it happened yet?

Laws that give tenants the ability to purchase their own apartments are popping up across the country. In this webinar, a panel of folks who have been reporting on, fighting for, and using these policies offer their perspectives on this powerful anti-displacement tool. 

Developers are pushing for two exemptions to the landmark tenant rights legislation—affordable housing properties and buildings that are 25 years old or newer.

Between 2011 and 2022, the number of nonprofits with shared-equity programs and CLTs increased by 30 percent. Here’s a look at the diversity of their programs and portfolios, and who’s benefiting from their rise.

Organized by a pandemic-era mutual aid group, this housing cooperative is taking advantage of D.C.’s pioneering Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. But the pressure of paying back a loan with mounting interest could stymie the group’s plans to provide affordable housing.

There’s a lot of momentum toward resident-controlled housing. Do you know the three major forms it takes?

What were the biggest Shelterforce stories of the year? We count down the top 10 of 2023.

Tenant Opportunity to Purchase laws empower renters to get control when their buildings go up for sale. But in D.C., the hurdles to becoming owners are many, and often insurmountable.

Arrangements in which LIHTC tenants share in the development’s financial benefits, or become partial or full owners, are rare—but some properties have pulled them off. This scan of several examples shows the possibilities—and the conditions needed for them to succeed.

Traumatic events, and the ongoing traumas of vacancy and disinvestment, can be strongly associated with the places where they occurred. In Cleveland, several organizations are bringing new function and meaning to traumatized spaces.

Shelterforce checks in on three communities that have passed policies giving tenants and nonprofits first dibs on purchasing property. Are these policies keeping residents in their homes?