Neighborhood Change
As community demographics shift and there’s neighborhood change, what are the issues affecting longstanding and new residents alike? When is change desirable, and when is it undesirable? How can it be turned to the benefit of those who need it most?
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Clybourne Park on Stage, Housing Inequity in Real Life—A Post-Show Reflection
Clybourne Park—a play exploring race, real estate, and community tensions—can set the stage for discussion on the lasting impacts of housing discrimination, gentrification, and the fight for affordability. What lessons can we take from the past to shape a more just housing future?
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Hung Up on Gentrification? Don’t Be
In my last post I described an approach—centering on a tax credit for families to buy substandard houses in targeted neighborhoods, fix them up, and occupy them as owner-occupants for […]
How CDCs (and TIFs) Might Help Create Equitable Public School Districts
As many parents know instinctively, and economists have shown, there’s a reason why the housing cost in many communities is strongly correlated to the quality of the local public schools. […]
The Value of a Visit: Community Schools Learn from Each Other
Oakland Unified School District is one of the few full-service community school districts in the country. What does that mean? Let’s start with a community school. A community school is: […]
Forget NSP, Tax Credits Will Save Neighborhoods
If we want to revitalize neighborhoods, we must recognize that it’s a multiyear project. It should be an income tax credit program for three reasons:
What Does It Mean for a Neighborhood to be Stable?
What should be the focus of a neighborhood stabilization program? It's an ongoing topic of conversation within community development organizations when deciding where efforts should be focused for the betterment […]
The Tenacity of Dysfunction
The word resilience has different meanings in different fields. In the field of material science, it refers to the ability of a material to regain its shape after it has […]
What Creating a ‘Stable Neighborhood’ Really Means
Last month I wrote about why Project Rebuild is basically a bad idea, and why the Obama administration is making a mistake by trying to refloat it once again, rather […]
3 Things for Nonprofits to Remember About Abandoned Properties
“'Do nothing' is not an option.” So says Jerry Flach, construction project director at Paterson Habitat for Humanity, of the need to take action on New Jersey's vacant and abandoned […]
Education Reform Backlash?
Today in New York state, third through eighth graders are wrapping up their second week of increased testing under the new Common Core standards. It did not go over very […]
Gentrification in Brooklyn the Result of Plans, Not Markets
Doug Henwood, editor/publisher of Left Business Observer, has an interesting piece in the Nation this week that argues that gentrification and displacement in New York City are aided and abetted, […]
How We Connect: Bridging the Gap Between Neighborhoods Through Public Land
When I worked as a local newspaper reporter, it was frustrating to see community members with ideas of how to transform or beautify their town stopped at the onset by […]
Police Train in Public Housing, Terrorizing Neighboring Residents
When Lauren Manning, a resident of the Ida Yarbrough Homes in Albany, N.Y., posted this public photo on her Facebook page, she probably didn’t imagine that a week later it […]