Community Organizations Have to Talk About Police Violence Directly
It’s easy to quickly refocus the conversation around police violence on the problems our organizations are already set up to fix—here’s why we shouldn’t.
A Transformative Experiment in Alaska
What do mimes, micro-units, and honoring Alaskan Natives have in common? Artists. The Cook Inlet Housing Authority's work with artists helped the organization realize new markers of success and furthered its housing goals.
What Prior Disasters Have Taught Housing Advocates About How to Respond to COVID-19
When it comes to helping people maintain or recover their housing, hurricanes and fires aren’t as different from a pandemic as one might think.
Nonprofit Housing Providers Face Down COVID-19
As organizers struggle to get strong eviction moratoriums passed and enforced around the country, there’s one sector where evictions during the pandemic were not...
Community Development Is Crucial in This Moment
One month ago, when I began the first draft of this article, the world was drastically different. Well before we became part of this...
Massachusetts Affordable Housing Providers Lead With Voluntary Eviction Moratorium—But There’s More to Do
Boston didn't have the power to suspend evictions itself, so while advocates pushed the courts and the state legislature, affordable housing providers agreed to a voluntary eviction moratorium and the city encouraged other landlords to join.
A Love Letter to the Next Decade of Community Development
For a long time, we’ve been too quiet about what’s working and what’s fueling us. But our field has major reasons to be proud; reasons you could miss in the cacophony of daily news.
Pulling the Rug From Under Community Development?
Investments and funding motivated by the Community Reinvestment Act are more foundational to the work of community developers than is often discussed. But if regulations change the incentives for banks, the effects on communities will be dramatic.
Why Organizations Should Invest in Home Repairs to Improve Health
A closer look at the relationship between health and the home repair needs of lower-income households.
How a Dozen Organizations Are Fighting Persistent Poverty Together
A national coalition of development financial institutions, CDCs, and financial intermediaries have banded together with local leaders who live in communities where more than 20 percent of the population has lived in poverty for more than 30 years.
Tiny Houses: Does Size Matter?
The suggestion of tiny houses as a solution to housing unaffordability is both condescending and impractical. Here's why.
Redlining Would Be Relegalized by CRA Reform Proposal
In an attempt to make compliance easier for banks, regulators are proposing to incentivize the very thing the Community Reinvestment Act was written to fight.
Shelterforce’s Top 10 Articles of 2019
We're sharing the most-read Shelterforce posts of 2019. We hope you enjoy them all and share with anyone who may have missed them.
New Writings Suggest Incremental Change is Best Path for CRA Reform
These writings suggest that careful reform of CRA regulations can build upon the progress in lending and investing if the reforms are incremental instead of “transformational."
The Opposite of Deficit-Based Language Isn’t Asset-Based Language. It’s Truth-Telling.
How do you describe the people you work for and with, or the neighborhoods you work in? Do you use primarily “deficit-based” language like...
“Welcome to Little Tokyo, Please Take Off Your Shoes:” Remembering Dean Matsubayashi
Sustained resistance to gentrification and displacement requires more than antagonism. It requires a community organized around an open, positive alternative vision that has both big ambitions and achievable, intermediary steps.
Talking About Revitalization When All Anyone Wants to Talk About Is Gentrification
Strategies for turning the conversation back to places where gentrification is not only *not* present, but not impending.
The Community Land Trust Movement Imagines Its Future
The 50th anniversary of New Communities was an opportunity for celebration and reflection—some of it critical—about the CLT movement.
Small Numbers, Great Expectations: A Case for Rural Investment
“Drop dead” wasn’t an acceptable answer to urban decay in the 1970s. And it isn’t the right answer for struggling rural areas today.
New Communities Inc. at 50: Thoughts on Identity and A Different Way Forward
The story of the nation's very first land trust shows that sometimes it takes people who have been repeatedly left out of systems to shake us into remembering to aim big, consider new strategies, and leave no one behind.