Investment Without Displacement: From Slogan to Strategy
How investments can be leveraged to ensure residents get to stay in their communities and reap the benefits of new amenities and increased accessibility.
Using Theater to Envision Racial Equity Solutions
Techniques from the arts world can help us envision and re-envision relationships and systems to spot stress points and opportunities within communities.
Can Using a Racial Equity Lens Increase Capital in Communities of Color?
If CDFIs adopted traditional appraisal standards to determine loan amounts, they'd make very few loans in the communities they were founded to serve.
“So, what do you do?” How to Have Conversations about Homelessness
Conversations about homelessness with those outside the field’s bubble can be exhausting, but there are several strategies and techniques that can help steer the conversation in a productive way.
The Rural Difference in Natural Disasters
There are distinct differences between natural disaster response and recovery in rural and urban communities. How can community-based organizations better respond to disasters and help rural communities prepare before disaster strikes?
From Sustainability to Resilience
My first reaction to the emergence of “resilience” as a lens for viewing community development was mostly informed by skepticism.
Resilience 101
Community development fits well within the growing resilience movement—and connecting the two more explicitly could make their work even more powerful.
NOLA Brings a Holistic Focus to Resilience
Cities cannot weather the effects of climate change without going beyond infrastructure to address institutional racism, historical inequities, and access to physical and mental health services.
Designing for Climate Change
How can affordable housing be more resilient to extreme weather and better prepared to deal with the consequences of climate change?
Buying Power: Why Nonprofits Should Own Their Space
Four reasons why organizations should consider owning property in the neighborhood they work in.
Moving Beyond Place-Based Community Organizing
How to train organizers to work across various communities, not just neighborhoods.
Reawakening “Courageous Philanthropy”
A review of Courageous Philanthropy: Going Public in a Closely Held World, by Jennifer Vanica.
The CFPB Needs Sunlight: Keep Easy Access to HMDA Data
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's reassurances on continued public access to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data are not very reassuring.
Let’s Get Explicit: Social Justice in Asset Based Community Development
Four Asset Based Community Development practices that support social justice frameworks when practitioners make them explicit and intentional.
A Hole in our Vision: Race, Gender, and Justice in Community Development
In years past, the community development field imagined how to change the world. So, what would it take to change anew? Nancy O. Andrews argues that it takes asking ourselves the right questions.
Time to Delink Homeownership from Asset Building
Using homeownership as an asset-building mechanism and retirement plan might not be a great thing for our society.
Racial Diversity in Community Development Leadership: A Roundtable Discussion on the Field’s Past, and...
Several national organizations in the community development field have experienced transitions from white leadership to people of color.
Where Banks and the Public Agree on CRA . . . and Disagree
Despite a CRA exam pass rate of 98 percent, the major thrust of bank comments is that they want easier exams with fewer moving parts and less uncertainty.
What Happens When a CDC Pivots to a Health-First Focus?
Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation in Cleveland finds that being an early adopter of a community health focus has its advantages.
State Policies Play a Central Role in the Fight Against Vacant Property
Abandoned and vacant properties seem like a quintessentially local problem. But state policies have a huge effect on how well municipalities can fight it.