Interview with Shelley Poticha, Director of Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities
Shelterforce speaks with Shelley Poticha, director of HUD's Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, about implementing sustainable policy at the federal level while encouraging local innovation, keeping down the cost of green housing, and effecting change while dealing with federal government bureaucracy.
The Revitalization Trap
Place-based initiatives won’t address the kinds of injustice and poverty that community development was formed to fight.
With responses by Brentin Mock and Miriam Axel-Lute.
Let’s Talk About CDCs…
…that is if we could. Awareness of community development, both within the larger progressive movement and in the country as a whole, is tragically limited. This is due in part to the lack of...
Why Leadership Pays
In previous blog posts (Why Evaluation Stinks), I’ve discussed how the fragmented nature of the nonprofit sector makes it very difficult to impose top-down, comprehensive evaluative frameworks. The primary problem...
3 Things Needed to Improve Transit-Oriented Development
Affordable and convenient transit is important to helping people access the employment, education and critical services required for physical and economic well-being. However, many low-income individuals lack access to transit,...
Rethinking Community Economic Development Beyond “Rent or Own”
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The Tenants Movement and Housers
Much has changed in the last 30 years about both Shelterforce magazine and the housing movement. Shelterforce, which began as a tenants’ rights and organizing publication, is now more broadly focused on housing and...
The Rebuilding Communities Initiative
Launched in 1993, the Annie E. Casey Foundation's (AECF) Rebuilding Communities Initiative (RCI) aims to provide the support services needed to help transform economically distressed neighborhoods into safe, supportive, and productive environments for children...
Getting Beyond the Developer Fee
In tough financial times, community developers are hanging on to their developer fees despite competition, but many are also diversifying their programs and revenue streams.
Chipping Away at Implicit Bias
Structural discrimination has led to an unconscious association between blackness and poverty and neighborhood disinvestment. Here’s what we can do to change the status quo.
The Mysterious Art of Collaboration
Five housing organizations' effort to merge reveals both pitfalls and practical possibilities for bringing community development groups together.
Panacea or Problem? The Possibilities in Opportunity Zones
With Opportunity Zones, the potential is there for great benefit, but it is not yet clear where, how, and to whom any benefits will accrue. People who care about connecting residents and businesses in distressed communities with opportunities need to act now so they fulfill their promise.
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.
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.
Losing Nonprofit Control of Tax Credit Housing?
How an ambiguous legal definition is endangering nonprofits’ control of dozens of affordable housing developments in the final years of their tax credit agreements.
Contracting with the Community
To connect with hard-to-reach communities, a Twin Cities agency diverted some of its consulting budget away from national firms and to organizations that already had those relationships.
Housing for People, Not for Profit
Poverty is not contagious or created by poor people, but is caused by systems of oppression such as racism, classism, gender discrimination, and homophobia
Scale, Schmale. What About Impact?
If you think what's wrong with CDCs today is their failure to “go to scale,” you are looking in the fundamentally wrong direction, asking the wrong questions.
While I do believe it’s essential for CDCs...
CRA Bill Getting a Hearing
Dion Spencer, NCRC’s director of legislation and regulatory policy just announced that a new Consumer Reinvestment Act bill will be heard by the House Financial Services Committee, citing information from Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.)....
Public Housing: Building Communities vs. Providing a Place to Live
Successful housing isn't merely a function of its form—design is not destiny—it's also a function the economic and social mix present within the communities.