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Community Development Field
Shelterforce considers “community development” to be an extremely broad term. But there are still many conversations about the ways in which that broad work happens. Comprehensively or in coalitions of specialized organizations? Locally or regionally? Place or people? While the answers to all of these are usually “both,” there are many conversations to be had about “how.”
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Is DOGE Coming After NeighborWorks?
Though it hasn't taken any action yet, DOGE has officially assigned a team to NeighborWorks America. The congressionally chartered nonprofit provides resources and training to a network of hundreds of local organizations that develop affordable housing and support homeowners and communities.
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Can We Build a Movement for Structural Economic Change? We Must
This July, the New Economy Coalition (NEC), a coalition of over 140 organizations from across North America, will convene in Buffalo for its biennial conference. Called Commonbound, the gathering has […]
Interview with Chester Hartman, Radical Urban Planner
As he retires, the founder of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council reflects on the fields of urban planning, community development, and fair housing.
We Must Find the Legacies of Racism Within Our Own Organizations, Too
We can’t begin to disentangle the racial dynamics of the institutions we want to fix if we are unwilling to get to the root of the same dynamics in our own organizations.
Four Lessons Learned from Collaboration
We’ve seen a renewed interest in non-profit collaboration (see articles in Shelterforce here, here, and here) but effective and successful collaboration takes more than simply finding like-minded people to walk […]
Address Merger Concerns Before the Merger
The Virginia Housing Coalition (VHC) and the Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness (VCEH) both began in the early 1980’s as grassroots statewide advocacy organizations. They supported each other’s work and […]
Stop Talking About Displacement
A well informed community organizing effort with a targeted purpose should be the first line of defense in protecting opportunities for wealth building and access to opportunities for upward mobility in working class communities as they experience inevitable changes.
Why Are Community Development Lenders Financing Charter Schools?
The choice to support privately-operated, publicly-funded schools puts these lenders at odds with many of their usual political allies and constituencies. So what’s the motivation?
Interview with Gordon Chin, Founding Executive Director of the Chinatown Community Development Center
Gordon Chin started San Francisco Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC), a longstanding CDC well-known in the field, in the mid-1970s. In June 2015, he released Building Community, Chinatown Style, a book about his professional life, the founding and evolution of CCDC, and the future of community development. Josh Ishimatsu, director of Research and Capacity Building at the National Coalition for Asian-Pacific American Community Development, and a regular Shelterforce contributor, spoke with Chin about where community development is going, and where it should go.
Flint: Tainted Choices, Tainted Water
Like the water itself, the situation in Flint, Mich., should be crystal clear: elected and appointed officials, at the state and federal levels, have done harm, some even irreparable, to the […]
CRA Exams Aren’t Cutting It For Communities in Need
In 1977, Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and required the federal banking agencies to assess a bank’s record of helping to meet the credit needs of the local […]
Health Care Confronts Challenge to Shift from “Volume to Value”
Health care, as we all know, is a big business. U.S. hospitals alone have $782 billion in total annual expenditures, which is roughly five percent of gross domestic product. Hospitals […]
How Are We Responsible for Baltimore?
Over the last few years, slowly but surely, the reality of the lived experience of black American women has continued to come to light. Historically, when state violence is discussed […]