Community Development Field

Rooflines will be live blogging from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s 2010 National Conference beginning Wednesday, March 10. Join us here at Rooflines as we cover this important annual event […]

Civic leaders and planners in the south and west Chicago suburbs were disappointed to learn that the regional collaborative proposals submitted by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) supporting […]

The nonprofit housing development field has myriad intermediaries and support organizations, but no one unified voice. Should it have one?

As the Bluff City picks itself up, its CDC community faces a host of challenges that are increasingly common across the field.

Towns long in Chicago’s shadow have sought creative ways
to collaborate for federal funding, while building off existing
partnerships as part of a long-term approach to neighborhood,
and regional, stabilization.

The progressive movement is seeing a resurgence of younger organizers thanks, in part, to the “Obama effect” of the 2008 campaign, and a renewed attempt to articulate values and build authentic relationships.

How can we practice effective community development and engage a community that suffers from a dwindling stock of physical historical references and is in the process of healing from the wounds of decades of urban decay? In the Bronx, community members are coming together, taking pieces of the past and making history.

ACORN, the 40-year-old, nationwide community organizing group has suffered more political fallout in 2009 than any number of shamed political officials embattling a public scandal, never mind the fact that […]

For groups with a local base, including faith-based networks, National People’s Action, and ACORN, effective national work exhibits these features: Deep local experience on the issues *Campaigns and capacity that […]

CDCs need to more effectively balance money and mission to ensure long-term financial viability. CDCs need to develop and implement strategies that respond strategically to the specific local market. Emphasize […]

Today’s economic crisis is devastating neighborhoods and households across the country. Urban, low-income communities that were slowly recovering from the disinvestment of earlier decades are now falling back to where they were in the 1970s. Rural communities, walloped by the collapse of key economic generators, have suffered no less. Families that had begun to break the cycle of poverty and build small amounts of savings are now being plunged back into debt. Yet, at a time when the work of community development corporations is more needed than ever, there are growing questions about their long-term viability and efficacy.

The next few years promise to feature both the best of times and worst of times for affordable housing finance and those who practice or are somehow affected by affordable housing and community development.