Financial System

Tenant organizing in Baltimore today is building on a rich legacy of tenant resistance in the city where residential redlining made its debut.

Requirements to be certified as a community development financial institution (CDFI) will soon change—and some lenders that qualified before might no longer.

Background explainers, affordability restrictions, and race and belonging topped the list of our most-read pieces of the year.

Some leases plainly contradict state law or include questionable, punitive, or egregiously anti-tenant clauses.

Shelterforce recently hosted a conversation about how to fight, and win, against corporate landlords and their extractive business models. Watch the video or read the transcript.

As more and more affordable homes are gobbled up by corporate landlords, prospective Black homebuyers are seeing opportunities for homeownership dry up.

Over the past couple of years, community development corporations have been popping up in sometimes-unexpected places across the country. Will this increased interest in CDCs last, or is it a trend that will end when the money runs out?

It’s difficult to know who owns a property because corporate landlords and investors tend to structure their business as limited liability companies, or LLCs.

There’s a reason land ownership is a matter of public record—but at the moment the records we have aren’t actually doing the job.

When wealthy investors treat homes like poker chips, it is the tenants who end up losing. How do we interrupt the vicious cycle of speculation and displacement?

Over the last two decades homeowners and investors have increasingly treated housing as a financial asset, like stocks or bonds. How has this changed the housing market for the worse, and how can we fix it?

It’s a wonky term with real-life consequences. At its most basic level, the “financialization of housing” means treating a home like a financial asset first, and a place to live second. But there are many more perspectives.