Homeownership

Many resident ownership plans are thwarted by tight timelines and high-ticket upgrade needs. One mission-driven startup is testing a phased approach to transferring mobile home park ownership to residents without pricing them out.

Racial bias in appraisals is still a problem—but there are steps we can take to fight back. Philadelphia’s reforms are a model to follow.

Charles Carrier is accused of orchestrating a yearslong Ponzi scheme, bilking tens of millions of dollars from both wealthy investors and older people with modest incomes. Despite signs of trouble, HomeVestors didn’t intervene.

As the mortgage industry becomes further automated, can artificial intelligence be trained to avoid replicating historic bias and expand access to loans for excluded borrowers? Some housing advocates are cautiously optimistic.

Decades of increasing costs and deferred maintenance could lead to people losing their homes, unless changes are made.

While renters and homebuyers’ challenges dominate the headlines, they aren’t the only ones wrestling with maintaining decent housing.

The proposed program could shrink the racial homeownership gap while serving a wide cross-section of people. But it only addresses some of the results of past discrimination.

The role of ‘heirs property’ in eroding Black families’ wealth

Arrangements in which LIHTC tenants share in the development’s financial benefits, or become partial or full owners, are rare—but some properties have pulled them off. This scan of several examples shows the possibilities—and the conditions needed for them to succeed.

In 2018, Shelterforce wrote about the Center for Community Progress’s recommendations for tax reform in West Virginia to address vacancy. Guided by CCP’s suggestions, the state auditor’s office has recently passed two laws to change its tax sales process and keep properties in use.

Social historian John Boughton explains how the U.K.’s social housing system changed millions of low- and middle-income people’s lives—and how privatization has crippled its power.

HomeVestors of America, the self-proclaimed “largest homebuyer in the U.S.,” trains its nearly 1,150 franchisees to zero in on homeowners’ desperation.