The Right to Stay Put
There is much work to be done around housing and equitable development, but the solution is not simply to move people around. A key challenge is creating real choice.
The Warren Housing Bill: Ready to Take On The Affordability Crisis?
Sen. Warren's proposed bill represents the kind of holistic housing strategy we need from the federal government in facilitating affordable housing for all Americans in all cities and towns who have been left out, locked out, or exploited over decades by the national housing market.
NYCHA’s Embrace of RAD Program Brings a Mix of Praise and Worry
Rehabbing this Far Rockaway housing complex is a huge undertaking. NYCHA is betting that the RAD program can make it happen, and it seems to be paying off.
Same Challenges, Bigger Numbers: 30 Years of Reporting on The State of the Nation’s...
While each annual State of the Nation’s Housing report has documented housing changes incrementally, looking back 30 years provides a unique frame of reference for just exactly how much worse housing affordability challenges have become.
Can Housers Unite Around the Warren Proposal?
Every once in a while someone says: "What would it look like if we came together and were united on a federal policy for housing?" It seems like the answer to "who would actually do it?" might currently be Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Los Angeles Should Expropriate This Land and Give It to Tenants
Though slumlords are not directly to blame for our nation's wealth disparities, they profit from them. Seizing their property and giving it to tenants would produce a more just and equitable outcome than what has been practiced in the past.
Bold Political Leadership on Housing Policy? In 2018? You Heard Right
Local elected officials are having to re-examine the risks and rewards of making housing and housing affordability a political priority. Could one mayor's bold steps on housing policy be a national bellwether?
The Most Important Housing Law Passed in 1968 Wasn’t the Fair Housing Act
At the Aug. 1, 1968 signing ceremony, President Johnson proclaimed “Today, we are going to put on the books of American law what I genuinely believe is the most farsighted, the most comprehensive, the most massive housing program in all American history.” He was right.
A Review of The Fight for Fair Housing
The collection of 17 essays captures and explains the dynamism of the fair housing movement with its remarkable contributors.
HUD Continues to Retreat From Fair Housing Duties
In the name of “local control,” the federal agency has abandoned enforcement of civil rights law because it believes it's too troublesome.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Aug. 24
Philly's Fight for Affordable Housing | HUD Targets Facebook In Complaint| An Eviction App | A "Massive" Multifamily Housing Fraud
Is a Home with Lead Hazards Really “Affordable”?
The cost of housing is not simply the mortgage, rent, and utilities, but the individual and community health, education, and social costs associated with low-quality, unstable, and unhealthy housing.
Eviction Lab Misses the Mark
As housing activists and academics who conduct research on issues of housing and displacement, we have encountered major problems with Eviction Lab’s practices.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—Aug. 17
HUD's Latest Assault on Fair Housing | Decriminalizing Homelessness | "Buying the Block" | FEMA's Roadblocks In Puerto Rico | Public Transport And Health
Homeless Vets Given Keys to a New Home and Life
The Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Community in Agawam, Massachusetts, offers housing for homeless veterans, along with access to various other supportive services.
Housing Advocates—Seize This Moment!
I’ve been working to address housing affordability since the late 1970s. There has never been this much media and public focus on the issue.
Renters Rise Again
Rent regulation is no longer being discussed as a vestigial holdover from a previous age, but actively debated and organized for by renters and activists.
Tenant Power: Organizing for Rent Strikes and Landlord Negotiations
In the face of high rent increases and substandard housing, many tenants are realizing they are not alone in their landlord troubles and are joining together to push for building-level wins, and policy change.
The Dark Side of Single-Family Rental
After the foreclosure crisis, global equity firms snapped up thousands of single-family homes to rent out. This massive shift in the market has not been good for aspiring homeowners, tenants, or neighborhoods.
The Promise and Peril of HUD’s RAD Program
After a public housing property in Hopewell, Virginia, was privatized through the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, some families were threatened with eviction and...
Eviction Filings Hurt Tenants, Even If They Win
From Monday through Friday, 52 weeks a year, thousands of tenants, landlords, and attorneys make their way to the Daley Center in downtown Chicago....
Setting Aside Housing for Frequent Health Care Users
Housing specifically for those who frequently use health care services makes sense on many levels, but it also raises questions about privacy and lining up who pays and who benefits.
Solutions to an Unjust Housing System
Four scalable land and housing models can provide justice, and homes, for our communities. But we need support to protect them from market pressure.
Section 8 Voucher Holder Denied Housing
Despite having a housing voucher—a legal source of income—a Buffalo, New York, woman could not find a landlord who would rent out their property to her.
A Cruel Choice—Sexual Favors for Housing
Across the U.S., sexual harassment at the hands of landlords, property managers, and others in the housing industry can drive poor women and their children into homelessness. It is a problem badly understood and virtually unstudied.
Taking Sexual Harassment Seriously: Tips for Nonprofits
Sexual harassment is a topic that’s not often addressed in the community development field, but it should be.
Absence of Eviction Court Recordings Leaves Tenants Vulnerable
In a court division where a family can lose their home after a two-minute trial and only 12 percent of tenants have lawyers, Cook County's lack of eviction court transcripts—with no court reporters or digital recording equipment since 2004—has serious repercussions for tenants.
How a Health Impact Assessment Helped House Irish Travellers
An HIA that focused on Irish Traveller housing programs proves successful because it empowered the population.
Shared-Equity Homeownership With No Public Subsidy
What if the future of shared equity homeownership was not dependent on government subsidies? Vivacité - Société immobilière solidaire, a Quebec-based non-profit organization, designed a shared equity program based on a social economy model that leverages impact investors to ensure perpetual affordability and scales its impact.
Despite Win Against Landlord, Minneapolis Tenants Still Face Eviction
North Minneapolis residents fight to take control of their buildings after city administrator finds homes to be uninhabitable.
We Can Totally Build Our Way Out of This Problem
Here's a list of possible translations to the statement, "We can't build our way out of the housing crisis," and a handy response to each.
Practical Ideas for Addressing Micro-Segregation in Mixed Income Communities
Practical lessons from long time community builders on promoting integration and interaction among residents of mixed income communities.
Section 8 Allowed
Early research shows that laws prohibiting discrimination based on source of income may improve outcomes for Housing Choice Voucher holders.
The CLT Solution: In Suburbia and Beyond
After 30 years and the development of thousands of units of affordable housing, the Long Island Housing Partnership Inc. and its affiliates are now concentrating on the Community Land Trust model.
CDCs and Nonprofits are Indeed Leading Affordable Housing Innovation
Blaming community development corporations (CDCs) for the high cost of affordable housing construction is not only misguided, but it ignores the work of CDCs and nonprofits that are leading efforts to reduce costs in the key areas of financing, construction, and land costs.
HUD Was Wrong To Suspend This Important Tool For Racial Equity
On May 8, 2018, three fair housing groups took action to preserve an important tool for community empowerment and equity.
A Year Later, Can the Grenfell Tower Fire Be a Catalyst for Reimagining Housing...
Glyn Robbins talks about what led him to view U.K. and U.S. housing policy as intertwined, how public protest stifled the Conservative Party’s 2016 Housing Act, and what’s changed in the wake of Grenfell Tower fire.
Here’s Why Costa-Hawkins Repeal Would Be Revolutionary for Housing in California
Rent control is one of the foremost demands of grassroots movements organizing around housing justice today. To activists across the country, from Los Angeles...
Why San Francisco Outdoes New York City on Tenant Rights
New York City has been outpaced by San Francisco in protecting tenants since the latter adopted rent control in 1979. While protections for the city's tenants have steadily weakened and even disappeared since the 1990s, San Francisco’s rent control and eviction protection laws have expanded and strengthened.
The Not-So Hidden Truths About the Segregation of America’s Housing
Our conversation with The Color of Law author Richard Rothstein on uncovering truths about our not-so distant history of federally mandated racial segregation in housing.
Preserving Affordability in San Francisco—A Look at the Housing Accelerator Fund’s First Year
An interview with Bob Annibale of Citi Community Development and Rebecca Foster of the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, which aims to to preserve or develop 1,500 affordable housing units in its first five years.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—May 11
Democrat’s Housing Proposal | Tracking SNAP Recipients Is a Bad Idea | Including Antiracism Practices Into The Housing First Model | An Asylum-Seeker Game? | Mick, Can We Rate You?
Democrats Propose Actually Meaningful Public Housing Funding
Whether it’s the need to recapture some momentum in the 2018 election season, or the growing effect of the housing crisis on a wider range of people, the Democratic Party has proposed investing $70 billion in public housing.
California’s Endless Housing “Crisis”
In many ways, the recognition of the current “crisis” stems from middle- and upper-income Californians finally being impacted, and using their power to push for solutions that would address their situation. But their solutions ignore another population.
Why Tenants Should Be Given the Opportunity to Purchase Their Buildings
Unlike so many owners who are quickly selling their properties to the highest bidder amidst rising real estate values, an East Oakland landlord was intent on giving the existing tenants a fair shot to purchase the property.
What Does “Community Control of Land” Mean?
When we put out a call for essays about the meaning of community control of land, we expected we might get a handful of responses. Instead we got dozens and dozens, coming from all different parts of the country, from residents and researchers, activists and advocates. We clearly touched a nerve.
The State of Permanent Affordability
In the face of accelerating gentrification, along with ongoing speculation and eviction, the idea of putting a substantial number of homes outside of the reach of the speculative market has been gaining momentum across the country.
Beating Luxury Developers at Their Own Game
The tide is starting to change as a number of organizations have partnered with nonprofits to make deals to acquire naturally occurring affordable housing.
Rebellion Spurs Opportunity and a New Housing Movement
How a Baltimore collaborative plans to make shared-equity housing a significant sector in the local housing market.
A Low-Cost Ownership Oasis in a Desert of Apartment Unaffordability
When this limited-equity cooperative in California began more than 30 years ago, it wasn’t the most affordable place to live. But now the co-op’s monthly costs are 50 percent lower than the average market-rate apartment.
Getting Ahead of Gentrification in the South Side of Columbus
More than a decade after several groups came together to improve substandard housing in the South Side of Columbus, signs of gentrification and forced displacement are beginning to emerge. Can something be done so current residents can afford to stay in their neighborhoods for years to come? The short answer is yes.
The State of Shared-Equity Homeownership
Though the need is greater than ever for resale-restricted, affordable homes, the growth of this model of homeownership appears to be limited.
Housing, Not Warehousing—A Victory 10 Years in the Making
Warehousing is one of real estate’s best-kept secrets, and a crucial piece of how the housing market can keep supply low and demand high. One New York City organization rallied to prove warehousing still posed a problem, and pushed the boundaries of what was politically possible.
Getting Health on Board
It’s becoming increasingly common for community development corporations and grassroots housing organizations to have board members from the health care sector. Here's why.
Inclusionary Housing in Soft or Mixed Markets
The time to strike isn’t when the iron is hot. Cities in soft or mixed markets should adopt inclusionary housing policies before the housing market heats up and the process becomes even more challenging.
“More Than the Sum of Our Property Values”
How can power over land be used in such a way that people who are at a political disadvantage—who are poor, members of racial, ethnic or religious minorities, very young or very old, or have a disability—benefit? How about those who cannot speak for themselves, like trees or rivers?
Community Rights and Urban Land
The contemporary American understanding of community control over urban land is rooted in post-war organizing against government-driven redevelopment and bank-driven financial disinvestment. Broader movement...
Co-ops: Resistance to Living in the Land of the Lord
For Section 8 recipients, a step toward economic mobility (and community control) can be limited-equity cooperatives. A Section 8 voucher can be used to pay some of the monthly carrying costs of a co-op unit.
The Fight Is Unfinished in San Francisco
Stabilizing their home came at a steep price. These residents no longer face the threat of possible eviction, but they now confront the well-disguised iron hand of the market wrapped in the velvet gloves of “affordability” and “fairness,” pitting them against efforts by their public financiers to force them into higher rents over time.
Interrupting Inequality Through Community Control of Land
Our belief is that community in CLTs emerges not from the simple fact of membership, but from the relationships, cooperative efforts—and disputes–of those occupying and making decisions over the land.
Settling Homeless Families in Vacant Homes
Take Back the Land broke into foreclosed, vacant homes, performed repairs, and housed homeless families in them. The most hopeful lesson to draw from the land occupation and the squatting activities is that pressure can be applied anywhere.
Community Ownership Redefines ‘Highest and Best Use’
The “highest and best use” of real estate should be the maximum fulfillment of social, environmental, and economic benefit for the greatest number of stakeholders including future generations.
Community Land Cooperatives Should Oversee Neighborhood Economic Development
This nonprofit is organizing a real estate investment cooperative for the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, with the exclusive purpose of incubating, funding, and assisting “community land cooperatives.”
Slow Building of Community on Lopez Island
Lopez Community Land Trust combined community control of land, permanent affordability, permaculture principles, a net-zero energy goal, green designs, individual empowerment and fun, into one ambitious housing development project.
Building Power for Community Control
Residents and institutions in a North Philadelphia neighborhood wanted to put the power of the land back into the hands of the community. The way we decided to do this was to create the Community Justice Land Trust and ensure neighborhood residents and tenants of CLT homes had seats on its board.
The Linchpin of a Just Housing System
A vision is rooted in the belief that housing is a human right, not a commodity to maximize profit. Homes For All believes it is possible to create a just housing system in which everyone has affordable and dignified housing.
Collective Ownership Is a Community Control Tool
A campaign pushed city government to begin the disposition process for a public parcel of land that is now proposed for a multi-use project that includes 171 units of 100 percent affordable housing.
Community Control Gives Families Hope for the Future
Because we have our own home we have the liberty to dream, act, and influence our community. We have a unique opportunity as land trust homeowners as we are part of affordable homeownership today, tomorrow, and forever.
Creating the Commons
The commons can be understood as a set of resources that have been de-commodified: that is, these are resources that are used to directly support life, rather than to extract a profit through sale on the market.
Controlling Land Collectively: The CLT Ground Lease Reimagined
Community control often gets conflated with affordability for neighborhoods seeing rising prices, and it’s obviously good to make land stay affordable. But affordability is not the same as democratic decision-making.
Community Is a Moving Target in Los Angeles
Empowerment is the ultimate response to displacement: perpetual affordability in a process that gives folks a stake in discussions and in an economy from which they are usually shut out.
The Power of Community to Segregate or Liberate
In order to successfully realize projects that serve the cause of social justice, community control must include strong leadership that actively cultivates the principles of inclusion, solidarity, and equity.
Resident Democracy by Design in Maryland
Democracy is messy and takes effort and time. Knowing my neighbors and being jointly responsible for our shared spaces make that effort worth our time and help make us better people, with skills in making decisions together and practice caring for each other.
Where the Disenfranchised Can Voice Their Opinions
Community control of land involves the constant process of inviting the most disenfranchised members of our community to voice their opinions and feedback on how the land is being used. The community for us consists of families who have been negatively affected by slumlords in inner-city Miami.
New York City Needs to Stop Negotiating Rezonings From an Uneven Playing Field
What is the underlying dynamic that leads so many council members in low-income communities of color to approve neighborhood rezonings, despite community opposition and the likelihood of increased displacement pressure on existing residents?
When Domestic Violence and Utility Bill Debt Intersect
In Pennsylvania, domestic violence survivors are often not afforded the protections they are entitled to because many people are often unaware of the Responsible Utility Customer Protection Act and its provisions. A three-year pilot program aimed to change that.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 27
Climate Gentrification | A Marijuana Tax for Housing? | Homeownership Alone Can't Close the Wealth Gap | Illegal ICE Raids on Farms | Keeping An Eye on Opportunity Zones | More...
New Program Aims to Help Community Land Trusts Get to Scale
A new program invests in the belief that community land trusts can become more than a boutique housing solution.
What Black Panther-inspired Gift to Oakland Should Have Looked Like
Disney's Black Panther-inspired gift to Oakland children is great, but there is a way it could be better.
Homeowners Reap Profits While Fueling Housing Crisis
The widespread critique of California's SB 827 got me thinking about why nobody talks about those really profiting from land use decisions that inflate their property values: homeowners.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 20
NIMBYs, YIMBYs, PHIMBYs-Oh My! | Can Algorithms Make Equitable Cities? | Retail Segregation Takes a Toll | E.R. Visits and "Tough" Neighborhoods | Enough Innovation Already | More...
It’s Time to Build New, Mixed-Income Public Housing
An interview with Ryan Cooper, co-author of the report (with Peter Gowan), Social Housing in the United States, about current approaches to government intervention in the rental market, the politics of home ownership, why public housing needs to be mixed-income, and envisioning a society that provides adequate, affordable housing to all of its citizens.
Remember Slavic Village? It’s Back
A Cleveland neighborhood made famous as an epicenter of the foreclosure crisis works its way back to stability. Here’s how.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 13
Really, YIMBYs? | TOD Without Displacement | Tracking 80 Million Evictions | MLK's Campaign, Revitalized | Airbnb Hastening Demise of NOLA Culture? | Bike "Borrowing" for Equity | More
A Marketplace for Health and Housing to Exchange Money—Has the Time Come?
Why would there be a need for a marketplace that values health? The answer is simple: our current “investments” in health are not working.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson and His Perverse Actions on Fair Housing
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act, HUD Secretary Ben Carson is doing all he can to undermine its mission.
The Amazon Opportunity to Revitalize Urban Communities
It's not too late for cities competing to be the next home to Amazon to raise the issue of employer-assisted workforce housing.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 6
Gentrification Is Bad For One's Health | Housing Teachers-At School | Protecting Space for Local Business | TOD Doesn't Have to Displace | Community Artists Win in Court | More . . .
Displaced Portland Residents Given Priority for Homeownership
A Portland policy gives priority for housing funded by the city’s housing bureau to residents who were displaced, are at risk of displacement, or are the descendants of families who were displaced due to urban renewal in North and Northeast Portland neighborhoods.
Ask Yourself: Who Do Anti-Rent Control Policies Serve?
Whenever you hear (or read) anti-rent control arguments, ask the question: who benefits from banning rent control? And who is hurt?
Interview with Michael Bodaken, retiring director of the National Housing Trust
Shelterforce took the occasion of Michael Bodaken's retiring from the National Housing Trust to speak with him about how he got into housing, some of his favorite projects, and his recommendations for the field going forward.
Dear Business School Professors: You’re Wrong, Rent Control Works
A university study on rent control makes three crucial mistakes in its assessment of the policy's effect on San Francisco's housing market. Housing advocacy organization Tenants Together sets the record straight on rent control's role, and who is actually to blame for the city's unaffordability.
What—and Who—Is a “Nuisance”?
Why are nuisance ordinances proliferating nationwide, and who is disproportionately affected?
New Money on the Block: Funders for Housing and Opportunity
A new funding collaborative, Funders for Housing and Opportunity, has just launched. The collaborative, officially a project of the New Ventures Fund, involves (so far) nine large and well-known foundations.
Believe in CLTs? Make Them Sustainable
Though much fanfare is showered on the CLT model, land trusts often struggle to get off the ground because very little support is available for those trying to create one or for existing CLTs looking to expand.
How Poorly Maintained Bank-owned Homes Harm Black and Latino Communities
Bank-seized properties in these communities of color have higher rates of neglect, and the situation has prompted a lawsuit.
Housing Advocacy Needs Housing Voters
Methods from a successful organizing campaign from the past can inform the basis of a new electoral constituency around housing.
The Big Red Herring: The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Will Help Predators Identify...
HMDA is the key to preventing predatory behavior, not the cause of it, so how can an economics professor from George Washington University claim that HMDA can facilitate large-scale identity theft?
A Case of Construction Eviction in Queens
How tenant and rent protections failed the residents of eight rent-stabilized buildings in Queens.
Not Just Partners, But Neighbors: Health Care in Affordable Housing Developments
Offering on-site health care in housing developments makes sense. But developing and managing housing and health care facilities can be very different. How do you make them work together?