Housing

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?

If high home prices and rents are hallmarks of inequality, the actions of the Federal Reserve should give us pause. Its policy interventions have had profound effects on housing prices.

Investors have helped preserve more than 1,700 affordable housing units in the Washington, D.C., metro area.

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.

Angela Kaufman purchased what she thought would be her longtime home in a mobile home community. Less than a year after she moved, the park was sold and residents were told they had to go.

Deferred home maintenance can lead to serious structural, safety, and health issues. A new program in Pennsylvania aims to fill the gaps in home repair and weatherization programs.

Six years after Prop HHH was passed, the fund appears to be delivering on its housing construction goals in the 10-year timeline, but the measure is being routinely criticized on all sides for delays, rising costs, and being an inadequate fix to LA’s homelessness crisis.

“Fair market rents” are set by HUD and used to determine how much federal assistance programs will pay toward rent. But with rental costs rising so rapidly, they aren’t keeping up.

Sealing eviction records at the point of filing is an urgent step toward dismantling harmful tenant screening practices.

A: So far, researchers haven’t found that an increase in vouchers by itself causes rents to rise.

Cities, court systems, citizen groups, and affordable housing operators are crafting ways of responding to emergencies that reduce the risk of negative police interactions.