Housing

News from—and affecting—the community development world. This week: fast food swamps, Seattle has too many apartments, criminal justice, basic income pilot, more.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

News from—and affecting—the community development world. This week: custom job searches for veterans, success in the land trust movement, middle neighborhoods, manufactured housing, senior cost burden at all-time high, more.

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.

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?

Whole Foods Employees Seek to Unionize, Your Job Won’t Save You From Homelessness, Rent-to-own May Equal Jail Time

An arts collaboration comes up with a creative spark to facilitate discussions about neighborhood change.

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.