Housing

Vacant properties are so persistent in part because it’s too expensive to do anything with them. At least that’s the assumption. It’s much simpler, goes this reasoning, and more cost-effective, to construct and manage a new multifamily building than to try to rehab and manage single-family homes spread over a wide area. But what if that’s just not true?

Those of us who work in housing and housing policy know how complicated housing tenure can be. The most common forms of tenure, which describes the legal status under which […]

As a Texas houser and fair housing advocate, I have been an anxious and interested outside observer of the long-running fair housing lawsuit in my state. The U.S. Supreme Court’s […]

This Tuesday, advocates took to the microphone on the steps of Newark City Hall and spoke passionately about the city they love and their right to live there without threat […]

One of my first jobs as a young housing professional in the 1980s at a local public housing authority was to support site staff, both property managers and social workers, […]

Across the country, inequity is a defining issue of our time, and in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area, the examples are stark. According to the Brookings Institution, […]

As regular readers of Shelterforce know, with the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008, Congress provided $75 million to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to create the […]

In a recent post on my website, I wrote about the need for a new affordable housing policy—one that targets the 99 percent of housing already built and operating, rather […]

While local and state resources are increasingly stepping up as federal funding continues to be strained, it remains a question as to whether these actions and resources will be enough to meet affordable housing needs.

Before school Oliver used to collect baskets of wood that his father would sell. That was his way of contributing to the effort of saving money for a lot on […]

Editor’s Note: The following are excerpts from the keynote speech given by Nan Roman, the executive director of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, during a conference in July.   On […]

On Aug. 3, The Washington Post published a remarkable opinion piece by Charles Lane, one of the paper’s editorial writers, which fits squarely into the Post’s narrative about the perniciousness […]