Stop Talking About Displacement
A well informed community organizing effort with a targeted purpose should be the first line of defense in protecting opportunities for wealth building and access to opportunities for upward mobility in working class communities as they experience inevitable changes.
Place Matters, But Place Changes
“Place matters, but place changes,” University of Southern California professor Manuel Pastor observed at the opening plenary at PolicyLink’s 5th Equity Summit, held this...
Gentrification and Public Schools: It’s Complicated
An influx of more affluent families and their resources and advocacy is just what every struggling school needs, right? Well . . .
Interview with HUD Secretary Julian Castro
Shelterforce got a chance to speak with Secretary Julian Castro about some of the current ways in which he’s working to make HUD a force for good in people’s lives, and what steps there are left to be taken.
Safe Havens
Housing first, yes, but then services, recreation, education: These are all pillars to building strong communities, and most importantly, strong people.
Author Roundtable
Shelterforce authors discuss the roles of place, mobility, and displacement on health and neighborhoods.
Q: Is a Land Bank the Same as a Land Trust?
A: Nope. They are totally different, though complementary tools. This chart will walk you through the differences.
It’s Not Actually About Ownership
Private Property and Public Power: Eminent Domain in Philadelphia,
by Debbie Becher. Oxford University Press, 2014. 334pp. $30.50 (paper)
Purchase here.
Gentrification Is More Widespread Than We Think
In Miriam Axel-Lute’s recent post here, “Place Matters But Place Changes,” she references “a study done by Governing magazine that found a 20 percent...
Interview with Tony Pickett, Urban Land Conservancy
Probably no one in the country is in a better position than Tony Pickett to talk about efforts to include long-term affordable housing in two of the nation’s largest Transit Oriented Development (TOD) ventures: Denver’s FasTracks plan, and Atlanta’s Beltline project.
It Takes a Village to Age In Place
A major challenge that has come with sprawl over the last half-century has been that growing up, maturing, and growing older has required, more...
Portland Gets Proactive on Gentrification
We've been talking about gentrification and displacement a bunch here on Rooflines recently. One of the perennial problems in dealing with...
Arts Build Community
CDCs now recognize that art and cultural activities can be useful tools toward building a community's identity, meaning, and spirit. But bank regulators have not yet reached a sufficient level of comfort with this new strategy.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, May 4
A Trauma-Centered Approach to Youth Violence in Cleveland | We May Know Who Benefits From Port Covington | What Housing Crisis? | Clearing Homeless Encampments in Philadelphia | Restaurant Tax for Affordable Housing
How Artists Helped a Housing Organization Adapt to Demographic Change
An in-depth look at the lessons one housing organization learned after receiving a multimillion grant to integrate arts and culture strategies in its work. Has the organization changed the way it operates?
Interpreting Segregation
The Poverty & Race Research Action Council has received a number of inquiries on the widely publicized report from the...
What Happens Once the Artists Arrive?
Conventional wisdom says that artists and gay people are tend to be pioneers in distressed neighborhoods, signs that change is...
A Community Planning Process–Even A Good One–Is Not Enough
Just the inherent language of community “transformation” signals that what has come before is not worth holding on to, and renders the history of these public housing sites insignificant.
How to Fight Vacancy? Do It All
The fight against vacancy in Youngstown, Ohio, shows us that we shouldn’t rely on a single strategy—everything is needed at once.
What Does ‘Gentrification’ Really Mean?
The word "gentrification" has become a widespread and highly debated term. We’ve found that there are (at least) four broad kinds of things that people mean when they say they are concerned about “gentrification."