Public Land Should be Used for Public Good
When a vacant lot in Oakland was close to becoming the home of a 24-story, market-rate development, local activists worked together to prevent it from happening.
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.
Sitting on a Porch Can Be Good for Your Health
To help combat isolation and reweave the connecting fabric that had been lost, a neighborhood arts center launches an initiative that eventually became a movement.
Starting Conversations with Public Art
An arts collaboration comes up with a creative spark to facilitate discussions about neighborhood change.
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
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.
Chicago Activist Convention Shifts Focus to Community Benefits Campaign
Standing on a truck in front of a group of several hundred protesters, Tom Gordon expressed a feeling shared often at the ONE Northside...
Seattle Takes Ownership of Its Displacement Challenge
Seattle is tackling displacement by aiming to reduce the systemic and structural barriers in connecting marginalized populations to opportunity.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
The Displacement Crisis of Immigrant-Owned Small Businesses
Growth of new business is a sign of a robust economy, but New York City’s true success hinges on ensuring that all residents have access to opportunity and community resources.
Game of Chance: Mass Eviction in Pittsburgh
In Pittsburgh, hundreds of Penn Plaza residents were given 90-day eviction notices after their building was slated for demolition. The mass eviction was well known throughout Pittsburgh, but few knew what was happening inside the building.
Myths and Misconceptions About Demolition in Cleveland
Demolition can generate emotional reactions, especially in places with a history of urban renewal. But critics of demolishing any vacant homes are ignoring the evidence.
Poem: “Gentrification”
I have seen a neighborhood eat itself for dinner
The Problem with “We Have to Do Something”
This summer, Eve Ewing, a sociologist of race and education at the University of Chicago, wrote an article called “The Chicago Negro and the...
We Are All NIMBYs…Sometimes
If we built enough housing, we would still need subsidized housing for many people, but market prices would be low enough that most people could afford them. But we’ve chosen not to. And the reason we give for that choice, more than any other, is that we are trying to preserve or improve the character of our communities.
Sustainable for Whom? Large-Scale Sustainable Urban Development Projects and “Environmental Gentrification”
Absent a fundamentally new approach to redevelopment planning that places housing affordability at the center of the process, large-scale sustainable development projects are likely to become engines of what has been termed “environmental gentrification.”