Neighborhood Change

As community demographics shift and there’s neighborhood change, what are the issues affecting longstanding and new residents alike? When is change desirable, and when is it undesirable, and how can it be turned to the benefit of those who need it most?

The Tenacity of Dysfunction

The word resilience has different meanings in different fields. In the field of material science, it refers to the ability of a material to regain its shape after it has been stressed.  A rubber...

Will Columbia Take Manhattanville?

Balancing an Ivy League university's expansion plan with a Harlem neighborhood's needs is a tricky business, especially when eminent domain is in the mix.
A round blue and orange sign on an urban street corner with a train on it reads "Welcome to the Ironbound"

Tales of Three Cities

Even after neighboring Hoboken turned from working-class enclave to exclusive high-cost outpost, some think that will never happen to Newark...

Forget NSP, Tax Credits Will Save Neighborhoods

If we want to revitalize neighborhoods, we must recognize that it’s a multiyear project. It should be an income tax credit program for three reasons:

Gentrification: Is Pop Culture Getting It Right?

Gentefied. In the Heights. Vida. How do storylines and portrayals of gentrification in cinema stack up to how it plays out in real life?

Help Restore Post-Katrina NOLA Neighborhoods by Tearing Down the Freeway

As we reflect on the five years that have passed since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, we can observe both progress and much, much left to be done. Speaking at Xavier University yesterday, President...

In New Jersey’s Hub City, A Push to Change Government Gets Big Government Resistance

In the 1970s, New Brunswick, NJ was struggling. Like other New Jersey cities experiencing the hangover of race riots of the 1960s, the schools were in decline, white flight began to set in, and...

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?

Talking Gentrification: Shelterforce Joins Shot & Chaser Podcast

What does gentrification mean? Is there anything that can stop it? Shelterforce's Miriam Axel-Lute joins the Shot & Chaser podcast to talk all things gentrification.

Defensible Space

In the Five Oaks community of Dayton, Ohio, during 1991, violent crimes increased by 77 percent, robberies by 77 percent, vandalism by 38 percent, and overall crime by 16 percent. Drug dealers, pimps, and...

Cory Booker’s #Neighborhood

If there was some radio silence on Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker's Twitter feed on Tuesday, it was only because he was delivering the Democratic Party platform as the DNC...
An orange and brown playground apparatus including a slide, monkey bars, and a treehouse, sits on a bed of wood chips in a grassy park on a sunny day. Four children of varying skin tones play on the equipment. Beyond the park area a man in uniform watches the playground and behind him is a clapboard house.

Rebuilding After Trauma: Public Spaces in Cleveland

Traumatic events, and the ongoing traumas of vacancy and disinvestment, can be strongly associated with the places where they occurred. In Cleveland, several organizations are bringing new function and meaning to traumatized spaces.
Mural on wall with faces of girls looking into the distance.

Art in the Face of Gentrification

Four representatives of New York City organizations discuss their employment of art and artists to empower residents in the face of gentrification.

In Defense of Asian American Neighborhoods

How do you address a history of anti-Asian housing discrimination? Not by destroying Asian American communities.

An Urban School Reduces Violence . . . With Nonviolence

When students feel like they are in jail when at school and the adults around them consider them all potential criminals, how do they act? In a...
Image of Chicago's 606 trail, which many housing advocates say contributed to local gentrification

Keeping Gentrification From Following Green Space

LA organizers work with park professionals on policies to allow green space investment in neighborhoods that have lacked it without paving the way for displacement.
porch party

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.
westlake mural

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

Author Roundtable

Shelterforce authors discuss the roles of place, mobility, and displacement on health and neighborhoods.

Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine, On the Verge

Cincinnati’s historic and very centrally located Over-the-Rhine neighborhood is poised to become one of America’s greatest revitalization stories, in the process creating a national exemplar of green, sustainable development. But a lot of...