Opinion

Press ‘Record’ To Catch Fair Housing Violators—If You Can

Fair housing testers often go undercover to expose discriminatory housing practices, but laws prohibiting recording conversations hamper investigations
a sign that promotes social distancing.

Three Lessons Learned from Working in Isolation

A New York-based organizer says although we may be physically divided due to social distancing, we can be emotionally bounded through our common purpose.
Two women in jackets and face masks hold up keys.

Shared Housing Tackles Loneliness in Homeless Services

Transitioning out of homelessness can be a lonely process. To address this, some homeless service providers are giving clients the option to share housing with someone they know, with each receiving their own bedroom.
A group of about 30 people stand in a large room with marble architectural details. All are smiling broadly. Three are holding signs: one says "#RightToCounsel" and two others say "Law Students for RTC."

Three Ways AFFH Has Advanced Housing Justice

Grassroots organizers have used the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule to strengthen communities in the past. These examples show what we should advocate for in a new AFFH rule. 
a street sign saying a neighborhood watch program is in force

Collective Empowerment or an Invitation to Vigilantes?

Jeremy Liu's post on combining “proactive” and “protective” services to both give people a greater sense of agency and help control costs for municipal budgets was an opening to discuss the ways community development...

Health Care Institutions Must Acknowledge Their Role in Neighborhood Change

If those in health care seek to develop new ways to help patients stay in their homes, they must also find ways to temper how they affect communities in which they reside.
A large affordable housing development with a large mural that includes Black musicians on the front wall.

Two Paths to Density: Profit vs People

As communities across the country begin promoting density to address the affordable housing crisis, they must grapple with how that housing will be built, and for whom.
AAPI community meeting

Anti-Displacement Organizing Should Start Here

Organizing in AAPI communities has challenges, but their location and composition make them key in the fight against gentrification. Here's why.

You Can’t Carbon Copy Community Ownership

Community development has long made attempts at wealth building, with a focus on trying to find successful or innovative models that can be replicated. And yet the transformational change we’ve sought hasn’t materialized. Displacement...
A row of large gray cylindrical water storage tanks on a roof. Behind them are heat pumps and other technical apparatus.

The Shift to Using More Electricity Will Change How Affordable Housing Is Built

Policymakers and building designers have gone from pushing for energy efficiency to focusing on reducing carbon emissions by using more electrical-based systems. What are some of the benefits and challenges of going all-electric, and how can affordable housers move forward?

Banks Can Earn CRA Credit for COVID Response—But Who’s Benefiting?

All banking activities, regardless of whether they benefit middle- and upper-income or low- and moderate-income people and communities, could count in the next round of CRA exams. This would further disadvantage communities that are already disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

So Your State Outlawed Inclusionary Zoning. Now What?

City officials can’t wait for the cavalry to solve their housing problems; they are going to have to do it themselves.
An extreme close-up of a dollar bill showing the dome of the U.S. Capitol

Federal and State Dollars Could Be Used to Force Change in Exclusionary Towns

Strict zoning policies keep housing unaffordable. But there are strategies governments can implement to change exclusionary housing policies and promote the construction of more affordable housing.

Better Business, Better Food…Better Community?

At a grand opening for a new retail market operated by a farm family, celebrants posed for a group photo on the sidewalk and cheered as the farmer remarked on the importance he placed...

Advancing Antiracism in Community Development

How can the community development field stay aligned with the movements that led to its rise in the first place?

How the Federal Reserve’s Monetary Policy Drives Housing Inequality

If high home prices and rents are hallmarks of inequality, the actions of the Federal Reserve should give us pause. Its policy interventions have had profound effects on housing prices.
CRA oped

Protecting the Community Reinvestment Act Is an Investment in Economic Justice

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation just released a set of proposed rules for the Community Reinvestment Act that threaten the very heart of the law.

How State and Local Governments Can Avoid Mass Evictions

Beyond the immediate need to stop mass evictions, there is much more that state and local officials can do to facilitate housing stability in a longer-term transition out of the pandemic emergency. The time for those critical measures is now.
Six people in winter coats and hats stand across the street from a construction site. At the center, a young man in a cloth cap stands at a podium gesturing as he speaks.

How Atlantic Yards Failed to Deliver Affordable Homeownership (With a Hakeem Jeffries Cameo)

Atlantic Yards demonstrates that developers' promises must be backed up in contracts, otherwise economic and political cycles can undermine them. 

Green Shoots of Innovation

When the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed earlier this year, I wrote that it had the potential to be the greatest poverty-fighting tool we’ve seen in generations. Well, we’re more...