A Word of Caution: The Forgotten Photograph
The trouble with many of us, and with our culture as a whole, is that we don’t take time to “relate,” to connect formally...
Clearing the Air
The Bronx neighborhood of Hunts Point has one of the highest asthma rates in the world. Home to the world's largest food distribution center,...
Homeownership Counselors—And Organizers, Too!
Northwest Side Housing Center combines counseling and organizing to empower homeowners facing foreclosure.
Fighting for Worker's Rights in Maine
Years of alleged wage, immigration, safety, and civil rights violations, environmental sanctions, and other infractions at the DeCoster egg farm in Turner, Maine, have...
Affordable, But for Whom?
How a box of felt pieces helps organizers help New York communities advocate for their real affordable housing needs
Putting “Community” Back in “CRA”
The Community Reinvestment Act and regulators have been unable to hold banks accountable to distant and distinct local communities—so nonprofits have stepped in to do the heavy lifting.
Grassroots Advocacy Strengthens Housing Trust Fund
Washington state housing activists came together in 1997 to launch the Housing Our Community Campaign to increase the state Housing Trust Fund (HTF) to...
Not Another Parking Lot
Fight City Hall - and WIN!
It took almost a year, but solid strategic planning and tenacious grassroots organizing paid off for affordable housing activists...
Once a Landmark, Always a Landmark
The Winthrop, a grand hotel converted to affordable housing in the 1970s, was at the center of a conflict between the city’s hopes for...
Organizing with the State on Your Side
In California, municipalities are required by law to plan for their fair share of affordable housing. Has this put housing advocates out of a...
Occupy Makes Space for Community Advocates
By smashing the wall of media silence about America’s wealth and income divide, the Occupy movement has opened a dramatically new terrain for organizations...
A Battle for Wards in New Jersey’s Hub City
How an organization of residents crossing age, race, and socioeconomic lines took on an unyielding City Hall known for quelling grass-roots efforts and (almost) overtook the political party machinery.
Tenant Organizing Wins One-for-One Replacement
In 1996, a small group of highly organized residents of North Beach public housing in San Francisco began to raise questions about the fate...
Housing Is Health: Ballot Initiatives in California Approved
A conversation with three county supervisors who were instrumental in moving affordable housing ballot measures forward in the California Bay Area by bringing in the health factor.
Living Wage Lives in L.A.
It was 1996, and an economic Godzilla loomed over Los Angeles, coming to crush the city's precarious prosperity. That, at least, was the way...
The Fight to Save Section 8
In April 2004, when the Bush Administration launched a major assault on the program that helps Marion Brady pay her rent, she sprang into...
Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition Wins Railroad Jobs
In 1997, residents of Los Angeles area neighborhoods in the path of what will be the largest public/private rail transportation project in the country...
Artists as Organizers
Creative placemaking means more than merely adding public art into the mix. To be sustainable it needs to build relationships—and power.
Building a Better City: Europe’s Affordable Housing Standard
In the United States, nonprofit builders of affordable housing often compete against each other as well as against larger, better-capitalized private builders for limited...
Cross-Community Collaboration on NYC’s Municipal ID Program
Lack of identification hurts many different groups in different ways—from the homeless to immigrants, and they all need to be considered in the fight for an alternative.