A Neighborhood in Brooklyn Says “No” to Worker Exploitation
A language barrier, I believe, has muddled my conversation with Nieves Padilla. “We’re fighting to get the workers on Knickerbocker Avenue the minimum wage,”...
Winning a Land Bank We Can Trust
Lessons from Philadelphia's Campaign to Take Back Vacant Land
Housing Set-Asides: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
In August 2002, Kevin Jackson, director of the Chicago Rehab Network, sent a letter out to network members and supporters to introduce a campaign...
Bringing Down the Barriers to Enrollment in Federal Programs
Constance Etheridge went to the Department of Social Services office in South Carolina for a simple reason: she and her children were hungry and...
“No Evictions. We Won’t Move!”
"This land is too valuable to permit poor people to park on it."
-Justin Herman, former executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1970
The...
Strategy Shift Yields Jobs from Marriott
A local organization affiliated with National People's Action, a 27-year-old coalition of grassroots neighborhood groups, won a public meeting with Chicago Police Superintendent Terry...
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.
How Organizing for Justice Helps Your Mental Health
How do social justice, organizing, and mental health interact? Shelterforce chats with clinical social worker Dawn Belkin Martinez to find out.
New Jersey’s Campaign Against Lead
The effects of lead poisoning on a child’s physical and emotional development and cognitive ability are well known. An investigation that ran two years...
Greater Boston Interfaith Organization
Massachusetts has one of the nation’s worst housing cost problems. Its rents and home prices have risen at one of the steepest rates in...
Building A Power Base
The first and most important battle organizers face is working with members to build an independent power base. Building an organization, and forcing a...
Learning to Love Sticky Cities
Dispelling stereotypes, the Great Lakes Urban Exchange has set out to unite the Rust Belt, starting with restoration of the Great Lakes region and ending with equitable, sustainable transformation.
Tenant Organizing When Rising Rent Isn’t the (Main) Issue
Tenant organizing has been re-energized in coastal cities where housing costs are soaring. But tenants need a voice in the rest of the country too—and they are organizing to get one.
New CDC Trade Association Lays Infrastructure
As sequestration takes hold and Congress wrestles with FY 2014 budget negotiations, the affordable housing and community development field is in a fragile state....
Helping the Mayor Get Your Way
“We need more buses!” That’s what organizers with Miami’s congregation-based organizing group PACT (People Acting for Community Together) heard loud and clear as they...
Housing Advocates Track Indoor Environmental Hazards to Spur Improvements
When the community health promoters of San Diego’s Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) say they’re doing pollution testing, many people probably imagine samples from the...
Living in the Buffer
Preventing the development of new affordable housing in close proximity to freeways isn't a just solution to the health effects of LA's air pollution.
No Place for Us
The low-income students living in Irvine Meadows West, a historic trailer park at the University of California, Irvine, received more than a liberal arts...
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...
Renters Rising
How San Francisco’s housing movement turned an assault on renters into a victory