It Takes Strong Roots to Achieve Climate Justice
Throughout 2018's six day Sol-2-Sol climate justice convening, indigenous people from the occupied U.S. territories and lands from around the world led many of the actions and activities, especially those directly impacted.
Hey YIMBYs, Thanks for Listening
The path to winning a pro-equity, pro-growth majority involves more (not less) investment in fighting displacement.
Taking the Bus: Nonprofit Conferences and Integrity of Purpose
Nonprofits advocate for local transit spending, but annual conference logistics don't typically include bus route information for attendees.
Small Investments Can Yield Big Returns. Review of A Few Thousand Dollars
Over a dozen stories of how Americans from all different backgrounds have managed to leverage a few thousand dollars to lead lives that have helped thousands of other people, and strategies to reinvigorate a movement to influence asset building policy nationally.
What the Fight for Universal Rent Control in New York Can Learn from Prop...
Voters have set up an unprecedented fight between progressive housing groups and real estate interests. It will be a brutal fight. For proof of this, housing advocates in New York need only to look at California.
State Policies Play a Central Role in the Fight Against Vacant Property
Abandoned and vacant properties seem like a quintessentially local problem. But state policies have a huge effect on how well municipalities can fight it.
How to Fund Land Banks
The number of land banks grew dramatically in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. So has our understanding of how to successfully fund them.
Affordable Housing Was On the Ballot, Here Are Some Election Results
A majority of voters nationwide supported funding for affordable housing as state and local governments try to address the problem in the absence of an adequate federal response.
Here’s What We Actually Know About Market-Rate Housing Development and Displacement
For-profit housing cannot meet most renters’ needs, and that’s by design. So when you talk about market-rate construction and displacement, use the following literature review as reference.
Dear Presidential Hopefuls: The People Want to Talk to You About Housing
Before we celebrate its resurgence as a national political issue, and certainly before we set out to solve for housing injustice, we should understand why America has overlooked housing.
Tackling Exclusionary Housing Policy in California
Diving into the issue of exclusionary practices that have exacerbated the housing crisis and offering some policy solutions.
Warren Housing Bill Presents a Clear Choice on CRA
Senator Elizabeth Warren and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have offered contrasting visions for the future of CRA. How do they differ, and what would the implications for historically disinvested communities be?
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.
The Warren Housing Bill: Ready to Take On The Affordability Crisis?
Sen. Warren's proposed bill represents the kind of holistic housing strategy we need from the federal government in facilitating affordable housing for all Americans in all cities and towns who have been left out, locked out, or exploited over decades by the national housing market.
Can Cities Fix Their Polarization Problem? A Review of The Divided City
How different would cities look and how different would people’s lives be if those with the power to set policy and invest resources prioritized the most vulnerable residents and the neighborhoods they live in?
Can Housers Unite Around the Warren Proposal?
Every once in a while someone says: "What would it look like if we came together and were united on a federal policy for housing?" It seems like the answer to "who would actually do it?" might currently be Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Bold Political Leadership on Housing Policy? In 2018? You Heard Right
Local elected officials are having to re-examine the risks and rewards of making housing and housing affordability a political priority. Could one mayor's bold steps on housing policy be a national bellwether?
Fair Housing at 50: At the Root, It’s Still Race Over Place
We should have known better. The Kerner Commission taught us that race matters most, not place. But it also embedded in our psyches the equation of Black = central city and the similarly absolute equation of white = suburbs.
The Most Important Housing Law Passed in 1968 Wasn’t the Fair Housing Act
At the Aug. 1, 1968 signing ceremony, President Johnson proclaimed “Today, we are going to put on the books of American law what I genuinely believe is the most farsighted, the most comprehensive, the most massive housing program in all American history.” He was right.
HUD Continues to Retreat From Fair Housing Duties
In the name of “local control,” the federal agency has abandoned enforcement of civil rights law because it believes it's too troublesome.
Is a Home with Lead Hazards Really “Affordable”?
The cost of housing is not simply the mortgage, rent, and utilities, but the individual and community health, education, and social costs associated with low-quality, unstable, and unhealthy housing.
The Jobs-Housing Hamster Wheel
A deeper dive into the cause of high housing prices reveals that it is not the price of lumber, bricks, or labor that accounts for high or low housing prices—the controlling factor most often is the price of land.
An Old American Struggle, Always New
Color and Character is an introduction to the seminal and unresolved struggle over integration and racial equality in America.
Housing Advocates—Seize This Moment!
I’ve been working to address housing affordability since the late 1970s. There has never been this much media and public focus on the issue.
How to Kill Land Speculation
People live in communities because natural and human-made resources make them productive places to live, work, and play. Because geographically based resources are gifts...
HUD Was Wrong To Suspend This Important Tool For Racial Equity
On May 8, 2018, three fair housing groups took action to preserve an important tool for community empowerment and equity.
Here’s Why Costa-Hawkins Repeal Would Be Revolutionary for Housing in California
Rent control is one of the foremost demands of grassroots movements organizing around housing justice today. To activists across the country, from Los Angeles...
Participatory Budgeting: Why Not Fix Everyone’s Sink?
Participatory budgeting offers a glimpse of how a more civically engaged society might work, but it’s also a distraction.
The Not-So Hidden Truths About the Segregation of America’s Housing
Our conversation with The Color of Law author Richard Rothstein on uncovering truths about our not-so distant history of federally mandated racial segregation in housing.
Shelter Shorts, The Week in Community Development—May 11
Democrat’s Housing Proposal | Tracking SNAP Recipients Is a Bad Idea | Including Antiracism Practices Into The Housing First Model | An Asylum-Seeker Game? | Mick, Can We Rate You?
Democrats Propose Actually Meaningful Public Housing Funding
Whether it’s the need to recapture some momentum in the 2018 election season, or the growing effect of the housing crisis on a wider range of people, the Democratic Party has proposed investing $70 billion in public housing.
California’s Endless Housing “Crisis”
In many ways, the recognition of the current “crisis” stems from middle- and upper-income Californians finally being impacted, and using their power to push for solutions that would address their situation. But their solutions ignore another population.
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
New York City Needs to Stop Negotiating Rezonings From an Uneven Playing Field
What is the underlying dynamic that leads so many council members in low-income communities of color to approve neighborhood rezonings, despite community opposition and the likelihood of increased displacement pressure on existing residents?
When Domestic Violence and Utility Bill Debt Intersect
In Pennsylvania, domestic violence survivors are often not afforded the protections they are entitled to because many people are often unaware of the Responsible Utility Customer Protection Act and its provisions. A three-year pilot program aimed to change that.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 27
Climate Gentrification | A Marijuana Tax for Housing? | Homeownership Alone Can't Close the Wealth Gap | Illegal ICE Raids on Farms | Keeping An Eye on Opportunity Zones | More...
Homeowners Reap Profits While Fueling Housing Crisis
The widespread critique of California's SB 827 got me thinking about why nobody talks about those really profiting from land use decisions that inflate their property values: homeowners.
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 Amazon Opportunity to Revitalize Urban Communities
It's not too late for cities competing to be the next home to Amazon to raise the issue of employer-assisted workforce housing.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, April 6
Gentrification Is Bad For One's Health | Housing Teachers-At School | Protecting Space for Local Business | TOD Doesn't Have to Displace | Community Artists Win in Court | More . . .
Data Drives the Movement for Economic Justice
A government report concludes that residents of low- and moderate-income Census tracts have as much access to bank branches as residents in middle- and upper-income tracts in rural areas and large metropolitan areas. Yet access to bank services for low- and moderate-income consumers is still being lost. Why is that?
Ask Yourself: Who Do Anti-Rent Control Policies Serve?
Whenever you hear (or read) anti-rent control arguments, ask the question: who benefits from banning rent control? And who is hurt?
Dear Business School Professors: You’re Wrong, Rent Control Works
A university study on rent control makes three crucial mistakes in its assessment of the policy's effect on San Francisco's housing market. Housing advocacy organization Tenants Together sets the record straight on rent control's role, and who is actually to blame for the city's unaffordability.
CRA “Reform” Under Trump Threatens Communities of Color and the 99 Percent
Banks enjoy consumer and taxpayer-funded privileges, such as deposit insurance, and not too long ago, subsidized trillion-dollar bailouts. It’s not too much to insist that they invest a fair share of those dollars back into all of our communities.
What—and Who—Is a “Nuisance”?
Why are nuisance ordinances proliferating nationwide, and who is disproportionately affected?
The Important Deadline Coming Up for All Governors
States have a deadline to submit their Opportunity Zones nominations. What factors will be weighed in the decision process, and what will federal designation mean to distressed neighborhoods?
Could Gentrification Be Changing D.C. Schools for the Better?
While gentrification's benefits and drawbacks have been discussed at length, one aspect has been largely overlooked: its effect on neighborhood schools.
The Big Red Herring: The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Will Help Predators Identify...
HMDA is the key to preventing predatory behavior, not the cause of it, so how can an economics professor from George Washington University claim that HMDA can facilitate large-scale identity theft?
Reshaping Housing Policy with a Health Lens
In Georgia, public health practitioners used a Health Impact Assessment to suggest changes to the allocation plan for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. This is how they made it happen.
Duty to Serve: A Boon for Shared Equity Homeownership
Shared equity homeownership programs just had a big win.
Integration as a Means of Combating Inequality
A review of books that delve into the harmful and far-reaching effects of racial segregation and solutions that integration measures can provide.
Endangering Community Investment with Tax “Reform”
There wasn’t one Republican senator who was willing say tax reform aimed at growing our economy should augment, not diminish, community investment.
Say It Loud: Renters’ Rights are Civil Rights!
Private developers and public agencies are finally investing in neighborhoods near transit and jobs—where many low-income communities of color have lived for generations—and as a result, are being pushed out just as resources in their neighborhoods are increasing.
Would Trump’s CRA Reform Really “Do No Harm?”
NCRC examined every single Community Reinvestment Act evaluation for mid-size banks conducted during 2016.
In California, a Victorious “Fix” for Inclusionary Housing
It’s time for more states to do what it takes to pass enabling legislation for inclusionary housing, adding this valuable policy tool to the fight for more affordable housing opportunities.
Proposed Changes to the Mortgage Interest Deduction: Some Simple Facts
The discourse around proposed changes to the federal tax system, especially between talk show pundits and economists and politicians—each with their own allegiances—is devoid...
Integration—We’ve Been Doing It All Wrong
I recently had a revelation about the American approach to racial integration: We've been doing it all wrong, and it's had disastrous effects on African Americans.
In Detroit, the Fight for Community Benefits Begins Anew
For equitable development activists, Detroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance may seem like major progress. And it is—just not how they may imagine it to be.
Block by Block, the Renters Movement is Growing
“The string of victories in 2017 are a direct product of renters building power on the ground. Renters, faced with a historic housing crisis, are getting organized to change immediate conditions on the ground and build a movement to transform the way land and housing are treated in the country.”
Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward
In 2010, the scattered enforcement of consumer protection and fair lending laws across several agencies would end. The CFPB would have broad oversight over banks and non-banks, and though not perfect, this model has produced some impressive results.
Four Simple Fixes for Mandatory Inclusionary Housing
For the past two years I’ve worked as a housing lottery project manager for a small affordable housing developer and have found that, in spite of De Blasio’s bold initiative, the program often fails to efficiently and adequately serve the very people for which it has been designed.
Newly-Suspended HUD Rule Would Have Expanded Access to Neighborhood Opportunity
After years-long notice and comment periods, a final rule on using small area Fair Market Rents to determine housing choice voucher payment levels was supposed to take effect. However, the Trump administration has recently announced a two-year suspension of the rule.
Poverty Is a Choice—Says The House Budget
Tax brackets, tax breaks, and just how much more rich the rich will become are all important details, no doubt, but among those details runs a single, shining, unifying message: Some people are worth investing in, and some are not.
Which Agencies Should Pay to End Family Homelessness?
When families have stable housing, the benefits are widespread. And perhaps that has been the problem.
A Policy Agenda for Manufactured Home Owners
In Minnesota, ten mobile home communities have closed in the past twenty-five years, and no new ones have opened. This uncertainty affects nearly 3 million Americans who are residents in the nation’s 50,000 manufactured housing communities. While most of these homeowners own their own homes, they rent the land, leaving them vulnerable to dramatic rent increases, arbitrary rules, and even eviction.
Despite Progress, States Have Work to do to Ensure Access to Affordable Rental Housing...
If expanding access to homeownership can reverse the trends of growing racial wealth inequality, why are we seeing so many states roll back the supports that make homeownership possible?
California Takes Historic Step Toward Affordable Housing for All
Amid a housing crisis in California, legislators last week approved a historic package of bills that will shape the future of housing policy in...
10 Ways to Talk About Inclusionary Housing, Differently
We need to talk about inclusionary housing in a different way that circumvents common misperceptions and creates a new narrative for policymakers in moderate markets and more conservative political climates. Here are 10 messages to help frame your conversations.
The Community Reinvestment Act at 40: A Careful Review of the Reviews
A review of HUD's Cityscape issue, which is devoted to reviews and studies of the Community Reinvestment Act at its 40th anniversary.
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.
Defending DACA Is a Moral and Economic Imperative
President Donald Trump has decided to end the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants. Over the course of its five-year history,...
In Spite of HUD, Fair Housing Process Can Help Communities
Last year, Philadelphia was one of the first cohorts to go through the AFFH process, a fair housing assessment mandated by HUD to discover...
Civil Rights Organizations on Hurricane Relief Efforts
Throughout what we know will be a long recovery over the coming weeks, months, and years, Shelterforce hopes to share the stories of the...
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.”
If We Want the Arts in Baltimore, We Need Its Artists
Artists have left their mark on Station North and paved the way for an arts district, but the organically-developed communal live/work spaces that play such a vital role in helping make Baltimore an arts mecca are an endangered species.
After a Far Fall, Is Louisiana Becoming a Better Place for its Lower Income...
When the 2017 Prosperity Now Scorecard was published last month, it was no surprise that Louisiana ranked second-to-last among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as it typically falls somewhere near the bottom. In many ways, the Scorecard confirmed what we already knew: that most Louisiana families, especially low-income families and families of color, are not faring well financially. What was surprising, however, was how far Louisiana had fallen.
The “Greeding Out” of Affordable Housing
There have been a number of stories in the papers over the last two months that, from my perspective, are connected. Unfortunately, their common denominator is the demise of affordable housing caused by the malignant neglect of government at all levels.
Administration’s Assault on Workers Continues in Congress
A proposed 20 percent reduction to the Department of Labor's overall budget would make working people less safe, and will discourage them from speaking up when abuses happen.
Trump Era a Time to Build Power, Not Buildings
This is a time that calls for us to start thinking a little less like an “industry” and more like a movement.
7 Policies to End Family Homelessness
Improving the well-being of homeless children and their families led Enterprise Community Partners, Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, and New Destiny Housing to convene a Family Homelessness Task Force comprised of over 40 organizations.
The Silent Expansion of Fiscal Control Boards in the U.S.
The power and process of boards that take control of a city or territory's finances is becoming more generalized, although they affect local democracy, impose austerity measures without controls, and lack mechanisms to evaluate their efficiency.
A Jobs-Housing Fit
The Bay Area can benefit from a clearer framework for understanding what the housing needs of our region actually are and evaluating how housing production is meeting those needs. A Jobs-Housing Fit is that framework.
Trump’s Upside-Down Plan: Tax Cuts Come at the Expense of Working Families
This past Wednesday, President Donald Trump released a one-page outline of a tax plan that he says provides tax relief for the middle class, but in reality, the plan is basically a massive tax cut for the rich. Like the American Health Care Act, which actually was also a massive tax cut for the wealthy disguised as health care reform, this plan is also a massive tax cut for people who need it the least. This time, it is merely disguised as “tax relief” and “simplification.”
Preliminary HUD Budget Shows Carson Lied in His Confirmation Hearing Too
The Washington Post reported today that a preliminary HUD budget cuts $6 billion—eliminating Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and...
Carson Confirmed. So About Those Other HUD Jobs…
Ben Carson has been confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to the weak...
CFPB: Government for the People
Those of us who work in regulated industries, such as banking institutions and credit unions, often succumb to the...
Carson Tries to Please Everyone in Confirmation Hearing, Mostly Succeeds
Triage is in effect among those opposed to the incoming administration and the president-elect's cabinet picks. This morning’s Senate...
Time for a Job Guarantee
In various economic pundit conversations on Twitter, the new target of scorn is Universal Basic Income (UBI). Supporters of...
GOP Tax Plan Takes Mortgage Interest Deduction Unfairness Off the Charts
Let's raise the standard deduction and lower tax rates to give everyone a tax cut!
It should not surprise you that since this is a...
The Real Social Engineering Ben Carson Needs to Address
HUD is the nation’s primary enforcer of the Fair Housing Act. This is one obligation Ben Carson will assume...
How CRA Can Promote Integration in Gentrifying Neighborhoods
Gentrification—the process of neighborhood demographic and economic change in which middle- and upper-income people move into lower-income neighborhoods, increasing...
All the Fury Over CFPB Ignores Its Modest Mission
Ever since its creation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been the focus of heated controversy, with banks...
The Foreclosure King Ascends to Treasury
There is considerable unease in the housing and community development world about the future of federal policy, including support for vouchers, fair housing,...
No, Housing Policy Really Could Get Done Next Year
Housing didn’t feature prominently in the 2016 presidential campaigns, and while we might wish it had gotten more attention,...
Malign Neglect? Urban Policy in the Trump Era
To paraphrase physicist Niels Bohr, (or maybe it was Yogi Berra), “predicting is difficult, especially when it’s about the...
On Clinton, Obama, Trump, and the Failures of Liberal Urban Policy
In the closing days of the seemingly endless 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, it became increasingly clear to political observers...
Some HUD Secretary Possibilities Are Serious–Others Laughable
Attention has been rightly focused this past week on the fact that the...
As Affordability Worsens, State and Local Governments Act on their Own
While local and state resources are increasingly stepping up as federal funding continues to be strained, it remains a question as to whether these actions and resources will be enough to meet affordable housing needs.
Why Are Biased Banks Getting High CRA Marks from Regulators?
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) statute has a statement of purpose affirming that banks “are required by law to...
Fairness and The Financial System
Trying to bring fairness to financial transactions for everyday people has long been both an avocation and passion for...