The Latest

Stock image of small gray house, perhaps a dollhouse, with peaked roof and white shutters, surrounded by stacks of pennies, nickels, and quarters. Some of the coin stacks are higher than the house, others have collapsed into piles in front of the house.

Explore Articles in this Topic

Search & Filter Within this Topic

filter by Content Type

filter by Date Range

search by Keyword

home with sold sign in front
Equity

Equitable Tax Reform Begins at Home(ownership)

Talk of tax reform has reached a fever pitch, but most Americans don’t realize just how high the stakes are and what impact the final legislation could have on their own financial security for years to come.

Name tag pasted to a wall
Community Development Field

When Bad Names Get in the Way of Good Policy

Today, America is a place where symbols are often more important than the causes or deeds they describe. With social media and the 24-hour news cycle all competing for attention, […]

sign at 2014 brown v. board rally
Equity

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.

Organizing

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.

Photo courtesy of Right to the City Alliance.
Equity

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.”

senator elizabeth warren
Policy

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.

Buildings composed of lottery tickets.
Housing

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.

Brick apartment building
Housing

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.

Dean Shareski via flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
Housing Advocacy

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.

Four hands holding money up in the air.
Housing

Which Agencies Should Pay to End Family Homelessness?

When families have stable housing, the benefits are widespread. And perhaps that has been the problem.

Row of trailer homes with mountains in the background.
Housing

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.

A key in focus
Financial System

Despite Progress, States Have Work to do to Ensure Access to Affordable Rental Housing and Homeownership

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?