Dot’s Home, a Computer Game, Addresses History of Housing Discrimination
A new video game aims to educate players on the various housing barriers facing Black Americans through history. How well does it do that?
The Racial Wealth Gap Begins With Our Tax Code
Dorothy A. Brown’s The Whiteness of Wealth breaks down the deleterious effect our tax code has had on Black lives. Crown, 2021, 288 pp., $27 (hardcover); $17 (softcover).
Fighting for Their Hometown in The Place That Makes Us
A review of the 2020 documentary, The Place That Makes Us, directed by Karla Murthy. 70 minutes.
Perspectives on the Community Land Trust
An interview with John Emmeus Davis, Line Algoed, and María E. Hernández-Torrales, editors of On Common Ground: International Perspectives on the Community Land Trust.
Valuing Black Lives and Black Cities
Andre M. Perry’s Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities reveals the web of historical and contemporary socioeconomic barriers that maintain the racial wealth divide and does this through personal narrative, history, and an exploration of a wide array of social issues.
Murder, Redlining, and the Fight for Jamaica Plain
Ken Reardon reviews "Redlined: A novel of Boston" by Richard W. Wise, an exciting novel about a community's fight for survival against disinvestment.
The Age of Predatory Inclusion
A review of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
Out of the Flames
A review of a documentary about the decade-long period in the South Bronx when 80 percent of its housing, home to around a quarter of a million people, was lost to fire.
Skating the Surface of Gentrification
A review of Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents, by Matthew L. Schuerman.
The Inside World of ‘Change Makers’
Reading Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman alongside Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas is a fascinating thought experiment.
Building Prosperity—A Review of ‘The Making of a Democratic Economy’
A review of "The Making of a Democratic Economy: Building Prosperity for the Many, Not Just the Few," by Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard
Reawakening “Courageous Philanthropy”
A review of Courageous Philanthropy: Going Public in a Closely Held World, by Jennifer Vanica.
Fair Housing Policy Approaches Exacerbate Inequality
A review of The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities, by Edward G. Goetz.
Facing Down Segregation—Half-heartedly or With Steely Determination?
A new book explores the history, impact, and policy solutions to racial segregation.
Millennials and the Affordability Crisis: A Review of Generation Priced Out
As tenant struggles become a bigger focus of activist recruitment, Randy Shaw’s new book, Generation Priced Out, is an essential organizing guide.
Tracing the Roots of CDFIs: A review of Democratizing Finance
This book is a major contribution to increasing knowledge and awareness of how far the community development finance movement has come in 30 years.
The Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles: A Review of City of Segregation
Andrea Gibbons’ City of Segregation shows why empowering capitalist processes and actors is the last thing we should do to fight gentrification.
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.
Organizers: There’s No Shortcut to Success
Overcoming the ideology of individualism and corporate power is achieved not through framing or advocacy but through the experience of collective struggle. A review of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey.
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?