Reviews

If you have a book, film, or report that you would like us to consider reviewing, please contact us at articles@shelterforce.org. We cannot promise to review every item that we receive a review copy of. If you would like to be a reviewer, please contact us at articles@shelterforce.org with a brief description of your experience and what you are interested in reviewing.

Screenshot from game of a young Black woman holding a glowing key

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.
Cover of Richard W. Wise's Redlined: A Story of Boston

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.
Cover image of Race for Profit

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.
decade of fire

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.
Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents

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.
A worker at Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, which recently secured new contracts for 3 million pounds of health care linens.

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
courageous philanthropy cover

Reawakening “Courageous Philanthropy”

A review of Courageous Philanthropy: Going Public in a Closely Held World, by Jennifer Vanica.
The cover of The One-Way Street of Integration by Edward Goetz.

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 segregation book cover

Facing Down Segregation—Half-heartedly or With Steely Determination?

A new book explores the history, impact, and policy solutions to racial segregation.
The cover of Generation Priced Out by Randy Shaw.

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.
The cover of Democratizing Finance: Origins of the Community Development Financial Institution Movement by Clifford N. Rosenthal, Friesen Press

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.
cover of "City of Segregation" by Andrea Gibbons

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.
graduation

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.
organize mural

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.
mallach book cover

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?