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Why ADUs Can’t Solve the Nation’s Housing Crisis

While accessory dwelling units are a valuable tool to add more rental housing, they also come with limitations.

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What’s an Accessory Dwelling Unit?

The cost of housing has skyrocketed across the United States. As a response, some states and localities have legalized accessory dwelling units in hopes of expanding the supply of affordable housing. But what are ADUs?

A rendering of what Port Covington would look like once the decades-long project is completed.
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Which Community Benefits Agreements Really Delivered?

Are the neighborhoods impacted by large development getting the jobs and affordable housing they were promised? Shelterforce looks back at several cities where community benefits agreements were won to find out where those agreements now stand.

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From Mobile Home Parks to Multifamily Housing Cooperatives

As tenants organize to take over their buildings, there’s been an increased interest in going the co-op route. Could the networks that support resident-owned mobile home park communities shift their focus to support residents of multifamily buildings that want to go co-op?

Nikole Hannah-Jones
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We’re All Enforcing “Separate But Unequal” Schools—An Interview With Nikole Hannah-Jones, a MacArthur “Genius”

Shelterforce spoke with MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” recipient Nikole Hannah-Jones about her research into the persistence of racial segregation, and how without government intervention, average Americans have done an excellent job of enforcing “separate but unequal” schools.

Communities

Who Owns That Vacant Building? Scan the Art to Find Out

In a brilliant mash up of classic protest/beautifying strategies and state-of-the-art data management, artists are painting murals on abandoned Baltimore buildings  . . . complete with QR codes that bring […]

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Writing About Recovery

Watching the scenes of devastation coming out of New York City and New Jersey from Hurricane Sandy, it’s hard not to think again of Katrina (despite their many differences, certainly) […]

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Capital Markets and Neighborhood Stabilization

It’s not often that a nonprofit housing developer sits down with a hedge fund manager, or someone from an investment bank who is outside of the philanthropic or CRA departments.

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Chicago: Mercy Portfolio Services, a subsidiary of Mercy Housing

“How do we knit together the capacity, whether it’s the developer, lawyers, title companies, lenders, and define the deal so that we can move properties with as much velocity as […]

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How Do You Choose?

How do community developers whose goals include neighborhood revitalization identify which businesses or other non-residential tenants (library, healthcare center) are likely to create the most positive momentum in a given area? It’s certainly more art than science. We asked a few long-time community developers for their thoughts.

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Rules Matter

Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use” praises people who jump right in to whatever work needs to be done, passing buckets of water down the line to put out […]

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Can the Silk City Forge its Next Industrial Revolution?

New Jersey’s Paterson is among the nation’s oldest planned industrial cities, but it has fallen on hard times since the once-booming silk industry there declined in the latter half of the 20th century. Much of the industry in this city of 150,000 has since left, but now a geological attraction once envisioned by Alexander Hamilton as something that could be harnessed for industrial might, is fully protected, and could be channeled, this time, for its community-building potential.