Neighborhood Information is NOT Just for the Experts
In 1997 a group of housing activists and their supporters came to focus attention on the deterioration of residential conditions in Los Angeles. Self-named...
Green Communities, Green Jobs
Community Based Development Organizations (CBDOs) often get drawn into an environmental agenda by the need to organize against an environmental hazard. In Roxbury, Massachusetts,...
Words into Action:
A New Housing Delivery System for Santa Fe
The shrinking supply of affordable housing has become the number one community concern in Santa Fe. The...
The Case for a Right to Housing
While the Constitution of the United States ensures citizens many rights, housing is not one of them—although such a right has been advocated for many years. Shelterforce asked Chester Hartman and Rachel G. Bratt (co-editors of A Right To Housing, with Michael E. Stone) to discuss this notion of a "right to housing." Hartman, answering a series of questions, puts it into the context of other rights Americans expect. Bratt explains how a right to housing can advance the work of CDCs.
Insurance Redlining: Still Fact, Not Fiction
Twenty-five years ago, the National Advisory Panel on Insurance in Riot Affected Areas made this critical observation:
"Insurance is essential to revitalize our cities. It...
Definitions of Sustainable Development
The phrase "sustainable development" means different things to different people. Here are a collection of some of them: "positive socioeconomic change that...
The National Affordable Housing Trust Fund
Senator John Kerry (D-MA) has introduced S. 2997, the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act of 2000. The bill would create a fund with...
Housing for All
With simple design changes and a few added features, an attractive and functional home can be built for people both with or without disabilities.
Alabama Tenant Victory
It took 13 years, but Alabama Arise’s efforts to win minimal protection for tenants finally bore fruit this year. The governor signed a bill...
Half-Truths on the Hudson
Through the rose-colored glasses of USA Today, Jersey City looks fabulous. America’s newspaper ran a feature article describing how the Hudson County city-long before...
The Battle in Brooklyn
In June 2004, inside Brooklyn’s Borough Hall, a stage was packed with New York’s most important political, labor, community and religious leaders. One of...
Building a Community-University Partnership in Newark
Among all the issues that affect taxpayers, none has a greater impact than a property tax revaluation. When Newark, New Jersey was about to...
Planning for More than Housing
Barry Meister has heard the rumors, and denies them emphatically: He has no plans to relocate Steel Craft, the small factory he owns in...
City Soil
Think of the typical small derelict vacant urban site. Chances are it is located in a middle- to low-income community where housing needs are...
Shelter Shorts: Community Development News
A Lump of Coal for Xmas
About one million people will begin losing their unemployment benefits after Christmas. Why? House Republicans successfully blocked Democratic efforts...
The Spirit of Rural Community Development, by Nelda K. Pearson
Here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia everyone knows the saying, “You can tell when times are hard. The gardens get bigger.” Although...
Shelter Shorts
Home Sweet Cell??
Critics of the United States’s rapid growth in prison population have often quipped that our only housing production program for the poor...
The Executive Director and Development Director Relationship
This article is for development directors (DD) and the executive directors (ED) who supervise them. The executive director can be a development director's greatest...
Practice Makes Perfect – Or At Least Able to Do the Job
Below is an excerpt from Fundraising for the Long Haul, recently published by Chardon Press. In this book, I explore the particular challenges of...
Shelter Shorts
New York City Sweeps Up HomelessNew York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has struck again, this time against the city's homeless. Homeless advocates were already...