Looking to Alternative Markets for Housing, Jobs, and Assets
My understanding of the community development field is shaped by a decade working with neighborhood-based and mission-driven community development organizations. Whether by working with...
Community Development and Ending Homelessness
The discussion of homelessness is dominated by stories of personal mistakes, bad luck, and mental illness. In contrast to this narrative, we know that...
Bank Fees of a Different Kind
A proposed bank accountability bill in California that had received considerable national attention has suffered something of a set back, but that doesn’t mean...
Housing Counseling in Crisis
In April, when the so-called budget compromise for continued FY2011 funding was reached, the entire $88 million HUD Housing Counseling budget was left in...
Fighting for the Trust Fund
When we reported earlier this year on the often-frustrating saga of finding a legislative home for the as yet unfunded National Housing Trust Fund...
What Affordable Housing Enforcement?
In 2010, N.J. Governor Chris Christie introduced legislation to abolish the Council on Affordable Housing, the enforcement body for New Jersey’s fair share affordable...
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...
Winning Back the Government’s Love (and Money)
Community developers are in a dead-end relationship with the government. For three decades, the government has exploited us, giving less and demanding more. It...
Community Development Corporations at a Crossroads
For nearly half a century, community development corporations (CDCs) have been a tool of choice for organizing and implementing grassroots economic development programs. Emerging...
Taking a Sustainable Approach
Over the next 36 years, the biggest issue facing community developers will be energy. Many experts say we have already hit peak oil production...
Funding the Fund?
The president has included $1 billion for the National Housing Trust Fund in his FY12 HUD budget, as he did in FY10 and FY11,...
The Regional/Local Dance
Q & A with Kimberley Burnett
HUD Regs Change May Hurt Local Housing Groups
Even before the much discussed (and critiqued) Washington Post “exposé” on the federal HOME program in 2011, HUD officials were purportedly concerned that too...
Do Foreclosures Make Us Sick?
New research shows a direct correlation between foreclosure and hospitalization, adding another way that foreclosures have a disparate effect on low-income communities and communities...
Heartache for HAMP
It’s no secret that the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, has produced lackluster results, with fewer than 450,000 permanent modifications realized...
QRM’s Downstream Effect
The discussion around how to define a qualified residential mortgage (QRM) has dragged on for over a year now, with no end in sight....
Transportation and Fair Housing Part 1: We Need a Better Measure of Opportunity
Factoring in costs that tend to be lower in urban high-poverty neighborhoods, but not costs that tend to be higher there makes the H+T Index unsuitable as a tool for locating low-income housing.
Holding Banks Responsible
The Chicago City Council is becoming one in a line of local governments to consider legislation to hold lenders more responsible for properties they...
Foreclosure-Free (Almost) Homeownership
Homeowners in community land trusts (CLTs) across the nation continue to have substantially lower delinquency and foreclosure rates than owners of market-rate homes, according...