From the Field
Shelterforce has always been driven by the voices of the people in the housing field. From the Field pieces are neither reported journalism nor standard opinion pieces, but articles that share knowledge, insight, lessons learned, or examples from people who work, organize, or volunteer in the field.
The Latest
How HUD Is Seeking to Make Fighting Housing Discrimination Even Harder
Fair housing law has never been easy to enforce. But HUD's proposal to eliminate the use of disparate impact analysis will remove another crucial tool for doing so.
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The Cooperative Struggle Against Redlining
Many people are familiar with redlining, but less well known are the handful of cooperatives that sprouted up following WWII with a bold mission: providing integrated, community-owned housing.
Community Land Trusts: Combining Scale and Community Control
“This is no longer my neighborhood.” Too often, communities of color that experience new investments report that the changes are a detriment to their lives, and a benefit to newcomers, […]
Burdensome Documentation Requirements Keep NOLA Homeowners from Getting Home
The Road Home program was supposed to help thousands of families rebuild their homes after Hurricane Katrina. Instead, $33 million was left undistributed, and now the Louisiana Office of Community Development is suing homeowners who couldn’t rebuild.
Community Engagement Can’t Be a Checklist
Are we engaging communities meaningfully, or are we just checking off boxes?
Fair Housing and Zoning: Toward a New Boston?
How Boston became the first city to add fair housing to its zoning regulations.
Why Do Low-Income Residents Oppose Development Even When Displacement Risk Is Low?
There’s more than one way to be excluded from your community.
Increasing Access to Affordable Housing in Indian Country
There is a strong desire for homeownership among Native households, but a set of obstacles specific to Native lands are getting in the way.
How to Temper the Influence of Private Equity in Manufactured Housing
The risk of onerous lot rent increases and the fear of eviction are more threatening than ever as private equity enters the manufactured housing market.
“So, what do you do?” How to Have Conversations about Homelessness
Conversations about homelessness with those outside the field’s bubble can be exhausting, but there are several strategies and techniques that can help steer the conversation in a productive way.
Long Before Redlining: Racial Disparities in Homeownership Need Intentional Policies
The wealth gap is probably best illustrated in the way our country has, and has not, provided access to the single most important determinant of wealth for the majority of people in the United States—home and land ownership.
In Spite of HUD, Fair Housing Process Can Help Communities
Last year, Philadelphia was one of the first cohorts to go through the AFFH process, a fair housing assessment mandated by HUD to discover impediments to opportunity in the city. […]
Tenant Organizing From the Ground Up
Gentrification is not the inevitable result of economic development, but the result of fundamentally unjust economic development policies.