Flip… Flip… Flip… Flop (Property Flipping and Mortgage Fraud)
Vincent Quayle and the folks at the St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center in Baltimore began to sense something was wrong about 1997, when people began coming to them for foreclosure […]
Devolution Hits Housing in Canada
Canadian housing policy has undergone quite an evolution over the past one hundred years. In the first quarter of the 20th century, it was a mish-mash of loosely instituted and […]
Hearts on Fire (Fighting Organizer Burnout)
I have always thought of my movement work as a demanding, aggravating and irresistible lover – one it’s impossible to marry, or to leave. I know it has an air […]
Geographic Information Systems
For a long time, questions like “Who lives near this housing development?” were notoriously difficult to answer. The level of data analysis that went into such seemingly simple questions made […]
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 the Blue Ribbon Citizens Committee on […]
Knowledge is (Still) Power
It’s getting harder and harder to call our time a period of record prosperity when the income disparity is as great as it is and so many people are living […]
Shelter Shorts
And the Beat Goes On: Mega-mergers Continue Citigroup has announced plans to acquire The Associates for $31.1 billion. The Associates, the largest publicly traded finance company in the U.S., with […]
Persistence Pays
Employees of Erickson Cosmetics Company (makers of Banana Boat lotion) only wanted what they had earned. Especially workers like Juana Vasquez who worked at the factory in the northside of […]
First Steps to a Capital Campaign
A “capital” campaign is a two-to-five year effort to raise money for a one time need over and above the annual budget. They are usually used to buy, build or […]
New Markets: Trickle-Down With a Twist
The New Markets program recently passed in the House (H.R. 4923), a tax subsidy scheme to divert capital into low- to moderate-income areas, is yet another variation on the administration’s […]
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 a dedicated source of revenue to […]
The Long Haul and the Short Haul
No Trespassing: Squatting, Rent Strikes and Land Struggles Worldwide by Anders Corr. South End Press, Cambridge, MA 1999. 256 pp. In 1972, I was placed as a VISTA Volunteer in […]