May/Jun 2002
Issue #123
Discussions of poverty and what to do about it tend to focus on hard numbers and thresholds: How many households live below the poverty line? How many families spend more than 30 percent of their income for housing? Hard targets make for clear goals. Build a hundred affordable homes and you reduce the number of Americans who must strain to keep a roof over their heads. Organize a community to pass a living wage ordinance and you raise the income of a thousand families. But all the housing production programs we could finance and all the living wage ordinances we could pass will not eliminate the need. We must work on not only reducing poverty but also addressing its effects. ... The most debilitating symptom of poverty may be its impact on opportunity.
So Fresh and So Clean
Poor people must not like Starbucks. I wonder about that each time I drive my borrowed hooptie through and around Cincinnati’s West End neighborhood. Development is nigh. It’s in the […]
Built to Last: Managing CDCs
For most community development corporations, internal management understandably takes a back seat to activities that stimulate community revitalization. But across the CDC field, there’s growing concern that a legacy of […]
Making a Living: How the living wage movement prevailed
Since the mid-1990s, 79 cities or counties in America have passed living wage ordinances. The movement’s success has been remarkable, given a legislative climate that looks suspiciously on any rules […]
Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and raising children
Community context matters to child development—the number of households in poverty and the ratio of adults to children in a neighborhood influence a child’s social, emotional, and cognitive development. A […]
Poverty and Opportunity
I grew up in a middle-class suburban neighborhood where children expected to have a future. Most of my friends went on to college, a few to distinguished careers. Even those […]
Shelter Shorts: Community Development News
Millennial Commission Speaks The much-anticipated Millennial Housing Commission (MHC) report was finally sent to Capitol Hill on May 30th. Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, lauded […]
Community Development Venture Capital
Low-income communities often have a wealth of ingenuity and innovation, but lack the equity capital and entrepreneurial experience needed to grow a business and stabilize the community in the process. […]
Between Eminence & Notoriety: Four Decades of Radical Urban Planning
Between Eminence & Notoriety: Four Decades of Radical Urban Planning, by Chester Hartman, Center for Urban Policy Research, 2002. 405 pp. $29.95 (Paperback), $39.95 (Cloth). In her foreword to Chester […]
Housing and the Bush Tax Cut
Some of the most important policy decisions affecting low-income housing in the years ahead are not about housing per se, but instead revolve around last year’s massive federal tax cut. […]