Jan/Feb 2003
Issue #127
Creating Wealth
Some time ago, many of us stopped fighting poverty and began to help people and communities create wealth. By changing the conceptual framework, we’ve changed our goals from simple self-sufficiency to full participation in the economic mainstream and the creation of personal and community assets. For example, over the last 10 years homeownership has driven public and private housing policy as the surest way to build wealth and beat a path into the middle class. Rental programs, land trusts and other alternatives were given short shrift. Winton Pitcoff takes a close look at our homeownership strategy and tries to separate the facts from fantasy and measurable outcomes from unintended consequences. Also in this issue, Robert Zdenek describes a range of asset building programs from Individual Development Accounts to the Earned Income Tax Credit, and encourages CDCs to become active partners in helping low-income people and communities take advantage of these opportunities.
Building Assets with Permanently Affordable Housing
Since 1984, the Burlington Community Land Trust (BCLT) in Burlington, VT, has developed and sold nearly 250 single-family houses and condominiums to first-time homebuyers. All of these owner-occupied homes have […]
Section 8 Is Broken
The Patterson Park neighborhood, on the East Side of Baltimore, stands perched precariously between renewal and collapse. A mixed-income population, almost evenly divided between white and black, lives here in […]
Building Wealth
Community development corporations have attracted billions of dollars of public and private funds to revitalize urban neighborhoods and rural communities. But global and national economic policies have undermined these efforts, […]
HUD’s Exit Strategy?
“All of the truly needy will not get vouchers. I’ll say that in a minute,” the HUD secretary bluntly told editors of the Washington Post while also acknowledging that the […]
Shelter Shorts
Dubious Distinction Homeowners in the Bronx and Brooklyn – mostly low- and moderate-income families – pay more of their income on housing than people anywhere else in the country. The […]
Winning a War, But Losing the Battle
Victory in a tenant organizing campaign is usually defined by improving conditions for the tenants involved – an egregious repair problem is fixed, landlord interactions improve, or the building changes […]
The United Way’s New Business Plan for Community Development
These cannot be fun times at the United Way of America (UW). An astonishing scandal at the National Capital chapter, covering Washington, DC, and the northern Virginia suburbs, continues to […]
How a City Was Changed Forever
City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco, by Chester Hartman with Sarah Carnochan. Revised and Updated Edition. University of California Press, 2002. 432 pp. $24.95 (Paperback) The San Francisco […]
Local Lessons for Legislators
The new legislative season is usually a time of optimism for housing advocates, many of whom believe that the right words, coupled with the proper legislative and public relations strategy, […]