Issue #157

Under President Obama, data transparency, private-sector innovation, and a renewed commitment to expanding opportunity could revolutionize housing and urban planning. But just as proponents of equity, open government data, and social entrepreneurship are being appointed to key positions, and while the administration is still young, the new HUD/DOT sustainable communities initiative illustrates why the devil is in the details.

Six months after Congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, allowing for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) allocation, a report issued by the Congressional Oversight […]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation have unveiled a new partnership to help families gain better access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and […]

A handful of Newark, New Jersey, nonprofits received some much-needed relief in a time of reduced donations from a surprising benefactor — Oprah Winfrey. In February, the talk show host […]

We couldn’t resist the pun when news broke in March that Van Jones will serve as Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on […]

Jim Klinge, the Realtor-cum-blogger who, first expressing pre-burst housing bubble incredulity, has since lit up the Web with an honesty rarely seen from a real estate agent. It’s not just […]

While national coverage has subsided, a handful of immigrant families in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood are still fighting to stay in their foreclosed apartment building, and their story is simply part of a larger struggle in the country’s third-largest city.

I would like to take this opportunity today to tell you about some important changes at the National Housing Institute–changes that, like so much of life, are both happy and […]

While the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance is helping people buy homes, their aim is to build an army of trained homeowners to engage their own neighbors in organizing and advocacy.

When Lenwood E. Johnson, the son of Texas sharecroppers, moved into Houston’s Allen Parkway Village project housing, the Freedmen’s Town section of the city had yet to be designated historic, […]

It’s quite a time to rejoin Shelterforce. As we struggle with the pain and despair that comes from the worst economy in decades, fueled by a subprime crisis so many […]

New Jersey’s Paterson is among the nation’s oldest planned industrial cities, but it has fallen on hard times since the once-booming silk industry there declined in the latter half of the 20th century. Much of the industry in this city of 150,000 has since left, but now a geological attraction once envisioned by Alexander Hamilton as something that could be harnessed for industrial might, is fully protected, and could be channeled, this time, for its community-building potential.