Issue #162

In August, when the FDIC seized ShoreBank of Chicago, it represented the demise of the oldest community development bank in the United States. The bank, according to its Web site, […]

The history of well-intentioned housing plans from HUD and Congress has public housing residents across the country scared to death that they could lose their homes through PETRA.

As Seattle continues its efforts to expand its affordable housing stock (and housing options), tiny so-called cottages are popping up in its backyards. The city recently changed its zoning rules […]

Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan has filed a lawsuit against Countrywide, alleging it steered African-American and Latino borrowers into subprime mortgages and charged them more for them. Madigan’s office conducted […]

According to Deutsche Bank, 20 million homeowners might be underwater by 2012. Turns out of those 20 million, those with the most expensive homes are actually more likely to walk […]

As the merits and flaws of PETRA are being debated, PolicyLink offers its list of desired outcomes for poor people and economically distressed communities.

The National Alliance of HUD Tenants weighs the merits and drawbacks of the PETRA proposal.

While PETRA is flawed, it is also the only serious attempt any administration has made to preserve public housing in quite some time.

When I last wrote an editor’s note for Shelterforce (#117, May/June 2001), we were all adjusting to the beginning of the G.W. Bush administration, nervously trying to figure out what […]

First it was New York City’s Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, and now, another enclave built by Metropolitan Life in the 1940s for veterans and middle-class families has run into […]

Things keep changing; sometimes for the better, sometimes worse. When President Obama nominated Shaun Donovan as HUD secretary, many of us cheered. Donovan is smart and experienced, and he cares. […]

In written testimony submitted to the House Committee on Financial Services in May, excerpted here, a group of urban affairs academics argue that PETRA is nothing less than a formal divestment from public housing, worse than anything previous administrations have proposed.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition wants to be able to support PETRA, but has some concerns.

After 23 years, the Chicago housing authority is no longer in receivership. The court-ordered receivership had placed administrative duties in the hands of a private company, Habitat Co. Now U.S. […]

HUD Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing Sandra Henriquez spoke with Shelterforce to discuss the administration’s Preservation, Enhancement, and Transformation of Rental Assistance initiative and address some of the concerns regarding PETRA’s push to allow public housing authorities to leverage private investments. 

Everybody hates public housing, except the low-income people who live there and the people on the long waiting lists to get in. After years of neglect, the Obama administration wants to save public housing for future generations. Let’s let them.

It’s not too late to treat toxic loans as the defective product they are.

PETRA, the Obama administration’s $350 million effort to reform public housing, first proposed in February 2010, has many in the housing field skeptical.

From the early days of the public housing program in the 1930s to the present, vociferous opposition has resulted in a host of problems. Understanding the history can help put President Obama’s PETRA program in context.

For first-time homebuyers with good credit, stable employment, and savings for a down payment, buying a home is more affordable than it has been in decades. For everyone else, however, lower home prices have been a disaster.

Editors of sat down recently with John Atlas, NHI board president and author of Seeds of Change: The Story of ACORN, America’s Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group, to discuss the organization itself, as well as organizing on a national level, tensions between organizing and development, and lessons learned from the downfall of the once-powerful antipoverty organization.

All across the country, local governments, CDCs, community groups, and housing counselors are coming together to address the foreclosure crisis.

For the founders of Cleveland’s Evergreen Coops, putting a handful of people to work at minimum wage isn’t worth it. They are aiming at nothing less than a ground-up economic transformation — one owned by the very people it’s intended to help.