Issue #169

If you want to explore the intersection of health and
community development further, here are some places to start.

Housing mobility can complement community revitalization for children with serious health challenges. 

If it were not acceptable for anyone to suffer from substandard housing or the problems of disinvested neighborhoods, then many of the public health issues facing us would be automatically reduced.

No! Two at-scale, long-term lending programs show that if the process is done right, low-income homeowners can be as successful as prime borrowers–or more.

The community development and health sectors can and should work together to reduce health disparities and improve everyone’s health.

The conventional approach to homelessness starts with services. But starting with permanent housing instead
costs less and works better.

In a dangerous cycle, medical bills are a common cause of foreclosure—and the stress and financial crisis of foreclosure causes an increase in serious health problems.

By systematically assessing the health risks of development decisions upfront, health impact assessments can prevent
costly and harmful mistakes.

Shelterforce authors discuss the roles of place, mobility, and displacement on health and neighborhoods.

Shelterforce talks with Sen. Robert Menendez about the ongoing federal response to the housing crisis, the Sustainable Communities Initiative, the Occupy movement, and more.

Credit Unions, Community Development Finance, and the Great Recession, Clifford Rosenthal, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco working paper, February 2012.

“A House America Bond for State Housing Finance Agencies: More Affordable Housing for Low- and Moderate-Income Households,” Jordan Eizenga, Center for American Progress, March 2012.

Health philanthropy and community development have historically worked on separate tracks. That’s changing. 

The Worcester, Mass., Toxic Soil Busters co-op shows improving a neighborhood’s health doesn’t have to be limited to experts and outsiders. 

How communities of color, using health and jobs as rallying cries, took on Big Oil — and won!

To improve the health of residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods, we have to address inequality, not medical care.

Discriminatory lending practices are a “silent pickpocket” skulking among unsuspecting borrowers, said Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition’s annual conference in […]

Cities are growing again, with young people increasingly interested in moving to more walkable communities. And it’s not just traditionally hot market cities that are gaining. Newark, New Jersey, for […]

The head of a sham financial corporation was arrested late last year for illegally flipping hundreds of homes in several Ohio counties, including Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland and noted […]

An organizing drive in Hawaii has forced the hand of America’s largest bank, achieving a breakthrough that has slashed foreclosures.

Can America’s most populous county design its way to better physical health and lower obesity rates? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave Los Angeles County $16 million in […]

Sharing the Pain and Gain in the Housing Market: How Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Can Prevent Foreclosures and Protect Taxpayers by Combining Principal Reductions with “Shared Appreciation,” John Griffith and Jordan Eizenga, Center for American Progress, March 2012.

Research for Organizing Toolkit, a web-based tool by Alexa Kasdan, Lindsay Cattell, and Rosten Woo for the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center, 2012.