Issue #191

A university study on rent control makes three crucial mistakes in its assessment of the policy’s effect on San Francisco’s housing market. Housing advocacy organization Tenants Together sets the record straight on rent control’s role, and who is actually to blame for the city’s unaffordability.

Shelterforce took the occasion of Michael Bodaken’s retiring from the National Housing Trust to speak with him about how he got into housing, some of his favorite projects, and his recommendations for the field going forward.

Early research shows that laws prohibiting discrimination based on source of income may improve outcomes for Housing Choice Voucher holders.

North Minneapolis residents fight to take control of their buildings after city administrator finds homes to be uninhabitable.

In most states, a household can avoid or delay termination of its utility service due to overdue balances if the shut-off would significantly impact their health. But the process isn’t as simple as it may seem

A: Yes. Landlords in most places can discriminate against voucher holders, and many do. This often keeps voucher holders in a few segregated neighborhoods.

The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism by Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak. Brookings Institution Press, 2018, 304 pp., $25.99 hardcover, also available on e-book.
Purchase a copy at brook.gs/2LOjunA

Sexual harassment is a topic that’s not often addressed in the community development field, but it should be.

Across the U.S., sexual harassment at the hands of landlords, property managers, and others in the housing industry can drive poor women and their children into homelessness. It is a problem badly understood and virtually unstudied.

Despite having a housing voucher—a legal source of income—a Buffalo, New York, woman could not find a landlord who would rent out their property to her.

Four scalable land and housing models can provide justice, and homes, for our communities. But we need support to protect them from market pressure.

Housing specifically for those who frequently use health care services makes sense on many levels, but it also raises questions about privacy and lining up who pays and who benefits.

From Monday through Friday, 52 weeks a year, thousands of tenants, landlords, and attorneys make their way to the Daley Center in downtown Chicago. Everyone has to empty their pockets […]

After a public housing property in Hopewell, Virginia, was privatized through the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, some families were threatened with eviction and calls to Child Protective Services when […]

After the foreclosure crisis, global equity firms snapped up thousands of single-family homes to rent out. This massive shift in the market has not been good for aspiring homeowners, tenants, or neighborhoods.

In the face of high rent increases and substandard housing, many tenants are realizing they are not alone in their landlord troubles and are joining together to push for building-level wins, and policy change.

Rent regulation is no longer being discussed as a vestigial holdover from a previous age, but actively debated and organized for by renters and activists.