Sep/Oct 1996
Issue #89
What If Everyone Had a Job?
This issue of Shelterforce presents a series of articles exploring ways community-based organizations can create job opportunities. David Scheie gives us an overview of strategies for CBOs to consider. Jed Emerson provides guidelines and cautions on the creation of for-profit enterprises. Bennett Hecht shows multi-family housing managers how to use their properties to create jobs. And Robert Zdenek introduces us to individual development accounts as a promising way to encourage asset development for low-income people. These assets can be used for, among other things, enterprise creation. Leading off our series is an opinion piece on jobs and community building by economist Richard Taub. Closing the series is a chronicle, by Barbara Duffield of the National Coalition for the Homeless, of what happened to one family who lost their main source of income after an injury on the job.
What if Everyone Had A Job?
When I read about efforts to build community, I continue to be struck by the fact that those who operate at the neighborhood level seem not to pay real attention […]
Housing-Led Economic Development
Managing Housing Assets for Economic Development of Residents Nonprofit housing organizations have become significant producers of affordable housing, with more than 400,000 affordable units to their credit through 1993, according […]
Program-Related Investments
As foundations and corporate funders search for new ways to extend their assets and increase the impact of their programs, a growing number have begun to provide financing through program-related […]
Creating Stakeholders with Individual Development Accounts
Millions of Americans have built assets and improved their economic standing through higher education, business creation, and homeownership. Yet in order to engage in such efforts, most people need […]
One Paycheck Away—A Family’s Path to Homelessness
When the Sjoblom family realized they might soon lose their home in Matawan, New Jersey, Diane Sjoblom found the National Coalition for the Homeless. Through email, letters, and telephone conversations, NCH reconstructed their journey into homelessness and ensuing efforts to find living wage employment to improve their situation.
One Solution Is…
Our nation is in the middle of a painful and divisive chicken and egg debate. As many troubled communities face devastatingly high unemployment rates, they are also experiencing rampant family […]
All Organizing is Constant Re-organizing
In 1990, a manufacturing plant in San Antonio laid off more than 1,000 employees, most of them Mexican-American women with limited formal education. The local economy had already lost 14,000 […]
Mark to Market Advances in HUD/VA Measure
With Section 8 contracts due to expire on over one million assisted and insured housing units during the next decade, Congress has proposed its second demonstration in two years concerning […]
When in Doubt, Think
In the words of Gandhi, “If the cause is right, the means will come.” There are resources out there – in every community, however small and however poor. We need […]
Moving Toward The Market
Nonprofit Enterprise In a Changing World The basic strategies for addressing the problem of homelessness in the United States have progressed from emergency shelter to affordable housing to housing with […]