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In August, when the FDIC seized ShoreBank of Chicago, it represented the demise of the oldest community development bank in the United States. The...

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...

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.

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...

According to Deutsche Bank, 20 million homeowners might be underwater by 2012. Turns out of those 20 million, those with the most expensive homes...

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,...

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...

Things keep changing; sometimes for the better, sometimes worse. When President Obama nominated Shaun Donovan as HUD secretary, many of us cheered. Donovan is...

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...

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.