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A HOME of a Different Name

In December, the Housing Opportunities Made Equal Act was introduced with moderate fanfare in an unusually active lame duck session of Congress. Unfortunately, HOME,...

Funding the Fund?

The president has included $1 billion for the National Housing Trust Fund in his FY12 HUD budget, as he did in FY10 and FY11,...

Transportation and Fair Housing Part 2: Consider Transportation Cost to Make...

The H+T Index should be used to site affordable housing, because it can identify which high-opportunity areas also are truly affordable in terms of transportation costs.

Taking the Measure of Community

Contesting Community: The Limits and Potential of Local Organizing, by James DeFilippis, Robert Fisher, and Eric Shragge. Rutgers University Press, 2010, 208 pp. $25.95 (paper).

Saving the Birthplace of Hip-Hop

A Bronx-based building known as the birthplace of hip-hop has been the subject of a high-profile tug of war between gambling real-estate investors and an eclectic yet powerful group of tenants, housing advocates, city agencies, local politicians, and hip-hop artists. The building’s well-publicized plight has helped shine a light on the threat predatory equity poses to affordable multifamily housing.

No One Left Behind

By 2050, possibly sooner, people of color will be a majority in our nation. There is no way we can build a strong, stable...

Transportation and Fair Housing Part 1: We Need a Better Measure...

Factoring in costs that tend to be lower in urban high-poverty neighborhoods, but not costs that tend to be higher there makes the H+T Index unsuitable as a tool for locating low-income housing.

Where Do We Fit In? CDCs and the Emerging Shrinking City...

As some cities begin to admit they are shrinking, CDCs in high-abandonment neighborhoods are rethinking their traditional roles, and even their missions.

Fighting Predatory Equity

When predatory equity investors take a gamble on multifamily housing, it's the tenants who suffer -- whether from harassment or crumbling buildings. Advocates and tenants in New York have won the fight to get some of these buildings into responsible hands, but many are still in limbo, and some are reentering the cycle of speculation.

NCRC Files Fair Lending Complaints

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition has filed complaints with HUD against dozens of lenders who have set minimum borrower credit scores as high as...

Sounding the GSE Death Knell

Last year, then-chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank told Shelterforce, regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, “the model of a private...

Equity Is Not Optional

Focusing on the most vulnerable communities and people and addressing racial and economic disparities is not only the right thing to do -- it's the only way we can succeed in building strong regions and a strong national economy.

Interview: Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity John Trasviña

The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity is dealing with an evolving set of discrimination challenges facing families, changes in the very definition of "family," and the political realities of the 112th Congress. Trasviña is no stranger to this balancing act.

Planning on Shrinking

It’s time to understand that shrinkage is no longer somebody else’s problem.

The Rising Tide of Bank Protests

Despite Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, distrust for the banking industry in the United States remains palpable, and now we’re beginning to...

Integrating Schools Is a Matter of Housing Policy

Inclusionary zoning and economic integration in suburban neighborhoods not only reduces concentration of poverty, it directly improves low-income children’s academic achievement. 

A Windfall for Los Angeles Landlords “Burdened” with Rent Control

A Los Angeles councilman says rent control places undue burdens on landlords and proposes a plan to reduce their tax burden.