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The United States has made slow, deliberate progress throughout its history to increase the voting franchise. But now, for the second time in our history, the nation is in real danger of moving backward.

Shaun Donovan is secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Outside of the limelight, the Obama administration has been quietly pursuing ambitious changes to better support healthy neighborhoods and regions. Will these programs be allowed to come to fruition?

Boston’s 9,000 three-family, or “triple-decker,” houses are trademarks of the city’s housing stock and have long provided shelter to the city’s working class and...

In the suburb whose exclusive zoning led to New Jersey's fair share affordable housing law, new research explores what the affordable housing finally built there has meant to the town, and to the people who have gotten to move there.

Talk of housing is notably absent from the presidential campaigns, but there are efforts underway trying to drive the housing issue home for good.

When community developers and organizers get elected to office, how do they preserve the community-minded sensibility and ethos that got them there? What lessons can they bring back to their colleagues on the ground? Shelterforce sat down with a cadre of organizers- turned–New York City Council members to find out how to bolster the bridge between the city and City Hall.

In the spring of 2008, as the country plunged into the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, Keith Ellison, a freshman Democrat representing...

A breakdown of the funding climate for civic engagement.

Affordable housing developments are often controversial and give rise to claims of dire consequences for quality of life and property values. But once they are built, does anyone realize they are there?

Are you part of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent? As we go to press, the furor over the leaked fundraising video in which the Republican...

The Community Reinvestment Act and regulators have been unable to hold banks accountable to distant and distinct local communities—so nonprofits have stepped in to do the heavy lifting.

Outside investors are buying up foreclosed properties in Oakland, California, at a rate that not only has Oakland residents uneasy, but has also raised...

Could planners have an effect on waistlines around the Beltway? Maryland’s Prince George’s County and Virginia’s Fairfax County are examining how land use and...

A multi-faceted approach is necessary to stem the rising number of severely cost-burdened households in the United States.

A: Yes! And keeps them safer than traditional homeownership does.

The loss of ACORN and changes in election laws could keep young people from voting in 2012. Will community-based efforts to engage young, disenfranchised voters fill the vacuum?

Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities, by Carl Nightingale. The University of Chicago Press, 2012, 482 pp. $35/$21 (cloth/ebook).

The fates of three venerable policies on fair share housing and sustainable land use can point the way for how to support similar efforts in other states.

The Rise of Residential Segregation by Income, by Richard Fry and Paul Taylor. Pew Research Center, August 2012.

1070 Washington Avenue in the Morrisania section of the Bronx sounds like just another address, but it’s notable for being the home of a...