Archives
Regional Solutions and Community Empowerment
Signs of a thriving economy abound – a booming stock market, millions of new jobs, and the first balanced budget presented to Congress in...
Shelter Shorts
Rent Decontrol = Rising Rents & Falling Diversity
Three years after the repeal of rent regulations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a survey of 1,000 tenants in...
Shelter Shorts
Mega-Merger Mania
The increasingly rapid rate at which financial institutions are merging has prompted a challenge from a national coalition of community organizations, which is...
Living Wage Lives in L.A.
It was 1996, and an economic Godzilla loomed over Los Angeles, coming to crush the city's precarious prosperity. That, at least, was the way...
Connecting Community Building to Metropolitan Solutions
This issue is dedicated to one of the most important challenges facing community institutions today: how to connect their work to the metropolitan marketplace...
Hiring a Consultant
There are times in the life of almost every group when a fundraising consultant can be helpful. These times are characterized by one or...
Expanding the Scope of Community Development
More than four decades of suburban growth have moved demographic, political, and economic power from central cities toward their suburban counties. The change can...
A Brief Triumph for Progressive Housing Policy
Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era by Gail Radford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 273 pp.
Until the Depression,...
Connecting People to Jobs:
Capitalizing on Regional Economic Development Opportunities
In the fall of 1996, New Community Corporation (NCC) in Newark and the nearby Hillside Auto Mall launched an...
The Outlook for Rural Housing in 1998
In 1980, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) rural housing programs financed 62,700 subsidized single-family housing units and 33,600 subsidized apartments. By 1996, these...
Growing Together:
After civil unrest shook the streets of Los Angeles in 1992, local low-income communities of color enjoyed what Andy Warhol once described as fifteen...
1998 Legislative Agenda
FY1999 HUD Budget
"Cities have been at a competitive disadvantage with outlying counties," said HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo in a February 2 New York Times...
Regional Coalition-Building and the Inner Suburbs
In response to growing social and economic polarization, between 1993 and 1997 Minnesota's Twin Cities jump-started a long-dormant regional debate. In three years, the...
St. Louis Congregations Challenge Urban Sprawl
This is God's world.
We are God's people.
The voices of several hundred church members – black and white, Protestant and Catholic – somewhat tentatively followed...
Redefining Community Development
Part II: Collaborating for Change
(Click here for Part 1: New Partnerships)
Willie Mae Gaskin can't walk through the halls of the Warren/Conner Development Coalition (WCDC)...
Preparing for Change
CBOs, particularly those involved in comprehensive community building efforts, need to do a better job of involving residents and other constituents in planning and...
Increasing Meeting Turnout
When you have low turnout for governance structure meetings, ask the following questions:
Where's the beef?
If these meetings mostly consist of reports from staff or...
Comprehensive Community Initiatives: Words Not Whacks
You've had it! You've tried your best to remain calm and reasonable in a conflict, but your last nerve has been plucked. What now?
WAIT....
The Rebuilding Communities Initiative
Launched in 1993, the Annie E. Casey Foundation's (AECF) Rebuilding Communities Initiative (RCI) aims to provide the support services needed to help transform economically...
Profile of a Community Builder: Kathy Brown
Profile of a Community Builder: Kathy Brown
A self-described "board junkie," Kathy Brown works with no less than 11 organizations in the Germantown neighborhood of...