history

In the memoir Staking Our Claim, Pat Morrissy talks about the early days of Shelterforce, organizing for rent control laws in NJ towns, and supporting tenant leaders in their fights for better homes.

Housing with preconditions means more people will cycle through shelters, jails, and the streets, fueling efforts to criminalize homelessness instead of solving it.

CLT named after Ruchell “Cinqué” Magee, considered by many to have been the longest-held political prisoner in the United States, aims to create not just affordability, but belonging.

A new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York highlights crucial moments in the local tenant movement, including rent strikes in the 1920s and the unlivable conditions that drove tenants to action.

Housing is fundamental to healthy families and communities. That’s why we must fight for policies that treat public housing as essential as roadways and schools.

A law professor explains why housing should be—and someday might be—considered a human right in the United States.

The Ebony Beach Club was supposed to open in the 1950s, but the city used eminent domain to seize the site. Los Angeles artist Autumn Breon talks about how the story inspired her multidisciplinary art event and why she’s inspired by the history of Black leisure sites.

Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maps have long been blamed for racial inequities in today’s Black neighborhoods, but recent research shows that’s misleading.

For decades, a group of Cambodian refugees worked to improve and upgrade their Stockton, California, affordable housing complex. While they technically own half of the property, they’re still waiting for HUD to approve their full ownership. Why hasn’t it happened yet?

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit was created in a moment when other real estate tax preferences were going away—but at the time, no one expected it to grow into the main source of affordable housing finance in the country.

Shelterforce has put together a short video to explain what “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” or AFFH, means, and the history of its enforcement.

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule was intended to force communities to take action to address housing segregation and discrimination. How has the rule evolved throughout the years, and will a proposed new rule finally put some teeth into the legal concept?