Tag: housing

Affordability: The 30 Percent Standard’s Blinders

Using a simple cost-to-income ratio to measure affordability doesn’t give us a good picture of who is really burdened by housing cost. We need a different approach.

Tenant Organizing From the Ground Up

Gentrification is not the inevitable result of economic development, but the result of fundamentally unjust economic development policies.

VASH and LIHTC Can Work Together to Support Veterans in Housing...

Earlier today, the U.S. Senate advanced Ben Carson's nomination to lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), setting up for a...

Should Online Shopping Change How We Use Space?

Should ground-floor use go from retail to housing?   In San Francisco, the closing of once-popular San Francisco restaurants and the decline of longtime Union Square...

Housing and The “Flyover” Mentality

Right around the New Year, an article by Wired’s Emily Dreyfuss popped up on one of my newsfeeds titled, “The Middle Class Can’t Afford...

Tenant Protections Are a Cornerstone to Solving the Housing Crisis

I’ve read far too many think pieces, op-eds, and reports that neglect the role of tenant protections as a tool that is vital to...

Not All Artists Are Young. Or Childless.

On Dec. 3, the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland became the deadliest in the city’s history, claiming the lives of 36 individuals. The warehouse...

Take the Best of Public Housing, And Make More

Policymakers must consider public housing as a viable option. Compared with housing vouchers, scattered-site properties, mixed-income, and affordable housing developments, public housing still serves a large segment of Americans.

In the Delta, Homeownership Strategies Need Innovation

Earlier this month, the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) partnered with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for...

Stop Subsidizing Bad Landlords

Esperanza Menendez-Jackson is a single working mother who lived with her three children in a government-subsidized apartment building in...

Housing Assistance for All Is a Matter of Racial Justice–and It’s...

Project-based Section 8 has been a successful public-private partnership that helps provide affordable housing to very low-income households while...

Homeownership Is a Culprit in the Racial Wealth Divide

Homeowners' equity—the market value of residential real estate minus the value of home-secured debt—has long been the largest single component of wealth for Black...

Housing Doesn’t Filter, Neighborhoods Do

There has been a renewed interest in the role that the real estate market can play in solving our...

Stopping Declining Homeownership Requires More than Affordability

According to recent research, the availability of starter and “trade-up” homes is in the midst of a four-year decline,...

The ‘Filtering’ Fallacy

The Council of Community Housing Organizations has created an infographic that breaks down the basics of filtering, the assumptions behind it, and the reasons it doesn’t work the way some say it does.

A New Perspective on Housing Tenure

Those of us who work in housing and housing policy know how complicated housing tenure can be. The most common forms of tenure, which...

“Your Lease Should Be Next to Your Bible,” #RentersDayofAction

This Tuesday, advocates took to the microphone on the steps of Newark City Hall and spoke passionately about the city they love and their...

Let’s Get Rid of the Words “Property” and “Manager”

One of my first jobs as a young housing professional in the 1980s at a local public housing authority...

From Barracks to Apartments: Serving Vets in Transition

As regular readers of Shelterforce know, with the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008, Congress provided $75 million to the...