By Lucas Aulbach
Read the full article from Courier Journal, here.
At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, city officials and others celebrated the massive investment, part of a $200 million initiative from the bank and Enterprise Community Partners to support growth in nine neighborhoods across the country. Russell, Mayor Greg Fischer told the crowd, has a lot to gain from the funding after decades of neglect.
By Ethan McLeod
Read the full article from City Lab, here.
Housing activists, officials and researchers are deploying new tools to empower tenants, spotlight negligent property owners and curb evictions in U.S. cities.
By Carlos Ramirez-Rosa
Read the full article from Jacobin here.
“From the top of Logan Square’s newest seven-story apartment building at 2602 North Emmett Street, just steps from the train stop bearing the neighborhood’s name, the view is incredible…In Chicago’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, this is usually the kind of coveted view and central location only the wealthy can enjoy. But they won’t be able to buy all this building has to offer. Instead, all of the building’s hundred apartments are publicly funded and reserved for poor and working-class people.”
By Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
Read the full article from The New Republic here.
“The strategic myopia of offering technical solutions to political problems, valorizing the expertise of financiers and economists over that of residents, and situating the private real estate market as the cure rather than cause of the housing crisis, is baked into the Affordable Housing project.”
By Dorothy A. Brown
Read the full article from The New York Times here.
“Black Americans are often unable to build wealth from homeownership in the same way their white peers are, in large part because home prices are generally set by the people who make up the majority of buyers: white Americans. White families typically prefer to live in predominantly white neighborhoods with very few or no Black neighbors. Homes in these neighborhoods tend to have the highest market values because most prospective purchasers — who happen to be white — find them most desirable.”
By Miriam Axel-Lute
Read the full article from Shelterforce here.
“Although the backdrop of a crisis that requires major federal intervention and economic stimulus is similar to that of 2011, the political landscape is clearly very different right now. The dominant conversation is not about how to eke out positive interest in our work along the margins, and convince Republicans to consider housing, but how to make the most of the opportunity of a country ready to talk about housing and with an appetite for bold proposals that actually make meaningful differences in people’s lives.”
By Shane Phillips
Read the full article from The Atlantic here.
“The housing situation is only getting worse—more expensive, more inequitable, more precarious. As prices have continued their climb in the country’s most economically dynamic regions, it’s no longer feasible for working-class residents to seek out the best opportunities there. Instead, younger and lower-income residents are being pushed out to places where jobs are less plentiful and lucrative, but where housing, at least, is relatively affordable.”
By Shane Phillips
Read the full article from The Atlantic here.
“The housing situation is only getting worse—more expensive, more inequitable, more precarious. As prices have continued their climb in the country’s most economically dynamic regions, it’s no longer feasible for working-class residents to seek out the best opportunities there. Instead, younger and lower-income residents are being pushed out to places where jobs are less plentiful and lucrative, but where housing, at least, is relatively affordable.”
By Anne Helen Petersen
Read the full article from Vox here.
“You buy a place, that place grows in value, and either you trade up to a bigger place or you keep it until you can pass it down to your kids or your kids get the money from its sale. Stability gives birth to even more stability. That’s not what happened with Dee’s family. ‘My grandparents were bludgeoned every time the economy took a downturn,’ Dee recalls, in part because of the legacy of redlining and the devaluation of property in Black neighborhoods.”
By Krystle Okafor and Sophie House
Read the full article from Shelterforce here.
“Despite its complexities, abolition holds tremendous promise for the housing field. Technocratic solutions are an inadequate fix for housing policy’s bitter history of racism and expropriation. Such solutions also obscure visionary, bottom-up approaches to housing justice. Following abolitionists’ lead, we can think critically about the racism in our work, set ambitious end goals, build genuine relationships with frontline communities, and foster conditions and institutions to make those visions a reality. This trailblazing moment should not pass us by.”