COULD BALTIMORE MOVE FAIR HOUSING FORWARD?




www.shelterforce.org
Wednesday, June 10, 2015




Shelterforce in print
Cover of Shelterforce aging issue, number 178
One year for $18

People

In October, Judith Bell will be leaving her position as president of PolicyLink and joining the San Francisco Foundation, where she will continue to advance equity issues. Bell has been with PolicyLink since its founding in 1999.

Michael McAfee, who has been leading PolicyLink's Promise Neighborhoods work, has been promoted to vice president of programs. 




Help support 
the voice of 
community development

Donate Button
Your Voice!

Subscribe to 
It's free! Click here!

Shop our bookshelf at 


Share 
Shelterforce Weekly 
with your colleagues...
Gray


From Shelterforce Online*


*Due to technical difficulties, new
Shelterforce online content is currently being posted on our blog, Rooflines.




English Required for a Mortgage?
By Ashlyn Aiko Nelson, Indiana University
Language barriers and immigration status pose overlapping and distinct challenges in housing and mortgage access, and though non-English speakers are not exclusively immigrants, the challenges faced by non-English speakers are likely to be ... More




From Rooflines, the Shelterforce Blog


Alan Jenkins


Housing Policy Key to Freddie Grey's Baltimore--and City's Future 
By Alan Jenkins and Diego Iniguez-Lopez 

Unjust police practices fanned the flames of indignation in Baltimore, to be sure. But the roots of injustice and isolation run far deeper, and implicate decades of decisions  
by ... More 


Could Baltimore Move Fair Housing Forward?
By Sarah Treuhaft, PolicyLink
Our field is having a moment in the national media. With discussion focused on Baltimore and the new mobility research out of Harvard, we may finally succeed at affirmatively furthering fair housing. Here's what it might look like if we did... More


Axel-Lute Should We Want Home Prices to Rise?

By Miriam Axel-Lute, Shelterforce

Economist Dean Baker argues against the idea that slow appreciation in low-income neighborhoods is problematic, especially because so many people struggle with housing unaffordability. Higher house prices, he argues, are a "transfer of wealth from future generations to current generations." So how do we reconcile slow home appreciation with the problems caused by underwater loans?... More 





New Approaches to Community-Based Supportive Housing 
By Sarah Ellis, Housing Partnership Network


How is a 1999 legal decision on disability rights continuing to affect community-based supportive housing? . . . More 


You Said It!


In light of recent events here in Baltimore, and the national media's "discovery" of entrenched poverty and abandonment, I had hoped we could finally get beyond the frame of gentrification displacing poor people from city neighborhoods as a national phenomenon. Yes, its a big issue in DC, NYC, SF and a relative few other places where the "experts" and pundits tend to live. As I think the nation saw, just 30 miles up the road here in Baltimore gentrification is a non-issue and a huge distraction . . .  --Barbara Samuels, on "Place, Poverty, and Politics: A Growing Divide"


The drip, drip, drip of resources our nation spends on mobility, inclusionary zoning, opportunity-based strategies and, I would add, efforts to remove continuing barriers (systemic discrimination) to housing choice pales by comparison to the virtual tsunami of resources devoted to place-based approaches that perpetuate residential racial segregation and concentrated poverty.  I would remind anyone who is tempted to oversimplify this debate that they cannot ignore the unmistakable imbalance in both the allocation of resources and public policy emphasis.  I am not persuaded that this imbalance will ever be addressed unless or until we are able to have a far more honest debate about the status quo.  --Fred Freiberg, on "Place, Poverty, and Politics: A Growing Divide"
 

Moving to the "burbs" is a step into newer streets, infrastructure and schools. New money builds new schools; it's not part of some huge capital improvement budget that is always stretched thin trying to maintain existing older systems. Try to find the funds to build a track at an old middle school, or revamp the technology wiring. You've got to get in line with a lot of competing interests. --Bill Lazar on "Place, Poverty, and Politics: A Growing Divide"

The current wave of gentrification and displacement is largely private market driven (and assisted/subsidized by a suite of different public investments and policies).  It is not caused by community development. Nor, like you say, is it caused by housing mobility nor anything related to fair housing advocacy.  Neither of us is the enemy here.  But, as Prof. Squire points out, we share a common set of values which can hopefully be translated into a common set of goals. --Josh Ishimatsu on "Place, Poverty, and Politics: A Growing Divide"

For the full discussion happening on the Rooflines blog, click here
 



Featured Resources


Stewardship Standards for Homeownership Programs

Affordable homeownership stewardship is a set of practices designed to help households maximize wealth while protecting the program and its community investment.
The Stewardship Standards for Homeownership (the "Standards") were developed by Cornerstone Partnership in collaboration with the National Community Land Trust Network, with the purpose of providing an educational resource and measurable framework to help affordable homeownership programs achieve excellence and maximize impact. Read the standards here.


Jobs

In This Issue


 Like us on Facebook     Follow us on Twitter     View our profile on LinkedIn 

Featured Bloggers
Transit Equity Network/Gamaliel

Regional Housing Legal Services

USC Price School of Public Policy

HOPE Credit Union

Burlington Associates

Democracy Collaborative

Housing Partnership Network

Columbia University

Tufts University

Fund for Public Schools

Planner, Louisa County, Va.

National CAPACD

Cornerstone Partnership

Opportunity Agenda


HACBED

National Housing Institute

Housing Assistance Council

CFED

ACLU Maryland

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 

George Washington Univesity

Housing Assistance Council 

Appalachian State University

San Francisco Community 
Land Trust

Harold Simon
Publisher
hsimon@nhi.org

Lisa Monetti
Assistant Publisher
lisa@nhi.org

Sara Steele Lau
Web Proofing Volunteer



Shelterforce Weekly 
60 S. Fullerton Avenue, Suite 202
Montclair, NJ 07042
(P) 973-509-1600
(F) 973-509-1602 


  
Miriam Axel-Lute
Editor
miriam@nhi.org

Keli Tianga
Associate Editor
keli@nhi.org