After a brief, shining moment following the 2008 Republican National Convention, when it seemed community organizers would rule the country, they are now back on the defensive.

London CITIZENS fights for permanently affordable housing in the shadow of the Olympics.

The 2008 presidential campaign showed us another side of volunteering. It drew literally millions of people, many for the first time, into the electoral process. But beyond political campaigns, can volunteerism provide increased capacity for communities and community organizations?

We expect the “solutions” to social problems to be found within the community, and yet community groups, more often than not, work beyond their communities’ boundaries. Why? Because they see the reality that if social and economic justice are to be realized in a community, then changes that are larger than the community must take place.

Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the house Financial Services Committee, sits down with Shelterforce to discuss consumer protection, the future of Fannie and Freddie, the role of FHA, and rental housing and offers a challenge to advocates looking to effect change on the federal level.

Pressure has been building for a long time against the red tape and inflexibility of the agency that implements New Jerseys landmark fair share housing policy. Can the spirit of Mount Laurel survive the backlash against the details?

The success of a Cleveland-based community organizing group in the face of massive foreclosures suggests that the city (and the nation) should have held on to a more diverse set of community organizations.

Organizing has been under attack for years, but this time around, the media has been directly complicit in severely damaging one of most influential advocates for low- and moderate-income families in the country. How did the media miss the real story behind the assault on ACORN?

Facing financial difficulties as new technology takes customers away, the United States Postal Service reviewed 3,300 branches to find those that could be deemed disposable. In low-income communities, just how disposable are the final 162?

The Community Land Trust Reader, edited by John Emmeus Davis. Lincoln Institute, 2010, 616 pp. $35 (paper).

As a wave of HUD mortgages expires in the next four
years, an already dwindling supply of affordable units may nosedive with owners making windfall profits—unless the right mix of federal legislation and local organizing can
save the day.

Access

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Obama administration is equipped with an impressive list of housing experts at the top.

What started out as a “weird art project” in Toronto is
providing aural illustrations into a northern New Jersey community’s past, and, organizers hope, laying the groundwork for the future.

The story of the American foreclosure crisis begins with reckless and abusive lending that leads to a wholesale emptying out of homes. But the story is far from over.

Homeownership can often be a way for families to get good stable housing as well as an effective vehicle for them to accumulate wealth. However, owning a home is not likely to be a wise investment for families in unstable work or family situations.

The Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act provides much-needed relief for tenants across the country in properties undergoing foreclosure. But with one-third of Americans living as tenants, is this a sign of a protracted federal response, or is it a one-shot deal?

Over the past few years faith-based organizing networks have broken onto the national organizing scene, adding grass-roots power and issue expertise to some of the biggest problems of the day.

In the past decade, community land trusts and other shared equity housing models have gained wider acknowledgement and acceptance as a means of creating and preserving affordable housing in communities with high property values. But by cultivating the long-term success of homeowners, these models are also bringing revitalization and stability to areas with weak markets and high foreclosures.

The nonprofit housing development field has myriad intermediaries and support organizations, but no one unified voice. Should it have one?

As the Bluff City picks itself up, its CDC community faces a host of challenges that are increasingly common across the field.

Towns long in Chicagos shadow have sought creative ways
to collaborate for federal funding, while building off existing
partnerships as part of a long-term approach to neighborhood,
and regional, stabilization.

The progressive movement is seeing a resurgence of younger organizers thanks, in part, to the “Obama effect” of the 2008 campaign, and a renewed attempt to articulate values and build authentic relationships.

The Community Reinvestment Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act hold great promise for the creation of a more financially inclusive nation, but both depend on critical “moments in time” in Congress that will determine whether they become good laws or are weakened beyond recognition

In and around the Twin Cities, there is a tolerance for process and building relationships to handle the pressing challenges facing neighborhoods. 

Shelterforce interviews George Moses, chairman of the board of the National Low Income Housing Coalition

Transit advocates and CDCs in two parts of the greater Boston
region are building cross-movement coalitions that are making
equitable transit-oriented development a part of the fight for
better transit access.

Plucked from New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development, Shaun Donovan is leading the effort to make the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development into a relevant, powerful agency.

Vacant land gives way to residential and commercial development is a classic urban renewal storyline, but DC’s Columbia Heights is getting more than just retail and residential: its reclaiming its history.

How can we practice effective community development and engage a community that suffers from a dwindling stock of physical historical references and is in the process of healing from the wounds of decades of urban decay? In the Bronx, community members are coming together, taking pieces of the past and making history.

In early October 2008, The Kirwan Institute hosted a national summit on subprime lending, foreclosure, and race. We didn’t know it when we were planning the event, but a series of unfolding economic events spurred by our nation’s housing crisis would have our government contemplating a $700 billion financial sector bailout on the eve of our convening.

Organizations

The current downturn in housing has seized the markets, pushed home prices down further than any time in generations and has sparked the worst recession since the Great Depression. At the same time, nearly 18 million households are severely burdened with housing costs that consume over half their household incomes. While few have escaped the fury of the recent downturn in housing, tenant, low-income, and particularly minority, households have fared the worst.

Today’s economic crisis is devastating neighborhoods and households across the country. Urban, low-income communities that were slowly recovering from the disinvestment of earlier decades are now falling back to where they were in the 1970s. Rural communities, walloped by the collapse of key economic generators, have suffered no less. Families that had begun to break the cycle of poverty and build small amounts of savings are now being plunged back into debt. Yet, at a time when the work of community development corporations is more needed than ever, there are growing questions about their long-term viability and efficacy.

The functions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—liquidity, stability, and access—remain important for the housing economy. Indeed, the two companies today are providing more than 70 percent of all the financing for housing even while under conservatorship. But their collapse into the federal government’s arms is causing a wholesale reevaluation of how best to provide those functions in the future.

Despite current economic woes, families continue to aspire to own their own homes. For many, homeownership represents a path to stability, community, and long-term wealth building. But achieving these social and economic goals requires a new policy regime and regulatory framework that mitigates the inherent risks of the process. If done right—by matching buyers with appropriate mortgage products in a transparent and fair manner—we can make homeownership work for a broad range of American families, even those with low incomes and few resources.

The story of the American foreclosure crisis begins with reckless and abusive lending that leads to a wholesale emptying out of homes. But the story is far from over. 

The story of the American foreclosure crisis begins with reckless and abusive lending that leads to a wholesale emptying out of homes. But the story is far from over. 

The story of the American foreclosure crisis begins with reckless and abusive lending that leads to a wholesale emptying out of homes. But the story is far from over. 

Between HARP, TARP, HERA, ARRA, TALF, NSP 1, NSP 2 and the rest of the alphabet soup of stimulus funding, there’s a lot of government money circulating around the country right now. How are communities using this money, and will the stimulus provide the springboard needed for equitable, sustainable change?

Wage Theft In America, by Kim Bobo. The New Press, 2009, 336 pp. $17.95 (paperback).

For decades, the United States government, pushed by its business partners in the financial and real estate world, “marched the nation into a delusion.” The fantasy is that we can create wealth for millions of homeowners by enriching investors, brokerage and mortgage companies and Wall Street bankers “to the fullest extent possible with few boundaries.”

New Jersey’s Paterson is among the nation’s oldest planned industrial cities, but it has fallen on hard times since the once-booming silk industry there declined in the latter half of the 20th century. Much of the industry in this city of 150,000 has since left, but now a geological attraction once envisioned by Alexander Hamilton as something that could be harnessed for industrial might, is fully protected, and could be channeled, this time, for its community-building potential.

Housing discrimination continues to plague the market, as does the myth that the housing crisis resulted from extending homeownership and home mortgage credit to historically underserved groups: minority families. Even with the Obama administration’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan and, within that, the Making Home Affordable program, minority groups continue to suffer ongoing discrimination and fair housing violations.

Urban Essex County, New Jersey, one of the hardest hit areas in the state by the ongoing foreclosure crisis, could be the laboratory for a reinvention of community development. A local CDC there has completed the successful acquisition, by way of an alliance of nonprofits, of 47 mortgages expected to foreclose with an eye toward stabilizing neighborhoods in some of the oldest suburban communities in New Jersey.

While the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance is helping people buy homes, their aim is to build an army of trained homeowners to engage their own neighbors in organizing and advocacy.

While national coverage has subsided, a handful of immigrant families in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood are still fighting to stay in their foreclosed apartment building, and their story is simply part of a larger struggle in the country’s third-largest city.

Under President Obama, data transparency, private-sector innovation, and a renewed commitment to expanding opportunity could revolutionize housing and urban planning. But just as proponents of equity, open government data, and social entrepreneurship are being appointed to key positions, and while the administration is still young, the new HUD/DOT sustainable communities initiative illustrates why the devil is in the details.

With housing stability increasingly important for families under economic duress, additional rental funds could help to fund local housing authorities in order to assist families in need. New thinking could result in a plan aimed to help families get back into the mainstream, as well place them on a on a path toward increased personal wealth.

New Jersey’s Paterson is the nation’s oldest planned industrial city—depend on who you ask. But it has fallen on hard times since the once-booming silk industry there declined in the latter half of the 20th century. Much of the industry in this city of 150,000 has since left, but with the help of a local CDC there, as well as corporate and community partners, a geological attraction once envisioned by Alexander Hamilton as something that could be harnessed for industrial might, is fully protected, and being prepared for a makeover.

Urban Essex County, New Jersey, one of the hardest hit areas in the state by the ongoing foreclosure crisis, could be the laboratory for an ostensible reinvention of community development, as a local CDC there announced today the successful acquisition of 47 mortgages on troubled properties with an eye toward stabilizing neighborhoods in some of the oldest suburban communities in New Jersey.

The $3.92 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program can spur recycling of the stock of abandoned and foreclosed homes produced by the mortgage crisis.

The foreclosure crisis has pushed the envelope so far, it’s left an opening where we can start building a real national housing policy.

In a time of great economic peril for the communities they serve, nonprofit grass-roots organizations need to push the federal government to raise foundations’ payout requirements.