In This Issue: When Gentrification Follows Green Space ● Crossing the Digital Divide During COVID ● What’s Next For Those Staying in Hotels During the Pandemic? ● Also: Jobs ● Events ● You Said It ● In Case You Missed It + | | Flyers, phone calls, and podcasts, oh my! Organizations blend past and present strategies to stay in touch with community members. Read Full Article | | LA organizers work with park professionals on policies to allow green space investment in neighborhoods that have lacked it without paving the way for displacement. Read Full Article | | Nicholas Slayton, Shelterforce As tourism remains slumped for the foreseeable future, some state and local governments are looking to create long-term housing for those who have been helped by temporary projects during the pandemic. Read Full Article | | These articles are free to read, but not free to write. Supporting us is simple and fast. You can do it on Patreon! | | Community Change, with support from the Ford Foundation, launched the Housing Playbook Project to reimagine the federal response to the nation’s current and future housing challenges. The effort will be co-chaired by Dorian Warren of Community Change, Maria Torres-Springer of the Ford Foundation, and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro. The Housing Playbook Project will prepare detailed recommended actions that future administrations could take to advance a reimagined housing agenda within the first 100 to 200 days of the term. | | Events
Sept. 16 through Oct. 31 | Home Truths: Films about Housing Rights, Displacement, and the Meaning of Home | This online film series, presented in association with Shelterforce, highlights a variety of films that have dramatized the plight of those who wage a daily battle for safe and secure housing, that have unveiled the structural and economic forces that render that struggle so difficult, and that have chronicled the efforts of activists to make change. Learn more here.
Tuesday, Oct. 6, 1 p.m. ET | Racial Equity and Housing Justice During and After COVID-19 | Join the National Low Income Housing Coalition for a conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates, author and thought leader. Register here. | |
We only list free events and resources of national interest. To learn about advertising, click here. | | Looking for a Job? Scroll Down... | | You Said It
Bill Huston: Remember housing accounts for the majority of middle-class wealth in the United States and not only are Black families turned down at higher rates for homeownership, but many times they are renting from white landlords [who] are extracting money from already disinvested neighborhoods. In many Black communities, there are a staggering number of vacant and abandoned properties, but there are constantly large and growing affordable housing crises . . . Read More
NeighborWorks: By design, then, public meetings give the people who say “no” a much louder voice than the people who say “yes.” Which can be seen in the case of NIMBY and stereotypes around #AffordableHousing. Via Twitter
Jeff Wachter: Community participation often leads to gridlock, frustration, and longer processes to make change—but can also be incredibly important. Worthwhile discussion to think about how and why local governments can and should engage the community. Via Twitter
Peter Sabonis: Count Jeremy Levine as the latest to understand that public participation must be tied to an equity framework if social change is to occur. Via Twitter
Chris: Thank you for writing this. It puts into words the many frustrations I’ve had as an urban planner attempting to explain why past efforts to understand “the community” have proven futile and often more exclusionary than if staff planners were trusted above the political will. Read More
Housing Action IL: Illinois is one of more than a dozen states using $$$ from the CARES Act to fund emergency rental and mortgage assistance programs. But we still need additional federal #RentReliefNow to help tenants and landlords, and stabilize communities! Via Twitter
Michael Lewyn: The problem with this sort of logic is that there are no logical limits to community demands. If a developer builds 10 units of affordable housing for the so-called community, they will demand 20. If it builds 20, they will demand 30. This process seems a bit risky to me. Read More
Robert Robinson: . . . People in communities are self-determined and will always solve their problems whenever government is incapable or unwilling to do so. Read More
Haborlight Community Partners: Time to shift the conversation to: why aren’t more being paid a living wage, and why, when market rate housing is out of reach for a majority of Americans, is the term “affordable” still negative? Via Twitter | | | | | | |
