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Segregation in the Era of Housing ‘Choice’
A few months before I met Vivian Warner,* she got the call she had been waiting so long for that she’d forgotten to hope for it. It was Baltimore Housing, the agency that oversees subsidized housing in...
View ArticleUtility Policy Reform Must Be a Focus for Lawmakers
More than a decade ago, when Ms. Charles needed some help catching up on her utility bills and maintaining service for her home, she was able to receive a payment agreement from the Pennsylvania Public...
View ArticleTour Guide to Homelessness
Editor’s Note: This piece is an edited essay based on a compilation of real life interviews between the author and her social worker. Oh, hi. I’m Lydia. I’ll be your tour guide to HOMELESSNESS today....
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In Our Backyard Interview: “Homelessness is Like Being Slowly Disassembled”
Alyssa Peterson: Can you explain Street Sense’s mission? Brian Carome: We are a street newspaper, which is a model that exists in a lot of different places. Street newspapers are print newspapers that...
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The answer to homelessness? Reliable employment.
This week, the city of Boston conducted its annual Homeless Census, during which teams of volunteers spanned the city and counted the number of people living on the streets, in shelters, or...
View ArticleClosing the Justice Gap for Low-Income New Yorkers
Each year, thousands of New Yorkers find themselves in Housing Court facing eviction. All court cases are important of course, but the potential ramifications of eviction cases are particularly...
View ArticleAs Affordable Rent Disappears, Lawmakers Propose Slashing Funds that Could Help
Last week, the Washington Post reported on a D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute study which found that there are virtually no apartments available on the open market in the nation’s capital that are...
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A City that Values My Brothers and Sisters
Editor’s note: Like many people living in urban communities across the country, residents of the historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati are struggling to stay in their homes and have a...
View ArticleStop Ignoring Residential Segregation and the Concentration of Poverty
Over the last two weeks, disturbing images of Baltimore’s civil unrest have flooded mainstream and social media. For many, the images recall other past uprisings still fresh in our nation’s collective...
View ArticleEnding ‘Debtors Prisons’ for Arkansas Renters
While it may not sound like something that should be legal in modern-day America, being arrested for failing to pay rent on time is a reality for some Arkansans, thanks to a state law – known as the...
View ArticleA Story of Why We Need Housing First Right Now
We need a national Housing First plan implemented as soon as possible if we are to effectively deal with the problem of homelessness in America. This is a story that explains why. I became homeless in...
View ArticleRemembering Katrina in the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
This is an excerpt from a post that first appeared at Medium. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 80 percent of New Orleans was under water, thousands of people were displaced, and at...
View ArticleWhat I Told the Attorney General and the HUD Secretary About My Criminal Record
After four decades of mass incarceration and over-criminalization in the United States, as many as 1 in 3 Americans now have some type of criminal record, and nearly half of U.S. children now have a...
View ArticleNew Mortgage Disclosure Requirements a Win for AAPIs
Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a much needed and long-anticipated rule—a milestone not only for fair housing policy and advocacy groups, but also for the nation’s...
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We Don’t Need to Wait on Congress to Fight Homelessness
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, “On a single night in January 2014, 578,424 people were experiencing homelessness—meaning they were sleeping outside or in an emergency shelter...
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Why Achieving the American Dream Depends on Your Zip Code
Today, the state of the American Dream—the ability of anyone to work hard and get ahead—largely depends on one’s zip code. That is more than a little troubling, given that 97 percent of Americans...
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When Landlords Discriminate
This article contains a quote from an interview that may be offensive to readers. With over a four-fold increase since the 1970s, the United States now boasts the highest rate of incarceration in the...
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The Hidden Costs of a College Education
Over the past few weeks, students across the country, myself included, have received their college diplomas. When I set out to purchase a cap and gown for my graduation ceremony, I was immediately...
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Dear San Francisco Journalists: If You Want to Help Homeless People, Just Ask Us
Today, media organizations throughout the Bay Area are devoting a day of coverage to homelessness in San Francisco. Aside from the fact that the project seems originally motivated by an editor’s view...
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The Biggest Beneficiaries of Housing Subsidies? The Wealthy.
It’s almost the first of the month, and that means rent’s due. That rent or mortgage check is the single biggest expense in most Americans’ budgets, so it’s no wonder that Congress directs a ton of...
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I Was Homeless in Rural America. Here’s How to Help Families Like Mine.
After we packed what was left of our belongings into our rusted-out minivan, my siblings and I loaded in to avoid the rain. We squeezed in among the garbage bags full of clothes, the kitchen...
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The House Next Door
When my father, aunt, and uncle decided to pool their money to buy my grandmother a house closer to one of her children, they didn’t need to look far. The house next door to mine had just gone up for...
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What Baton Rouge Can Learn from New Orleans About Bringing Flood Victims Home
In the wake of the nation’s worst natural disaster since Superstorm Sandy, flood recovery efforts are now underway in Baton Rouge: Electricity is operating in certain neighborhoods, damaged floors and...
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Public Housing Can Be Good for Kids. But There Isn’t Enough of It.
Finish this sentence: “Children who grow up in public housing…” Whatever your political leanings, you probably didn’t come up with “…do better in life than their peers who didn’t.” But according to a...
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6 Reasons Ben Carson Is Unqualified to Be Housing Secretary
Update: The Trump administration announced on Monday morning that Ben Carson will be nominated for the position of Housing Secretary. Earlier this month, when rumors of erstwhile presidential candidate...
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Why Won’t Ben Carson Speak Out Against HUD’s Budget Cuts?
When Dr. Ben Carson was nominated to be Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, many progressives were distraught. Dr. Carson’s lack of experience with housing policy, paired with...
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What People Get Wrong When They Try to End Homelessness
When my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007, she asked me to promise I’d never move her into a nursing facility. I promised, although I wasn’t sure how I’d keep my commitment. I...
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How the U.S. Can Prevent a Fire Like Grenfell Tower
At least 80 people are missing and presumed dead after a devastating fire in Grenfell Tower, a high-rise apartment building in London. It’s the deadliest fire in Britain in more than a century. This...
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D.C. Residents Are Fighting a Slumlord to Regain Control of Their Neighborhood
For the past four years, tenants in the five-building complex above the Congress Heights metro station have dealt with horrific conditions: cockroaches, rats, bedbugs, persistent flooding, roofs caving...
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A New Bill in Congress Would Make Mobile Home Loans Even More Predatory
Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that would allow employees at manufactured home retailers—who sell houses often called “mobile homes” or “trailers”—to steer customers towards...
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Why Have Banks Stopped Lending to Low-Income Americans?
At the end of September, the Federal Reserve released its annual collection of data gathered under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Among other findings, the report details that the country’s three...
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A Billionaire’s Bid to Bring Amazon to Detroit
When Amazon solicited bids this fall for the location of its new 50,000-employee headquarters, 238 North American cities tossed their hats in the ring. They’re competing with one another to put...
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The Wind Chill is 46 Below and Our Roof Is Full of Holes
We need a new roof but we need a new car more. We live in a cabin in Trescott, Maine. Our nearest neighbors are a half-mile down the road in one direction and about two miles in the other, with woods...
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What Ben Carson Doesn’t Get About Poverty
“The prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease.” Apply Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson’s latest plan and...
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I’m a Programmer in a Tech Mecca. I Still Have to Deliver Food to Make Rent.
10:45 a.m. I wake up—I think I must have missed my alarm, or snoozed it too many times. I grab my phone to check the time. It’s late. I snap out of bed in a rush and curse myself for sleeping in. I...
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Ben Carson Wants HUD to Stop Fighting Housing Segregation
Today, a child born to a low-income family and raised in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans will have beaten the odds if they live past age 67. They can also expect to make just $20,000 a year by...
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San Francisco’s Prop C Would Make Tech Companies Address the Homelessness...
National media coverage of San Francisco’s Proposition C — which would raise taxes on the city’s largest businesses in order to increase funding to address the city’s homelessness crisis — is largely...
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California Already Has a Housing Crisis. The Fires Just Made It Worse.
California is on fire. Again. The state’s 2018 wildfire season has been devastating, and it’s not over yet. The dramatic Woolsey and Hill fires scorching the hills around Los Angeles are still being...
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30 Million Homes Are Unsafe to Live In. This Arizona Organization Has a Model...
When technician Dustin Shaber arrived at a small home on the east side of Tucson, he was prepared to measure a broken glass door and order a replacement. The homeowner had called in the request to...
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D.C.’s High Housing Costs Pushed Me In and Out of Homelessness for 30 Years
Everyone always forgets about apartment building laundry rooms. That’s where I used to go when the temperature dipped below freezing — the doors are unlocked and they’re usually in the basement, far...
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A Record-Breaking Tornado Season Is Pummeling Mobile Home Residents
“Our home is a 28×80 four-bedroom, two-bath that we got used three years ago. It was in like-new condition for a 15-year-old home,” said David Kelley, who lives in Beauregard, a town in Lee County,...
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Calling 911 or Not Mowing the Lawn Can Cost Disabled People Their Homes
Richard McGary lost his home because he wasn’t able to clean his yard. When McGary lived in Portland, Oregon, a city inspector decided he had too much debris in his yard and cited his home as a...
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My Neighborhood Shows How the ‘Opportunity Zone’ Tax Program Just Helps the Rich
My walk to the Metro each day takes me past a construction site, where there are currently four large cranes looming overhead. Walking along Rhode Island Ave. in the morning means having several large...
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Don’t Count on Big Tech to Fix the Bay Area’s Housing Crisis
Recently, Apple joined Facebook, Google, and a number of other tech companies pledging to make investments in increasing housing affordability in the Bay Area. Tech giant Amazon is also funding...
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San Francisco Tows Cars Over Unpaid Tickets, Even When People Are Living in Them
No one likes paying for a parking ticket. But for 32-year-old MiQueesha Willis, not being able to pay for those parking tickets meant losing the only home she shared with her two-year-old son, Tobias....
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COVID-19 Proves San Francisco’s Housing Crisis Is A Health Emergency
Ako Jacintho remembers when people weren’t living in tents on the streets of San Francisco. Or if there were tents, there weren’t encampments. This was back in the late ‘90s, right at the base of the...
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Landlords are Using an Old Financing Trick to Get Around Eviction Freezes
When coronavirus started sweeping the country this March, Francine Simpson lost three jobs. The 26-year-old was apprenticing in a Los Angeles-area tattoo shop, while babysitting and working as a waiter...
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As Eviction Bans Expire, Renters Turn to Credit Cards
Just off the major traffic artery of 16th Street NW in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where gentrification has forced out generations of Latinx and Black renters, an eight-story...
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Florida Police Are Still Clearing Homeless Camps Despite CDC Guidance
Tears stream down Venettia Moultrie’s face as she recalls the day that she was evicted from her encampment in Gainesville, Florida. Her tent had space for up to twenty people and included a meditation...
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Philadelphia Colleges Are Using Trump’s Opportunity Zones to Speed Up...
The West Philadelphia neighborhood of Mantua, where more than 1 in 5 buildings and lots stand vacant, seems like a classic picture of an economically distressed community. The median income is about...
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