Shelterforce Magazine

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.

Shelterforce magazine takes a look at one of the hardest hit areas in New Jersey by the ongoing foreclosure crisis, and a first-in-the-nation property acquisition project that aims to stabilize neighborhood in decline.

Community groups and politicians are creating new strategies to bring fresh foods into low-income neighborhoods.

Should the people who build low-income housing get a prevailing wage? Community developers say they can't afford to pay it, but can they really fight poverty if they don't?

In Boston, labor unions and community groups are joining forces to win victories for affordable housing.

Nonprofit organizations are offering foreclosure prevention programs to assist people when their mortgages have become unmanageable.

Policies and initiatives based on class and race are essential in altering the unequal patterns of opportunity in cities and suburbs.

More Katrina evacuees went to Texas than any other state except Louisiana. A year later, many of them are in limbo.

The right choice of words, stories and images can have a remarkable effect on how the public views affordable housing.

After 9/11, when economic forces threatened Chinatown's survival, collaborative planning built consensus on where to go next.

Neighborhood planning allows community-based developers to move beyond housing development and become community catalysts.

For 18 years, the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group has helped Chicago's grassroots community organizations understand where and how their public dollars are spent.

An experiment in Ontario, Canada has ordinary residents meeting regularly to decide how government funds are spent on playgrounds, health clinics and adult education.

How residents of Lawrence, MA, are campaigning for greater resident control of public resources.

A grassroots coalition in Oakland used its organizing and design skills to produce a housing proposal the city couldn't refuse, despite the mayor's stiff opposition.

Displaced and overwhelmed, three major organizing networks provided immediate aid to Hurricane Katrina evacuees, and began working for long-term, equitable recovery. Will they be able to rise to the human and political challenges?

How the tenants movement of the 1970s and 1980s evolved into the housing and community development movement of today.

Grassroots groups, developers, bankers and others are sharing knowledge and collaborating on campaigns to change state and local community development policies.

New York ACORN's deal with a major private developer to incorporate a higher-than-average number of affordable housing units could provide an unprecedented strategy for collaboration and partnership.

New alliances and collaborations are winning community benefits agreements that dramatically improve the lives of low-income residents.