Category: Affordable Housing
Surprising UK election outcome – people want to organize
Fort Lauderdale The voters came out from under the rocks and jumped over the hedgerows to vote for the Conservatives behind weird and wacky Boris Johnson in the recent snap election in Britain. Labour took a…
Rathke: Community reinvestment still matters, why gut it more?
New Orleans Newsday, the big Long Island, New York newspaper, reported on a three-year investigation of real estate practices in this suburb that is well-known as one of the whitest suburbs in America. Using a…
Rathke: If there isn’t a housing crisis, why does it feel like one?
New Orleans Not only have I believed there is a housing crisis, but I’ve said so repeatedly and at every opportunity I’ve been given. I’ve also argued that rents and evictions are rising at record…
Rathke: Liberal Affordable Housing Conundrums
New Orleans Just maybe there is beginning to be an emerging consensus in the United States, joining many other countries around the world, that there is in fact an affordable housing crisis in the country. Perhaps…
Rathke: New housing law in NY has impact on tenant evictions
New Orleans The Wall Street Journal and its reporters must get a special thrill when they can score an exclusive on the New York Times on New York’s own turf. I bet they didn’t even…
Rathke: Consolidating the fight against housing displacement in Canada
Quebec City After a day of training and reports, the ACORN Canada organizing staff really got serious when the Year End / Year Begin meeting began no holds barred wrestling with campaigns. The discussion was particularly…
Rent-to-own, same ol’ or something different?
by Wade Rathke December 3, 2020 Little Rock Don’t misunderstand me, we want to believe, we really do. Several years ago, the ACORN Home Savers Campaign worked in a half-dozen cities trying to bend the…
The vultures are circling the housing market
by Wade Rathke September 21, 2020 New Orleans Following right behind the crisis that tenants are facing with the eviction situation clouded in different courts and interpretations and no stimulus in the offing, mortgage holders…
Community land trusts could help heal segregated cities and reduce homelessness
Efforts to build wealth for Black Americans could focus on property ownership. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images by Mark Roseland, Arizona State University and Christopher Boone, Arizona State University American cities represent part of the…
Housing is healthcare!
Pearl River At ACORN we like the slogan, “Housing is Health Care.” We saw it or picked it up somewhere. I wish I could remember, so I could give proper credit, but in the meantime,…
As April 1 Nears and Coronavirus Crisis Continues, Demand to #CancelRent Swells
“It’s unreasonable to expect thousands and thousands of people who lost their incomes to pay rent and mortgages on April 1st.” by Andrea Germanos, staff writer With the coronavirus pandemic causing an economic crisis for households…
Around The Corner: 3D housing designed for the homeless and needy seniors
Sharon Jayson March 9, 2020 AUSTIN, Texas — Tim Shea is counting the days until he can move into a new, 3D-printed house. Shea, 69, will be the first to live in one of six such…
Attention turns to Flagstaff’s pension fund: Mayoral candidates weigh in
By Naima Schuller Senior Meteor Reporter March 6, 2020 Flagstaff As the City of Flagstaff heads into the budget process for next fiscal year, every City Division is doing so in the red. Greg Clifton, the Flagstaff…
Mayor Pete has a redlining problem in Indiana
By Aaron Glantz / February 28, 2020 This story was originally published by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at revealnews.org and…
Housing crisis forcing rich cities to get smaller
New Orleans A reporter, Jed Kolko, with the New York Times seems to be connecting the dots in an interesting and important way. In a recent article about some of the unintended consequences of geographic…
Unmasking the secret landlords buying up America
By Aaron Glantz / December 17, 2019 This story was originally published by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at revealnews.org and…
3 ways HUD is using regulatory attacks to dismantle fair housing protections
More than 50 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act (FHA), the ultimate goal of the law—to eliminate all forms of housing discrimination and end residential segregation—is still far from reach. By Areeba Haider…
Unmasking the secret landlords buying up America
By Aaron Glantz / December 17, 2019 America’s cities are being bought up, bit by bit, by anonymous shell companies using piles of cash. Modest single-family homes, owned for generations by families, now are held by…
Tenants and communities organizing in Ireland
Dublin A change in plans pushed Tunisia off of my plane ticket and found me jumping instead from Manchester, England, to Dublin, Ireland, to meet with the officers of ACORN’s newest affiliate, CATU-Ireland or Communities and…
The big, fat, long tail of neighborhood segregation
Manchester The “long tail” is a tech-marketing concept that pundits and futurists promote with some enthusiasm. The heart of it is that some businesses, especially enabled by the internet and the Amazon world view, could make…
When people downsize to tiny houses, they adopt more environmentally friendly lifestyles
Tiny houses on display in Portland, Oregon in 2017. Dan David Cook/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA Maria Saxton, Virginia Tech Interest is surging in tiny homes – livable dwelling units that typically measure under 400 square feet. Much…
Beacons of hope in the European housing crisis
Amsterdam A housing conference took place in a workers’ center built in the heart of a neighborhood in the 1930s in the midst of the worldwide depression that the conveners thought underscored the possibilities even in…
Rathke: The dollars driving landlords to evict aren’t big time
Little Rock The landlord ideology about tenants is based on a narrative mythology that whenever they evict, it is because their tenants are deadbeats and scofflaws. Landlords having powerful local and national organizations and a much…
Cranes soaring to escape London, building student housing not affordable housing
Editors note: It appears that the same corporate motivations building expensive student housing and condos for vacationers in Flagstaff is infecting the world. ACORN is building a campaign in Ireland to combat unbridled development. New Orleans One thing that intrigued…
