Housing

Big Win For Victims Of Racist Restrictive Covenants

May 17, 2023 Ryan Reft, LAWCHA.org. Create! Desegregation, Housing, Segregation, Victory, Washington

On April 23, 2023, the Washington state legislature passed the Covenants Homeownership Act (CHA), pioneering legislation that will provide compensation to victims of the racist restrictive covenants that destroyed opportunities for generations of Black, Asian, Latinx, and Indigenous families. Historians have been working in dozens of locations to document the extent and impact of racial restrictive covenants, finding them in thousands of neighborhoods and showing that they have a close connection to today’s disparate rates of homeownership and wealth. Now the state of Washington is taking action to compensate the victims, and doing so with a law designed to survive court challenges that might scuttle reparations or programs that are overtly race based.

The Ugly Truth Behind ‘We Buy Ugly Houses’

May 12, 2023 Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon, ProPublica. Educate! Homebuyers, Housing, Poverty, Predatory Capitalism

Cory Evans was well-versed in the HomeVestors of America playbook when he arrived at a suburban Los Angeles home on Nov. 4, 2016. His franchise with the “We Buy Ugly Houses” company had executed more than 50 deals in the preceding two years. Patriot Holdings would soon become one of the company’s most successful franchises by following HomeVestors’ strategy of finding homeowners in desperate situations, then convincing them to sell quickly. The homeowner, Corrine Casanova, had bought the three-bedroom Baldwin Park bungalow with her husband in 1961 and now owned it outright. After raising three children there, she was days away from leaving it for an assisted living facility and had called the number on a HomeVestors ad.

These Lawsuits Could Turn The Tide On Section 8 Discrimination

April 28, 2023 Roshan Abraham, Next City. Resist! California, Housing, New York (NY), Washington D.C.

In October, the Washington, D.C., attorney general’s office announced the largest civil award in a housing discrimination case in U.S. history. The lawsuit was filed in 2020 against D.C. real estate firms DARO Realty, DARO Management Services and Infinity Real Estate, LLC, which oversaw investing for companies. A judge ruled that DARO would have to pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit brought by holders of Section 8 vouchers, a federally-funded payment system that allows low-income people to rent in the private market. What’s more, DARO had to dissolve its property management business and certain members of leadership who were named as defendants were permanently banned from owning property management businesses in D.C.

Philly Reaches Deal With Property Owner Over UC Townhomes

April 26, 2023 Aaron Moselle, Next City. Educate! Gentrification, Housing, Philadelphia, UC Townhomes

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Philadelphia has agreed to build 70 units of affordable housing on a portion of the site containing the soon-to-be-shuttered University City Townhomes, the city announced last week. The forthcoming project is a piece of a settlement agreement stemming from a federal lawsuit the complex’s owners filed against the city last year in response to legislation passed by City Council. The measure was introduced as part of a broader effort to maintain affordability in a swiftly gentrifying section of the city, as well specifically at the site of the townhomes. The owners argued the bill violated their constitutional right to sell the blocklong complex at 39th and Market streets, calling it an abuse of power.

Our Missing Middle Housing Didn’t Just Go Missing

April 24, 2023 David S. Rotenstein, Next City. Educate! Affordable Housing, Gentrification, Georgia, Housing

In early February, the city commission in Decatur, Georgia voted to amend the city’s zoning law to allow the construction of “duplex, triplex, and quadruplex residential units” in “single-family residential zoning districts” — what many housing advocates call missing middle housing. The legislation followed on the heels of 20 years of special studies, litigation and resident agitation over the city’s declining affordable housing stock, gentrification and displacement. By early 2023, it was too late to preserve the Atlanta suburb’s affordable housing stock. As for Decatur’s diversity, the tipping point for demographic and economic inversion had been reached long ago.

What Barcelona Can Teach New York City About Affordable Housing

April 20, 2023 Katelin Penner, Next City. Create! Barcelona, Housing, New York City (NYC), Spain

Earlier this month I visited Barcelona, Spain’s second largest city, where my sister has been studying abroad. We did all of the major tourist hits: we ate tapas, took a cable car to the top of Montjuïc, drank sangria, strolled through Park Güell, one of Antoni Gaudί’s signature works. We were captured by the beauty of the massive, rainbow stained glass windows of the Sagrada Familia church. I babbled to my family about superblocks, Barcelona’s innovative street design model, intended to decrease car use and air pollution while increasing access to public space. Yet the thing I found most striking about Barcelona was its rapidly growing social and public housing stock.

HUD Excludes People With Convictions From Public Housing

April 15, 2023 Roshan Abraham, Next City. Create! discrimination, Housing, Legal System, Public Housing

The housing crisis is particularly acute for the 79 million Americans with a criminal record: People with convictions are nearly 10 times more likely to experience homelessness compared to the general public. While federally subsidized housing could provide support to these individuals, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) contributes to the problem by permitting each public housing authority (PHA) wide leeway to discriminate against people with convictions. But some advocates have successfully gotten their local PHAs to change course: A 2016 policy change in New Orleans has been able to open up public housing for people with convictions by providing a clearer rubric for PHAs to use during screenings and appointing a board to review applications.

Measuring The Value Of Student Housing

April 6, 2023 P. M. Campbell, Left Voice. Resist! CUNY, Higher Education, Housing, New York (NY), Student Activism

CUNY Hunter College’s Brookdale Residence Hall is home to over 600 Hunter College students, where residents have a unique opportunity to foster community through social, educational, and cultural programs. It is organized by Resident Assistants, and a quick commute from New York City’s cultural hotspots and classes. Brookdale is unique in its affordability among CUNY housing, costing students less than $10,000 per academic year, but the dorm is currently in danger. On October 13, 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayer Eric Adams publicized the creation of an “Education Hub” at Brookdale Campus without mentioning that creating this Hub would require the ultimate destruction of the dorms located there.

Commoning In The City

April 2, 2023 David Bollier. Create! Cities, Commoning, Housing, Racism

While Foster and Iaione start with the design principles identified by Elinor Ostrom, the great scholar of the commons, they acknowledge "the limits of her framework and its applicability to the urban environment." Unlike traditional commons of farmland, water, or fisheries, where uses have great latitude to devise their own governance rules, Foster and Iaione concluded that "Ostrom's framework needs to be adapted to the reality of urban environments that are often crowded, congested, socially diverse, economically complex, and heavily regulated." So our discussion focused on the varieties of ways that urban commons are built in very different urban settings, and the cross-currents of politics, personalities, and histories that require a larger conceptual approach.

Housing Crisis Pushes Once-Thriving Co-op Movement Back Into Spotlight

April 1, 2023 Paul Weinberg, The Breach. Educate! Cooperatives, Democracy, Evictions, Housing, Privatization

When Eric Tuck lost two jobs at separate times in the 1980s, the Greenhill housing co-operative where he lived provided emergency assistance to him and his family. First, Tuck was laid off from National Steel in Hamilton, Ont. Two years later, he was laid off again from Firestone Tire Factory, only six months after he’d taken the job. Tuck was the sole breadwinner back then, raising two young children with his partner. Thrown out of work, he was forced to go on unemployment insurance, which was not enough to supplement his lost wages. But his co-op came through—both times—with a subsidy to reduce his housing charge. The Greenhill co-op was more than just an economic lifesaver.

California Wants Medicaid To Cover Six Months Of Rent

March 28, 2023 Angela Hart, Next City. Create! California, Health Care, Homelessness, Housing, Human Rights, Medicaid

Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose administration is struggling to contain a worsening homelessness crisis despite record spending, is trying something bold: tapping federal health care funding to cover rent for homeless people and those at risk of losing their housing. States are barred from using federal Medicaid dollars to pay directly for rent, but California’s governor is asking the administration of President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, to authorize a new program called “transitional rent,” which would provide up to six months of rent or temporary housing for low-income enrollees who rely on the state’s health care safety net — a new initiative in his arsenal of programs to fight and prevent homelessness.

The Banking Collapse, Housing Insecurity And More

March 24, 2023 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. Resistance Report Banking Crisis, Economic collapse, Housing, Regulation

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the 50 billion dollar injection to Credit Suisse highlights the precarious state of the banking system. While the banks claim that they are too big to fail, the reality is that the people who suffer the most when banks collapse are ordinary Americans. The rich can protect themselves by moving their money into offshore accounts or investing in other assets. But the poor and working-class Americans who have their savings in these banks will lose everything if banks collapse. On this episode of Behind the Headlines, Lee Camp interviews James Fauntleroy, a regular contributor to the Revolutionary Blackout Network (RBN) show.

Inside The Underground Network Supporting Asylum Seekers In Scotland

March 21, 2023 Agatha Scaggiante, Waging Nonviolence. Resist! Asylum, Housing, Refugees, Scotland

Every Sunday for the past six weeks, far-right protesters have been gathering in the small Scottish town of Erskine to complain about plans to house some 200 asylum seekers in a local hotel. However, they are not alone. Asylum seekers in Scotland and their local allies have also been protesting the use of these hotels, and for a much longer time. Scotland takes in thousands of asylum seekers each year: 4,000 in 2019. Normally Scotland is not the first stop for asylum seekers. The Home Office — the arm of the U.K. government that deals with immigration — processes most asylum seekers in England, and spreads people out around the U.K.

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