The Shelterforce blog

May 2008

• The Big Blue Bin

  Remember back in the ’70s, when people used to ask if you believed in ecology? Meaning, of course, do you support saving the earth and the whales and whatever else needs saving. But I would act dumb and say I…

• Make Lemonade from the Current Housing Crisis

  When life serves you lemons, make lemonade. That seems to be the adage the Prince William County authorities are following with regard to the foreclosure crisis. Prince William County has very high foreclosure rates, the highest in the state of…

• You’re Gonna Change the Economy? How, Exactly?

  If people were surprised at how skeptical voters in the recent West Virginia Democratic primary were of Barack Obama’s casting himself as the candidate of change, they shouldn’t have been. West Virginians have a right to be skeptical of talk…

• The Garden State Has a Tell, and Towns Are Calling the Bluff

  New Jersey is set to go all 12 rounds in its battle to achieve a plan for an affordable-housing mandate, but at this point, it’s looking more and more like the state, with its aging housing stock, misguided property-tax system,…

• California’s Organizer in the State House

  It just ain’t natural for a policy-type blogger to stray into ray-of-sunshine territory — we’re talking politics here, after all, so it’s smarter to expect disappointment. But a wonderful thing happened on May 13: Karen Bass was sworn in as Speaker of the California Assembly on Tuesday, the first African-American woman in United States history to head a legislative body. That’s cool in and of itself, but even better, in Karen Bass, California now has an extraordinary and gifted organizer in a top leadership position. more

• Master of Low Expectations

  Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich offers faint praise for the foreclosure fixes working their way through Congress, calling them better than nothing. Whether or not you’re convinced by Reich’s argument, it’s indisputable that Congress is engaged in a stylized…

• Can the Senate Sway Bush on a Foreclosure Rescue Plan?

  As of this writing, the Senate Banking Committee seems to be nearing a consensus on its housing rescue plan aimed at preventing foreclosures on homes that are covered by troubled mortgages. In an election year, and with foreclosure filings 65-percent…

• Speak Out for the Neighborhood Stabilization Act

  The foreclosure crisis is a tragedy for an increasing number of families, but what is frequently missing in the media coverage is the negative impact that the crisis is having in a growing number of low-income communities. Vacant and deteriorated…

• Preparing for Peak Oil: Nutty Survivalism or Crucial Equity Issue?

  Should community developers and other low-income community advocates be concerned about preparing for life after peak oil? We all know that the greed of the banking industry is responsible for much of the pain of the current foreclosure crisis, and especially its effects on poor neighborhoods. But as the recent report from CEOs for Cities, Driven to the Brink, points out, there’s another piece to the puzzle: They argue that rising gas prices “pricked” the housing bubble, particularly in those exurban areas that weren’t particularly the happy hunting grounds of predatory lenders, but yet are experiencing massive foreclosures. So what?, you may ask. How much do we care if speculators and rich folks who bought McMansions in the latest version of white flight suffer a little foreclosure? Don’t advocates for poor city neighborhoods have more important things to worry about? Maybe we do. more

• Collective Efficacy: The Key to Community Change?

  Nandinee Kutty, who, with James Carr, is co-editor of the newly released book Segregation: The Rising Costs For America, comments on my previous post about the correlation between residential segregation and high levels of violence in America’s cities. What happens…

• “Stop Killing People” in Chicago

  It’s the slogan of CeaseFire in Chicago, where gun violence has claimed the lives of close to two dozen school children already in 2008. Is gang violence a disease? There’s no doubt that its deadly effects are rampant among America’s…

• California: Fear & Loathing at the Ballot Box

  Everybody likes to go all schadenfreude on California, jealous of the wonderful weather, fabled coastline, and our claim to Yorba Linda, birthplace of Richard Nixon, all things that make us The Envy of the World. But please go easy on…

• Could High Gas Prices Have Positive Side Effects?

  With The New York Times reporting an increase in mass-transit ridership as gas prices continue to climb, I’m reminded of my days as a mass-transit commuter, when I got rid of my car so I could ride the rails daily.…

• I Really Want to Be Wrong

  Around the beginning of February I caught wind of the Permanent Source program here in California. Evidently the governor (and you all know his name) got it into his head that instead of a proposition here and a proposition there…

• Stirring Up Change in the Steel Belt

  The steel belt, once famous for its smoky cities, is capitalizing on a renewed public awareness of the environment to achieve tangible neighborhood change. Over the past few years, Youngstown, Ohio has garnered national press with a radical, green redefinition…

• Will Foreclosures Translate into Votes?

  What are the political consequences of the mortgage meltdown? Will the spiraling wave of foreclosures translate into votes in November’s election? And, if so, who will benefit? Democrats? Republicans? Or both? A piece of that question was answered last Thursday, when the House voted 266-154 for two bills – H.R. 5818 and H.R. H830 — sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, that would help homeowners at risk. The bills allow homeowners to shift from subprime mortgages they can no longer afford to federally backed mortgages. It would provide $300 billion in federal loan guarantees to lenders who agree to reduce the outstanding principal on loans. In exchange for a new mortgage, backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), homeowners must share profits on a subsequent sale of their home with the government. The Frank plan also includes a one-time $7,500 tax credit for new homeowners to be paid back over 15 years, and $15 billion for states and localities to buy and rehabilitate foreclosed properties. In 2007, 405,000 households lost their homes, an increase of 51 percent over the more than 268,000 that were repossessed in 2006. The Center for Responsible Lending projects that two million families are likely to lose their homes in the next few years due to the current subprime lending crisis. More than 80 mostly subprime mortgage lenders went bankrupt by the end of last year. But it is not just borrowers and lenders who are losing. Standard and Poor’s reported that home prices dropped by more than 12 percent over a one-year period beginning in February 2007. As a result, property values and property-tax revenues have declined. The U.S Joint Economic Committee has projected a loss of $71 billion in housing wealth as a result of the mortgage meltdown. The U.S. Conference of Mayors projected that 10 states alone would lose $6.6 billion in local tax revenue. The Democrats, including Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, want to provide a lifeline to troubled homeowners — those who have already lost their homes and those on the brink of foreclosure — and to toughen regulations on banks, lenders, brokers, and investors who participated in the subprime rip-offs. It’s fascinating to watch President George W. Bush try walking the political tightrope between ideology and political reality. Instinctively, Bush, like most Republicans (including Sen. John McCain) has balked at using tax dollars to rescue homeowners and gasped at the idea of holding businesses accountable to be socially and economically responsible. They prefer to blame the victim — the borrowers who got snookered by predatory lenders and brokers — but feel no hesitation at bailing out Wall Street banks like Bear Stearns. (For a full explanation of the origins of and solutions to the foreclosure crisis, see Stemming the Red Tide in the Spring 2008 issue of Shelterforce) more

• Make It Better

  Welcome to Rooflines, the new group blog of the National Housing Institute. At the risk of going all biblical on you, Rooflines’ launch is one of many signs that Americans are emerging from 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. I came of age in an era long on idealism but devoid of effective progressive leadership. After the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy , my generation sank into a chronic state of rudderless opposition, punctuated by moments of excruciating disappointment, such as the occasion of my first foray into the voting booth in 1972. The day got off to an inauspicious start when my dog Jude pulled me into a sign post on a Philadelphia street, leaving me with an egg-shaped souvenir of my debut as an enfranchised citizen. My headache the next morning when I awoke to find Richard Nixon was the one again had less to do with the lingering effects of a mild concussion than with the realization that my candidate had been buried in a landslide. And like anyone old enough to have had that Nixon headache, I spent the subsequent decades watching the marginalization of progressive values in American society. Lately, though, it seems that there are innovative ideas and visionary leaders everywhere I turn, using this medium to get people moving — from the local grass roots to the national level. And they are there for the googling online. It is not just a matter of electoral politics. Van Jones’ Green for All movement has made a quantum leap by joining Dr. King’s vision of social and economic justice with the emerging green economy. Once you’ve seen how Green for All is catalyzing Americans across generational, ethnic, rational, and economic boundaries your consciousness about the possibilities for a transformative 21st-century progressive agenda will be forever altered. Watching Majora Carter talk about her organization, Sustainable South Bronx, I fairly jumped from my desk chair with excitement, galvanized by her passion, her brilliance, and her drive to revitalize her community while restoring connection to the natural environment. And then there’s former presidential candidate John Edwards, who has not retreated from public life to prepare for another campaign season. Instead, he is spearheading Half in Ten — a coalition of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF), the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN), and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) dedicated to cutting poverty in America in half by 2018. On Rooflines, you’ll meet bloggers who, like Van Jones, Majora Carter, and John Edwards, are using the Web to make change. They exemplify what NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has to say about the genius of the link, making the Internet a “web of connections.” This medium gives us the opportunity to forge community across generations, time zones, professional specialties, and other barriers to connection, which is the prerequisite for true synergy. By sharing information, we can empower one another, and ourselves, as an informed citizenry, to work together for economic and social equity. No wonder we’re coming out of the wilderness and finding our way to Rooflines. To paraphrase the Pulitzer-Prize-winning bard, Robert Zimmerman, we just need an Internet connection to know which way the winds of change are blowing. more

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