January 2010

  • The Risk In The System Starts to Come Home

    Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel that watches over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has never been known to mince words, and she’s not starting now. In the past few days by way…

  • “Top Of The Pecking Order” for Housing Bubble Blowups

    The New York Times has a pretty good rundown of all the players involved in the collapse of the sale of New York City’s Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complexes, replete with this quote: Its the poster child for…

  • Massive NYC Real Estate Deal Collapses

    The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the purchaser of two colossal apartment complexes on Manhattan’s east side, Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, has abandoned them to its creditors, after it defaulted on the on the $4.4 billion debt…

  • Honor Thy Mortgage!

    Thinking about walking away from your mortgage because of your underwater mortgage? Stephen Colbert, in his inimitable way, tells us to think again, and to honor mortgage because “your honor was so precious to the banks that they bundled it…

  • Some Thoughts On This Martin Luther King Jr. Day

    On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as one of the lucky ones who actually had the day off to reflect on this great man’s legacy, I started thinking about what’s actually happening around race in the United States today.…

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    Inclusive Revitalization In the South Bronx: Melrose Commons

    I’m sure many in the Rooflines readership are familiar with the inspiring story of Melrose Commons and Nos Quedamos in the South Bronx. It is much less known in my world of environmental advocates, so I chose it as my…

  • HUD Announces NSP2 Grants

    The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced this morning the long-awaited list of grantees for the second round of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP2)—$2 billion in available funds set aside in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of…

  • NSP2 Announcement Coming Soon

    HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan is expected to announce the NSP2 grantees, benefitting from nearly $2 billion of neighborhood stabilization program funds made available in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Donovan will hold a press conference today in Detroit to…

  • The Shadow (Inventory) Knows

    What used to be dismissed as a bogeyman by real estate professionals is now a reality of unknown capacity: homes that fall into the shadow inventory of foreclosure. The December report from Lending Processing Services indicates that one in every…

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    DC Population Rises While Crime Plummets

    New end-of-year data confirm what some of us have been reporting for a long time: central cities in the US are no longer in decline. This is great news for the environment, since it is more evidence that sprawl is…