San Francisco’s new model for mixed-income housing: HOPE SF

Public housing ; San Francisco (Calif.)

Strengthening community development infrastructure: the opportunities and challenges of CDBG

Considerations should be made regarding how to improve the capacity of local governments and nonprofits using CDBG funds to carry out community development work.Community development

Improving the outcomes of place-based initiatives

For more than five decades, public, private and nonprofit entities have implemented a range of targeted neighborhood revitalization strategies designed to tackle the challenges associated with concentrated poverty. These efforts have included urban renewal programs, loans and grants motivated by the Community Reinvestment Act, housing redevelopment through HOPE VI, Empowerment Zones, New Markets Tax Credit investments, as well as foundation-led comprehensive community initiatives and local nonprofit ventures. The most ambitious of these initiatives have aimed to concentrate multiple investments in both infrastructure and human capital in a single neighborhood. ; At their core, these comprehensive initiatives try to tackle long-standing disparities in housing, employment, education, and health caused by public policy decisions, market forces and failures, and patterns of discrimination. Yet overcoming these inequalities has proven to be difficult. In some cases, place-based initiatives have led to measurable improvements; in others, efforts have struggled, failing to significantly “move the needle” on the challenges associated with deeply entrenched neighborhood poverty. ; Despite these mixed-outcomes, place-based strategies are receiving increased attention and funding from both the public and private sector. The Obama Administration has explicitly endorsed place-based policy, and has launched an evaluation of existing federal place-based policies in an effort to identify areas of overlap and to seek avenues for interagency coordination. Additionally, the administration has budgeted for a new cohort of place-based anti-poverty programs. On a more local scale, a number of California-based foundations and CDFIs, as well as local government agencies, have also expanded investments in place-based initiatives.Community development

Ties that bind: income inequality and income segregation

Widening inequality is experienced not at the national level, but rather on a community by community basis. Learn about income inequality and its relationship to income segregation.Income distribution ; Community development

It’s getting easier to be green - cultivating the intersections between community development and environmental sustainability

Community development ; Environmental protection

The role of transportation planning and policy in shaping communities

This article reviews some of the social and environmental costs of transportation planning over the past half-century, and highlights some promising trends in planning and policy development at the local and federal level. These legislative measures, incentives, and new patterns of growth - including transit-oriented development (TOD) - are poised to remedy some past harms by better aligning transportation, housing, and environmental considerations. Equitable TOD, though not a silver bullet, has particular potential to enhance access for low-income communities to employment, education, and other opportunities, while at the same time supporting environmentally sustainable urban growth patterns.Community development ; Transportation

Addressing community and economic development in rural America: trends, challenges, and opportunities

Rural development

Small business development: an overview

Small business ; Community development

Homeownership at high cost : recent trends in the mortgage lending industry

Mortgage loans