The Impact of Advocacy Organizations on Low-Income Housing Policy in U.S. Cities

Financial support for affordable housing competes with many other municipal priorities. This work seeks to explain the variation in support for affordable housing among U.S. cities with populations of 100,000 or more. Using multivariate statistical analysis, this research investigates political explanations for the level of city expenditures on housing and community with a particular interest in the influence of housing advocacy organizations (AOs). Data for the model were gathered from secondary sources, including the U.S. Census and the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Among other results, the analysis indicates that, on average, the political maturity of AOs has a statistically significant, positive effect on local housing and community development expenditures

Advocacy, Democratic Theory, and Participation

This document was part of the Multicultural Philanthropy Project, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. A series of fourteen guides examine the ways in which various gender, ethnic, cultural, religious and racial groups use their gifts of time, money, and talent. They reflect the ways giving and voluntarism are embedded in American life and challenge the notion that philanthropy is the exclusive province of elites. The guides include discussion topics, research questions, and literature overviews with annotated bibliographies. They were developed both to integrate the study of philanthropy into the curricula at colleges and universities, and to provide a tool to nonprofit professionals in the area of development and fundraising. Each volume provides background information on a selected community that will help practitioners work effectively with these groups. Divided into three sections -- Theory and Participation, Pluralism and Interest Groups, and Advocacy in Practice -- this volume explores the relationship between the formation of associations and democratic practice. Beginning with Madison's federalist papers, the chapters explore why individuals have formed organizations, the most important reason being the desire to redress perceived inequalities, imbalances and injustices. The guide is designed with a dual purpose; to provide a clear conceptual and historical foundation for those interested in the advocacy role of nonprofit organizations and to offer lessons learned from case studies for those actively involved in community advocacy. The guide can best be used to examine historical and contemporary models of change from the work of community organizer, Saul Alinsky to the current practices of environment, economic and health-related public interest groups

Neoliberal urban policy and new paths of neighborhood change in the American inner city

In this paper, we examine a new form of neighborhood change that appeared towards the end of the 1990s and early 2000s and explore its causes, processes, and effects. We suggest that a neoliberal policy regime focused on revitalizing cities through deconcentrating poverty and increasing low-income and moderate-income home-ownership has created a new funding and decision environment for the redevelopment of select inner-urban neighborhoods. The results have been an emerging process of neighborhood reinvestment marked by land-use and social transformations driven not by rent-seeking private developers but primarily by local political actors and community development organizations struggling in resource-poor environments. This neighborhood change process promotes benefits for those with a vested interest in neighborhood and urban revitalization and for a small group of moderate-income, minority homebuyers. The effect of these revitalization efforts on very-low-income residents who have lived in these neighborhoods through a period of severe disinvestment is uncertain. Despite the rhetoric of neighborhood revitalization, the reality of this reinvestment looks more like a new process of gentrification than a process of community-controlled redevelopment.

Displacing New York

The capitalization of urban property markets intensifies the contradictions between housing as use-value affordability versus exchange-value asset accumulation, and exacerbates displacement pressures. Policies designed to deal with these contradictions—public housing and rent regulations—allow some low-income renters to resist displacement, particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the resulting empirical configuration has been interpreted in ways that cast doubt on the extent of displacement, its causal links to gentrification, and the necessity of protective policies. In this paper we present an alternative interpretation, using New York City as a case study to analyze the spatial evolution of displacement pressures amidst the restructuring of an embattled yet vital municipal welfare state.