Public Housing

In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.

There was no single, dramatic event that set the current financial crisis off. A whole series of very questionable decisions by many people, in many places, over a period of years, built up the pressures that led to a sudden collapse of the housing market and of financial institutions that began to fall like dominoes as a result of investing in securities based on housing prices. This book is designed to unravel the tangled threads of that story.

Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners.

Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-have resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Listeners will find discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment; explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism; and a comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis.

Millennials are the first generation in Ireland to be worse off than their parents. Trapped in a game of rental roulette, stuck living at home as adults, and many on the brink of homelessness, the Irish housing crisis has defined the lives of an entire generation—and it is set to continue. With housing costs in Ireland the highest in the EU, the property ladder has been kicked from under thousands. So how did we get here…and how do we break the cycle?

Have you ever felt like you had a gift to share with the world, but only needed the perfect opportunity to make that dream a reality? Do you ever feel stuck on your path because you feel your race, gender, social class, etc., is hindering you from making the necessary strides to get ahead in your education or career? As a first-generation low-income student, Crystal received over $670,000 in scholarship funding, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholarship and the Army ROTC merit award.

Much ink has been spilled in recent years talking about political divides and inequality in the United States. But these discussions too often miss one of the most important factors in the divisions among Americans: the fundamentally unequal nature of the nation's housing systems. Increasingly, important life outcomes—performance in school, employment, even life expectancy—are determined by where people live and the quality of homes they live in. Fixer-Upper is the first book assessing how local, state, and national housing policies affect people and communities.

What if there were one single way we could significantly improve the American economy, public health, and offer attractive investment opportunities, while also providing more homes for American families and workers? The American Dream has always been built on the notion that no matter where you come from, you can be successful. For the past century, housing has played a major role in making the American Dream a reality for millions of individuals. In short, the availability of affordable housing stands at the crossroads of capitalism and compassion.

La crisis de vivienda existe y no podemos seguir ignorándola. Nuestras ciudades son cada vez más inhabitables: cada vez más caras, más distantes, más precarizadas y con menos servicios. Miles de personas están preocupadas por su imposibilidad de adquirir unavivienda en propiedad o, incluso, en arrendamiento. Sin embargo, esta problemática sigue siendo percibida como una preocupación individualizada y no como el problema estructural que realmente es.