Author: Stephen BurghardtPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Tenants and the Urban Housing Crisis
Author: Stephen BurghardtPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Book Description
Tenants and the Urban Housing Crisis, Edited by Stephen Burghardt
Author: The Urban Housing Crisis
Author: Arlene ZarembkaPublisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
Zarembka's one-volume analysis and synthesis of four major aspects of the current housing crisis (financing/affordability, inadequate supply of lower-priced housing, discrimination, and displacement) provides, for each of the areas discussed, historical background, a review of alternative methods of problem resolution, and concrete proposals for new housing policies. Few, if any, books in the field investigate all four topics in such detail. Drawing on her legal training and experience, Zarembka also summarizes and interprets key legal concepts and court decisions that are relevant to the housing issue in terms the non-lawyer can understand. In addition, the work proposes a comprehensive platform for resolving the housing crisis. Chapter 1 summarizes the present housing crisis in the United States and reviews the federal government's response to that crisis. Issues arising in capitalist, socialist, and mixed economies in devising an equitable housing system are discussed in Chapter 2. Chapters 3 through 7 provide detailed analyses of the problems of financing, production and preservation, discrimination, and displacement, and give concrete proposals in each of those areas. The book concludes with a chapter discussing constitutional considerations that apply to the housing proposals, as well as mechanisms for financing them. Public policy makers, housing experts, urban planners, housing and community activists, professors and students in the social sciences, minorities, and those interested in critiques of the existing social and economic structure will find the keen insights, systematic analysis, and proposals for change provided here important reading. The volume could well be used as a primary or supplemental text for courses in urban studies, public policy, sociology, political science, economics, social work, law, Afro-American studies, and history.
Collateral Damages
Author: Meredith GreifPublisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610449002
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197
Book Description
Changes in federal housing policies over the past several decades shifted the primary responsibility for providing low-income renters with affordable housing from the government to private landlords. Federal, state, and local governments have passed laws to ensure that low-income renters are protected from illicit landlording practices. Yet we know little about how private landlords experience local housing regulations. In Collateral Damages, sociologist Meredith Greif examines how local laws affect private landlords and whether tenants are, in fact, being adequately protected. For three years, Greif followed sixty private landlords serving low- and moderate-income residents in the Cleveland, Ohio, metropolitan area to better understand how local regulations, such as criminal activity nuisance ordinances (CANOs) and local water billing regulations, affect their landlording practices. CANOs are intended to protect communities by discouraging criminal activity on private properties. Property owners can face financial and criminal sanctions if they do not abate nuisance activities, which can include littering, noise, drug use, and calls for police assistance, including calls for domestic violence. Local water billing regulations hold landlords responsible for delinquent water bills, even in cases where the account is registered in the tenant’s name. Greif finds that such laws often increase landlords’ sense of “financial precarity” – the real or perceived uncertainty that their business is financially unsustainable – by holding them responsible for behavior they feel is out of their control. Feelings of financial uncertainty led some landlords to use illegitimate business practices against their tenants, including harassment, oversurveillance, poor property upkeep, and illegal evictions. And to avoid to financial penalties associated with CANOs and delinquent water bills, some landlords engage in discriminatory screening of vulnerable potential tenants who are unemployed or have histories of domestic violence or drug use. In this sense, by promoting a sense of financial insecurity among landlords, laws meant to protect renters ultimately had the opposite effect. While some landlords, particularly those who rented a larger number of units, were able to operate their businesses both lawfully and profitably, the majority could not. Greif offers practical recommendations to address the concerns of small- and mid-sized landlords, such as regular meetings that bring landlords and local authorities together to engage in constructive dialogue about local housing policy, issues, and concerns. She also proposes policy recommendations to protect renters, such as establishing the right to counsel for lower-income tenants in eviction hearings and enacting a federal renter’s tax credit. Collateral Damages is an enlightening investigation on how local laws and practices perpetuate disadvantage among marginalized populations and communities, in ways that are hidden and often unintended.
The Affordable City
Author: Shane PhillipsPublisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831336
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
From Los Angeles to Boston and Chicago to Miami, US cities are struggling to address the twin crises of high housing costs and household instability. Debates over the appropriate course of action have been defined by two poles: building more housing or enacting stronger tenant protections. These options are often treated as mutually exclusive, with support for one implying opposition to the other. Shane Phillips believes that effectively tackling the housing crisis requires that cities support both tenant protections and housing abundance. He offers readers more than 50 policy recommendations, beginning with a set of principles and general recommendations that should apply to all housing policy. The remaining recommendations are organized by what he calls the Three S’s of Supply, Stability, and Subsidy. Phillips makes a moral and economic case for why each is essential and recommendations for making them work together. There is no single solution to the housing crisis—it will require a comprehensive approach backed by strong, diverse coalitions. The Affordable City is an essential tool for professionals and advocates working to improve affordability and increase community resilience through local action.
Rethinking Rental Housing
Author: John GilderbloomPublisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439906718
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
In recent years, almost daily media attention has been focused on the plight of the homeless in cities across the United States. Drawing upon experiences in the U.S. and Europe, John Gilderbloom and Richard Appelbaum challenge conventional assumptions concerning the operation of housing markets and provide policy alternatives directed at the needs of low- and moderate-income families. Rethinking Rental Housing is a ground-breaking analysis that shows the value of applying a broad sociological approach to urban problems, one that takes into account the basic economic, social, and political dimensions of the urban housing crisis. Gilderbloom and Appelbaum predict that this crisis will worsen in the 1990s and argue that a "supply and demand" approach will not work in this case because housing markets are not competitive. They propose that the most effective approach to affordable housing is to provide non-market alternatives fashioned after European housing programs, particularly the Swedish model. An important feature of this book is the discussion of tenant movements that have tried to implement community values in opposition to values of development and landlord capital. One of the very few publications on rental housing, it is unique in applying a sociological framework to the study of this topic.
Generation Priced Out
Author: Randy ShawPublisher:
ISBN: 0520356217
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
"Generation Priced Out is a call for action on one of the most talked about issues of our time: how skyrocketing rents and home values are pricing out the working and middle-class from urban America. Telling the stories of tenants, developers, politicians, homeowner groups, and housing activists from over a dozen cities impacted by the national housing crisis, Generation Priced Out criticizes cities for advancing policies that increase economic and racial inequality. Shaw also exposes how boomer homeowners restrict millennials' access to housing in big cities, a generational divide that increasingly dominates city politics. Defying conventional wisdom, Shaw demonstrates that rising urban unaffordability and neighborhood gentrification are not inevitable. He offers proven measures for cities to preserve and expand their working- and middle-class populations and achieve more equitable and inclusive outcomes. Generation Priced Out is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of urban America"--Provided by publisher
In Defense of Housing
Author: Peter MarcusePublisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804294942
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.
Abolish Rent
Author: Tracy RosenthalPublisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 173
Book Description
Abolish Rent takes aim at one of the foremost engines of inequality and injustice. Rent drives millions to debt, despair, and onto the streets. The social cost of rent is too damn high. Written for anyone fed up with the permanent housing crisis, complicit politicians, and real estate greed, Abolish Rent dissects our housing system from the perspective of those it immiserates. Through brisk, un-equivocating analysis and striking stories of resistance, it shows us how tenants can, through organizing and collective action, finally re-balance the scales. From two co-founders of the largest tenants union in the country, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. Authors Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis take us to trilingual strategy meetings, raucous marches against gentrification, and daring eviction defenses where immigrants put their lives on the line. These are the seeds of the revolutionary movement we need to make our housing, our cities, and the world our home.
Author: Ronald Lawson