As home prices decline, Southern Californians who bought at the peak are nervous
Surging mortgage interest rates threatened to squash Michael and Christine Hawkins’ dream of home ownership. But this fall when the couple saw a Canoga Park condo languish on the market, they devised a plan.
5 ways local leaders can use the Racial Wealth Equity Database
The large wealth gap between Black and White families in America has persisted for generations—and mayors are determined to find ways to finally address it. In the most recent Menino Survey of Mayors, 67 percent of mayors said they are worried about the racial wealth gap in their cities. Of those mayors, overwhelming majorities support targeted programs to help Black and Latino residents build businesses and increase homeownership. When city leaders get down to designing new policies and programs, however, they quickly discover a problem. The data they need to inform their efforts—local-level data on assets, homeownership, and more—can be difficult to find broken down by race.
Thank You For Your Feedback
In 2018, Sarah Meyer, then chief customer officer with New York City Transit, was fielding questions at a public meeting in the 14th Street Y near Union Square. The topic of the meeting was moving a few bus stops a few hundred feet so they were better spaced out. While working one of the tables, a man Meyer described as about 60 or 70 years old sauntered up to her. He said he was representing “everyone from his building,” Meyer said. They were opposed to the MTA moving bus stops. Meyer tried to explain why they were doing it—there are international standards for bus stop distances, and this stop was far too close to the other stops. With fewer stops, the buses would be faster.
Greater Boston Housing Earns “Failing Grade” in Annual Report Card
Released on Wednesday, the 2022 Greater Boston Housing Report Card—the Boston Foundation’s annual accounting of the state of housing in Boston and the area surrounding the city—shows that the region “would receive a failing grade” along almost every metric for measuring housing accessibility, equity, and availability, said M. Lee Pelton, Boston Foundation president and CEO, during a report launch event. (Pelton is also a member of the BU Board of Trustees.)
Real/Symbol Episode 2: Land, place, roots
In our second episode we will explore more deeply how our ideas about place and land shape how we might begin the healing and repair from the violence caused by displacement, gentrifcation and urban development. In our often enclosed narratives of extraction and profit, we have allowed the logic of capitalism to tell us what’s possible, but our imaginations can and must stretch further.
Housing inequities in Mass. start with those at public meetings, new report shows
A new report from Boston University researchers for the Massachusetts Coalition for Racial Equity in Housing finds the current housing policy process is hurting diverse communities and that the inequities can be traced directly to the voices showing up to public meetings.
Lack of Diversity Hindering Mass. Housing Production, Report Finds
The process for approving new housing development in communities across Massachusetts is “skewed toward an older, white population with the greatest interest in obstructing new development,” according to a new report assembled by two Boston University researchers and released Wednesday by The Boston Foundation.
BU study finds local land boards dominated by homeowners in Massachusetts
Local boards that oversee land use and housing construction in Massachusetts are dominated by white male homeowners, potentially skewing their decisions, according to a Boston University study of nearly two dozen cities released Wednesday.
Memphis’ potential is about Black Memphians reaching theirs
Every time it seems that progress is being made, it is upended by another wave of repressive and oppressive laws and policies. Some people these days refer to Jim Crow 2.0, but truth be told, the residual impacts of Jim Crow 1.0 were never completely eradicated. The impacts were retained in institutional racism, predatory and discriminatory lending, barriers to opportunity and wealth, new restrictions to make voting more difficult, resistance to fully funding social net programs, obstacles to business capital, blame the victim poverty “reform” programs, lack of access to affordable and sustainable housing, entrenched racial income disparities, and neighborhood disinvestment.
Mayors Face a Reckoning With Racial Wealth Gaps
A national survey of 126 mayors of cities with more than 75,000 residents found that two out of three are concerned “a great deal” or “a lot” about the racial wealth gap in their communities. This concern was shared by twice as many mayors in large cities as in smaller ones; surprisingly, more mayors (52 percent) of cities where housing costs are low had stronger concerns than those in cities with high cost of living (32 percent).