Anti-Displacement Ordinance Introduced in Louisville by Tenant Advocates
Tenant leaders and advocates in Louisville, Kentucky, introduced the “Anti-Displacement Fair Housing Ordinance,” also known as the “Historically Black Neighborhoods Ordinance” (HBNO), in August 2023. The first of its kind to be introduced in a southern state, the ordinance aims to address the rampant displacement and gentrification affecting Black communities in low-income neighborhoods in the Louisville metropolitan area.
The Power of One Vote: An Examination of Close Federal, State, and Local U.S. Elections and How Just a Few Votes Can Shape Policy
There is a common belief that voting does not matter because one vote cannot really make a difference. After all, more than 158 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election. In the face of such astronomical numbers, it may not feel that a single vote matters; but the truth is it does. Center for American Progress analysis of election data for U.S. Senate elections from 1976 to January 5, 2021, U.S. House elections from 1976 to 2022, and state office-level returns in 2016 compiled by the MIT Election Lab reveals that while large margins decide many elections, key elections often come down to just a handful of votes.
Who’s Responsible for the Housing Crisis?
Americans love local government. In a December 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 61 percent of respondents had a favorable view of their local government, whereas 77 percent had an unfavorable view of the federal government. But behind this veneer of goodwill is a disturbing truth: Local government is driving a housing crisis that is raising rents, lowering economic mobility and productivity, and negatively impacting wages.
A Teen’s Murder, Mold in the Walls: Unfulfilled Promises Haunt Public Housing
The year before Desaray died, President Joe Biden called for the federal government to spend tens of billions of dollars to fix dilapidated public housing that he said posed “critical life-safety concerns.” The repairs, Biden said, would mostly help people of color, single mothers like Gilliard who work in low-income jobs, and people with disabilities.
How Do We Solve America’s Affordable Housing Crisis? BU Research Helps Inspire a Federal Bill That Suggests Answers
A new federal bill, introduced by Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), aims to solve the crisis by making it easier to peel back local rules that can block new construction—and that are often weaponized by those who don’t want new housing in their backyards. And the bill’s approach was inspired, in part, by Boston University research.
Wausau, bring out the porta potties
At Monday’s Committee of the Whole on homelessness at City Hall, I brought up the lack of portable toilets in our city and noted that providing them would be low-hanging fruit for the city council to help people in need. In regard to this week’s Committee of the Whole, a professor at Boston University, Dr. Katherine Levine Einstein, sent a letter addressed to the Wausau City Council, which is embedded at the bottom of this column.
In studying business gentrification, of course size matters
Our recent study measured business closings and openings in Central Square between 2013 and 2023 as a way to understand commercial gentrification – the replacement of lower-value businesses with higher-value ones. In the study, we categorized businesses by their size: independent businesses or local, regional, national and international chains.
Reversal of Fortune: A Clean Energy Manufacturing Boom for Legacy Cities
In the Carondelet neighborhood of St. Louis, where once-busy shipyards gave way to vacancy and blight during the waning decades of the 20th century, a global specialty minerals company is building a $400 million factory to produce highly efficient batteries for energy storage. All of these projects and dozens more across the country are manifestations of a new federal, place-based industrial policy, fueled by more than $1 trillion in tax credits and grants under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, American Rescue Plan, CHIPS and Science Act, and most of all, what is essentially sweeping climate action legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act.
Creating and Managing Rental Registries: Cities’ Experiences and Exploring Use of Lived Experience to Evaluate Impact
According to HUD’s American Healthy Homes Survey II, 22.3 million housing units in the U.S. have one or more significant lead-based paint hazards. Many unsafe housing units are in disadvantaged neighborhoods where most people rent their homes and may be unable to afford better, safer housing. For a city’s most vulnerable residents, a rental registry with proactive inspections is a lifeline.
The YIMBYs are coming, to the suburbs
Fed up with the hostile reception to new development in Franklin, Frongillo and a group of other residents formed what was once a rare breed of advocacy organization in Boston-area suburbs: a pro-housing group, whose members go to public meetings to say yes to more housing development, instead of no. Katherine Einstein, a Boston University researcher who has studied housing politics in Massachusetts, said the new advocacy groups can wield a lot of influence. Even showing up at public meeting to speak in favor of projects is helping to offset longstanding dynamics that have shaped decisions about local housing policy.