Housing

Like binge drinkers or fast-food fanatics, American urban leaders have had a tendency to run wild when things appear to be going well. But soon they will find that the good times are coming to end.

The prime culprit this time will be deflation of the residential real estate bubble, which has brought about a surge of tax collections and development.

Soaring prices for condos and a spike in upscale development have become the primary evidence for enthusiastic talk about… more

Almost a year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, media attention remains riveted on the rebuilding of New Orleans. But what happened to the estimated 1.5 million people who fled their flooded and destroyed homes in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana?

The Katrina-spawned diaspora is arguably the largest in U.S. history. Federal statistics suggest that about 1 million evacuees from the hurricane-damaged areas have returned to their homes. That leaves a diaspora population of about half a million people.

Where did they… more

For the better part of a half-century, America's leading urbanists, planners, and architects have railed against the growth of suburbia. Variously, the suburbs have been labeled as racist, ugly, wasteful, or just plain boring. Despite the criticism, Americans have continued to vote with their feet for suburban or exurban landscapes. These Americans now include not only whites, but also a growing proportion of recent immigrants, Asians, Latinos, and African Americans. And it's not just people who are moving -- suburbia… more

States continue to play an important role in helping low- and moderate-resource families save and build wealth. They have been innovators in assets policy, whether on their own or through the forces of "devolution," in which federal funds and decision-making authority are shifting from the federal to the state level. These initiatives and experiments -- these "laboratories of democracy" -- have inspired and informed other states as well as policymakers at the national level.

The following ideas to broaden savings and… more

In the wake of terrorist threats, gas price spikes, hurricanes, and a run-up in housing prices in certain markets, there has been broad discussion recently about the value to the U.S. of encouraging greater development in the nation’s interior. Population growth along America’s coasts is crowding more people into ever smaller areas, while the interior of the country remains relatively open. As the U.S population is projected to grow to 400 million in the next half century, America has an… more

The last great frontier for upward mobility in California extends from the far eastern suburbs of greater Los Angeles to the Sierra foothills in Northern California. It is there that the "California dream"--a place to create a new life and raise a family--is still possible. Call it the "Third California."

That may come as a surprise. Some coastal residents regard inland California as a failed geography of rising poverty, crummy jobs and unremitting ugliness. But in recent years, more and… more

As California's first large urbanized region, the Bay Area has a long and compelling history as a center of city life. When Fresno was little more than a couple of shacks and Los Angeles a gunslinger's cow town, San Francisco already saw itself as a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city.

Yet today, this cherished ideal of the Bay Area as a neatly organized, dense urban center is increasingly archaic. The suburbs are starting to take over. Long anxious to see itself as… more

Suburbia, the preferred way of life across the advanced capitalist world, is under an unprecedented attack--one that seeks to replace single-family residences and shopping centers with an "anti-sprawl" model beloved of planners and environmental activists. The latest battleground is Los Angeles, which gave birth to the suburban metropolis. Many in the political, planning and media elites are itching to use the regulatory process to turn L.A. from a sprawling collection of low-rise communities into a dense, multistory metropolis on the… more

Before a storm sank New Orleans and a pair of Boeing 767s gored the Twin Towers, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) drew up a list. It escaped notice in the months of second-guessing after the September 11 attacks but took on an air of prophecy within hours of Hurricane Katrina's landfall. There were three disasters, FEMA managers concluded at an August 2001 training session, that Americans should beware above all others: a terrorist attack on New York… more

While consuming only a tiny fraction of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) budget, the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program is one of the nation’s largest programs designed to help working poor families increase their savings and build assets. The program has three primary components -- stable, affordable housing, asset-building escrow accounts and work-promoting case management -- that function together to help families build assets and increase their earnings. The program is open to families receiving federal housing assistance… more