Released earlier this month, this new report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development presents an assessment of efforts by HUD to desegregate public housing as a voluntary response to suits filed by various groups at eight different urban sites citing discriminatory HUD policies. HUD commissioned the Urban Institute (see the September 9, 1999 Scout Report for Business and Economics) to...

For folks with an intense and abiding interest in the world of housing and urban policy, this trove of working papers is quite a find. Crafted as part of the long term mission of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, it includes meditations from scholars from all over the world. Visitors can dive into recent offerings such as "Healthy Communities Under Fiscal Pressure: Smart Practices...

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development offers the full text of its periodical publication Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research. Cityscape, published three times per year, is an in depth publication that summarizes research on housing issues. Past issues are available in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format and early issues are single compressed (.exe) .pdfs. Recent issues...

Craigslist Disputes “Fair” Housing Lawsuit http://www.craigslist.org/about/fair.housing.html Free classified ads not working well for newspapers http://www.editorsweblog.org/news/2006/02/free_classified_ads_not_working_well_for.php#more Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc. v. Craigslist, Inc....

Founded in 1959, the Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) at Harvard is a collaborative unit affiliated with the Graduate School of Design and the Kennedy School of Government. The Center's central focus is to "analyze the dynamic relationships between housing markets and economic, demographic, and social trends, providing leaders in government, business, and the non-profit sector with the...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) puts together hundreds of informative documents for policymakers and the general public every year. This site provides access to grant applications, housing discrimination forms, materials on Native American housing programs, and other helpful information. It can be a bit tricky to navigate the site, but scrolling down the site is a good...

As the United States continues to grapple with a financial crisis, many scholars and policy pundits are looking at ways to improve the lot of American cities. One recently proposed idea is land banking, which is "the process or policy by which local governments acquire surplus properties and convert them to productive use or hold them for long term strategic public purposes." In this 39-page paper...

The LIHTC database contains information on 11,774 projects and 407,973 units placed in service between 1987 and 1994. Data available "includes project address, number of units and low-income units, number of bedrooms, year the credit was allocated, year the project was placed in service, whether the project was new construction or rehab, type of credit provided, and other sources of project...

Operated by a private research firm under contract to the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Resource Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness serves as a clearinghouse for technical assistance and research information. Included here are comprehensive, well-annotated national listings of organizations concerned with mental...

Volume II of this 2 volume report, explores success rates of the Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP) and factors affecting success rates in rural communities. The report draws on research from five rural public housing agencies (PHAs) in Alabama, Iowa, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In both volumes, success rate is defined as the portion of families who are issued vouchers and succeed in...