How are we doing on getting to zero on homelessness in CT?

If you’ve nothing better to do…

…I’m at Hartford’s historic Old State House for their very first Table Talk program at noon today. We’ll talk about housing, poverty, the Presidential election, and anything else you’d like to bring up.  I hope you’ll come. This is a new program at the Old State House and it would be cool to kick it off …

Because I’m one proud teacher…

Please, if you have a moment, go to the blog written by students in my COMM4500 class (a senior seminar at University of New Haven). At the beginning of the year, I had each student write down what they knew about wealth and income inequality. Some were pretty well informed, and some, not so much, but …

If you’ve nothing better to do…

I’m on WNPR’s “Where We Live” on Thursday, starting at 9 a.m. I’ll be appearing with Rex Fowler, who leads the Hartford Community Loan Fund, and Jeff Gentes, of Connecticut Fair Housing Center. They’ll be talking about tax liens, which I wrote about here. (And as an aside, Bro. Rex is also a refugee from the …

When housing’s too expensive…

…here’s who you lose: Teachers, firefighters, teachers, and other middle-class workers. From Nathan Heller, at The New Yorker: The quandary became flagrant last week: news circulated that the Palo Alto City Council had moved to explore subsidized housing for families earning between a hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. The …

You need to see this picture

A year ago, that man in the middle was sleeping on the porch of the state Supreme Court. He rolled up his bag one day and walked across the street to participate in Homelessness and Housing Advocacy Days — talk to legislators about his situation, maybe make some change. This is that man just last year: …

Do you know ALICE?

That’s Assets Limited, Income Constrained, Employed in the state? Here’s the latest update. It includes: Housing is a universal need, and affordable options for ALICE families are limited.  Throughout much of Connecticut, the cost of available housing is too high relative to the actual incomes of ALICE households.   Half of all renters and more …

In a housing revolution, sometimes things move slowly

But they do move, sometimes. I followed Breisha Hilyard in her quest to find adequate (and affordable) housing in Hartford. A couple of times, she and her two children skated dangerously close to homelessness. This is not how things are supposed to be. I watched Hilyard struggle, conquer, and get knocked back down only to …

In towns with high inequality, the poor pay more for housing

The rich. They crap up everything. I kid! But this says in cities where income inequality is high, the poor pay significantly more for housing. From Brookings: Inequality at the local level may be undesirable for a variety of reasons. It may diminish the ability of schools to maintain mixed-income populations that produce better outcomes …

If you’ve nothing better to do…

…I’m on “Where We Live” on WNPR at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, talking about how zoning can serve (and often does, in Connecticut) as the last legalized bastion of racism and classism. The show will also explore a recent study from Partnership for Strong Communities, which you can read here.