Our Affordable Housing Crisis
In the Neighborhood
6/16/16, SARASOTA, FL --
"Today, 4 in 10 households in Sarasota County spend more than one-third of their total income on rent or a mortgage, county long-range planning manager Allen Parsons told members of the Tiger Bay Club. Half of those families spend more than half of their income to put a roof over their heads, he said. 'That's only going to get worse,' Parsons said, 'Unless we do something now.' But that "something" -- any kind of broad-based approach to promote workforce housing -- has eluded county, municipal, business, development, nonprofit and elected leaders alike." (Source: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Zach Murdock)
4/19/16, BALTIMORE, MD --
Baltimore City Board of Estimates exempts Sagamore Development from city requirements to include affordable housing in its proposed $5.5 billion redevelopment plan of Port Covington. Sagamore Development is the real estate firm of Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank. (Source: Baltimore Sun, Natalie Sherman)
3/13/14, BALTIMORE, MD --
Watch this video from The Real News Network for an excellent 18-minute discussion about the range of issues faced by cities like Baltimore in dealing with low-income tenants, public housing, a shortage of private-sector affordable housing, and the growing homeless population as a result of Congress' persistent failure to adequately fund public housing. Featured in the video are Baltimore City Councilman Bill Henry (4th District) and University of Maryland School of Social Work professor Jeff Singer.
From Our Blog
2018 Poverty and the Urgency of Prisoner Reentry and Life Restoration
Since 2005 Open Door America has worked to unlock the secret codes of intergenerational poverty in America’s inner cities. Now in year thirteen, our story has greater meaning and urgency than ever before. Having come on line just nine years after metamorphic welfare reform in 1996, we were an immediate beneficiary of the raised social awareness generated by the faith-based initiative movement of the early 2000's. By the end of our first decade, however, a sharp decline in nationwide community development investment, especially in the key area of federal housing, shifted our thinking away from traditional block-by-block redevelopment strategies to individualized programming targeting heads of households, young fathers, and in particular, ex-offenders and current offenders who hold sway in the poorest neighborhoods. Today, 22 years into the nation’s endless rancorous debate over poverty and government spending, we operate in a political and cultural environment where the very existence of entrenched poverty is now openly and counter-factually questioned in Washington. We believe the lessons learned from our improbable survivor's journey and the promising potential of our current efforts to retrieve first-time offenders and restore vetted recidivists are essential to this discussion and critical to America's social and economic future.
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