Beyond Foreclosures: New Approaches to Housing and Community

This week the New York Times had an amazing article about a visionary builder in Texas who builds gorgeous, idiosyncratic houses for low income residents out of scavenged and recycled materials. Two things struck me from the article: The beauty that can be created using materials otherwise destined to become “trash,” and the fact that a number of residents of the houses he built ended up losing their homes to foreclosure, despite having helped build them with their own hands, and the low prices that he charges for them. The houses ended up reselling for market rate, bought up for their architectural beauty and never to be sold as affordable again.

I happened upon a possible solution to this dilemma the same day, in an article about how Boston’s Dudley Street neighborhood used an innovated combination of imminent domain, land trusts, and community organizing to develop an economically thriving community without the increased rents that cause displacement and gentrification. Thanks to their land trust, Dudley Street has avoided the rash of foreclosures that have devastated so many other communities.

Read both articles by following the links below:

One Man’s Trash- New York Times

No Foreclosures Here- Yes! Magazine