November 11, 2014 | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A former G.C. Murphy’s store in Hazelwood could become a centerpiece of efforts to revitalize the neighborhood.
The city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority board is poised to accept a proposal by AHI Development Inc., a subsidiary to Action Housing Inc., at its meeting Thursday to buy the Spahr Building for $80,000 plus costs. The price includes four adjacent parcels.
“This is essentially a sales agreement,” said Robert Rubinstein, URA acting executive director...
August 5, 2014 | Washington Post
Washington, DC (August 5, 2014) – Summer days can stretch long for many young students in the District whose families don’t have thousands of extra dollars for camps and enrichment programs.
But a group of children in a subsidized housing development in the Parkside-Kenilworth neighborhood has been busy for the past month planting a new garden as part of a free summer program.
On a recent morning, children from the Paradise at Parkside Apartments showed a group of visitors what they had planted so far in their new wood-framed garden beds...
June 29, 2014 | Baltimore Sun
Baltimore, MD (June 29, 2014) – Alice Johnson noticed the checker boards that recently popped up behind her house, a neat brick rowhouse in the Barclay neighborhood of Baltimore.
"People will definitely use them," she said. "I play. I wish I could play chess, too."
She should have time to learn. The boards have been etched permanently into 1,000-pound slabs of marble in a new community courtyard.
The stones are salvaged steps from several area houses, and the artist who placed them in the courtyard hopes they become a new kind of Baltimore front steps — where urban dwellers have long gathered, told stories and played games...
April 8, 2014 | ElevationDC
Home values in D.C. nearly doubled from 2000 to 2010, while income for the bottom 40 percent of the city’s population barely budged. A minimum-wage worker would have to clock in 137 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent. The District’s New Communities Initiative – a plan to turn four public housing communities into viable mixed-income neighborhoods – is years behind schedule and widely considered a failure.
The list of affordable housing crises in the nation’s capital goes on. But there is at least one bright spot, and it comes in the form of an institution you are helping fund but may not have even heard of: the DC Sustainable Energy Utility (DCSEU)...
March 20, 2014 | BaltimoreBrew
Baltimore, MD (March 20, 2014) – Standing in front of a scrolling slideshow of public housing decrepitude – moldy bathrooms, cracked concrete and rusty heating pipes – U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan applauded Baltimore’s involvement in a new federal program that aims to finance repairs by selling some of the city’s public housing to private owners.
“It is a central piece of the President’s and my preservation strategy for public housing,” Donovan said yesterday during a pr blitz at The Brentwood on 25th Street, one 22 public housing units planned to be converted as part of the first round of the city’s participation in the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program or RAD...
