Second Act Communities and the Virginia Beach CDC invite you to participate in their first annual Read One Book Together event. The first book will be Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block. We need to transform the isolation within our communities into connection and caring for the whole by building our social fabric. As community developers, we are very interested in participating in critical conversations with our neighbors and community partners about how we

Last month, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) released a report that explores the ways America's federal housing production programs are serving the lowest income households and how those resources may be better aligned. The report reveals that there are new entrants to the low income household sector such as retirees who don't have adequate retirement savings, households who lost their homes to foreclosure, college-educated young adults who cannot find profes

The internet was invented in 1958. The War on Poverty started in 1964. We sent a man to the moon in 1969. Why have we not been able to end homelessness in the United States? We have passed housing equality laws, but we haven't faced up to issues of housing equity. Most government programs have a very limited and deceiving definition of who is truly homeless. Innovation and risk-taking is not a leadership competency taught or endorsed in the community development industry. Non

In the greatest country in the world, it's counter-intuitive for us to tolerate poverty, hunger, and homelessness. To allow it brings into question our standards of human decency as we portray and communicate them to the rest of the world. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beloved Community" is a global vision that mandates that individual accountability should go hand-in-hand with local action. This vision is revived and speaking today into the lives and work of those of us who

Words have staying power. Keeping your head above water. Making the way best you can... I remember the first time that I heard that theme song and saw the introduction to the Good Times television show. I wondered how people could live in highrise concrete tombs surrounded by fences of iron and hopelessness. I have never been sure whether those fences were built to keep the world out or keep the residents in. Either way, the boundaries worked. The result was generations of pe