#157 Spring 2009 — Foreclosure Crisis

The Green House?

We couldn’t resist the pun when news broke in March that Van Jones will serve as Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on […]

We couldn’t resist the pun when news broke in March that Van Jones will serve as Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Jones is expected to work with departments and agencies to advance the President’s agenda of creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources. Jones will also help to shape and advance the administration’s energy and climate initiatives with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities.

The appointment is viewed as something of a bellwether for the green jobs movement. Jones, a founder of Green For All, a national organization that promotes an inclusive green economy, and a New York Times bestselling author, could be pivotal in assuring major federal investments that support the growth of a green economy. In a 2008 Shelterforce interview, Majora Carter, a Green For All cofounder and founder of Sustainable South Bronx, called for a “Green New Deal” that included federal support, in addition to community support.

OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE

  • The Continued Importance of Fair Lending in the Age of Obama

    June 4, 2009

    Housing discrimination continues to plague the market, as does the myth that the housing crisis resulted from extending homeownership and home mortgage credit to historically underserved groups: minority families. Even with the Obama administration's Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan and, within that, the Making Home Affordable program, minority groups continue to suffer ongoing discrimination and fair housing violations.

  • Can the Silk City Forge its Next Industrial Revolution?

    June 4, 2009

    New Jersey's Paterson is among the nation's oldest planned industrial cities, but it has fallen on hard times since the once-booming silk industry there declined in the latter half of the 20th century. Much of the industry in this city of 150,000 has since left, but now a geological attraction once envisioned by Alexander Hamilton as something that could be harnessed for industrial might, is fully protected, and could be channeled, this time, for its community-building potential.

  • Organizing Lessons from Allen Parkway Village

    June 4, 2009

    When Lenwood E. Johnson, the son of Texas sharecroppers, moved into Houston’s Allen Parkway Village project housing, the Freedmen’s Town section of the city had yet to be designated historic, […]