Credit Unions: True To Their Mission Part II, from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, focuses on fair lending performance of credit unions. The report analyzes several credit unions and compares them to bank service in working and minority communities. The study finds that credit unions lag behind banks on 64 percent of the fair lending indicators that were examined.

Out of Reach 2009: Persistent Problems, New Challenges for Renters, released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, looks at the 36 million renter households in the U.S. and offers a side-by-side comparison of wages and rents in every county, Metropolitan Area (MSAs/HMFAs), combined nonmetropolitan area and state in the United States. For each jurisdiction, the report calculates the amount of money a household must earn in order to afford a rental unit at a range of sizes at the area’s Fair Market Rent (FMR), based on the generally accepted affordability standard of paying no more than 30 percent of income for housing costs.

The States and the Stimulus, from Smart Growth America, looks at the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 120 days after it was enacted and asks: “Are they using it to create jobs and 21st century transportation?” Specifically, the report examines if states and urban areas are investing stimulus funds in -projects that will generate the most jobs and create transportation, if states and urban areas making progress on the objectives for the ARRA funds, and if choices in spending ARRA funds are transparent and accountable?

The State of the Nation’s Housing 2009, from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, says that ongoing job losses, house price deflation, and tighter mortgage credit could stifle any economic recovery—despite signs of stabilization among new and existing home sales and single-family starts.

Balancing Durable Affordability and Wealth Creation: Responding to Concerns about Shared Equity Homeownership, by Rick Jacobus and Ryan Sherriff, and Prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation by the Center for Housing Policy. This report explores the potential of shared equity homeownership to balance long-term affordability and asset-building objectives, and how to better understand and respond to community concerns over limiting wealth creation. The report stems from an October 2008 convening held by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that brought together a group of shared equity homeownership practitioners and leaders from the asset building field.

Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes, from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, compares four states—New Jersey, Maryland, Oregon, and Florida—that had formal statewide smart growth policies in place in the 1990s with four states—Colorado, Indiana, Texas, and Virginia—that did not. The first group of states generally performed better in the five categories considered by the study: promoting compact development, protecting natural resources and environmental quality, promoting transportation options, supplying affordable housing and creating net positive fiscal impacts. No state did well on all performance measures. And at least one state in the second group, Colorado, was credited with outperforming some of the “smart growth” states by supporting local government actions that resulted in effective land-use planning.

Politics and the Subprime Mortgage Meltdown: An Examination of Disparities by Congressional District, Political Party, Caucus Affiliation and Race, by Maurice Jourdain-Earl, Managing Director of ComplianceTech for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. The report examines the racial and ethnic distribution of subprime loans in each Congressional district of the 110th Congress for the year 2006, one of the subprime boom years. This study indentifies patterns of the subprime mortgage crisis and the resulting mortgage defaults and foreclosures, as well as districts hardest hit.

While ACORN, now more than ever, remains the right wing’s knee-jerk fall guy for the housing and economic crisis, it’s also become more of a widespread political liability. But now, people are speaking up in support of the organization, pointing to the crucial role it plays in the community development world. NHI’s John Atlas weighs in with “What is ACORN?” on the NHI blog, Rooflines, as does NHI Board member Peter Dreier of Occidental College with “First They Came for ACORN”.