Miriam Axel-Lute

Miriam Axel-Lute is associate director of the National Housing Institute and editor of Shelterforce. She has returned to NHI/Shelterforce, where she began her career in the late 1990s, after overlapping stints as a journalist, newspaper editor, freelance editor, parenting blogger, urban planning student, and community development consultant. Based in Albany, N.Y.,  she is also a parent, poet, award-winning columnist, and not-so-award-winning gardener.

ARTICLES IN SHELTERFORCE since jan 08

  • True Costs, True Responsibilities
  • CLTs Go Commercial

    The idea of turning the community land trust model into an economic development tool is attracting growing interest, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions about how it would work.

  • No One Left Behind
  • Making Connections
  • Can Lease-Purchase Save Us?

    As developers struggle to find buyers for rehabbed affordable homes, many are looking to a lease-purchase model to expand the pool of potential owners. But lease-purchase is far more complicated than just an end-run around the credit crunch.

  • Rules Matter
  • Green Jobs with Roots

    For the founders of Cleveland’s Evergreen Coops, putting a handful of people to work at minimum wage isn’t worth it. They are aiming at nothing less than a ground-up economic transformation—one owned by the very people it’s intended to help.

  • Hello, Again
  • Disappearing Act

    Facing financial difficulties as new technology takes customers away, the United States Postal Service reviewed 3,300 branches to find those that could be deemed disposable. In low-income communities, just how disposable are the final 162?

  • Will Columbia Take Manhattanville?

    Balancing an Ivy League university’s expansion plan with a Harlem neighborhood’s needs is a tricky business, especially when eminent domain is in the mix.

  • Small is Beautiful - Again

    The shrinking cities movement imagines revitalization without growth – and housing advocates take a hard look at what that means for the poor.

  • A Community Whodunit
  • Picking Up The Pieces

    Hurricane Katrina forced organizing groups to stretch to their limits, but it also showcased their strengths as never before

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