Affordable Housing Institute : US

Assuming that stakeholders and citizens wish to bind the sovereign,
 

“You sink to bind moi?”
 
… how can they do it?  There are lots of things to try:
 
1.       Boycott.  Ostracize the sovereign and thus cut him off from necessary services.   It worked for the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez.
 

A generation will never think of grapes […]

In Boston, where affordable housing is a sure political winner, comes this surprising Boston Globe followup to a housing-advocacy story:
 
They call themselves the silent opposition.
 
Some homeowners and lifelong Jamaica Plain residents yesterday said they, too, have launched a campaign about the future of the Blessed Sacrament Church.  
 

Commanding attention even against the backdrop of a […]

As a meme, rent control  is tenacious, resisting efforts for its eradication, since it turns citizens into windfall beneficiaries, and beneficiaries into self-interested defenders.  Eliminating rent control directly, via frontal assault, typically requires appealing to a higher level of government (e.g. 35 states pre-empt localities) or a broader circle of voters (e.g. statewide referendum).  This […]

How do stakeholders (citizens or copmpanies doing business with a government) assure their government treats fairly with them?  What prevents government, the enforcer of rules, from failing to enforce its own rules or changing them for its own convenience? 
 
Nearly 250 years ago, Rousseau first posed the question:
 
[P]ublic deliberation, while competent to bind all the […]

From the ever-reliable Boston Globe comes this tale of urban change that invites a multi-question multiple-choice quiz:
 

Some Jamaica Plain residents fear that gentrification would cause them to lose neighborhood markets like this one at Centre and Wyman streets, stamping out the area’s unique flavor and pricing out the very people who rebuilt the neighborhood. (Globe […]