Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s essay inspired by a provocative new book, The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum by Sarah Wise, asked how and why a slum dies, based on the gradual and not—so-gradual elimination of London’s 1880 Old Nichol.
 

London, 1880
 
In today’s developed nations, slums are where, as the Times’ […]

 
Where do slums go to die?  And what kills them?
 
That question is raised by a provocative new book, The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum by Sarah Wise.  Although not yet published in the States, and hence unavailable to Your Humble Blogger, it’s the subject of an interesting review in The […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1 and Part 2 .]
 
So far we’ve seen that American-born microfinance originated, as has global finance, based on shifts in the larger credit markets.  As chronicled in Funding Universe, what became Household Finance Corporation boomed during the good times, suffered a backlash during the Panic of 1907, was under financial and regulatory […]

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s post explored the emergence of ’steam-powered microfinance’ from the turn-of-the-century household-finance industry, as chronicled in Funding Universe.
 

Another turn-of-the-century invention: New York’s Williamsburg bridge
 
By 1900, HFC had established itself, developed a market niche, introduced its killer-app financial product – a short tenor, small personal loan for almost any purpose – and […]

Age has few enough consolations, of which one is that things others might have studied in school, you can remember.
 

Decades hence, who among us will still remember this class?
 
We think of microfinance as a post-electronic activity, yet some of us can remember a similar small-scale finance that comes from a time before the internet, before […]