Local governments urged to use mediation, other aid to stop evictions

Many subprime borrowers in the United States are financially unable to buy a home themselves. An unconventional lender is trying to make it easier for low-income people to buy houses despite the tighter requirements that other lenders adopted after the mortgage bust.

An innovative program by an unusual bank allows low-income people in Cambodia to take out a 15-year fixed mortgage with little or no documentation - contradicting traditional loan assumptions and creating means for some of the country's poorest people to completely change their lives. The bank and its investors are now making a profit, and more than 700 mortgages and building loans have been provided.

Thousands of refugees are navigating hurdles of integration in the United States. Organizations like the Minnesota Council of Churches provide comprehensive support in a number of areas - from housing to job applications to health insurance paperwork - but all with the end goal of helping the relocated families towards independence and sustainability in their new life.

Communities United a grassroots organizations in Chicago is solving the city's housing crisis with a program called ROOTS (Renters Organizing Ourselves to Stay). The organization is bringing together financiers, development organizations and partners to make housing more affordable. ROOTS managed to significantly improve renters' rights law by making amendments to the city’s affordable housing ordinance.

For publishing companies located in major metropolises, housing costs can present a significant challenge to successfully recruiting and retaining staff. To address this issue, the Hachette and Penguin Random House publishing groups have created initiatives to provide interns with subsidized housing. Working with the Book Trade Charity—which has traditionally provided subsidized housing for retirees from the publishing industry—these publishing groups have invested in the refurbishment of apartments and are offering them at below market rate to applicants selected for internship programs.

This is an opinion piece by the paper's staff based on a large series of investigative stories about evictions and substandard housing in Baltimore. It critiques a system that was designed to protect tenants, where they can get a judge to set up an escrow account to collect rent while landlords make repairs, because it usually favors landlords over tenants. The column outlines specific fixes that would address this imbalance, including more code inspections, a more transparent process and laws that hold landlords accountable for substandard properties.

Resources to prevent evictions in Baltimore continue to decline, even while other cities are allotting more resources to keeping people in their homes. This article explores the many problems facing Baltimore tenants trying to avoid eviction and juxtaposes those examples with those of other cities such as New York, which is actually expanding funding for attorneys to represent tenants because avoiding evictions saves money. Many organizations in Baltimore say people often need help just once to avert a crisis, but the funds available to help continue to dwindle.

Almost 3,000 Alaskan families received governmental assistance for rent - those who are in need but don't qualify for government help often turn to family, friends, and other informal sources for aid. The St. Vincent de Paul Society is just one of the many faith organizations stepping in to help fill in the gaps.

The University of Illinois piloted a program to fund housing for homeless patients who frequent the ER as a means to get off the street, and seek treatment for their chronic health conditions. Maintaining stable housing for these patients actually reduces the long term cost to the ER because homelessness is associated with chronic conditions such as asthma, and simply having housing can eliminate a lot of the side effects of these conditions. This solution is saving the hospital money and improving the health outcomes and living situations of the patients.

Years of misrule and a subsequent dearth of hard currency, along with crippling bank-fostered debt cycles and exorbitant home mortgage interest rates, have created immense suffering for Myanmar's poor. But with the guidance of a local NGO, Women for the World, a pilot project helped women in some of Yangon's poorest neighborhoods capitalize on their cultural "head-of-household" status. It helped them form and manage community savings cooperatives, secure land, build homes, buy food, and even generate profit through loans to families' business enterprises.