Predatory Equity

By the summer of 2008, the collapse of the mortgage market was assured and subprime lending was on the tip of every politician’s tongue. The threat to rental housing remained all but invisible, much less publicized and, truthfully, much more difficult to understand.

When Amy Chan of Tenants and Neighbors submitted her proposal to the Making Policy Public series, the immediate need was to alert policy makers to the danger that private speculation posed to affordable housing developments. By the time the project team started, the situation had shifted considerably. Buildings across the city were already defaulting, and very little appeared to be untouched by the financial crisis. The poster was reconfigured to focus less on revealing problems and more on explaining solutions in ways that were intelligible to both policy makers and tenants.

In this project, CUP worked with Glen Cummings of MTWTF and Dina Levy and Amy Chan of the tenant organizations Tenants and Neighbors, and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, respectively.