ABSTRACT
Housing and economic/community development are among the very basic needs of individuals and communities and are covered in NASPAA's Urban Administration standards under core services and functions. This chapter focuses on federal programs, but states and cities often have their own programs to enhance local efforts in these areas. University-community partnerships also exist in many cities that have developed projects and try out new ideas and innovations. Many more ideas and efforts are needed across the country to try to solve the problems of affordable housing, homelessness, poverty, the need to more jobs, and the sustainability of the communities. Early federal housing programs like Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgages routinely discriminated against poor and minority households and neighborhoods, so minority families were kept from housing opportunities provided to other families. Over the time of the homelessness crisis, services shifted away from a focus on purely emergency shelter to longer-term housing.
