| 3. Housing & Development:
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The U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development's Homes & Communities Web site is comprehensive, well-organized, and easy to use. The heart of the site is a thorough, and well-designed, collection of information on many housing-related topics (accessible from the main page). HUD also maintains an extensive Online Library, with publications about housing programs and issues, homelessness, FHA loan programs, and so on.
Just to show the care with which HUD put together their Web site, they even have a helpful page explaining how to best use the site (an idea that makes a lot of sense!). Also of note is the HUD-User page, which will allow you to easily search an even larger database of publications and abstracts.
The Fannie Mae Foundation web site focuses on affordable housing and community revitalization. You can locate a number of publications and data on housing. Perhaps the most useful section of the site for citizen planners is titled Periodicals, Reports, and Census Notes. Housing Facts & Findings, Fannie Mae's newsletter (which can be accessed from the web site) often contains quite informative, short, non-technical, articles.
Want to get the housing industry's perspective? Just go to the National Association of Home Builders' web site. Many NAHB publications are available to download at no charge; you can also sign up for one of their weekly emailed newsletters. The web site also makes available a considerable amount of housing data, including information on housing starts, home sales & prices and building permits (much of this information is available by metro area, state, and/or region). Even more online resources can be found on the NAHB Research Center's web pages.
The Building Better Communities Network web site provides a central source of news and information on affordable housing efforts. For citizen planners dealing with affordable housing issues, the two most useful sections of the BBCN site are its Planning & Design pages (which will link you to a variety of documents and web resources) and its monthly NIMBY reports.
The non-profit National Housing Institute regularly runs articles dealing with affordable housing and community development in its magazine, Shelterforce. The full content of current and back issues is available online in a searchable format. While the design of the Shelterforce Online web site is basic, that won't stand in your way of being able to find many well-written, useful articles.
The National Association of Realtors' site provides information primarily designed to meet its members needs. However, citizen planners dealing with housing issues may find useful information on their Web site, as it contains an extensive (searchable) news database (updated daily).
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Take a break from your Web research
-- try our online jigsaw puzzles
Subscribe to the Planning Comm'rs Journal, called "the most valuable publication for the citizen commissioner" * and "the 'must have' publication for planning commissioners and elected officials" ** * William E. Moore, Jr., Director, Virginia Citizens Planning Association **Connie Cooper, FAICP, Past National President of the American Planning Ass'n |
