A well-researched, user-friendly introduction to the importance of affordable housing.
Bertoldi makes the case for the broader social value of affordable housing in this debut nonfiction book.
“To have the American dream come true,” Jeffrey Whiting writes in the book’s foreword, “there must be help along the way.” As co-founders of CREA, a limited liability company that claims to have benefitted around 230,000 people in need of affordable housing, Whiting and Bertoldi have long advocated that housing not only provides a better life for families but is an essential engine of a thriving economy. Seeking to “destigmatize” and “depoliticize” the topic, Bertoldi begins the book with a series of chapters that introduce readers to the current housing crisis’ impact on local and national economies and the basics of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), hoping to “remove the mystery” surrounding a misunderstood industry often greeted by a NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard”) mindset. The book’s middle chapters note the ways in which affordable housing benefits all Americans (including those who have already secured reliable housing) by highlighting its impact on healthcare (“home and health go hand in hand”), business (more than 40% of the consumer price index “is driven by housing costs”), and important ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) standards for increasingly socially conscious corporations. The book concludes with nonpartisan, workable solutions that the author believes policymakers, investors, and voters across ideological lines could support. With an MBA in finance from Boston University and decades of experience with LIHTC, Bertoldi does an admirable job of acquainting neophytes with the basics of the housing industry while also backing his claims with a wealth of data and dozens of footnotes for those who need to see the underlying research. This emphasis on accessibility is further reflected by the book’s concise writing style, which delivers an engaging narrative in less than 130 total pages and is accompanied by an ample assortment of charts, graphs, and other visual aids.
A well-researched, user-friendly introduction to the importance of affordable housing.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798887500911
Page Count: 208
Publisher: ForbesBooks
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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