Affordable housing proposal up for national award

Victoria Basolo (pictured), associate professor of planning, policy & design at UC Irvine, and Victor Becerra, director of UCI’s Community Outreach Partnership Center, are finalists in the National Urban Initiatives Competition. Their paper, “Sustaining Affordable Housing through Maintaining Stable Urban Neighborhoods,” proposes opportunities for nonprofits to purchase foreclosed homes and preserve the units as affordable housing. Basolo and Becerra, along with graduate student co-authors Arlene Granadosin and Michael Powe, argue that selling foreclosed homes to low- and moderate-income families could prevent neighborhood decline. The competition, which awards winners $20,000, is administered by Clark University, Community Development Training Institute, Freddie Mac, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the National Community Development Association.