A must-read for policymakers at all levels and recommended for anyone who wants to understand housing problems while working...
A passionate but well-reasoned call to reinvigorate federal support for affordable housing.
In this tour de force debut, Shashaty, a journalist-turned-advocate who has covered housing and urban policy since 1979, combines encyclopedic knowledge, real-life stories, and a point of view that’s equal parts data-driven pragmatism and enlightened moral outrage. His central thrust: the lack of affordable, safe, and decent places to live imperils the American dream of generational upward mobility. The book examines the successes and failures of federal housing programs since the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles. Shashaty unleashes a virtual fire hose of statistics and examples of successful multi-income, multifamily communities across the country to counter the stereotype of failed, crime-ridden, high-rise public housing projects. Erosion of political support at the national level and federal budget cuts have reversed previous gains in reducing segregation and concentrated poverty. These shortsighted cuts hinder low-wage workers from saving for down payments and becoming homeowners. Worse, poor housing conditions drive up federal costs elsewhere, particularly Medicare and Medicaid. As federal funding evaporates, the surviving tax credits cannot bridge the gap. At the local level, affordable housing initiatives are often stymied by other municipal policies, like exclusionary zoning. Shashaty warns that stagnant incomes and rising housing costs now set the stage for a new housing crisis in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the recent foreclosure debacle. His nimble prose keeps the narrative from drowning in a flood of numbers. Color charts visualize data, sidebars expand key concepts, a bibliography offers further reading, and an appendix outlines practical actions for individuals or groups. Ideologues who reject any federal role in affordable housing will dismiss the book out of hand, but thoughtful readers will be hard-pressed to challenge the facts, figures, and logic. Housing and urban development issues are complicated, and Shashaty doesn’t pretend they can be made simple. But by articulating the many interconnected components and identifying concrete, proven approaches, he offers a blueprint for converting retreat into progress.
A must-read for policymakers at all levels and recommended for anyone who wants to understand housing problems while working toward solutions.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990518709
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Partnership for Sustainable Communities
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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