Bittersweet Lane

A stunning portrait of policy, personal struggles, and the pervasive problem of a nation that fails to care for its people. In a beautifully written and rigorously researched examination of why housing matters, Jamie brings us inside his family and his passion for housing justice in a painful and illuminating story. Every voter, every community member, and every person who claims to care about others needs to read this heartbreaking and critically important book. – Marcia Chatelain, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black AmericaThis is one of the most original, provocative, and timely assessments yet produced about America’s housing affordability crisis and what to do about it. For far too long, it has been a quiet crisis, as Madden shows—riddled with moral denial, bad assumptions, kick-the-can politics, and forceful resistance to change at any meaningful scale. The author’s remarkable family story, combined with long experience producing homes people can actually afford, gives us an account as searing and blunt as it is practical and inspiring. Jamie Madden’s wisdom should be widely read and—most importantly—heard. – Xavier ‘Xav’ de Souza Briggs, senior fellow, Brookings Institution; author of Democracy as Problem Solving and The Geography of OpportunityJamie Madden provides a unique perspective on affordable housing challenges through the lens of someone who grew up in poverty and lived in low income housing in Greater Boston. He skillfully weaves his gripping personal stories with a content-rich history of affordable housing in the U.S. coupled with tips for being a successful non-profit developer. This is a must-read for those wanting to gain new insights into the complexity of affordable housing as a public policy issue and to learn how to make things better. – Aaron Gornstein, President CEO, Preservation of Affordable Housing

Jamie Madden is a dad and community development professional with expertise in housing development, public policy, and real estate finance. Jamie grew up in affordable housing at the Bittersweet Lane Apartments in Randolph, MA and went on to work for the housing industry’s leading national non-profits. His work has directly created more than one-thousand affordable homes. Jamie earned his Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his BA in Political Science and Chinese from Swarthmore College, but he learned his most important lessons inside Massachusetts’ most diverse high school, Randolph Jr/Sr High.

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