PLAN 769: Housing and Community Development Policy and Planning: Home
Background Research
- CQ ResearcherThe CQ Researcher is the perfect answer for people beginning research on current topics. It covers the most current and controversial issues of the day. From Abortion to War, each issue gives you a comprehensive review of the controversies, historical background, chronology of important events, opposing views from experts on the subject, and extensive bibliographies for additional research.
- Issues and Controversies on FileContains full text articles on current topics of interest, arranged in opposing points of view. It is intended to give users a quick grasp of the essentials of more than 250 controversial news topics. It also contains chronologies, illustrations, maps, tables, sidebars, bibliographies and contact information.
- Points of View Reference SourceProvides students with a series of essays that present multiple sides of a current issue. Essays provide questions and materials for further thought and study and are accompanied by thousands of supporting articles.
- ProCon.org"Mission: Promoting critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan, primarily pro-con format."
Academic Essay Collections
The Affordable Housing Reader by ISBN: 9780203722671Publication Date: 2013-03-05
The Community Land Trust Reader by ISBN: 9781558442054Publication Date: 2010-05-20
A Right to Housing by ISBN: 1592134319Publication Date: 2006-02-28
Constructing Community by ISBN: 0691193649Publication Date: 2021-06-01
How Ideas Shape Urban Political Development by ISBN: 9780812297171Publication Date: 2020-05-15
The Fight for Fair Housing by ISBN: 9781134822942Publication Date: 2017-10-16
Perspectives on Fair Housing by ISBN: 9780812297447Publication Date: 2020-11-20
Find Scholarly Articles
General & Public Policy databases
- Academic Search PremierFind information on academic areas of business, social sciences, humanities, general academic, general science, education and multi-cultural topics; resource provides access to major popular and scholarly journals with many full-text articles.
- Google ScholarEnables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.
- PAIS IndexA bibliographic index to the literature of public policy, social policy, and the social sciences in general. Includes full-text articles.
- ScopusA large citation and abstracting database providing comprehensive coverage of the peer-reviewed journal and conference literature, with links to full-text where available through the library; includes scientific, technical, medical, social science and arts and humanities disciplines and indexes over 20,500 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers including over 340 book series. Like Web of Science, Scopus allows researchers to perform citation searches to see how many times a work has been cited, by whom, and to rank searches by times cited, for the period 1996 -present, as well as its curated index of over 375 scientific web pages and over 24 million patents.
Subject specific databases
- Sociological AbstractsDatabase covering over 2500 journals in sociology, both theoretical and applied, and related disciplines including anthropology, economics, education, medicine, community development, philosophy, demography, political science, and social psychology. Articles in 30 different languages from about 55 countries.
Find Newspaper articles
Evaluate news stories
- Finding News Stories guide
- Checking the Facts guide
- Fact Check - Nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players.
- Snopes - Site that attempts to dispel urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.
- Politifact - Fact check for U.S. politics
Find news stories
- America's NewsAmerica's News is the most comprehensive U.S.newspaper resource available. It provides information on people, issues, and events in the local area or around the country. Updated daily, America's Newspapers offers tens of millions of current and archived full-text articles from newspapers nationwide in a single, fully searchable online database. It includes the complete electronic editions of 827 newspapers - with 75% of these sources not available in any other library database.
- New York Times Academic PassUNC Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff now have full, year-round access to The New York Times, including smartphone, tablet, and browser access, thanks to a sponsorship from the University Library. For app downloads, visit NYTimes.com/mobile.
Access DOES include NYT Cooking, but does not include e-reader editions, Premium Crosswords or The New York Times Crosswords apps. Pass users also receive access to the New York Times archives (1851-2002) which includes 5 PDF downloads from the Times Machine per day via timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser. Archive articles outside that date range are not subject to that limit. Digital access is available only during the time that our New York Times Site License is active.
To set up your account: Please consult https://guides.lib.unc.edu/nyt-academic-pass for detailed directions on setting up your account. - Washington Post (Online)Access articles for the The Washington Post in 15 years of rolling archival content to the present. Available to all UNC students, faculty, and staff.
Note: For remote access, create an individual account here, using your UNC email.
City & Regional Planning Librarian
Writing Resources
Guides to writing a policy brief
Policy Briefs – UNC Writing Center
Writing a Policy Memo – USC Libraries
Writing Policy Briefs – The Women’s and Children’s Health Policy Center
and Example Policy Briefs
UCLA Affordable Housing Policy Briefs - Anderson School of Management (UCLA)
Getting more from low-income housing assistance - The Hamilton Project (Brookings Institution)
Social housing: A key part of past and future housing policy - Employment, Labour, and Social Affairs Policy Briefs (OECD)
Collection of policy briefs - County of Los Angeles Homelessness Initiative
Find Think Tank Reports
- Google Think Tank Search EngineSearches the websites of institutions that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. These sites are affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, and non-governmental organizations. The list represents a mixture of partisan and non-partisan think tanks.
- FactCheck.OrgMonitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases.
Policy Actors
- White House - IssuesLink to White House/President's stand on policy issues.
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Policy AreasExplore how HUD's efforts influence key policy areas.
- Congress.govProvides access to legislative information, including the full text of the Congressional Record, a directory of congressional committees and members of Congress, the weekly floor schedule for the House, and a schedule of daily committee hearings.
- ProQuest CongressionalComprehensive source of current and historical U.S. Congressional material, including bills, testimony, reports, documents, selected prints, the Congressional Record, the U.S. Code, Federal Register, and the Code of Federal Regulations.
- National Conference of State LegislaturesFind state policies by issue area.
- Interest GroupsListing of some major U.S. interest groups by issue area from Vote Smart.
Find Statistics
- Statistical Abstract of the United StatesAn authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic conditions of the United States.
- PolicyMapAccess social, economic, health and demographic data about U.S. communities and markets in this online mapping tool. View data on map, in table or chart format, and download via the sidebar menu. Reports provide a summary snapshot of an area: Community Profile, Community Health Profile, Rental Housing Report, and Housing Mortgage Report.
- Social ExplorerProvides web-based access to United States Census data from 1790 to the present, and to other U.S. and international data, with the ability to make tables and interactive maps easily or export data for analysis. Data include the most commonly used variables and geographies.
- U.S. Census Bureau topicsContains links to statistics on a variety of topics, including housing, living arrangements, and economics.
Public opinion
- Roper Center's iPollOffers extensive database of opinion poll datasets. Roper’s iPOLL allows searching at the question level. The Center archives national opinion polls back to 1935, both U.S. and some international polls. Holdings include survey results data from academic, commercial and media survey organizations such as Gallup, Harris Interactive, Pew Research Associates, ABC, CBS, Wall Street Journal and many more. Many datasets are available for instant download in ASCII or SPSS format. Datasets not available for immediate download may be requested from the Center to be queued for digitization.
NOTE: First time users to NEW Roper iPoll need to self-register for access at login. Your credentials from Classic iPOLL will NOT work without new registration as of 8/14/2020. Classic iPOLL will no longer be updated after Sept 1, 2020.