bittersweet lane:

creating Home(s) in the american affordable housing crisis

Book cover stylized as a street sign with images of young mother and baby in 1959, teen worker with mop in 2002, and toddlers in 1962 at projects

Housing dominates headlines, yet few truly understand how affordable housing works-or why it's failing. Bittersweet Lane is the first book to demystify America's housing crisis from both a professional and deeply personal perspective.

Spanning from Ireland to America, from the Bittersweet Lane Apartments to MIT, Bittersweet Lane carries the stories and deep scars of intergenerational poverty while offering a bold vision for change.

A community development professional with expertise in housing development and public policy, Jamie Madden blends gripping memoir with sharp policy insights to expose the brutal history of housing in the US - and the tools we already have to fix it.

Though the barriers to housing justice seem insurmountable, the solutions are within reach. Bittersweet Lane doesn't just explain the crisis- it shows how we can all find home.

Listen

Soundtrack for your reading

Booked on Planning
Podcast

The Ugly Podcast

Audiobook, narrated by the author

“A stunning portrait of policy, personal struggles, and the pervasive problem of a nation that fails to care for its people.”

— Marcia Chatelain, author of Pulitzer Prize winning Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America.

“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 de Souza Briggs, senior fellow, Brookings Institution; author of Democracy as Problem Solving and The Geography of Opportunity.

“this is a must-read for those wanting to gain new insights into the complexity of affordable housing as a policy issue and to learn how to make things better.”

— Aaron Gornstein, President & CEO of Preservation of Affordable Housing.

About jamie

Jamie Madden (he/sé) is the author of Bittersweet Lane: Creating Home(s) in the American Affordable Housing Crisis. Jamie is a dad and community development professional with expertise in housing development, public policy, and real estate finance. 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’s most diverse high school, Randolph Junior/Senior High. Jamie grew up in affordable housing at the Bittersweet Lane Apartments, and he went on to work for the affordable housing industry’s leading nonprofits. His work has contributed to creating more than one thousand affordable homes. If this housing crisis were fixed, sé would spend his days writing, parenting, playing music, and learning an cúpla focail as Gaeilge.