"For sixty years, federal policy has attempted with little success to solve the problems of housing and poverty in America's inner cities. Yet increasingly, local organizations are picking up where Washington has left off. In a series of dramatic and colorful narratives, von Hoffman shows how these groups are revitalizing once desperate neighborhoods in five major cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.

The unlikely heroes include: the tough-talking Bronx priest who learned how to fight city hall (run for office); the "crazy white man" who scrambled to save Chicago's historic Black Metropolis from the wrecking ball; the Boston cops who built a task force that put the brakes on youth gangs. Thanks to locally based, bootstrap efforts like these, crime has been falling in these neighborhoods, real estate values are rising, and businesses are returning to the inner city.

Von Hoffman also shows that grassroots work can't do it alone: successful turnarounds need the support of local government and access to business and foundation capital." "Based on years of research and more than a hundred interviews, this book is the first systematic account of the dramatic urban revival now going on in the United States. House by House, Block by Block will be a must-read for anyone interested in the fate of America's cities."--BOOK JACKET.