PRRAC Update  

October 18, 2012   

 

 

  

Welcome to the PRRAC Update!  Every other Thursday, PRRAC sends out a brief digest of news, recent publications, and other points of interest related to our work in housing, education, and health. We welcome feedback and encourage you to forward to others. To join the PRRAC email list, click here.  

    

 

"How Non-Minority Students Also Benefit from Racially Diverse Schools:"   The National Coalition on School Diversity has just released its latest Research Brief, in response to many requests from our colleagues in the field.  Prepared by Genevieve Siegel-Hawley of Virginia Commonwealth University.

 

Save the date:  A post-election reception for DC-area friends of PRRAC, the night before our fall Board meeting.  At the Tabard Inn, 1739 N Street NW, Thursday, November 15, 5:30-7:30.  Please RSVP to Ebony Gayles if you'd like to join us!    

 

 

Other resources

 

Adkins et al v. Morgan Stanley:  Read an overview and the full class action complaint in this important civil rights case attacking the harsh racial impacts of predatory lending under the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.  Filed by the ACLU Racial Justice Project (headed by PRRAC Board member Dennis Parker) and the National Consumer Law Center.  

 

Is Inclusionary Zoning Inclusionary?  A "Guide for Practitioners" by Heather Schwartz and colleagues finds that, compared to other affordable housing programs, IZ programs provide its recipients with greater access to low-poverty neighborhoods, which are often correlated with high-performing schools - but that unlike many affordable housing programs, they tend to serve owners rather than renters.  Read the study here

 

Dana Goldstein on Boston's "new" busing debate: in the AtlanticCities blog. "A recent Harvard Graduate School of Education analysis [found] that Menino's proposals to reduce busing would lead to the further clustering of poor and nonwhite students in low-performing schools, and would give white, middle-class students disproportionate access to high-quality schools..." Read more

Alternatives to incarceration"From Waiting Rooms to Resource Hubs: Designing Change at the Department of Probation," by Laura Kurgan - profiling New York City's investment in "justice reinvestment"  From the almost-always-interesting Urban Omnibus newsletter of the NY Architectural League.

      

 

Philip Tegeler

Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Washington, DC