PRRAC Update  

March 13, 2014  

 

 

 

"The Challenge of Inequality" by Justin Steil, in the new Poverty & Race - a concise and powerful overview of recent economics research, including new scholarship at UC-Berkeley.  Plus an article from Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett on the psychological impacts of inequality.

 

Fair housing goals in HUD's "Housing Counseling" program: HUD's $38.5 million Housing Counseling  program, which funds groups helping with foreclosure counseling, first time homebuyer counseling, and some renter services, has not placed a strong emphasis in past years on expanding fair housing choice - but HUD has started to change its message to grantees in its new 2014 Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the program.  The new NOFA for the first time treats "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" (AFFH) as a program requirement - and gives a substantial number of points in the competitive funding process to applicants who demonstrate how they will accomplish this goal.  "Mobility counseling" is listed as one of the activities housing counseling agencies can include to meet this obligation.  AFFH is also listed this year as one of four "policy priorities" in HUD's 2014 "general NOFA," which sets base requirements for all the Department's competitive grant programs.

 

 

New web-based resources:

 

Diversitydatakids.org:  The Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy (ICYFP) at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management has launched diversitydatakids.org, a new online data and analysis tool that provides insights into wellbeing and equity among the ever-more diverse child population in the United States.  In addition to hundreds of standard measures broken own by race and ethnicity, this site also generates unique, equity-focused data on known structural factors that drive existing disparities among varying racial and ethnic groups.  Co-designer Professor Dolores Acevedo-Garcia is a member of PRRAC's Social Science Advisory Board.

 

More upward mobility stories from Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins Professor Stefanie Deluca

has teamed up with the Century Foundation in an engaging web-based narrative about families in the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program -  see apps.tcf.org/finding-home  (Professor Deluca is also a member of PRRAC's Social Science Advisory Board).

 

Upcoming events:

 

"Detroit Bankruptcy and Beyond": On April 7-8, the Damon Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School, the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley, and Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES) invite you to "Detroit Bankruptcy and Beyond: Organizing for Change in Distressed Cities.  Registration info here. 

 

Growing up in Concentrated Poverty:  a discussion with Paul Jargowsky, Patrick Sharkey, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sherrilyn Ifill.  On Thursday, April 10 at 2 p.m., the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and The Century Foundation will host this discussion on the long-term impacts of growing up in high-poverty neighborhoods.  Click here for more information.

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