One Nation Invisible has released their newest story from the field, “Utah’s Bilingual Boon,” an engaging profile of Spanish two-way bilingual programs near Park City, which are part of a larger state-supported language immersion effort in a so-called “red state” that has also come to value immigrant integration. One Nation Indivisible is a project of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute at Harvard Law School and PRRAC.
Assessing fair housing compliance of tax credit properties: We recently reminded the IRS that they had omitted virtually all required fair housing elements from their technical guide for auditing legal compliance of owners of Low Income Housing Tax Credit properties. See our letter here.
Unintended consequences: We also expressed our concern about the pending elimination of some school-based poverty reporting, arising out of an important new program extending free and reduced price meals to all students, regardless of income, in higher poverty schools. We will be following up with the Dept of Ed soon. See our letter here (on behalf of the NCSD)
America’s Growing Inequality: The Impact of Poverty and Race, edited by Chester Hartman is now available in hardcover – includes the best articles and essays from Poverty & Race; with a foreword by Congressman Luis Gutierrez. Order here at the PRRAC discounted rate; see the Table of Contents here.
Other News and Resources
Amicus brief in CA inclusionary zoning case: We were pleased to join a superb brief of housing scholars drafted by Michael Iglesias of the University of San Francisco School of Law. The California Supreme Court is deciding the crucial question of what constitutional standard of review applies to facial challenges of local inclusionary zoning ordinances. The brief gives an excellent overview of inclusionary zoning policy and its history as a civil rights response to local exclusionary zoning.
Fair housing goals at the Office of Multifamily Housing: The head of HUD’s FHA multifamily office is considering replication of part of the Baltimore Thompson v HUD desegregation remedy as a possible new national initiative, encouraging owners and developers of multifamily housing to make their properties available in “communities of opportunity” (see “Multifamily Policy Priorities for Calendar Year 2014″)
Implicit bias: The Kirwan Institute has released its second annual State of the Science Implicit Bias Review 2014.
