Future federal housing policy: We have released an initial set of housing policy reform recommendations, to accompany what we hope will be a major new investment in affordable housing in 2021 and beyond. See our policy brief, “A Vision for Federal Housing Policy in 2021 and Beyond.”
Housing Mobility Demonstration: The Notice of Funding Availability was released this week for $50 million in funding for a select number of public housing agencies (PHAs) to develop and evaluate programs to help low-income families with housing vouchers access low-poverty, high-opportunity areas. The demonstration funds, appropriated through the 2019 and 2020 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Acts, will be accompanied by research grants to study best practices in housing mobility programs. See the Mobility Works team’s press release here.
School diversity in the House: The House Appropriations Committee has proposed (in §312 of the 2021 Appropriations Bill for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education) to eliminate the last remaining restriction from the 1970s that has barred the use of federal funds for student transportation in support of school integration. In its report (at p. 243), the Committee also encouraged the Department of Education to link Magnet School applications with the HUD Choice Neighborhoods program (originally suggested by PRRAC and NCSD in 2011), and urged states and local districts to consider school integration in their implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act: “The Committee is concerned by the resegregation of public schools and believes that the 2015 enactment of ESSA presents a valuable opportunity to support State and school district efforts to improve student diversity as a means of achieving equity of educational opportunity. Further, the evidence base in support of increasing student diversity as a means of school improvement is extensive, which is why the Committee continues to support the Magnet School Assistance program.” (See also NCSD’s recent policy brief on ESSA)
Other News and Resources
HUD History resource: HUD has recently made available online a trove of historical documents that will be of interest to historians of US housing policy and civil rights. The archive is searchable here by year. (See also our 2015 HUD 50th Anniversary civil rights timeline)
