Fifth National Conference on Assisted Housing Mobility: We just completed a successful two-day national conference, co-hosted by the Urban Institute, on current research, advocacy, and practice in the field of assisted housing mobility (focusing on programs that assist housing voucher families make voluntary moves to lower poverty and less racially concentrated areas). We are working to build a community of practice in this growing field, to link housing mobility practitioners with researchers and advocates. We know most of the established programs around the country, but if you are aware of a new or emerging housing mobility program in your area, please let us know about it. Here are links to the conference agenda and to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan’s keynote address (feel free to fast forward through my introduction!)
Race to the Top revisited: Along with a number of member organizations of the National Coalition on School Diversity, we submitted comments on the next proposed “Race to the Top” competitive funding round, designed to promote educational reform initiatives at the school district level. Once again, we urged the Department of Education to include incentives for school diversity in the Race to the Top competition. We do not understand why the Department has insisted on keeping “education reform” separate from “school diversity” in these funding competitions, when the two strategies are so naturally aligned…. See our comments here.
Other news and resources
Making the Economic Case for Health Equity: The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is holding a webinar Friday, June 22, 2012 at 1:00pm on the financial and social cost of health inequities, and promising practices and policies from states and tribal governments making the economic case for health equity. Register here.
Victory on school siting in Rhode Island: (from our colleague Steve Fischbach) – “On June 6th, Governor Lincoln Chafee signed into law the school siting legislation we have been working on for at least 3 years. This new law is probably the strongest law in the nation when it comes to addressing the problem of the siting of schools on contaminated sites.” For more information about the new law, the Rhode Island coalition, and the recent New England Environmental Justice Summit, contact Steve at steve.fischbach@gmail.com.
