The “state” of school integration: Last week, the National Coalition on School Diversity published an overview of school integration initiatives and challenges across the country, submitted by NCSD members. The report is organized by the four Department of Education-supported Equity Assistance Center regions – See The State of Integration 2018.
Victory in Minneapolis: The Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to the new Minneapolis source of income discrimination ordinance, passed last year to expand access to housing for Housing Choice Voucher families in the city. PRRAC submitted an amicus brief in the case along with the Housing Justice Center and the National Housing Law Project.
More source-of-income discrimination laws: Since we last published our regular compendium of source of income discrimination statutes and ordinances in January, six more jurisdictions have added these protections for families receiving housing assistance (and other lawful sources of income), including New York State, Los Angeles City and County, Des Moines, Iowa, Holland, MI, and Baltimore, MD. There are now over 70 jurisdictions with source-of-income protections. Proposed ordinances are pending in several other cities and towns. See our updated “Appendix B.”
Reparations – a perspective from the Clinton years: After last week’s historic Congressional hearing on reparations, we took a look back at the wide-ranging symposia on reparations that PRRAC published 25 years ago.
Other resources
Kerner Commission at 51: As a follow-up to last year’s provocative conference on the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Commission report, the Haas Institute at UC-Berkeley has released a follow-up report, The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years after the Kerner Commission Report.
Collateral Consequences: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report Collateral Consequences: The Crossroads of Punishment, Redemption and the Effects on Communities, evaluates the civil rights implications of laws and practices imposing burdens on people with criminal records.
Regional variations in child poverty: The 30th annual KIDS COUNT Databook by the Annie E. Casey Foundation highlights some progress on reducing child poverty but reveals stark variations across states in key data on race and poverty. And also this week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed how proposed changes to the way annual adjustments in the federal poverty definition are calculated could cut hundreds of thousands of families off of federal entitlement programs.
