Hot Off the Presses – Poverty & Race: A new edition of Poverty & Race is hot off the presses and available on PRRAC’s website. Print subscribers should be receiving the issue in the mail soon (and, if you would like to subscribe at the low rate of $25 per year, please email info@prrac.org). What do readers have in store for themselves this edition? First, there are companion pieces from Thomas Sugrue of New York University and former PRRAC Board member Florence Wagman Roisman of Indiana University-Indianpolis exploring the legacy of historian Arnold Hirsch. Sugrue’s piece is adapted from the introduction to the new volume Segregating Cities: An Arnold Hirsch Reader. Roisman’s essay recounts the history of deep collaboration between Hirsch and PRRAC in the 1990s. Moving on, Jon Dubin of Rutgers Law School has a piece adapted from his recent book The Color of Social Security: Race, Retirement, Disability, and Disparity. That contribution explores the history of racial exclusion in Social Security Administration (SSA) programs and current disparities in benefit levels, situating those inequities in light of contemporary right-wing attacks on the social safety net via the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This cataloging includes both relatively well-known ways in which SSA programs have disproportionately excluded Black people and other people of color and program features that might have flown under the radar. Lastly, environmental justice scholar Stephen Pinkney ties together multiple threads regarding environmental sustainability, green design, and smart growth – linking these concepts to the imperative of environmental justice.
Other news and resources
Detroit Justice Center Report on LIHTC & Community Land Trusts: If you know PRRAC, you know that this organization loves thinking about how to steer the administration of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program towards social housing principles. This report from the Detroit Justice Center explores the compatibility between LIHTC and the community land trust model.
Community Service Society Brief on Enhancing CityFHEPS: PRRAC is also a fan of making tenant-based rental assistance programs work better for participants. This new brief from the Community Service Society explores – based on a survey of assisted households – avenues for doing just that with CityFHEPS, New York City’s flagship locally-funded voucher program.
Join PRRAC for Happy Hour in Los Angeles – October 8: Join PRRAC in Los Angeles for a happy hour fundraiser hosted by our Board member Silvia Argueta at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles at 5:30 PM local time on Thursday, October 8. Grab your ticket here!
A Break from the Parade of Horribles – National Parks Edition: Our national parks are the quintessential break from anything bad, never mind a parade of horribles. Also, it so happens that Yosemite became the U.S.’s third national park on this day in 1890. To inspire Update readers to get outside and enjoy some natural beauty while taking a break from the news, here are the PRRAC team’s favorite national parks:
- Audrey: Mammoth Cave
- Tessa: Dry Tortugas
- Thomas: Acadia
