NY State housing mobility programs: Three years ago, Enterprise Community Partners-NY, with financial support from the NY State Attorney General’s office, began funding a pilot housing mobility program in Long Island, New York City, and Buffalo (with assistance from Mobility Works and PRRAC). Although the Covid pandemic hampered some of the programs’ progress, all three of these programs have shown promise, and the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal has invested in expanding the programs in Buffalo and Long Island, while the NYC program has received significant funding from HUD through the Community Choice Demonstration. We have just co-published an interesting final report on the pilot program (see the Enterprise press release on the report here).
Re-centering ESSA as a civil rights act: A comprehensive new policy brief from the National Education Policy Center, A Civil Rights Framework for the Reauthorization of ESEA argues that the next reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently called the “Every Student Succeeds Act”) should re-focus the Act on racial equity, including addressing systemic inequity and segregation with regional cross-district approaches to funding equity, school integration, and transportation.
Other Resources
More evidence on voucher discrimination: A new Urban Institute study looking at the poverty deconcentration effects of source of income discrimination laws confirms the positive effects of SOI laws, but using a different methodology from other recent studies, finds that it takes an average of five years after enactment for these laws to show increased access to low poverty neighborhoods for families with Housing Choice Vouchers. This finding underscores for us the importance of active public education and enforcement campaigns immediately following the passage of these laws.
Building connection in our diverse communities: The American Immigration Council has just published a helpful new guide, Cultivating Contact: A Guide to Building Bridges and Meaningful Connections Between Groups by Linda Tropp and Trish Dehrone at the University of Massachusetts, based on decades of research and practice in intergroup contact theory.
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