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Poverty & Race Research Action Council

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PRRAC Update (October 22, 2016): AFFH for PHAs; “School Diversity in Action”

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AFFH for PHAs :  HUD continues to revise the reporting forms for the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing process, as AFFH has begun to roll out across the country.  The latest revisions came in the Assessment of Fair Housing form for public housing agencies (PHAs) – which is improved but still missing several key analyses that would be routinely done by a fair housing or legal services advocate looking at PHA policies. See our coalition comments here.

“School Diversity in Action” conference:   Earlier this week, we were proud to support the National Coalition on School Diversity as a cosponsor (with the Century Foundation) of the U.S. Department of Education’s “School Diversity in Action” conference, which brought together representatives of over 20 school districts committed to expanding school integration in their regions.

Standing under the Fair Housing Act :  We joined the ACLU, Lawyers Committee, and the National Fair Housing Alliance in an amicus brief in the combined appeal of Wells Fargo v. Miami/ BOA v. Miami, cases challenging predatory lending practices associated with widespread foreclosures and financial harm to the city of Miami. The appeal challenges the traditional broad standing afforded to plaintiffs in Fair Housing Act cases.  The case is scheduled for argument in the U.S. Supreme Court on the morning of Election Day.
 
Other events and resources:
 

Segregation At An Early Age:   A new report from the Penn State Center for Education and Civil Rights draws on the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) set from 2013-14 to examine rates of segregation in school-based pre-k programs across the country.

Connecticut school integration:  The Sheff Movement school integration coalition in Hartford is hosting a “design challenge” this Saturday to generate new ideas for the future of Connecticut’s two-way regional school integration plan.  If you live in the Greater Hartford area and want to share ideas about school integration, there’s still time to register – see the coalition’s website for more information.

PHA waitlists:   The latest Housing Spotlight report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition looks at data on waiting lists for the Public Housing and Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) programs , and finds that more than half (53%) of HCV waiting lists and 11% of public housing waiting lists are closed to new applicants. Of these, 65% of HCV waiting lists and 37% of public housing waiting lists have been closed for at least one year ; a majority of applicants on these waitlists are extremely low income families (the lowest income category recognized by HUD).