Congratulations to the successful PHAs in the Housing Mobility Demonstration! HUD announced the awards last week to Public Housing Authorities in nine metro areas, including PHAs and local agencies that PRRAC and Mobility Works has worked within Cleveland, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh! For the PHAs that did not receive awards, we are looking to the 2022 federal budget, and hope that we can all work together to secure the President’s request for new housing mobility funding.
Join a “Fifty State Conversation” on school integration: On May 17, the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, join the Epic Theatre Ensemble and the National Coalition on School Diversity for a dialogue centered around Epic’s film NOTHING ABOUT US. Nothing About Us is a rigorous, passionate and hilarious exploration of educational segregation written and performed by those most affected and least consulted: NYC Public High School students. What does separate but equal mean to us today? A screening of Nothing About Us will take place at 7:15pm ET, followed by the #50State Conversation at 8pm. Register here.
Other Resources
Resources to promote community ownership of housing: A new PolicyLink brief, Our Homes, Our Communities: How Housing Acquisition Strategies Can Create Affordable Housing, Stabilize Neighborhoods, and Prevent Displacement, provides local policymakers, housing justice advocates, and tenant organizers with the tools to advance community ownership as a part of an equitable housing recovery strategy. Read the full report here, and you can also sign up for a webinar on May 19 at 10 am (Pacific Time) to learn about the report’s key findings.
AFFH in California: When California passed Assembly Bill 686 in 2018, it essentially re-adopted the federal Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule that had just been suspended by the Trump Administration, and required AFFH to be incorporated in local housing plans starting in 2021. This week, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (led by Gustavo Velasquez, a former Assistant Secretary at HUD) released a suite of AFFH tools to assist California cities, towns, and counties – including an AFFH Guidance Memo and an AFFH Data Viewer. See the state’s new AFFH resources here.
Openings at PRRAC, CLPHA, and FHJC:PRRAC is launching a search for a Senior Policy Counsel/Director of Advocacy, based in DC – see the job listing here. Down the street, the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities is seeking a new Research and Policy Director. And in NYC, the Fair Housing Justice Center has just launched a search for a new executive director. Please don’t apply for all of these jobs at once!
