More detail on housing mobility funding in the President’s Budget:The President’s ambitious, racial equity-focused 2022 budget proposal to Congress includes two crucial provisions to expand and strengthen our largest low-income housing program – a budget increase in the Housing Choice Voucher program to provide 200,000 new vouchers to low-income families, and a $491 million request for housing mobility services funding, which would support a large number of PHAs struggling to assist families with children who want to move to lower-poverty, well-resourced areas. If you support these proposals, and want to see them in the final 2022 budget, please let your Congresspeople hear from you soon. See the HUD budget details here and here and our press release here.
News from Mobility Works! Exciting news – the successful technical assistance group “Mobility Works,” which PRRAC has been managing for the past four years, is spinning off as a separate non-profit. The partners will continue to be the Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership, Housing Choice Partners, Inclusive Communities Project, and PRRAC, with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities continuing as a consulting partner. On Mobility Works’ agenda for 2021: the 8th national housing mobility conference in the fall (see below), a housing mobility training institute starting in the spring of 2022, and continuing technical assistance with our PHA partners.
8th National Housing Mobility Conference – save the date:In order to include more of our participating families, and to accommodate those of you who are not fully ready to fly, we are planning a “hybrid” live and virtual conference this fall, with simultaneous shared sessions at Mobility Works’ four partner locations (Baltimore, Dallas, Chicago, and DC). November 4-5, 2021. More details coming soon.
Discrimination in real estate appraisals: Check out this preview of an excellent article by Greg Squires and Ira Goldstein in our upcoming summer issue of Poverty & Race. It is particularly relevant now, as the Administration has announced a new interagency initiative to address inequity in home appraisals, part of a larger suite of proposals designed to address the widening racial wealth gap.
Other news and resources
Congrats to Kristen Clarke, a former PRRAC Board member, and until recently, President and Executive Director of the national Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, on her confirmation as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Department of Justice – and congratulations also to our current Board member Damon Hewitt on his appointment as President and Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee!
Exclusionary zoning studies from Cuyahoga County: In their most recent study of exclusionary zoning (following up on a 2020 study), our friends at the Fair Housing Center in Cleveland have done a great job of framing and analyzing exclusionary zoning for what it often does most effectively – exclusion of lower-income children from high performing school districts.
