Posted in Featured (Stories)
Research is documenting the harmful effects on children when families must keep moving to find a safe, affordable home.
Read MorePosted in Expert Insights
This article originally appeared on America’s Essential Hospitals’ Essential Insights blog on 12/4/17.
Read MorePosted in Expert Insights
How do you know if you are building a healthier place?
Read MorePosted in Community Close Ups
Trauma-Informed Community Building Sets Stage for Neighborhood Revitalization Susan Neufeld, Vice President of Resident Programs and Services for BRIDGE Housing Corporation (BRIDGE), describes the existing 606-unit Potrero Terrace and Annex housing projects as “an island of poverty in a sea of wealth.” Unlike many distressed public housing complexes that are surrounded by other disadvantaged neighborhoods, residents of Potrero Terrace and Annex, with a median annual income of $14,000, are surrounded by Potrero Hill neighbors making ten times that much.
Read MorePosted in Community Close Ups
Tipping Point: Deep, Neighborhood-Scale Transformation Creates Lasting Change Of the East Lake Meadows public housing project before revitalization, says Carol Naughton of Purpose Built Communities, “the only thing that was working was the drug trade.” Frequently called “Little Vietnam” – as in, a war zone — the Atlanta neighborhood grappled with extreme poverty, violent crime, abysmal educational outcomes and high unemployment. The poorly built, 40-year-old public housing was in severe disrepair. For kids, East Lake Meadows functioned mostly as a pipeline into the Georgia penal system.
Read MorePosted in Community Close Ups
Creating Access to Opportunity by Building a “Village Center” in a Houston Neighborhood In the 1970s during Houston’s oil boom, the city’s Gulfton neighborhood sprouted street after street of luxury apartment complexes catering to the single young professionals pouring in to work in the oil industry. Swimming pools, hot tubs, and even a disco seemed essential in the complexes, while neighborhood developers simply skipped building sidewalks, parks or other public amenities. When the bottom dropped out of oil a decade later and the oil professionals left, rents in these complexes plummeted too.
Read MorePosted in Community Close Ups
Holistic Redevelopment to Bring Lasting Change to a Distressed Neighborhood The St. Bernard Public Housing Development was already in severe disrepair and only 75 percent occupied on August 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit leaving much of the Bayou District neighborhood submerged in eight feet of water. One of four large public housing complexes in New Orleans, the St. Bernard was notorious for its blighted properties, rampant violence, drug activity, and severe poverty. Schools in the area were among the worst in New Orleans, a state whose schools regularly rank as low as 48th in the nation. Katrina rendered the housing complex uninhabitable, and many of the residents scattered as part of the Katrina diaspora.
Read MorePosted in Expert Insights
Communities are looking for ways to build more livable cities, promote healthy lifestyles, and create an environment where residents can achieve their potential. It’s a broad vision that most whole-heartedly endorse—but achieving it isn’t easy. To start, the social challenges facing communities of all sizes have no simple solutions. For issues as complex as chronic homelessness, or the many challenges that face youth aging out of foster care, or the need to update an outdated workforce training system to meet the demands of a rapidly changing economy, one policy initiative simply cannot address the many facets of the problem. Even when we do know clear steps or initiatives that could help improve outcomes, the systems through which we fund social services—both publicly and privately—typically aren’t set up to support agile decision-making, nor necessarily to encourage strong performance and accountability among existing funding streams.
Read MorePosted in Crosswalk
The Early Development Instrument is a new data tool that’s helping communities come together, across sectors, to improve neighborhoods for vulnerable children. Our new essay examines how one community in west Texas has harnessed the EDI, and how others across the country are seeing its potential for catalyzing change.
Read MorePosted in Expert Insights
When you think of Boston what comes to mind? You may be thinking of American history, world class hospitals, top research institutions and winning sports teams. However, there is another side to Greater Boston, one where more than half of households are rent burdened (paying 30 percent or more of their income on rent) and income inequality is rising – in fact, a 2016 Brookings Institute report ranked Boston as #1 among cities with the highest income inequality nationally. While these statistics are daunting, Boston’s resources and leadership provide a prime opportunity for cross-sector innovation.
Read MorePosted in Expert Insights
This blog originally appeared on the Home Matters blog in December 2016.
Read MorePosted in Publications
Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies Blog (2/25/15) Not All Hard-Hit Neighborhoods Recover Equally Foreclosures disproportionately hit minority neighborhoods across the U.S. during the housing crisis. In Boston, over 80 percent of foreclosures took place in just five of its 15 planning districts—Dorchester, East Boston, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Roxbury; nearly 75 percent of the residents in these five districts are non-white, while the remainder of Boston is 70 percent white.
Read More