Don't miss CLiME Director David Troutt's keynote address during tomorrow's Equity Leadership Symposium: Aligning Restorative Practices and Restorative Justice!
Read More
Mayor Ras J. Baraka, Manager of the Office of Affordable Housing Al-Tariq Shabazz, President & CEO of the Newark Alliance Aisha Glover, and Founding Director of the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) David D. Troutt, will hold a press conference to announce the creation of the Equitable Growth Advisory Commission on Thursday, December 6, at 11:15 a.m., in the City Hall Press Room, located on 920 Broad Street. The Municipal Council approved this initiative at its regular meeting today.
Read More
A new report by the Economic Policy Institute confirms that there has been a structural change in low wage employment toward part-time work. This is apart from cyclical changes brought about by normal business cycles or even the Great Recession. The number of involuntary part-time workers shot up from 4.5 to 9 million during the Great Recession. Although the current levels are 6 million–an improvement from the 9 million during the Great Recession–we have not returned to pre-recession levels. The report states that employers are using part-time work as a cost …
Read More
This year was one of decisive forward momentum for CLiME. We advanced our interdisciplinary framework for public scholarship on issues of metropolitan equity through the following programmatic highlights: The Trauma, Schools and Poverty Project (TSP); Equitable Growth—Newark; Fellowship; Scholarship; Staffing; and Communications.
Read More
On May 5th, CLiME hosted a national conference on Trauma, Schools and Poverty. The Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) is committed to studying the role of law and policy in encouraging or inhibiting opportunity based on place. This conference is an outgrowth of the Trauma, Schools and Poverty Project.
Read More
Welcome to the Place, Race, and Equity Legislative Watch, which tracks proposed federal legislation by Congress that impact the fight to eliminate place-based inequality. Between January 3 and May 26th, members of Congress have proposed 5,149 bills and resolutions. Of these, 40 are on the topic of Housing and Community Development. In that time, 16 bills have become law. Note: Senator Lindsey Graham has stated, “For all practical purposes the political process will be ground to a halt by these allegations,” in reference to the ongoing allegations against President …
Read More
Cities may sue banks for injuries to their tax base caused by unlawful conduct against homeowners, according to the Supreme Court in a May 1st decision that was closely watched by fair housing advocates. An unusual split among the justices produced the 5-4 opinion in Bank of America v. City of Miami. The federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) ruling demonstrates that the aggregation of direct harms can produce broader consequences that may be actionable by indirect victims.
Read More
On May 5, 2017 CLiME hosted an interdisciplinary conference around systemic response to psychological trauma in youth. Dr. Alexandra Margevich has written an outstanding summary of the conference, which can be downloaded here. Recent CLIME publications on the topic of trauma and law include two new legal memos, one on emotional disturbance classification and the other on international perspectives on child trauma, a critical literature review and an article by CLiME Director Professor David Dante Troutt.
Read More
Welcome to the Place, Race, and Equity Legislative Watch. We will be tracking proposed federal legislation by Congress that impact the fight to eliminate place-based inequality. Before proposed legislation becomes law, it is reviewed by an internal committee, then must pass a House vote, Senate vote, and finally be approved by the President. Through at least 2018, the Senate and House Majority are Republican. For context, according to the Library of Congress, the 114th Congress proposed 18,747 bills, resulting in 113 laws in the 2015-2016 session.
Read More
Fair housing under the Mt. Laurel doctrine is resurrected in New Jersey. On January 18th, days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump would unsettle expectations of HUD’s role in supporting federal fair housing, the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed the vitality of the state’s own constitutional requirement that all municipalities provide their “fair share” of the regional need for affordable housing. That constitutional requirement had been dead for 18 years, thanks to recalcitrance by the governor and the state regulatory body—the Council on Affordable Housing …
Read More
The Terrell Homes public housing project, with over 200 units situated in Newark’s Ironbound area, has again been proposed for demolition by the Newark Housing Authority, in the face of residents’ protests. The Terrell Homes is comprised of primarily black residents, who make up 10% of the 07105 zip code where the housing development sits; demolition of the units could significantly lower the proportion of black residents in the Ironbound neighborhood and therefore violate the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule.
Read More
1. A new report by the Urban Land Institute provides a nuanced view of U.S. suburbs, including classification, maps, and important insights for policy and planning. 2. Frameworks Institute, a research organization that applies the cognitive and social sciences to policy messaging, has released recommendations for a variety of equity-related topics, including criminal justice and affordable housing. 3. The Coalition on Human Needs issued the Human Needs Report summarizing current actions of the 115th Congress in the areas of safety net, healthcare and labor, as well as a freeze on all new agency regulations.
Read More
Equity is not just an ideal to admire. It can be defined, measured, and mapped. Visualizations are an increasingly important medium to communicate our values in a digital era. We have compiled some of the best visualizations that came our way this past year that featured measures of inequality and equity. We commend the researchers and institutions for their commitment and investment to this work.
Read More
The presidential election that was too vulgar for us to write about, with accusations too inarticulate to describe policies, and an intimidating atmosphere of racist, nativist and sexist extremism inflaming every imaginable social division, finally received the emotional outcome it created. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in a historic upset destined to be known as the ultimate political demand for change. For those dedicated to working against structural inequality, this may be the transformative change we …
Read More
This election is giving me high blood pressure, and I don’t mean the man in the Great Pumpkin outfit who is running for president. No, my friends, it is the folks on “my side” who bring me despair. The blue-hairs and kids that can afford to work in politics and policy are of the same breed and dependent on the same hierarchy that they claim to be against. Case in point: in a moment of panic I recently volunteered at a local political organization. They told me that they needed to hire five part-time workers at $10 per hour.
Read More
Our 2015-2016 Equity and Opportunity Studies Fellows have spent the Spring semester completing coursework with Prof. Troutt and advancing their qualitative research projects that span an array of issues in place-based inequality and opportunity, including the topics of Diverse and Inclusive, Moderate-Income municipalities (DIMIs) to accompany the ongoing work by David Ruske and David Troutt; investigation into the impact of state takeover in troubled cities, including Camden and Atlantic City; interrogation of the theoretical benefits of localism in two affluent …
Read More
Beginning in the fall of 2015, CLiME’s Trauma, Schools and Poverty Project (TSP) is a multi-year effort to understand the relationships between structural inequality and the pervasive experience of complex psychological stress and trauma. Psychological research has demonstrated the cumulative destructive effects caused by exposure to complex trauma—traumatic experiences linked to school and community violence, family separation as well as domestic abuse and neglect that are often repetitive, if not continuous—on children and adults, especially those …
Read More
The Center on Law, Inequality & Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) was proud to host the Trauma-Informed Care Roundtable on April 15th, 2016 at the Rutgers School of Law-Newark, co-sponsored with the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. CLiME Director David Troutt and Assistant Attorney General Wanda Moore served as the facilitators for three panels on the following topics: Understanding Trauma in Adults and Children, Understanding Trauma-Informed Care Practices in Action, and Understanding the Capacity to Provide Trauma-Informed Care.
Read More
Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Why We Can’t Wait“ to dispel the notion that African Americans should be content to proceed on an incremental course toward full equality under the law and in the wider society. King observed, “Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.” Yet waiting and whispering, rather than raising their voices for genuine inclusion, is what many seem to expect of the children and grandchildren of King’s generation even today.
Read More
When President Obama visited the Rutgers Law School on November 2nd, it represented the startling achievement of two dream-like goals. First was the sheer specter of the occasion—seeing our president suddenly in our home, flanked by new flags and the familiar bars that adorn our atrium’s spiral stairs. Second was the occasion itself: to meet in a roundtable with formerly incarcerated persons and then to deliver a speech intended to reverse—by executive order—one of the single greatest public policy failures in American history.
Read More