Posts in Report
The Making Of Ferguson: Public Policies At The Root Of Its Troubles

In August 2014, a Ferguson, Missouri, policeman shot and killed an unarmed black teenager. Michael Brown’s death and the resulting protests and racial tension brought considerable attention to that town. Observers who had not been looking closely at our evolving demographic patterns were surprised to see ghetto conditions we had come to associate with inner cities now duplicated in a formerly white suburban community: racially segregated neighborhoods with high poverty and unemployment, poor student achievement in overwhelmingly black schools, oppressive policing, abandoned homes, and community powerlessness.

Media accounts of how Ferguson became Ferguson have typically explained that when African Americans moved to this suburb (and others like it), “white flight” followed, abandoning the town to African Americans who were trying to escape poor schools in the city. The conventional explanation adds that African Americans moved to a few places like Ferguson, not the suburbs generally, because prejudiced real estate agents steered black home buyers away from other white suburbs. And in any event, those other suburbs were able to preserve their almost entirely white, upper-middle-class environments by enacting zoning rules that required only expensive single family homes, the thinking goes.

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The State of New Jersey: A Study of Fair Housing, Housing Affordability, and Metropolitan Equity

In order to understand affordable housing and the issues surrounding public housing, we must know the background of how it evolved. The following section will provide landmark history of affordable housing and its development in the United States. This section will also discuss the evolution of affordable housing and the impact it has had on American families.

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Mobility and the Metropolis: How Communities Factor into Economic Mobility

In a 2011 public opinion poll, The Pew Charitable Trusts asked Americans how important they thought a number of factors were in determining whether people in the United States get ahead or fall behind economically. More than 80 percent of respondents identified factors such as hard work, personal ambition, and access to education as key drivers of upward mobility, while less than half viewed growing up in a good neighborhood as an important factor. On the contrary, respondents strongly agreed that a young person with drive, ambition, and creativity growing up in a poor neighborhood is more likely to get ahead economically than someone who grew up in a more affluent neighborhood but lacks those personal attributes. 

Contrary to these perceptions, however, evidence is building that location actually matters a great deal and that Americans' economic mobility prospects vary by state, locality, and even neighborhood. This report adds to the growing body of research as it examines economic mobility across 96 U.S. metropolitan areas and the role of place in Americans' prospects of moving up or down the economic ladder.

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A Status Quo of Segregation: Racial and Economic Imbalance in New Jersey Schools, 1989-2010

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: New Jersey has a curious status regarding school desegregation. It has had the nation’s most venerable and strongest state law prohibiting racially segregated schooling and requiring racial balance in the schools whenever feasible. Yet, it simultaneously has had one of the worst records of racially imbalanced schools.

In 1881, a New Jersey statute was enacted that prohibited segregated schooling based on race, one of the very first such laws in the nation.1 In 1947, New Jersey adopted a state constitutional provision that specifically prohibited segregation in the public schools.2 It is the only state with such an explicit provision. Connecticut’s state constitution, the next strongest, bars “segregation or discrimination in the exercise or enjoyment of his or her civil or political rights,” but it does not specify the public schools.

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City Lines, County Lines, Color Lines: The Relationship between School and Housing Segregation in Four Southern Metro Areas

Background/Context: At the close of the first decade of the 21st century, the intersection of race, geography and opportunity is increasingly referred to as spatial racism. School quality and resources, municipal services, employment opportunities, accessibility of transportation, exposure to pollution, and tax rates all vary dramatically across a network of invisible boundary lines that carve up U.S. metro areas into racially and socioeconomically distinctive spaces.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study:This analysis explores how district boundary lines and school desegregation policy have impacted metropolitan school and housing integration levels over the past two decades.

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Median Income across NJ

The change in median household income between 2009 and 2011. To ensure accuracy for smaller geographies like municipalities, the annual figures are actually five-year averages. For example, the data for 2011 is an average of data from 2007-2011. Click on a municipality to the median income for each year and the change.  Explore the interactive map here.

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The Roots Of The Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining The Black-White Economic Divide

Growing concerns about wealth inequality and the expanding racial wealth gap have in recent years become central to the debate over whether our nation is on a sustainable economic path. This report provides critical new information about what has fueled the racial wealth gap and points to policy approaches that will set our country in a more equitable and prosperous direction.

New research shows the dramatic gap in household wealth that now exists along racial lines in the United States cannot be attributed to personal ambition and behavioral choices, but rather reflects policies and institutional practices that create different opportunities for whites and African-Americans. So powerful are these government policies and institutional practices that for typical families, a $1 increase in average income over the 25-year study period generates just $0.69 in additional wealth for an African-American household compared with $5.19 for a white household. Part of this equation results from black households having fewer opportunities to grow their savings beyond what needed for emergencies.

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New Homes, New Neighborhoods, New Schools: A Progress Report on the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program

n the Baltimore region, a successful housing mobility program is providing families living in very disadvantaged inner city communities with a new home and a chance for a new life. Minority voucher holders in the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program (formerly titled Section 8) have often been limited to living in “voucher submarkets” where racial and economic segregation is high and opportunities are limited. The Baltimore Housing Mobility Program, a specialized regional voucher program operating with deliberate attention to expanding fair housing choice, has overcome some of the biggest barriers to using vouchers in suburban and city neighborhoods where opportunities are abundant. The program’s results-oriented approach has produced a replicable set of best practices for mobility programs while presenting an important model for reform of the national Housing Choice Voucher Program. This report, New Homes, New Neighborhoods, New Schools: A Progress Report on the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program, provides the first-ever comprehensive description of the program.

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The City-CLT Partnership: Municipal Support For Community Land Trusts

The community land trust (CLT) movement is young but expanding rapidly. Nearly 20 community land trusts are started every year as either new nonprofits or as programs or subsidiaries of existing organizations. Fueling this proliferation is a dramatic increase in local government investment and involvement. Over the past decade, a growing number of cities and counties have chosen not only to support existing CLTs, but also to start new ones, actively guiding urban development and sponsoring affordable housing initiatives.

Two key policy needs are driving increased city and county interest in CLTs, particularly in jurisdictions that put a social priority on promoting homeownership for lower-income families and a fiscal priority on protecting the public’s investment in affordable housing.

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