Publications

Publications on the CLiME site are designed as a digital portal into an educational research resource for issues of structural inequality, urbanism and metropolitan equity. Content is divided between types—articles, reports, presentations and public documents—and by subject. Externally created documents are briefly described, then linked to their sources; original CLiME scholarship is intermixed by subject or can be found under the CLiME tab.

Inequitable Gentrification: A Form of Exclusionary Zoning that Violates the New Jersey Constitution

From the perspective of many low-income families, gentrification is the ultimate social injustice; where “wealthy, usually white, newcomers are congratulated for "improving" a neighborhood whose poor, minority residents are displaced by skyrocketing rents and economic change.”

A social injustice promulgated by local government action, gentrification is no longer confined to our big cities and is increasingly impacting smaller cities and towns as municipalities seek to increase their tax base by luring wealthy residents in search of urban amenities and replace low income residents in the process.

PaperRutgers CLiMEMay 15, 2019Gentrification, Housing

Tiny Houses In the City of Newark: A Brief Overview of Cass Community Social Services

Tiny Houses In the City of Newark: A Brief Overview of Cass Community Social Services

In Tiny Houses in the City of Newark, Rutgers doctoral candidate Lenore Pearson studies innovative tiny house programs underway in Detroit, Michigan and analyzes their prospective application in Newark in a fascinating memorandum about unique urban housing solutions.

ReportRutgers CLiMEMay 5, 2019Housing

Newark’s Right to Counsel: A Proposed System Design for Indigent Tenants Facing Eviction

Newark’s Right to Counsel: A Proposed System Design for Indigent Tenants Facing Eviction

As a member of a local affordable housing coalition and partner to Mayor Baraka's effort to implement the second right-to-counsel (RTC) ordinance in the country, CLiME led the research design of such a system and the supporting basis for its legality under New Jersey law.

This memorandum was submitted to the City of Newark in early February, with recommendations for implementing a system of free legal services for indigent Newarkers (incomes below 200 percent of the median) facing imminent eviction proceedings in Essex County court.

MemorandumRutgers CLiMEApril 1, 2019Inequality, Housing

The Cost of New York City’s Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project

ABSTRACT: Tax increment financing (TIF) has exploded in popularity on the municipal finance landscape as cities compete for scarce public resources to fund economic development. Previous studies evaluate TIF’s efficacy and ability to spark economic growth.

This research expands the evaluation of TIF by questioning the widespread understanding of TIF as a “self-financing” tool through an analysis of its risks and costs to taxpayers. We present a case study of the Hudson Yards redevelopment project in New York City, the country’s largest TIF-type project.

ArticleRutgers CLiMENovember 5, 2018Housing, Poverty

Making Newark Work for Newarkers: Housing and Equitable Growth in the Next Brick City

Making Newark Work for Newarkers: Housing and Equitable Growth in the Next Brick City

Making Newark Work for Newarkers is the full report of the Rutgers University-Newark Project on Equitable Growth in the City of Newark, written by CLiME and incorporating research conducted in conjunction with a university working group whose work began last April. We viewed the goal of equitable growth first in the context of housing issues before expanding to think about the fabric of community life and economic opportunity in the city.

ReportGuest UserNovember 1, 2017Gentrification, Inequality, Poverty, Housing, CLiME

Displacement Risk and Gentrification: The CLiME Displacement Risk Indicators Matrix (DRIM) Methodology

Displacement Risk and Gentrification: The CLiME Displacement Risk Indicators Matrix (DRIM) Methodology

As Newark experiences unprecedented growth potential, Newarkers express more and more anxiety about the prospects of housing displacement brought on by the processes of gentrification that have transformed urban neighborhoods across the United States. Given the recent history of other cities in its metropolitan neighborhood—New York, Hoboken and Jersey City—Newark would seem poised to attract the kind of global capital that has accelerated so much economic development among …

ReportGuest UserNovember 1, 2017Gentrification, Poverty

Housing in Newark Research Brief: Status and Trends, 2000-2015

Housing in Newark Research Brief: Status and Trends, 2000-2015

The City of Newark is undergoing rapid transition, with creative political leadership and development cranes dotting its sky. In February 2016, CLiME launched a comprehensive study of housing trends in the City. In May 2016, CLiME led a Rutgers University-Newark anchor initiative that researching laws and policies that might promote more equitable growth in the City as it changes. This Housing Research Brief represents the first installment of our almost year-long work. It provides quantitative snapshots …

ReportGuest UserNovember 1, 2017Gentrification

Recommendations to the City of Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka

Recommendations to the City of Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka

The Rutgers University-Newark Project on Equitable Growth was formed as a team of university researchers led by CLiME to provide research and recommendations about spreading the benefits of potential economic growth to all wards and neighborhoods in the City of Newark. Although housing and housing-related issues dominated our work, we viewed the task more broadly and asked: How does a working-class city in the midst of economic interest from a fast- growing metropolitan region harness …

ReportGuest UserOctober 1, 2017Gentrification, Trauma, Poverty

Conference Brief - Psychological Trauma and Schools: How Systems Respond to the Traumas of Young Lives

Conference Brief - Psychological Trauma and Schools: How Systems Respond to the Traumas of Young Lives

On May 5, 2017, the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) hosted an interdisciplinary all-day conference on the institutional responsibility of schools in responding to childhood psychological trauma, particularly in low-SES communities where early life trauma exposure is disturbingly ubiquitous. The conference brought together a group of panelists and audience members from diverse fields related to childhood trauma.

ReportGuest UserJune 1, 2017Inequality, Poverty, Race, Trauma

Criminal Customers: The Criminalization of Poverty and the Systemic Exploitation of the Working Class

Criminal Customers: The Criminalization of Poverty and the Systemic Exploitation of the Working Class

Going to court is a stressful and frequently expensive ordeal. Most court appearances result in a monetary retribution, whether to an adversary or the state, and usually come with fine print. Financial obligation to another always comes with strings attached. For those unable to immediately meet their fiduciary duty, penalties can be severe. Inability to pay a fee often results in the tacking on of another fee, for being unable to pay the initial fine. With all these fines being imposed, one may feel as though being poor is a disadvantage in the justice system. The possibility of going to …

ArticleGuest UserMay 10, 2017Poverty

Disparities in Access to Prenatal Care: Perpetuation of Poverty and Inequality through the Healthcare System

Disparities in Access to Prenatal Care: Perpetuation of Poverty and Inequality through the Healthcare System

This analysis addresses the disparity in prenatal health outcomes between the City of Paterson and Wayne Township in New Jersey. It guides the reader through the experiences of a hypothetical pregnant woman living in Paterson to examine the institutional and non-institutional factors that prevent this pregnant woman, and others like her, from accessing appropriate prenatal care. This paper also discusses the relationship between the inability to access proper prenatal care and the perpetuation …

ArticleGuest UserMay 1, 2017Poverty, Race, Inequality

Trapped in Tragedies: Childhood Trauma, Spatial Inequality and Law

Trapped in Tragedies: Childhood Trauma, Spatial Inequality and Law

Each year, psychological trauma arising from community and domestic violence, abuse and neglect brings profound psychological, physiological and academic harm to millions of American children, disproportionately poor children of color. This Article represents the first comprehensive legal analysis of the causes of and remedies for a crisis that can have lifelong and epigenetic consequences. Using civil rights and local government law, it argues that children’s reactions to complex trauma represent the natural symptomatology of severe structural inequality—legally …

PaperGuest UserApril 11, 2017Gentrification, Inequality, Poverty, Race, Trauma

Legal Memorandum on Trauma, Schools and Poverty: Inquiry into Emotional Disturbance Classification for Children

What is the practical reality of “emotional disturbance” classifications under the IDEA? The vagueness and ambiguous nature of the “emotional disturbance” classification under the IDEA fails to accurately identify children affected by trauma as well as provide beneficial and effective services for those who do qualify. Emotional Disturbance (“E.D.”) is defined as a “condition exhibiting [at least one of five] characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.” A child needs to exhibit one …

MemorandumGuest UserFebruary 1, 2017Trauma

Issue Brief: Child Poverty In Essex County 2000–2015

Issue Brief: Child Poverty In Essex County 2000–2015

County, New Jersey between 2000 and 2015. The number of children living in poverty in Essex County has increased over the past 15 years, and in some places, quite dramatically. Increasing numbers of Essex County’s poor children live in neighborhoods of extreme poverty. There are also preliminary signs that child poverty has spread into formerly no- or low-poverty neighborhoods.

ReportGuest UserFebruary 1, 2017Inequality, Poverty

Assessment of Trauma in School-Aged Children with Significant Emotional and Behavioral Challenges: A Pilot Study

Assessment of Trauma in School-Aged Children with Significant Emotional and Behavioral Challenges: A Pilot Study

The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence of exposure to childhood trauma and related disorder in a sample of children with significant emotional and behavioral problems, enrolled in a partial-hospitalization program serving the Greater Newark, New Jersey area.This exploratory study took place at a community-based, urban mental health clinic between Dec 2015 and August 2016. Study participants included children aged 8 to 16 years. To assess exposure to traumatic events, children and parents/legal guardians completed the Traumatic Events Screening …

ReportGuest UserFebruary 1, 2017Trauma

Preliminary Research On Evidence Of Psychological Trauma In The International Realm

The most common consequence of trauma, such as war and natural disasters, on children is the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”). There are two types of trauma that a child experiences that can result in PTSD. Type I of trauma “refers to a one time, horrific, and clear cut life-endangering experience.” When “chronic stress and adversities . . . are a part of [a child’s] daily life,” it is considered Type II trauma. Based on the following research, it appears Type I can develop into Type II.

MemorandumGuest UserFebruary 1, 2017Trauma

As Other Districts Grapple With Segregation, This One Makes Integration Work

MORRISTOWN, N.J. — When the morning rush begins at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School here, students lugging oversize backpacks and fluorescent-colored lunchboxes emerge from the school buses that roll in, one after another, for 15 minutes. By the time it ends, children from some of this area’s most privileged enclaves, and from some of its poorest, file through the front doors to begin their day together.

The Morris School District was created in 1971, after a state court decision led to the merger of two Northern New Jersey communities — the mostly white suburbs of Morris Township, and the racially mixed urban hub of Morristown — into one school district for the purpose of maintaining racial and economic balance.

ArticleRutgers CLiMEDecember 12, 2016Inequality, Race, Housing

A Critical Review of the Psychological Literature

A Critical Review of the Psychological Literature

This report provides a critical and comprehensive review of the empirical literature on the sequelae of childhood exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs), with special emphasis on low socioeconomic status (SES) populations at disparate risk for exposure to PTEs across the lifespan. First, I will outline the categories and characteristics of childhood PTEs. Second, I will synthesize research on the proximal and distal consequences of childhood PTE exposure. Third, I will identify significant mediators (i.e., how or why PTE-related outcomes occur) …

ReportGuest UserDecember 1, 2016Poverty, Trauma

A Vision For An Equitable D.C.

What would an equitable DC look like? Communities of color have faced decades of systemic racism and discriminatory policies and practices. These actions have barred people of color from certain jobs and neighborhoods and from opportunities to build wealth, leaving a legacy that persists today. If the nation’s capital were free of its stark racial inequities, it could be a more prosperous and competitive city—one where everyone could reach their full potential and build better lives for themselves and their families.

Washington, DC, is one of most racially segregated cities in the United States, stemming from public policies and private actions that once limited where black residents could live, whether they could secure mortgages, and whom they could buy homes from. Today, Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8 on the east have a majority of black residents, and Wards 2, 3, and 6 on the west are majority white. About half of Hispanic residents live in Wards 1 and 4.

ReportRutgers CLiMENovember 29, 2016Gentrification, Housing, Inequality

The Lasting Impact Of Foreclosures And Negative Public Records

While it is commonly understood that the 7 million foreclosures that occurred between 2004 and 2015 fueled the Great Recession and have held back a robust recovery, the role of adverse public records is just as significant and less recognized. Nearly 35 million consumers had adverse public records between 2004 and 2015 including bankruptcies, civil judgments and federal tax liens.

Combined with the 7 million foreclosures, this means more than one in five Americans with credit records suffered an adverse event during this period. While It is also commonly understood that the Great Recession ended on June 2009, the total number of consumers having their foreclosure or negative public records still on their credit report actually peaked in 2015. This paper examines the lasting impact of these negative records on consumer spending and economic recovery.

ReportRutgers CLiMENovember 1, 2016Housing, Inequality