TWO NEW ACTION! RESEARCH REPORTS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD:
Community Controlled Housing for Massachusetts:
Securing Affordability for the Long Term
In communities across Massachusetts, daily experience is making the once abstract notion of regional inequity painfully clear. Families of diverse income levels struggle to secure affordable housing, maintain decent employment, and feel secure about the environmental safety of their neighborhoods. Both urban and suburban commuters feel the impact of a transportation system that does not adequately address mass transit needs. Fewer than ten percent of the Commonwealth's cities and towns have managed the political will to build the state-mandated proportion of affordable housing. Achieving regional equity is no longer simply an issue for communities of color and low-income communities-although there is no question that they are disproportionately impacted-but the principal challenge facing Massachusetts in the 21st century.
Action for Regional Equity (Action!)-a coalition of 18 Massachusetts equity organizations united to address continuing disparities in affordable housing, transportation investment, and environmental justice-has developed strategies to address the critical development challenges facing the Commonwealth.
Advancing regional equity involves reducing social and economic disparities among individuals, social groups, neighborhoods, and local jurisdictions throughout a metropolitan area. It means reversing patterns that have concentrated poverty, segregated communities, and limited opportunities for lower-income residents of the region. It means creating policies that value vital working class communities, strengthen a region, and benefit all of its residents. To achieve regional equity, it is necessary to:
Make environmental justice and social equity central components of regional development;
Integrate solutions to public transit, affordable housing, workforce development, and open space issues;
Prevent displacement of low-income residents through mechanisms that connect them to opportunities, resources, and the political process; and
Balance land use decisions across jurisdictions.
In 2008, Action! will focus on critical issues in affordable housing and transportation equity, commencing with findings from its recently released reports on the opportunities to increase housing in nonprofit and community control, and ways to ensure equity in the growth of transit oriented development throughout the state.
Since November 2002, Action! has produced several reports charting the social and economic forces shaping the region and hosted numerous forums where community-based organizations share strategies for equitable development. It has provided public comment on critical state policy, lobbied for legislative changes that advance regional equity, provided significant support to the campaign efforts of allies, and led its own policy campaign during 2006 focused on data collection for the Commonwealths’ affordable housing investment. Its organizations reflect the concerns of the communities they represent and are united in advancing policy campaigns to address those concerns. Action! is promoting ways to reduce displacement through the production of housing with deep affordability provisions, seeking alternatives that can provide equity in transportation finance, and advancing environmental justice and social equity in regional development. PolicyLink has been a key ally of Action for Regional Equity from its inception.
Principles of Equitable Transit Oriented Development click here .
For a list of member groups click here .
To view employment opportunities with Action! click here.
General Contact Information:
Action for Regional Equity
2181 Washington Street, Suite 301
Boston, MA 02119
Phone: (617) 442-3343, extension 237
www.actionma.org
Staff:
Paul Deare, Director
Meira Soloff, Program Associate