Equitable Public Investment

To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities offers a vision and an action agenda for ensuring that smaller industrial cities take their righthful places within America's diverse and healthy metropolitan regions. Our nation's smaller industrial cities can be attractive, welcoming places to live. Despite challenges, they possess tremendous assets and amenities and deserve our coordinated attention and action.

Voices from Forgotten Cities: Innovative Revitalization Coalitions in America's Older Small Cities prepared by Lorlene Hoyt and Andre Leroux, highlights the daunting economic challenges faced by smaller industrial cities and the promise they hold. Progress in retooling for economic competitiveness and reinvigorating civic life will come from the creativity and commitment of leaders both old and new, and the Forgotten Cities project has given voice to many of these committed and articulate leaders. Their remarks, as well as those of many national experts, have provided the basis for the insightful findings and recommendations in this report.

Connecting Working Families to Economic Opportunities in the Philadelphia Region: The Role of Employers  describes barriers to economic success faced by working families and puts forth strategies that employers, government, and the nonprofit sector can use to overcome these barriers.By focusing on programs for job training, housing, transportation and community revitalization partnerships, the brief seeks to show how these strategies can help both working families and the businesses that give them a hand. Though the brief does offer some Philadelphia-specific policy recommendations, it also focuses on broader strategies that are applicable in most areas of the country, such as: creating a state innovation fund for incumbent training and career pathway programs, Increasing state and federal commuter benefits, providing local matching funds and state and federal tax credits for employer-assisted housing, and establishing state tax credits for revitalization partnerships.

Grow Newark: Building Newark's Economy by Investing in Minority and Women-Owned Small Businesses, a policy brief that examines the challenges facing women-and minority-owned businesses (or "minorityowned business enterprises (MBE)) in Newark. The brief examines current hurdles facing the business community in Newark and provides recommendations based on best practices that have been proved successful in other cities.  

Buy Newark: Adopting a Comprehensive Buy-Local Strategy for the City of Newark, a policy brief which outlines various recommendations to better steer a portion of the enormous purchasing power in Newark toward local, small, and minority- and women-owned businesses which can result in substantial local economic impacts that would benefit a broad and deep cross-section of Newark residents.

Safety, Growth, and Equity: Parks and Open Spaces, provides a brief history of the city park movement and its intersection with the community gardening movement. It shows how planners began to incorporate park elements in their attempts to create vibrant downtowns and walkable neighborhoods. Additionally, the report identifies promising practices for community participation in policy and programming; instituting standards, measurements, and assessments; targeting resources to high-need areas; increasing funding overall; and the efficient and creative use of existing community assets as well as alternatives to new land acquisitions.

Safety, Growth, and Equity: School Facilities, examines how aging infrastructure and a growing population have led to a critical need to modernize old schools and address school construction and maintenance disparities in low-income communities.

Safety, Growth, and Equity: Transportation, explores equitable transportation policies and investments, looking at how local and regional governments play the lead role in financing the construction and maintenance of our transportation infrastructure, with the federal government playing a smaller, but nevertheless significant, role via subsidies.

Safety, Growth, and Equity: Infrastructure Policies that Promote Opportunity and Inclusion, Winter 2006
Infrastructure—transit, schools and colleges, roads, water systems, parks, telecommunications networks—is the backbone of strong, healthy communities and regions.  Population growth, resource-intensive development patterns, new technology requirements of a changing economy, and several decades of underinvestment have created a large backlog of infrastructure projects in urban, suburban, and rural areas across the country—and over the next two decades, even more new infrastructure projects and upgrades will be needed to keep communities running. In a policy and budget system of fierce competition for limited public funds, decisions about how and where to allocate infrastructure dollars literally shape our communities and affect access to economic opportunity more ...

Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions: An Agenda for Rebuilding America's Older Core Cities, Winter 2005
Older core cities are primarily located in the Northeast and Midwest and are often referred to as rust belt, weak markets, slow growth, or undercapitalized cities.  They face significant obstacles to a sustainable future and are struggling to reposition themselves in the face of a changing economy and the movement of people and resources out of urban centers to other parts of the region, the country, or overseas.  This report explores the opportunities and challenges confronting older core cities by looking closely at five of them:  Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh and answers questions about how older core cities can become economically competitive and socially inclusive places where all residents can participate and prosper. more ...

Ending School Overcrowding in California: Building Quality Schools for All Children
Over a million California schoolchildren—predominantly from low-income families and communities of color—attend severely overcrowded schools. Yet school construction resources are too often diverted to newer schools in suburban or exurban communities, bypassing critically overcrowded urban or inner-ring suburban schools that typically lack vacant land for expansion or local funding sources. Ending School Overcrowding in California: Building Quality Schools for All Children explores California’s overcrowding relief initiatives and proposes policy recommendations for fair and equitable distribution of school construction funds. more ...

Investing in a Sustainable Future: An Analysis of ACA 14 and SCA 11, PolicyLink, July 2003
California is growing, and local communities are struggling to address unmet community infrastructure needs-affordable housing, transportation, neighborhood improvements, sewers, parks, and other infrastructure-that impact quality of life. Local communities need flexible new tools to empower them to make smarter and sustainable community investments required to help shape their futures.  In this report, PolicyLink analyzes the infrastructure shortfall and makes the case for two constitutional amendments that were under consideration in the California state legislature in 2003.   more...

Building A Healthier Sacramento Region: An Analysis of AB 680, PolicyLink, January 2002
This paper synthesizes existing research on land-use and regional development and provides an analysis of the potential benefits of California Assembly Bill 680 for the Sacramento region. Assembly Bill 680, which passed in the California Assembly on January 30, 2002, addresses the inequitable sales tax distribution system in the Sacramento region; rewards smart growth projects undertaken by local jurisdictions; and encourages development that fosters regional cooperation and meets smart growth principles.  more ...

Equitable Development

Understanding Climate Change: An Equitable Framework contributes to a deeper understanding of the issues, and considers the equity consequences and implications associated with global warming. The chapters in the report describes: The scale of the challenge; why equity advocates should care; the relationship between climate change and air pollution; energy production, climate justice, and the climate policy debate; and opportunities and challenges to address climate change and promote equity. Each chapter concludes with a resource guide that identifies additional sources of information.

Regional Equity and the Quest for Full Inclusion, the focus of the recent PolicyLink summit in New Orleans, examines the history of equity in America and how national and global forces are creating unique challenges and opportunities. It concludes with a vision of the future characterized by shared economic prosperity and true participatory democracy, one where everyone--including people of color and residents of low-income communities--can contribute and benefit.

Building a Better New Orleans: Hope Needs Help highlights the tremendous strides made by some of the city's most vulnerable people and showcases the folks who helped make that progress possible. But the report also calls on the federal government, the private sector, and the public to do more to get New Orleans the help it needs to create a truly vibrant and equitable city.

Bringing Louisiana Renters Home: An Evaluation of the 2006-2007 Gulf Opportunity Zone Rental Housing Restoration Program shows that barely two in five renters can return to affordable homes.  The report evaluates rental program outcomes, cites current challenges and threats facing rental developments, and makes recommendations to meet the challenges and achieve intended housing goals.

Market Creek Plaza: Toward Resident Ownership of Neighborhood Change , Spring 2005
This case study highlights the planning, design, and implementation process of Market Creek Plaza, a 10-acre mixed-use, resident-planned commercial and cultural development in the historically disinvested Diamond Neighborhoods of San Diego. 

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Regional Equity and Smart Growth: Opportunities for Advancing Social and Economic Justice in America, Winter 2004-5 seeks to ensure that all communities can participate in and benefit from economic growth and activity throughout each metropolitan region. This includes being able to access quality affordable housing, good schools, living wage jobs, public transit, open space, and healthy foods. more ...

Advocating for Equitable Development, Winter 2004-5
The first step in making change is to recognize the need for it. The second is to know how to make it happen. Advocating for Equitable Development describes the process for moving from recognition to resolution and demystifies the process for achieving economic and social equity in low-income communities and communities of color throughout the nation. more ...

Promoting Regional Equity: A Framing Paper, November 2002
This paper seeks to broaden and deepen the growing dialogue and action to promote regional equity. Through analysis and practical examples, the paper explores a number of key equity issues that challenge our nation today-from education to transportation to environmental justice-and situates these issues in a regional context. Further, the paper identifies opportunities for action and highlights examples of community actors evolving their strategies and tactics to the "regional reality," and successfully connecting their neighborhoods and communities to resources and opportunities throughout regions.  more...

Sharing the Wealth: Resident Ownership Mechanisms, PolicyLink, Fall 2001
This report examines a range of strategies and instruments to increase opportunities for residents to become owners in the development process--to be stockholders, not just stakeholders in local economic activity. more ...

Health In Communities

Designed for Disease: the Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes, a study by PolicyLink, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy examines the correlation between the health of nearly 40,000 Californians and the mix of retail food outlets near their homes. The key finding: people living in neighborhoods crowded with fast-food and convenience stores but relatively few grocery or produce outlets are at significantly higher risk of suffering from obesity and diabetes.

Click here to view a "Detailed Methodology" and click here for a one-pager of "Policy Recommendations" based on the study.

Why Place Matters: Building the Movement for Healthy Communities
Where you live determines how well you live; and available resources are not equally distributed. Communities of color and low-income communities face harmful community environments, such as poverty, toxins, or economic disinvestment, that compromise individual and community health. The framework described in this report provides a way to understand the relationship between community conditions and health, analyzes the connections among all the environmental factors that contribute to a healthy community, and identifies environmental effects on community health.

The Impact of the Built Environment on Health
The way we plan, shape and create our urban environment impacts the health of the people who live, work, play and move through these communities. The symptoms of poorly planned neighborhoods are often poor health outcomes. Communities of color and low-income communities face disproportionally greater health impacts related to poor land use planning. There is an effort, by the field of public health, to integrate health considerations into planning and land use to yield improved health outcomes. This report provides both a framework for understanding the necessary elements for building a movement for policy change and better planning, as well as numerous illustrations of innovative practices, projects and networks of advocates and professionals.

Healthy Food, Healthy Communities: Improving Access and Opportunities through Food Retailing, Fall 2005
One necessity of good health is being able to easily buy and eat fresh fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods. All too often, however, healthy food options are limited – or completely unavailable – in low-income communities. This lack of local access to healthy, affordable food affects what people eat and ultimately threatens both individual and community vitality – residents risk obesity and other poor health conditions, and communities suffer. more ...

Communities And Health Policy: A Pathway For Change, Health Affairs, Winter 2005
Improving the health system can reduce the effects of health disparities, but it can do little to eliminate them. An upsurge in new research is documenting the impact of physical, social, and economic environmental factors: air quality, housing conditions, racism, relationship to community institutions, and neighborhood economic conditions, all of which affect health status over time. A combined focus on community and the policies that affect communities’ environments presents opportunities for altering and ameliorating the underlying forces at the heart of the determinants of health. This Perspective presents examples of successful community involvement and policy change.
click here for direct link to the Health Affairs article..

Building Stronger Communities for Better Health, October 2004 (co-published with the Joint Center Health Policy Institute)
Public debates on the lagging health status of people of color often focus on the need for better access to health care. This is certainly an unmet need, but something else is needed as well if lingering health disparities are to end: a simultaneous focus on community environments. more ...

Breathing Easier: Community-Based Strategies to Prevent Asthma, October 2004 (co-published with the Joint Center Health Policy Institute)
Asthma ranks among the most prevalent diseases suffered disproportionately by people of color. Most current strategies to reduce asthma focus on its clinical management, but the alarming rates of asthma among African Americans and Latinos will not decline until communities organize to reduce the toxins that exacerbate this debilitating condition. more ...

Community-Based Strategies for Improving Latino Health, October 2004 (co-authored with the Joint Center Health Policy Institute)
Latino immigrants and their children make up one of the most medically underserved groups in the United States today. Surprisingly, despite their poverty many of these immigrants arrive at our borders relatively healthy, but their health status often declines with acculturation to North American eating habits and sedentary lifestyles. more ...

A Place for Healthier Living: Improving Access to Physical Activity and Healthy Foods, October 2004 (co-authored with the Joint Center Health Policy Institute)
Diet and nutrition related diseases, including obesity and diabetes, disproportionately affect people of color. Obesity rates, in particular, are not only higher among African Americans and Latinos than among whites but also are rising faster too, and this in turn has led to higher rates of premature death due to heart disease. more ...

The Influence of Community Factors on Health: An Annotated Bibliography, Fall 2004
Developed by PolicyLink, and funded by The California Endowment, this annotated bibliography contains more than 150 entries of research on how community factors affect health. The Influence of Community Factors on Health: An Annotated Bibliography provides insight into the ways that researchers have investigated community effects on health, their findings, and the program and policy implications that researchers have drawn from their work. more ...

Fighting Childhood Asthma: How Communities Can Win, Fall 2002
This report provides an overview of current efforts to improve the prevention, tracking, diagnosis and treatment of childhood asthma and accompanying opportunities for policy change. Asthma is a growing problem for children and families in California and in the nation as a whole.   more...

Reducing Health Disparities Through a Focus on Communities, November 2002
Where you live can hinder or contribute to good health. This report highlights policies and practices aimed at reducing health disparities-the higher incidence of certain diseases and conditions, including asthma, heart disease, high blood pressure, and infant mortality-in low-income communities and communities of color.  more...

Bridging the Innovation Divide: An Agenda for Disseminating Technology Innovations within the Nonprofit Sector, Winter 2007

Why is there an innovation divide in the nonprofit sector? What is it about this sector that makes the use and adoption of information and communications technologies (ICTs) particularly difficult?  Included in this report are the results of an investigation along with a five-part agenda which answers these questions and offers solutions for what can be done to speed up the diffusion of innovations within the nonprofit sector. 

This report also profiles twelve innovators that employ four technology practices —neighborhood information systems, electronic advocacy, Internet-based microenterprise support, and digital inclusion initiatives—to strenghten the capacity of communities for advocacy, knowledge-sharing, and economic development. more...

Click Here for Change: Your Guide to the E-Advocacy Revolution, Spring 2007

The Internet has fundamentally changed the face of advocacy. Organizations are arming themselves with technology tools to mobilize constituents, advance their issues, support political candidates, and engage individuals in the political and policymaking process.  This new Internet-based approach to advocacy—electronic advocacy (e-advocacy)—is a multifaceted process that uses an array of technology tools, tailored to an organization's specific campaign goals.

Click Here for Change: Your Guide to the E-Advocacy Revolution features technology tips to help organizations and coalitions strengthen their offline advocacy tactics; target decision-makers to pass or defeat a proposed change; connect with "hard to reach" communities; organize for mass mobilization; track online activity to identify strong supporters; and reach out to more supporters for online donations. more...

Moving Beyond the Divide: Workforce Development and Upward Mobility in Information Technology, Spring 2006
As information technology (IT) has become nearly universal in workplaces, skills in IT are increasingly becoming the focus of many new jobs and, more broadly, a precondition for progress in the knowledge-based U.S. and global economies. For many workers, however, lack of skills, post-secondary degrees, and connections leave them trapped in dead-end, low-paying jobs. However, a low-wage future is not inevitable for disadvantaged groups. Innovative community-based organizations play an important role in making the transition possible for many of those whom the educational system has failed, providing crucial job training programs that help workers cross the digital divide. Moving Beyond the Divide: Workforce Development and Upward Mobility in Information Technology – a Policy Brief outlines the context for IT workforce development, analyzes the role of community-based training programs, and concludes with policy implications for the employment training field. more ...

Bridging the Organizational Divide: Toward a Comprehensive Approach to the Digital Divide, PolicyLink, September 2001     

This report reviews the innovative use of information technologies (IT) to promote equity and strengthen community institutions. The report highlights pioneer community organizations, community technology centers, and technical assistance groups, each using IT to enhance community building efforts. more...

Fair Distribution of Affordable Housing Throughout Regions

A Long Way Home: The State of Housing Recovery in Louisiana 2008 examines how renters and homeowners have fared since Katrina, Rita, and floods destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes. With extensive data andinformation on where rental housing units are coming back -- outlining the gaps that remain for many homeowners, along with snapshots of heavily damaged neighborhoods -- this report puts hard numbers on the experiences of residents on the ground.

Delivering on the Promise of Inclusionary Housing: Best Practices in Administration and Monitoring,(pdf) outlines several of the most common tasks associated with ongoing administration of inclusionary housing programs and describes some of the common approaches to staffing and paying for implementation. It also lists a number of program profiles where inclusionary zoning has been implemented.

Expanding Opportunity: New Resources to Meet California’s Housing Needs, Winter 2005
California is currently facing its greatest housing crisis ever. Expanding Opportunity: New Resources to Meet California’s Housing Needs makes the case for a dedicated source of funding for California’s housing trust fund and provides a menu of viable options. The report draws from interviews with over 50 key experts in state housing policy, industry, tax, and budget issues. It presents an in-depth economic analysis and surveys best practices of housing trust funds across the nation to show how such funding can stabilize affordable housing opportunities across the state’s diverse communities. more ...

Increasing Housing Opportunity in New York City, Fall 2004
This report makes recommendations for using inclusionary zoning in New York City. Drawing on success stories nationwide, Increasing Housing Opportunity in New York identifies five New York neighborhoods currently slated for rezoning and shows how IZ can increase affordable housing in those communities and whenever city neighborhoods are rezoned. The report builds a strong case for using IZ as a tool to ensure that the benefits of development will be fairly shared now and in the years to come. more ...

Expanding Housing Opportunity in Washington, DC: The Case for Inclusionary Zoning, October 2003
The growing need for housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income families is an issue facing nearly every part of the United States. This report draws on inclusionary zoning successes from around the country and makes recommendations for expanding the availability of affordable housing in Washington, DC that apply to other cities as well.  more...

Promise and Challenge: Achieving Regional Equity in Greater Boston, May 2003
Promise and Challenge ties the principles of equitable development to smart growth.  Commissioned by the Greater Boston Action Committee (GBAC), this PolicyLink report prioritizes policy opportunities in the region. It includes strategies to improve current policies and advocates new directions, such as the application of equity criteria to all publicly subsidized development.  more...

Leadership for Policy Change, PolicyLink, Fall 2003
This report explains why there are so few leaders of color making policy, why their presence is important, and what must be done to increase their numbers. Leadership for Policy Change draws on interviews with more than 100 leaders from the public sector, private industry, academia, and nonprofit organizations; a scan of 72 leadership development programs; and an extensive review of current leadership development literature. The report describes the barriers to participation of leaders of color in local and national public policy development and the strategies that can be used to remove the barriers so that leaders can use their expertise and experience to benefit low-income communities of color and the nation. more...

"Learning to Lobby: Steps to Successful Legislative Advocacy," Race, Poverty & the Environment: A Journal for Social and Environmental Justice," Fall 2003.
(Race, Poverty & the Environment is published by Urban Habitat.)
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