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2019-01-14
Family Foundations;
When I was City Council President, I was invited by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund to an Asset Building Conference, where I joined a team of colleagues from Jacksonville. We were challenged to set a bold goal around poverty in our community. We decided that our goal had to be big – we chose 1,000 people – and our goal had to have a time limit – we chose 1,000 days and that is how 1,000 in 1,000 was born.
I assumed that this initiative would be like most, where a group comes up with some great ideas, but then we get back home our good intentions wither. But Team Jacksonville was different. We completed research on the latest learnings on poverty, including literature reviews and national site visits. We ran pilots, working with 100 families over 3 years, to determine what specific strategies were the most powerful for building assets.
We learned from the families directly. They told us that their top goal was to provide a better life for their children than their own. They wanted a job that paid a living wage and were willing to work for it, but needed child care and reliable transportation to get to job training. They emphasized the need for life management skills, including goal setting, budgeting, parenting andinterpersonal skills. Families were frank that many of them had a past criminal arrest or conviction, but for relatively minor offenses that were still classified as a felony, such as bouncing a check or driving with a suspended license.
Poverty is everyone's problem. I am justifiably proud of our community for examining poverty through the magnifying glass of our collective vision.
2018-10-04
Innovation Lab;
This is the tenth Grants in Australia research report. This survey-based resource for Australian grantmakers and grantseekers has been produced regularly since 2006, and is the biggest of its type in Australia. An output of Our Community's Innovation Lab, the report is part of an ongoing research project that charts the development of the field of grantmaking from the grantseeking community's perspective. The goal of this report is to create a snapshot of grantmaking in Australia, to examine developing trends in the field, and to inspire and enable more successful grantseeking and better grantmaking.
2018-10-01
Reinvestment Fund (TRF), The;
The BLOCK by BLOCK study is based on what Reinvestment Fund calls a "Market Value Analysis" -- a tool designed to help private markets, government officials and philanthropy identify andcomprehend the vitality of local real estate markets.
By using the analysis, public sector officials, non-profits/philanthropy and private market actors can more precisely craft intervention strategies in weak markets and support sustainable growth in stronger market segments.
The Market Value Analysis (MVA) looks at communities at the Census block group level to discover the variations of housing market health, stability and opportunity in neighborhoods. It is based fundamentally on local administrative data sources.
The analysis focuses on residential real estate because, neighborhoods are – first and foremost – places where people live.
The analysis then overlays other elements – job clusters, mortgage financing, rental evictions, resident displacement risk, life expectancy, etc. – to provide a more complete picture.
The analysis is done at the Census block group level because even within discreet neighborhoods there can be significant variation. By identifying pockets of opportunity or concern early, communities can effectively "draft" on market forces or act before problems expand.
2018-09-13
Social IMPACT Research Center;
Millions of people in Illinois experience poverty or are living on the brink. That societal position keeps opportunities out of reach and nearly guarantees worse outcomes in every quality of life domain—making ALL of us worse off.
This fact sheet on poverty, income, and health insurance coverage in Illinois and the Chicago region, was created using the Census Bureau's release of local American Community Survey data.
The poverty rate for the United States was 12.3% in 2017. There were 39.7 million people in poverty nationwide. The poverty rate is not significantly different from the pre-recession level of 12.5% in 2007. In 2017, 1.6 million Illinoisans were in poverty ─ a rate of 12.6%. Additionally, 2.0 million Illinoisans are near poor and economically insecure with incomes between 100% and 199% of the federal poverty threshold.
2018-09-06
Citizen's Committee for Children of New York;
Citizens' Committee for Children of New York (CCC) has worked over the last year to gather quantitative and qualitative data about the North Shore of Staten Island to provide a comprehensive assessment of the needs of children and families in the area, as well as the resources available to them. CCC's model for community-based research utilizes existing government data on child and family well-being and complements it by mapping community assets and elevating the voices of service providers and community members through a participatory research process. This work builds on our experience maintaining the nation's most comprehensive municipal-level database illustrating the well-being of children and families in New York City, Keeping Track Online.
In this report, we highlight both welcomed and worrisome trends districtwide and across the seven neighborhoods that make up the North Shore—Grymes Hill-Park Hill, Mariner's Harbor, Port Richmond, Stapleton, St. George-New Brighton, West Brighton, and Westerleigh—and compare these outcomes against borough and citywide averages.
In order to address the challenges faced by children and families on the North Shore—and in Staten Island broadly—residents and service providers have come together to engage in efforts to improve outcomes across the range of issues impacting child and family well-being. This includes several collective impact initiatives, a term describing a systematic approach to collaboration among organizations aligned by a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and support from a backbone organization tasked with coordinating the partnership.
CCC's data collection and participatory research process are designed to inform and support efforts in the community to improve well-being for children and families. We believe that reliable data is a foundational element of effective advocacy, and that community engagement elevating the voices and concerns of residents is essential in identifying the challenges that need to be addressed. We are hopeful this report will be a useful tool as residents and service providers continue working to improve outcomes for children and families on the North Shore.
2018-09-01
Center for Economic and Policy Research;
It is ten years since we were at the peak of the financial crisis — the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an investment bank. This sent tremors throughout the world, and media outlets began talking about a return of the Great Depression. While the fear generated by politicians and media was able to get enough support for saving the financial industry, the country was left to deal with the painful fallout from a collapsed housing bubble. Millions lost their homes and jobs. Even a decade later, by some measures, most notably prime-age employment rates, the labor market has still not recovered.
This discussion makes several points concerning the bubble and its collapse. First and foremost, it argues that the primary story of the downturn was a collapsed housing bubble, not the financial crisis. Prior to the downturn, the housing bubble had been driving the economy, pushing residential construction to record levels as a share of GDP. The housing wealth effect also led to a consumption boom. The saving rate reached a record low. When the bubble burst, it was inevitable that these sources of demand would disappear and there were no easy options for replacing them, except very large government budget deficits.
2018-08-21
Heartland Alliance National Initiatives on Poverty & Economic Opportunity;
Implementing the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model boosts employment outcomes for transition-age youth facing barriers to employment. LifeWorks, a non-profit organization serving transition-age youth and their families in Austin, TX, realized that workforce models popular within the youth development field may not address the significant and complex challenges faced by their participants. LifeWorks staff began to look toward behavioral health approaches to employment and discovered the Individual Placement & Support model. This case study discusses how IPS offered LifeWorks a new approach to workforce support for youth that might better address the types of challenges their participants faced.
2018-08-01
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless;
Provides national, state, and local statistics and data about affordable housing, family status of homeless households, living wage jobs, tax inequality, un- and under-employment, the poverty rate, and other exacerbating factors that feed into and exacerbate homelessness.
2018-07-19
Heartland Alliance National Initiatives on Poverty & Economic Opportunity;
This infographic highlights current trends in how well the homeless service system is connecting people exiting the system with employment and income. The infographic is based on an analysis of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Continuum of Care System Performance Measure data from 2016.
