Crossposted from LA Weekly

The impact of Los Angeles' postrecession housing crisis became clear in 2014, when a UCLA report found that L.A. is "the most unaffordable rental market" in the United States. Since then, L.A. has seen renters become the majority of households in the market. And earlier this year, a report marked a 23 percent rise in homelessness  countywide, a number that some experts say is directly tied to out-of-reach rents.

To kick off an awareness campaign called the Renter Week of Action this week, a number of organizations released an analysis of the city's and nation's increasing rent burdens, noting in a summary that renters from coast to coast now "face a toxic mix of rising rents and stagnant wages."

The Trump Administration recently stripped communities of a crucial tool for job creation – hiring local workers. In August, the US Department of Transportation announced it would discontinue a pilot program allowing for geographic-based hiring preferences in administering federal awards, also known as local hiring. This represents a premature halting of a program that was being utilized on 14 projects in more than 10 states. The pilot program has not been in existence and functioning long enough to collect and analyze data and information to determine its impact. 

By repealing the program at US DOT, the Administration is breaking its promise to increase employment, especially for disproportionately under and unemployed communities that stood to gain from the program. For example, one of the projects in located in Wise County, VA: a region which could be called “Trump country”. The population is 92 percent White, and Trump won nearly 4 out of 5 votes in the county in the 2016 election. Wise County is also struggling economically; as of June 2017, the unemployment rate was 7.3 percent – nearly double the statewide rate of 3.7 percent. The poverty rate is 22.7 percent more than twice the statewide rate of 11.2 percent.  Across the entire state there are 16,000 unemployed veterans. The state was working to leverage a $6.4 million dollar road expansion project (which included bicycle paths and sidewalks) to address unemployment and poverty. The county’s approved project they required that 75 percent of new hires should be either local residents or veterans living anywhere in the state of Virginia. 

Local hire policies bring good jobs to economically disadvantaged communities and ensure equitable development. Local hire programs also yield shared benefits.  Businesses receive financial incentives when they hire veterans or workers from the local community and they also find a steady supply of reliable workers. Job seekers can more easily travel to job sites located within their community.

Civic leaders and advocates across the country that are trying to move a jobs agenda for infrastructure have voiced major opposition for this recent move. Members of the federal Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity (ACTE) sent a letter to Secretary Chao urging her to re-instate the local hiring program. ACTE was established by the US DOT in 2016 to provide the Secretary with “independent advice and recommendations about comprehensive, interdisciplinary issues related to transportation equity.” PolicyLink CEO Angela Glover Blackwell sits on this committee,  serving a two-year term of service alongside 11 individuals involved in transportation planning, design, research, policy, and advocacy, including Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, DreamCorps CEO Van Jones and Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians, Jacqueline Pata.

If you would more information about how to join with others to voice your opposition to this move by the administration, please CONTACT US at Transportation Equity Caucus website.

JOIN US in Chicago April 11 – 13, for EquitySummit 2018, as we explore the complexity and urgency of building a multiracial coalition at this pivotal moment for our nation.

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining the U.S. Conference of Mayors summer meeting in New Orleans to discuss the importance of equity — just and fair inclusion — to their cities’ future. This was also the first meeting of the conference since their president, Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, ordered the city’s Confederate statues removed. In an earlier speech about this decision, Mayor Landrieu explained, “Centuries old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place.” The conference took a moment to applaud his bold actions, which are all the more courageous given the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, surrounding that city’s plan to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. Given today’s political climate, cities — with their economic power, diversity, and innovation — must continue to take bold actions, address old wounds, and lead our nation toward inclusive prosperity. This requires transforming policies and systems that have long perpetuated racial inequities.

While millennials, as well as companies and investment capital, are flocking to cities, many vulnerable communities who stuck with cities through their long decline are disconnected from these emerging opportunities and are at risk of being further left behind or displaced altogether. As I explained at the conference, local leaders must think intentionally about racial equity and ensure that low-income people and people of color are able to participate in, and benefit from, decisions that impact their communities.

We call this pathway for achieving healthy, vibrant, prosperous communities “equitable development.” Specifically, I shared four principles to guide equitable development:

1. Integrate strategies that focus on the needs of people and on the places where they live and work.
2. Reduce economic and social disparities throughout the region.
3. Promote triple-bottom-line investments (financial returns, community benefits, and environmental sustainability) that are equitable, catalytic, and coordinated.
4. Include meaningful community participation and leadership in change efforts. 

For example, the City and County of San Francisco entered into a historic community benefits agreement with Lennar (the second-largest national housing developer) around a major development in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. As a result, Lennar will ensure that 32 percent of housing units are affordable; provide housing preference to existing residents; and provide over $8.5 million in job training funds. Such commitments would not be possible without thinking about enduring inequalities and putting people at the center of development plans.

Reducing inequality and creating opportunities for all to participate in building a stronger economy is not just the right thing to do — it is urgent and fundamental to the economic future of cities, regions, and the nation. Already, more than half of new births in the U.S. are children of color. By the end of this decade, the majority of children under 18 will be of color. By 2030, the majority of young workers under 25 will be of color. It is evident that what happens to people of color will determine the fate of the nation.

As I shared this message with the mayors present, I also understood that they have a responsibility to all their residents. But equity is not a zero-sum game. Intentional investments in the most vulnerable communities have benefits that cascade out, improving the lives of all struggling people as well as regional economies and the nation as a whole. I call this the “curb-cut effect”, after the ramp-like dips on sidewalk corners. Championed by disability rights activists in the 1970s, these investments not only enabled people in wheelchairs to cross the street, but have helped everyone from parents wheeling strollers to workers pushing carts to travelers rolling suitcases. In fact, studies show that curb cuts have improved public safety as they have encouraged pedestrians to cross safely at intersections. 

The strategies may be unique in each city, but the struggle for equity is the same across the United States. Fortunately, mayors understand that the work they do is more important than ever, particularly when it comes to addressing racial inequality. Reflecting on the meeting, I am reminded of another quote from Mayor Landrieu’s speech: “If we take these statues down and don’t change to become a more open and inclusive society this would have all been in vain.” Mayors must grapple with inequities in their communities, embrace the changing faces of their cities and towns, and maximize equitable development to foster communities of opportunity for all.

Together, we can build a nation in which no one, no group, and no geographic region is left behind. 

By Tanya Holmes and The FARE Project

This piece features Tanya Holmes of the Ka-La Healing Garden Center, a participant in The Food Trust’s FARE (Food Access Raises Everyone) Project and funded partner of the Center for Healthy Food Access. With support from Saint Luke’s Foundation, The Food Trust is implementing a comprehensive and collaborative approach to food access in Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County. The FARE Project is guided by a diverse advisory committee made up of local stakeholders and provides technical assistance, strategic planning, and additional resources for local efforts. The Food Trust’s Center for Healthy Food Access is a national collaborative effort supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to increase access to and demand for healthy foods and beverages in underserved communities. Through the Center, mini-grant funds were made available to relevant groups in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. The FARE Project’s advisers nominated local grantees, and more than 20 grassroots groups and residents — including nutrition educators, urban farmers, and faith-based organizations — are now funded partners of the Center and an integral part of The FARE Project.

Tanya Holmes is the founder, owner, and operator of Ka-La Healing Garden Center. It is her vision to build a safer and healthier environment for residents in the Central, Fairfax, and surrounding neighborhoods of Cleveland. Holmes, a graduate of the Neighborhood Leadership Development Program, has created an interactive community space that includes an urban garden, a summer jobs program, a networking and entrepreneurship group for women, and more. Fresh produce grown on-site is sold every Saturday at her farm stand, which accepts SNAP and senior vouchers

With funding from the Center for Healthy Food Access, Holmes is finalizing a business plan and establishing a 501(c)(3): The Ka-La Healing Garden Foundation. “I’m getting to a place of stability, where I can purchase things that will make the garden run smoothly,” she says.  She is also using the funds to create materials for nutrition classes and cooking demonstrations at the garden and farm stand, as well as to purchase a commercial hot plate and rain barrels.

Summer 2017 marks the third year of Holmes providing jobs for 20 young people ages 14 to 24 through the Summer Youth Gardening Training Program. In partnership with Youth Opportunity Unlimited, program participants learn about urban agriculture, nutrition, professional development, and skills they can use to start a garden in their own community. In her words:

“I feed them, I teach them, I have them create vision boards. I ask them: ‘Where do you want to see yourself in three years? Where do you want to go to college?’ They’re learning about food and where it comes from, and entrepreneurship skills. It’s a safe place for them, an outlet. This is hard work. Some of these kids have never seen a seed before. Seems so simple. But they'd never seen it before. Kale, eggplant, squash...most of the kids never ate any of these vegetables.”

Through partnership with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, Holmes provides free breakfast and lunch to participants in the summer jobs program as well; she’s also been known to provide work for additional youth from the neighborhood. She explains, “I saw kids coming to work hungry, not having lunch. I reached out to [U.S. Representative] Marcia Fudge, and she said, ‘I'm going to help you,’ and then reached out to Farm Credit of Mid- America, which provided funding for a cabin and refrigerator. Following that investment, I partnered with the Food Bank. Now, they send a truck full of lunches that we give out to kids over the summer.”

Holmes also has a very important helper in the garden. “My grandson, Alonzo, is seven years old, and he’s been with me in the garden since he was three. He helps with the soil, mulch, locking up the place; he’s my little assistant.”

When asked what inspires her, Holmes responds: “It's more than farming and gardening for me. It's about taking over our neighborhood and introducing healthy food to our children and adults. I'm here not to just grow and sell vegetables; I'm here to teach the community entrepreneurship, how to eat healthy foods, and the importance of cleaning their neighborhood. I'm teaching them to love themselves and not to let anyone ruin their day…Urban farming is about bringing the community together, reducing crime, helping neighbors feel comfortable coming outside. I do street clean ups, and I’m in charge of the kids’ park across the street.”

As for what’s next for Holmes?

“So many people want to partner, but I need capacity. Now, with nonprofit status, I could partner with the city on things like a re-entry program. Things are going so great with the business. I'm outgrowing my home…I’m going to need an office space or a small building!”

*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Healthy Food Access Portal.

Cross-posted from the Healthy Food Access Portal

Celebrating stories of community action, impact, and hope through images captured by Healthy Food Financing Initiative grantees working to foster access to healthy food, good jobs, and opportunities to thrive.

Six years ago, PolicyLink, Reinvestment Fund, and The Food Trust worked in partnership with community and public stakeholders to craft a federal response to address the inequitable access to healthy food in rural and urban communities. The effort resulted in the launch of the federal Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) program in 2011 by the Departments of Treasury (through the CDFI Fund), Agriculture, and Health and Human Services.

In just five years, the HFFI program distributed over 100 awards in over 30 states to support projects that are improving healthy food access in communities across the country. Throughout the year, the Healthy Food Access Portal has shared success stories of healthy food access projects. To celebrate this important milestone in the movement to improve food access, grantees were invited to share their own stories of their HFFI projects in action, through both photography and video.

My HFFI Story features the inspiring work of 15 HFFI grantees who are responding with action, engagement, collaboration, and innovation to ensure all communities have access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food. Read, view, and watch their stories here: https://equityis.exposure.co/my-hffi-story

Read the full blog post > > >

Originally posted on Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity

In Pittsburgh, a wave of baby boomer retirements is expected to leave the region with 80,000 more job openings than workers to fill them over the next decade. At the same time, 32,000 of the region’s workers are long-term unemployed, and unemployment is highest among black, mixed race, and Latino workers.

How to connect unemployed and under-employed workers of color to jobs in growing industries and industries with retiring baby boomers is a key question for Pittsburgh, but the region is far from alone. The Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce estimates that that by 2020 there will be 5 million more job openings in America than there are workers with the requisite skills to fill them. Yet, workers of color, particularly black workers, continue to face high levels of unemployment and inadequate access to relevant education and skills training.

Addressing continued unemployment for black workers and other workers of color is critical to families, employers, and the U.S. economy as a whole. The question is: how do we most effectively do that?

Read More>>>

Cross-posted from Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity

Economic growth is often seen as an antidote to poverty (e.g. rising tides lift all boats)—but increasing inequality in regions across the country underscores the fact that the benefits of growth are often narrowly shared.

In most regions, income and racial inequality are a legacy of myriad land-use, housing, education, tax, and economic development decisions that have disproportionately benefited wealthier, white households over lower-income and household of color. For example, for decades, public and private investment in regional transportation systems, infrastructure, and housing fueled the development of suburbs where racially restrictive covenants explicitly kept out black buyers; while redlining minimized investment in the urban core, where households of color remained.

Today, we see the reverse dynamic: Public and private investment is flowing back into many inner cities, increasing land and housing prices and disrupting social networks that act as the glue to already marginalized communities. This “reinvestment” is fueling a diaspora of community residents, especially black and Latino families, who can no longer afford to stay in their rapidly changing neighborhoods.

But where, when, and how can we have frank civic conversations about who benefits from regional economic decisions—where diverse stakeholders can come together, unpack complex issues, and explore lasting solutions?

Read more>>>

"Robust, democratically controlled community-based organizations have the capacity to drive development locally," said Greg Sawtell, a leadership organizer at Baltimore's United Workers. The human rights organization is gearing up for a month-long exhibition of the community's multiple visions for local development, opening in September. The Development Without Displacement art show will highlight works focusing on neighborhood revitalization efforts that aim to protect the city's vulnerable low-income residents from displacement, eviction, and alienation.

United Workers' arts and culture projects are intertwined with their campaigns: the projects are tools to critically engage with issues of housing, labor, and environmental injustice and draw attention to the lived experience of locals. "The arts — in the form of music, painting, storytelling, and more — are a strength that we have on the ground," said Sawtell. "We've used art both to shine a light on untold stories, and as a way to ignite the collective imagination to think beyond what seems possible in the everyday."

Free Your Voice and the fight against an incinerator

One of United Workers' most successful and well-publicized recent campaigns was an effort to block the building of a trash-to-energy incinerator in the Curtis Bay neighborhood of South Baltimore. Proposed in 2010, the 90-acre site was planned to house a plant that would burn 4,000 tons of trash a day. The complex would have been less than a mile from two public schools, in a neighborhood already beset by multiple toxic pollution burdens.

The anti-incinerator campaign was largely youth-led, spearheaded by one of United Workers' human rights committees, Free Your Voice. Young people conducted research about the impacts of the incinerator, canvassed neighborhoods to disseminate information about the plans, and organized protests and events. The students discovered that Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS), other city government agencies, and local entities — including several arts-based institutions — had signed contracts to purchase energy from the proposed incinerator. Students launched a divestment campaign to put pressure on these entities to demonstrate their commitment to environmental justice and equitable development. Sisters Audrey and Leah Rozier wrote and performed the song "Free Your Voice" for the Baltimore City School Board in 2014, singing: "It'll all get better/We can save the world/And it starts with music/Get your message heard."

In 2015, BCPS and the Baltimore City Board of Estimates terminated their contracts with the incinerator developer, Energy Answers. In spring 2016, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Public Service Commission both declared the incinerator's permit to be invalid, halting the project indefinitely. For her leadership in the campaign, high school student Destiny Watford became the 2016 North American winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, which honors grassroots environmental activists.

Sawtell said that local residents initially supported Free Your Voice as a nice research project and leadership development activity, but didn't have much faith that young people would be able to stop the construction of the incinerator. "Those weren't cynical adults," he explained, "Those were people who felt like they were managing the expectations of young people. Free Your Voice went from hearing those responses to their efforts to steadily building power and a campaign, and now this is recognized as one of the most successful environmental justice campaigns currently in Maryland."

Read more in the August 18th America's Tomorrow newsletter>>>

As all eyes turn to the presidential election, many transportation equity advocates are setting their sights on more local battles, where city and county ballot measures are offering key opportunities to invest in more equitable transportation systems.

Though both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have come out in support of overhauling the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, this is no guarantee of an influx of federal transportation spending.  As Gabrielle Gurley noted in The American Prospect, “the person moving into the Oval Office may actually matter less than who gets new digs on Capitol Hill,” considering the sizeable challenge that Congress’s austerity politics have posed to local leaders desperate to address infrastructure issues in their jurisdictions.

As Washington politics fail to move on the rebuilding America’s infrastructure, advocates and local governments have had to find local means to meet their transportation needs, resulting in dozens of transit-related ballot initiatives in cities and counties across the country. Transit-related ballot initiatives have an impressive success rate (in 2015, 7 in 10 proposed ballot measures passed) and because they require a public vote, they are a powerful method for communities to create direct policy change on issues that elected officials might otherwise shy away from — such as raising revenue through increased taxes or tackling politically controversial topics. 

For example, in Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed and local advocates succeeded in getting a proposed half-penny sales tax to fund transportation on the November 2016 ballot. If Atlanta voters pass this ballot initiative, SB 369, it will generate at least $2.5 billion in revenue over the next 40 years, funding the largest expansion of the regional transit system, MARTA, in its history. This potential expansion opens doors for equity advocates in Atlanta to advocate for a more equitable and inclusive transit system.

“You can’t talk about public transit in Atlanta without also understanding the history of structural racism and the built environment,” says Nathaniel Smith, Founder and Chief Equity Officer at the Partnership for Southern Equity. “We need policies that minimize displacement and gentrification and expand transit to communities that have been left behind.”

The Partnership is working in coalition with the Transformation Alliance to advocate for the development of a revolving loan fund that will take $200 million of the $2.5 billion to provide grants for equitable transit development around MARTA stations. 

A similar opportunity to expand transit is taking place in Seattle, where local advocates are asking voters to approve a measure that would raise $54 billion dollars over a 25-year period to regionalize the current mass transit system of light rail, commuter rail, and bus services. Puget Sound Sage, which works for equitable and sustainable solutions to the regions problems, has mobilized a coalition of community members that helped put language into the ballot that enables measures to address potential displacement and meet the needs of low-income communities and communities of color. For example, the ballot now includes a mandate for transit agencies to dedicate 80 percent of their surplus properties as affordable housing, a light rail stop in previously overlooked neighborhood, and a revolving loan fund for acquiring property near transit stations for affordable housing and family-owned businesses.

In the Bay Area, TransForm, which advocates for equitable transportation solutions, has had to contend with ongoing tension between expanding the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system to serve primarily wealthier suburban communities and channeling transportation funding to meet the needs of low-income communities and communities of color. Their focus has gained new urgency with the upcoming $3.5 billion bond measure that voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties will vote on in November. TransForm has worked to ensure that this ballot measure focused improving and expanding service on the core system as opposed to funding more expensive suburban expansions.

These three measures are just a few examples of the 34 ballot initiatives that transportation advocates across 13 states are working on — from bus expansion in Southeast Michigan to a new regional transit plan for Wake County, N.C. Given the high success rate of transit ballot initiatives and the strong community engagement that has driven these campaigns thus far, these referenda offer significant opportunities to move the needle on transportation equity, regardless of who moves into the White House in January.