Resilient Communities/Resilient Families

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) serves as a strategic learning and evaluation partner to The Boston Foundation (TBF). TBF’s investment and people and place-based initiatives seek to make sustainable, positive change through community and economic development in neighborhoods along the Fairmount-Indigo transit line in Boston. As part of the Resilient Communities/Resilient Families (RC/RF), CSP with Mattapan United and Millennium 10 (in Codman Square/Four Corners) to identify community priorities for neighborhood change. From 2013-2015, the Center team is evaluating these neighborhood change efforts, as well as other initiatives aimed at increasing economic well-being for neighborhood residents

People and Place: Understanding the Processes, Outcomes and Impacts of Interventions of the Fairmount Corridor Initiative

Through a 5 year grant, the Center for Social Policy (CSP) serves as a strategic learning and evaluation partner to The Boston Foundation (TBF). TBF’s investment and people and place-based initiatives seek to make sustainable, positive change through community and economic development in neighborhoods along the Fairmount-Indigo transit line in Boston. From 2010-2012, the Center team worked closely with Mattapan United and Millennium 10 (in Codman Square/Four Corners) to identify community priorities for neighborhood change. From 2013-2015, the Center team is evaluating these neighborhood change efforts, as well as other initiatives aimed at increasing economic well-being for neighborhood residents. The Center is also serving as a learning partner to TBF planners

Thrive in 5 Boston Initiative

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) is the external evaluator for Thrive in 5 Boston. As part of the initiative, CSP is helping to identify, implement, and evaluate community interventions designed to increase the readiness of Boston children for success in school at kindergarten age. Thrive in 5 is transforming Boston into a city that values and proactively nurtures young children’s school readiness, and envisions a city where families, educators, providers, business leaders and communities come together with the knowledge, skills, and resources to prepare children for success in school and beyond

Family Self-Sufficiency Program: An Evaluation

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) serves as a strategic learning and evaluation partner to The Boston Foundation, relative to its collective investments in the Fairmount Corridor. The Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership’s (MBHP) Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program is one of TBF’s people-oriented Fairmount Corridor investments. The FSS program is part of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program to promote economic advancement for families receiving housing assistance

Thrive in 5 – Boston Initiative

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) is the external evaluator of Thrive in 5 Boston. Thrive in 5 is transforming Boston into a city that values and proactively nurtures young children’s school readiness – because when our youngest children thrive, we all prosper. Thrive in 5 envisions a city where families, educators, providers, business leaders, and communities come together with the knowledge, skills, and resources to prepare children for success in school and beyond. The center is helping to identify, implement, and evaluate community interventions designed to increase Boston children’s readiness for success in school at kindergarten age

The Boston Foundation Retrospective Case Study

The Boston Foundation (TBF) seeks to improve the life trajectories for children and families living in Fairmount Corridor neighborhoods. The emerging Fairmount Strategy can be strengthened and achieve greater impact with rigorous information about how foundation activities and investments contribute to community change. To further this internal strategic learning, the Center for Social Policy (CSP) is conducting retrospective and prospective case studies of the Fairmount Strategy (2009-2015) focusing on one of the foundation’s central tenets: alignment

Moving Home: An Evaluation

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) is carrying out an analysis of data on the housing situations of participants in the Moving Home program, which is run by the Bowery Residents’ Committee (BRC) in New York City (NYC). BRC is one of the largest, most comprehensive social service agencies in NYC, offering a client-focused continuum of 27 programs that serve 2,600 individuals daily. Launched in 2007, BRC’s Moving Home initiative applies an individualized, low-threshold model to transitioning chronically homeless men and women from the streets to permanent housing

HOPE VI-Old Colony: An Evaluation

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) is continuing its ongoing evaluation role with HOPE VI, a federally funded program operated by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. HOPE VI allows public housing authorities to apply for funding to redevelop severely distressed housing developments. The Old Colony development is currently the most physically distressed site in the Boston Housing Authority’s federal portfolio, with aged systems and infrastructure and high annual energy and water costs. This project began in January 2014

New Lease for Families: an evaluation

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) was hired by the New Lease for Homeless Families to conduct an evaluation measuring specific outcomes of the unique housing interventions in their pilot program. New Lease for Homeless Families will connect 400 or more homeless families to affordable housing units provided by private and non-profit property owners over a two-year period. The infrastructure will then be in place to continue matching homeless families coming out of shelter to affordable housing units, which may change the larger systems of reducing family homelessness in Massachusetts

Project Hope; Negotiation to Unify Advocacy for Successful Passage of Foreclosure Legislation to Protect Low Income Households in Massachusetts

Project Hope is a multi-service agency at the forefront of efforts in Boston to move families beyond homelessness and poverty. It provides low-income women with children with access to education, jobs, housing, and emergency services; fosters their personal transformation; and works for broader systems change. The Center for Social Policy was asked by Project Hope to carry out collaborative action research to help them identify viable employment pathways, accessible in the neighborhood or through use of public transportation, for parents with children who have limited workforce experience and education. Together, the research involved: working with agency staff to survey families served by Project Hope regarding their workforce aspirations; analyzing employment and business data to identify business sectors likely to be seeking new entry-level workers; and consulting with the agency\u27s workforce development leaders regarding strategies for developing new partnerships with employers seeking workers with skills and aspirations like those of families served by Project Hope. The Coalition for Occupied Homes in Foreclosure (COHIF) was formed in response to the wave of foreclosures that has affected communities across Massachusetts. While widespread predatory lending practices left homeowners vulnerable to foreclosure, falling property values have prevented owners from avoiding foreclosure through sale or refinancing of their homes. With Over 20 bills pending, COHiF members were not united in their advocacy. Unless they developed some level of consensus on which bills to push, no legal protections for these low income households would stand a chance of passing. Animosity was present among sub-camps having to do with differences on strategy tactics and provisions within pending bills. The Center for Social Policy partnered with COHiF\u27s organizational members to enable them to work at cross-purposes relative to pending foreclosure bills