Equitable Development: The Path to an All-In Pittsburgh

Now is Pittsburgh's moment for equitable development, and its leaders must commit to implementing the recommendations in this report and ensuring everyone is a part of the new Pittsburgh. As this report illustrates, there are viable strategies that leaders in government, business, community development, and philanthropy can undertake to address racial inequities and put all residents on track to reaching their potential, starting with baking equity in to its new development projects and reaching across its institutional landscape and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Just as Pittsburgh has embraced its identity as a tech-forward region, it should—and can—be a frontrunner on equitable development

Shared Prosperity, Stronger Regions: An Agenda for Rebuilding America's Older Core Cities

Explores opportunities for community collaborations to promote economic development and neighborhood revitalization, and offers strategies for public/private investment. Includes case studies in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh

When investors buy up the neighborhood: preventing investor ownership from causing neighborhood decline

Across the country, communities are struggling with the negative spillover effects of foreclosure. In states such as Arizona, California, and Nevada, an additional concern is the increased number of investors who are purchasing distressed properties. While investors are an important part of a vibrant housing market and can provide high-quality and affordable rental properties, there is a danger that unscrupulous investors are buying these properties without the intent to maintain them or contribute to the health of the surrounding neighborhood. This article, an excerpt from a longer report published by PolicyLink, reviews strategies that local governments can use to prevent investor ownership from causing neighborhood decline.

Healthy Food, Healthy Communities

An often-ignored contributor to poor health is lack of access to good quality, affordable healthy food. Residents in low-income communities have limited options for healthy eating and often resort to buying unhealthy foods at corner stores or fast food outlets. Certainly, people choose what they eat but their choices are based on availability. Across the nation, communities are addressing this issue, often by partnering food retailers with residents and policymakers. The PolicyLink report, Healthy Food, Healthy Communities: Improving Access and Opportunities through Food Retailing, examines how low-income communities are accessing healthy, affordable, good quality food - right in their neighborhoods. The report illustrates how policymakers, business leaders, community organizations, and foundations have joined together to identify ways to create innovative community-driven solutions to the food access problem across the country. The report shows how vacant land, abandoned properties, and existing smaller sites are being adapted for grocery store developments in poor communities and spurring economic development; small stores are stocking healthier options, promoting local small business development, and even turning "problem" locations into community assets; farmers' markets are sustaining small farms while providing fresh, local food, opportunities for small business development, as well as a social space. It also shows how community organizations are partnering in-sometimes even owning and operating-grocery store development, which helps build the community's economic capital and creates a more cohesive community environment. Healthy Food, Healthy Communities describes examples of successful programs in Baltimore, Boston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Newark, New York City, Providence, St. Louis, Washington, DC, and throughout California and Pennsylvania, and showcases the important role of state and local governments in increasing access to healthy food in low-income communities. Healthy Food, Healthy Communities: Improving Access and Opportunities through Food Retailing was funded by a grant from The California Endowment (TCE). This report builds on earlier work about the effects of community factors on health that was developed by PolicyLink in partnership with TCE, Reducing Health Disparities Through a Focus on Communities. Rebecca Flournoy and Sarah Treuhaft, who authored Healthy Food, Healthy Communities: Improving Access and Opportunities Through Food Retailing, are program associates at PolicyLink. Flournoy leads a project designed to improve access to grocery stores and other healthy food retail options in underserved communities, and advises coalitions on advocacy strategy for policies that will improve community conditions and residents' health. Treuhaft researches and writes on a variety of equitable development topics including the use of information technology tools for community building, regional equity strategies, economic development, and healthy neighborhood environments. She also provides data and mapping analysis for PolicyLink projects

Coming Back Better: Leveraging Crisis-Response Task Forces to Advance Racial Equity and Worker Justice

As the United States enters its third year of navigating the global Covid-19 pandemic, the coronavirus continues to disrupt the lives of millions of workers and their families. About a quarter of the US workforce—nearly 41 million workers -- experienced at least one spell of unemployment due to the coronavirus. As of February 2022, some 3 million fewer people are employed than before the pandemic. While nearly all workers have been affected, yet these impacts are highly unequal: low-wage workers, Black workers, and other workers of color, particularly women of color, have experienced the greatest health and economic harms. This lop-sided labor market recovery has done little to buoy low-wage workers of color who continue to face heavy burdens in terms of rent debt and childcare access

Advancing Employment Equity in Alabama

This report, Advancing Employment Equity in Alabama, offers a framework to guide policymakers as they consider how to best connect residents to good jobs that pay family-sustaining wages and remove the barriers that have held back far too many for far too long. The Alabama Asset Building Coalition is prepared to be a partner in this effort and further our mission of building an economic foundation that allows underserved Alabamians to reach their highest potential and secure their financial future

Advancing Employment Equity in Rural North Carolina

This brief describes why employment equity in rural North Carolina is critical to the state's economic future and lays out a policy roadmap to achieving employment equity. This roadmap is based on data analysis and modeling of a "full-employmentfor-all economy" (defined as an economy in which everyone who wants a job can find one) that was conducted by the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at the University of Southern California as well as policy research and focus groups conducted by PolicyLink, Rural Forward, and the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center

Boosting Economic Growth in Mississippi through Employment Equity

This brief describes why employment equity is critical to Mississippi's economic future and lays out a policy roadmap toachieve employment equity. It is based on data analysis and modeling of a "full-employment economy" (defined as when everyone who wants a job can find one), which was conducted by the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at the University of Southern California, and on policy research and focus groups conducted by PolicyLink and the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative (MLICCI)

Designed for Disease: The Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes

Examines the link between a community's retail food environment -- the ratio of fast-food outlets and convenience stores to grocery stores and produce vendors, with income level as a factor -- and the prevalence of adult obesity and diabetes

Scoring Federal Legislation for Equity: Definition, Framework, and Potential Application

Federal legislation is fundamental to building a nation in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential. Since our nation's founding, in many ways, federal legislation has created and exacerbated racial inequities, leaving one-third of the population experiencing material poverty and preventing our democracy from realizing the promise of equity. To ensure the federal government serves us all, we must accurately understand and assess whether every policy advances or impedes equity. The Equity Scoring Initiative (ESI) exists to establish the foundation for a new legislative scoring regime. By scoring for equity, we can begin to create an accountable, responsive democracy