The first, New Orleans
After the Storm: Lessons from the Past, a Plan for the Future, offers
a federal agenda for rebuilding the region, based on the unique socio-economic
and physical topography that rendered the deluge all the more tragic, with
particular attention to the federal policies that served to concentrate those
most vulnerable to the storm.
http://www.brookings.org/metro/pubs/20051012_NewOrleans.htm
Beyond New Orleans, the second report, Katrina's
Window: Confronting Concentrated Poverty Across America, identifies pervasive
concentrations of poverty, similar to those in New Orleans, in cities across the country, recommending
a synthesis of existing policy tools to restore economic choice to these neighborhoods.
http://www.brookings.org/metro/pubs/20051012_Concentratedpoverty.htm
More Help for Hurricane-Displaced
Students, Teachers
The Department of Education
convened a group of mental-health experts, teachers and schools officials
for the first in a series of roundtables designed to gather information about
Hurricane Katrina's on displaced students and the schools that have welcomed
them. Today's meeting was the first of six roundtables to be held over the
next few months in hurricane-impacted areas.
http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/10/10122005.html
Changes Needed In Katrina
Transitional Housing Plan To Meet Families' Needs
According to the Center
on Budget and Policy Priorities, Hurricane Katrina displaced unprecedented
numbers of people and caused physical and economic devastation of such a magnitude
that it will be many months before the region can be rebuilt and many of the
people who have been displaced can return home. In the hardest-hit areas of
southern Louisiana and Mississippi alone, hundreds of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed,
and up to 600,000 families will need transitional housing, according to FEMA
estimates. As of October 6, about 60,000 people still were living in mass
shelters, while about 435,000 people remained in hotels or motels.
http://www.cbpp.org/10-13-05hous.htm
**Children, Youth &
Families
Kids with Access to Home
Computer More Likely to Graduate
Access to a home computer
increases the likelihood that children will graduate from high school, but
blacks and Latinos are much less likely to have a computer at home than are
whites, according to a new study by a researcher at the University of California,
Santa Cruz, that also found the digital divide is even more pronounced among
children than adults.
http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20051019.103438&time=12%2031%20PDT&year=2005&public=1
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Physically Abused Boys
may be More Likely to Commit Domestic Violence as Adults
According to a study in
the October 18 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, a history of childhood
physical abuse may be common in men from urban settings, and these men with
physical abuse histories may be more likely to commit domestic violence. The
study found that the childhood abuse was primarily committed by parents, with
mothers being the most frequent abusers.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-10/uops-psf101205.php
**Civic Engagement
The Future of U.S. Community Foundations
A new report indicates that
community foundations are entering a pivotal era and that the next 20 years
will be a period of great promise and important challenges for the community
foundation field. The report looks at the entire field of community philanthropy,
which the authors defined as the "practice of catalyzing and raising
resources from a community on behalf of a community." The authors point
out that community philanthropy has evolved over the years, and while community
foundations focus primarily on specific geographical regions, geography has
become just one way in which people identify their communities.
Full Report: PDF: http://communityphilanthropy.org/pdf/FINALfutureofcommunity_25AUG05_complete.pdf
Executive Summary: PDF:
http://communityphilanthropy.org/pdf/foc_executivesummary_sept21.pdf
Justice Through Music
Launches 'Harmony Now!' Campaign to Promote the New Crop of Protest Songs
Justice Through Music, has
just launched a new campaign called 'Harmony Now!' to promote the new crop
of protest songs being created by both signed and unsigned artists. JTM, which
for three years has used famous bands to inspire youth to support civil rights
and vote, will host the songs on its website and will release several compilations
of the "best of" these songs on CD prior to the 2006 elections.
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=55367
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Get more information on
these issues at http://www.ecommunityissues.com.
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**Community Development
Raising Hope with Jobs-Plus
This report is the final
in a series on MDRC’s evaluation of the Seattle site of the Jobs-Plus Community Revitalization
Initiative for Public Housing Families (Jobs-Plus), a national demonstration
project testing a new employment program for public housing residents. Based
in the city’s Rainier Vista housing development, Seattle Jobs-Plus was distinctive because
it came to operate the community and supportive services component of the
housing authority’s HOPE VI initiative to tear down and rebuild the development
as a mixed-income neighborhood. Rainier Vista was also the most ethnically
diverse of the six housing developments operating Jobs-Plus. Its tenant population,
which included many East African and Southeast Asian immigrants, spoke no
fewer than 22 languages.
http://www.mdrc.org/publications/416/overview.html
Urban Universities and
Neighborhood Development
Many urban universities
must develop their neighborhoods as well as their campuses to create good
environments for learning, working and living, according to a book co-edited
by a University of Illinois at Chicago professor.
http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20051013.084524&time=09%2031%20PDT&year=2005&public=1
Controlling Growth Doesn't
Mean Higher Housing Prices
A new study from Sacramento State University questions the notion that policies
designed to control sprawl also increase housing prices. Instead, researchers
examining data on hundreds of urbanized areas in the United States found that if an area's population
in its central locations increases by 10 percent - which reduces the amount
of sprawl - then the median price of a home in that area falls by 2.7 percent.
http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20051013.152012&time=15%2036%20PDT&year=2005&public=1
New Book Features Stories
of Saving Places, Finding Community
The Trust for Public Land released a new compilation of inspiring land conservation
stories from across America. This new book, "Groundswell:
Stories of Saving Places, Finding Community," celebrates the role of
land conservation in preserving community character and connecting people
to the land and to each other. Told through pictures, interviews, and editorial
insight, Groundswell engages readers in compelling journeys of collaboration
in the field of land conservation, and conservation's capacity for enhancing
community health, economies, and connections.
http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20051012.160513&time=08%2000%20PDT&year=2005&public=1
**Economic Security
New IRS Data Show Income
Inequality Is Again On the Rise
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
reports that new figures from the Internal Revenue Service show that income
disparities grew substantially from 2002 to 2003. After adjusting for inflation,
the after-tax income of the one percent of households with the highest incomes
shot up in 2003 by an average of nearly $49,000 per household while the after-tax
incomes of the bottom 75 percent of households fell on average. The term
“household” here refers to tax filers with positive amounts of adjusted gross
income.
http://www.cbpp.org/10-17-05inc.htm
The True Tax Rates Confronting
Families with Children
According to The
Urban Institute the panoply of U.S. tax and transfer programs often act in concert to penalize
low-income families who increase their work effort or marry, by saddling them
with high effective marginal tax rates. These effective marginal tax rates-often
the product of multiple, hidden phase-outs in benefit programs like the EITC,
Food Stamps, and Medicaid-are often higher for low-to-middle income families
with children earning between $10,000 and $40,000 than they are for more well-to-do
families earning above, $90,000.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=9468
Poverty, Income, and
Health Insurance Coverage Tables
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
has compiled a collection of tables in PDF and Excel format on Poverty, Income
and Health Insurance coverage.
http://www.cbpp.org/10-19-05pov.htm
**Education
New Compilation of Resources
on Family Involvement in Children's Education
As part of its national
work on strengthening the field of family involvement, Harvard Family Research
Project has come up with a solution to finding family involvement resources.
"Taking a Closer Look: A Guide to Online Resources on Family Involvement"
is now available on the Harvard Family Research Project website. The guide
contains information about what national organizations are currently doing
in family involvement and home-school partnerships.
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/projects/fine/resources/guide
Edison Schools Match
or Exceed Gains of Comparable Public Schools
A new RAND Corporation study
says most public schools operated for at least four to five years by the for-profit
company Edison Schools have shown student achievement gains that match or
exceed gains in schools with similar student populations.
http://www.rand.org/news/press.05/10.11.html
Charter Schools Closing
Achievement Gap in Fourth Grade Reading, Math
Fourth graders attending
public charter schools across the country are making notable strides in reading
and math, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP),
otherwise known as the "The Nation's Report Card," released today.
Gains were particularly strong in reading, with charter students gaining at
a faster rate than students in traditional public schools, whose scores were
unchanged since 2003. African-American, Latino, and low-income charter students
also registered larger reading gains than their fourth-grade peers in non-
public charter schools.
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=55309
Test Scores Move Little
in Math, Reading
Reading scores among fourth-
and eighth-graders showed little improvement over the past two years, and
math gains were slower than in previous years, according to a study released
by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The disappointing results
came despite a new educational testing law championed by the Bush administration
as a way to improve the nation's schools. Most troubling for educators are
the sluggish reading skills among middle-school students, which have remained
virtually unchanged for 15 years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101900708.html?nav=rss_nation
**Health
'A Virtual Katrina' of
Deaths Every Week in US Due to Racial Health Gap
Research estimates that
health inequalities between white and black Americans cause 84,000 extra deaths
every year - equating to a virtual hurricane Katrina every week, says an editorial
in this week's British Medical Journal.
But because the victims die gradually from diseases such as diabetes, heart
disease, cancer, HIV, and from drug and alcohol abuse, the public are generally
unaware of the scale of the fatalities.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-10/bmj-vk102005.php
Insurance and Un-insurance
in the District of Columbia: Starting with the Numbers
Produced under the State
Planning Grant project of the DC Department of Health, this report from The
Urban Institute provides details on the characteristics of the uninsured
in the District. It first presents data on the variation in insurance coverage
by socio-demographic characteristics. It then presents data on the reasons
that people are uninsured. Finally, it looks at the cost of un-insurance,
presenting estimates of current expenditures by and for the uninsured.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=9462
New Reports Indicate
Immediate State Fiscal Crisis Subsides, But Medicaid Still Faces Long-Term
Budgetary Challenges
Three Kaiser Commission
on Medicaid and the Uninsured state surveys indicate state budgetary pressures
are easing as the gap between Medicaid spending growth and state tax revenue
growth narrows, but states still face long-term budgetary challenges.
http://www.kff.org/medicaid/kcmu101905pkg.cfm
An Analysis of The National
Governors Association's Proposals For "Short-Run Medicaid Reform
On August 29, the National
Governors Association released "Medicaid Reform: A Preliminary Report,"
a set of recommendations for Congress as it develops budget legislation this
fall to reduce projected federal Medicaid expenditures. These NGA proposals
are intended to build on longer-term Medicaid recommendations the governors
made in June. Congress is likely to give these NGA proposals serious consideration.
http://www.cbpp.org/10-14-05health.htm
A National Roundtable
on the Indian Health System & Medicaid Reform
The Urban Institute partnered
with the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board and the Indian Health
Service (IHS) to host a National Roundtable on the Indian Health System and
Medicaid Reform. This summary of the August 2005 event details how pending
Medicaid cuts may have serious ramifications for the Indian Health System
and includes recommendations for reform.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=9466
Announcing Families USA fellowships for 2006
Applications are now being
accepted for the Wellstone Fellowship
for Social Justice designed to foster the advancement of social justice
through participation in health care advocacy work that focuses on the unique
challenges facing many communities of color and the Villers Fellowship
for Health Care Justice created in 2005 by Philippe Villers, Founder and
President of Families USA, to inspire and develop the next generation of health
care justice leaders.
http://www.familiesusa.org/about/wellstone-fellowship.html
http://www.familiesusa.org/about/the-villers-fellowship.html
**Hunger & Nutrition
Food Stamp Access in
Urban America:
A City by City Snapshot
This report from the Food
Research and Action Center evaluates food stamp usage in 25 of
America's largest metropolitan areas. Information
includes food stamp participation (usage rates, trends and enrollment gaps),
characteristics of program participants, practices to expand food stamp access,
an overview of hunger in US cities, and more.
PDF: http://www.frac.org/pdf/cities2005.pdf
