On Our Radar

Axios, April 24, 2024, Strict School Zones Are Reinforcing Inequality, New Study Finds Rigid school attendance zones allow districts to legally keep many students of color and low-income families out of coveted, elite K-12 public schools, a new study finds. Why it matters: The US will soon mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education […]

The Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2024, Rockford Is Now America’s Top Housing Market After An Improbable Turnaround Rockford attracts home buyers who are drawn to its affordable housing stock and its growing healthcare, aerospace and logistics industries. The Rockford metro area, about 90 miles from Chicago and Milwaukee, offers easy access to its larger

The New York Times, April 25, 2024, The Gen-Z Advantage In Housing Researchers measured the average housing costs incurred by Gen Z-ers and millennials between the ages of 22 to 30, including rent, mortgage, insurance and utilities, with dollar amounts adjusted for inflation. Down payments were not included. Projections through age 30 were made for

Washington City Paper, April 24, 2024, Undesign The Redline Explores The Racist Housing Policies That Shaped Upper Northwest Undesign the Redline is an interactive exhibit that examines the racially segregated history of upper Northwest’s land development, explains the larger history of redlining across Ward 3, and explores the policies enacted to deny residents of color—with a

Axios, April 24, 2024, Unchecked Hospital Mergers Increased Health Costs, Study Finds Federal regulators vastly under-enforced antitrust laws in the hospital sector in the last two decades, a new study finds. Why it matters: Unchecked mergers during a period of rapid consolidation represent a significant factor in rising health costs, according to the study in the American Economic Review.

NPR, April 23, 2024, Housing Experts Say There Just Aren’t Enough Homes In The U.S. Horowitz: So restrictive zoning is the primary culprit. It’s made it hard to build homes in the areas where there are jobs. And so that has created an immense housing shortage. And each home is getting bid up, whether it’s

CalMatters, April 23, 2024, The U.S. Supreme Court Just Gave California A Major Opportunity To Lower Housing Costs Thanks to a recent blockbuster U.S. Supreme Court ruling on excessive and often arbitrary local fees, reform may be on the way that could help ease California’s worsening housing crisis. But critical unanswered questions from the ruling could

WBUR, April 22, 2024, ‘Housing, Not Handcuffs’: Advocates Seek Solutions For Homelessness Beyond Fines And Arrests The National Low Income Housing Coalition crunched data and found that in Grant Pass, Oregon, for every 10 low-income families, there are just two affordable and available apartments. The nonprofit joined an amicus brief in the SCOTUS case saying

Marketplace, April 22, 2024, Why It’s Gotten More Expensive To House People Experience Homelessness Rates have gone up from about 3% to 6% over the past few years, Dare said. And at the same time, nonprofits who own and manage affordable housing properties are also getting whacked by skyrocketing insurance rates.

The New Republic, April 22, 2024, The Real Culprit In Our Housing And Homelessness Crisis: Wall Street Forty-three years into America’s Reaganomics experiment, homelessness has gone from a problem to a crisis. Rarely, though, do you hear that Wall Street—a prime beneficiary of Reagan’s deregulation campaign—is helping cause it. Thirty-two percent seems to be the magic

Axios, April 22, 2024, Philly Metro Remains A Hotbed For House-Flippers Flipped houses made up nearly 8% of home sales in the Philly metro last year, according to a recent report by real estate data firm ATTOM. Why it matters: While house-flipping can improve conditions in some of Philly’s most blighted neighborhoods, some say the practice primarily benefits developers and fuels

PBS, April 19, 2024, New Title IX Rules Add Protections Against Harassment, Assault And LGBTQ+ Discrimination The Biden administration put out new Title IX rules that will increase protections for LGBTQ+ students and change how schools handle cases of campus sexual assault. It reverses several moves made by the Trump administration. William Brangham discussed the

ProPublica, April 23, 2024, The Family Photographs Have Helped Us Investigate How A University Displaced A Black Community The Johnsons are the center of a short documentary ProPublica released last year. The documentary, “Uprooted,” is part of an investigative project reported by Brandi Kellam and Louis Hansen, both of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at

MSNBC, April 16, 2024, Our Green New Deal For Public Housing Is A Win-Win-Win For America It’s no secret that we as a country are facing enormous challenges. We have a national housing crisis. We’re experiencing the existential threat of climate change. Our health care system is broken and dysfunctional. And while the very rich get

Phys Org, April 15, 2024, New Research Highlights Effects Of Gentrification On Urban Wildlife Populations Across US Cities Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identifies how gentrified parts of a city have notably more urban wildlife than ungentrified parts of the same city, further limiting marginalized communities’ opportunity to connect with nature.