On Our Radar

Bloomberg, August 9, 2023, First American City to Tame Inflation Owes Its Success to Affordable Housing In May, the Twin Cities became the first major metropolitan area to see annual inflation fall below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Its 1.8% pace of price increases was the lowest of any region that month. That’s largely […]

Fortune, August 8, 2023, Group behind affirmative action cases sues venture fund backing Black female founders for racial bias, a potential precursor to attacks on corporate DEI Last week, a conservative activist group behind the Supreme Court case that limited affirmative action in higher education sued early-stage venture capital fund Fearless Fund for racial discrimination. Atlanta-based Fearless

Insider, August 7, 2023, America, take note: New Zealand has figured out a simple way to bring down home prices Home prices in Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, doubled between 2009 and 2016 and prices across the rest of the country followed close behind. People even began to pay hundreds of dollars a month to rent garages in

Washington Post, July 28, 2023, Nearly 4 million in U.S. cut from Medicaid, most for paperwork reasons Beneficiaries typically must renew Medicaid every year, but that stopped in 2020 when the coronavirus arrived. With no one leaving the program, the number of Americans on Medicaid swelled to 85 million by this April, when the unwinding

Yahoo! Finance, July 28, 2023, Missing Out on the Generational Wealth Transfer: Nearly Half of Americans Don’t Expect To Inherit Anything A study published in 2019 by the Fed Board found that the median wealth families can expect from a generational transfer varied by race and ethnicity, prompting the phrase, “racial wealth gap.” Most minority

American Banker, July 28, 2023, Banks reduce exposure to climate-sensitive industries: New York Fed Last year, average bank exposure to companies that would be harmed in the event of an extreme climate-related shock was about 14% of total assets, down from 16% in 2020 and close to 18% in 2012. In recent years, shareholders and

CNBC, July 27, 2023, Regulators unveil sweeping changes to capital rules for banks with $100 billion or more in assets U.S. regulators unveiled a sweeping set of proposed changes to banks’ capital requirements to address evolving international standards and the recent regional banking crisis. The changes, designed to boost the accuracy and consistency of regulation, will revise

The Ink, August 24, 2023, The Secret Immigrants Keep, Even From Themselves The common American immigrant narrative — one especially propped up by Indian-Americans — is one of upward possibility. One escapes the tyrannies or doldrums or deprivations of elsewhere, and comes to America, and rises and thrives and becomes the fullest expression of oneself.

New York Times, July 25, 2023, School District Woes Likened to ‘Environmental Racism’ in Flint, Mich. The East Ramapo public schools serve more than 9,200 K-12 students, and all 13 school buildings received a failing rating in a survey of building conditions completed by a New York-based architecture, engineering and construction management firm. The district’s school

CBS News, July 25, 2023, From redlining to blacklining: Englewood organization to fix up abandoned home, sell to first-time homebuyers An Englewood organization is teaming up with the Cook County Land Bank to tackle decades of neglect and discriminatory practices that blocked Chicagoans from owning homes. Butler said that a different generation was forced into

CNN, July 27, 2023, Biden administration taking new actions to boost housing affordability and availability The Biden administration on Thursday announced further steps to lower housing costs and boost supply, part of the economic agenda that President Joe Biden will highlight as he seeks a second term. The administration is taking a “comprehensive federal approach,” White House domestic

New York Times, July 20, 2023, Signature Biden Program Won’t Fix Racial Gap in Air Quality, Study Suggests A new analysis has found that the White House’s signature environmental justice program may not shrink racial disparities in who breathes the most polluted air, in part because of efforts to ensure that it could withstand legal challenges.

Axios, July 20, 2023, Gender pay gap now the narrowest on record The pay gap between full-time working women and male counterparts is now the narrowest on record. Full-time working women had median weekly earnings of $1,001 last quarter, about 84% of the $1,185 male median. Male employees continue to earn more than their female

CNBC, July 21, 2023, Less than 5% of U.S. housing supply is accessible to older, disabled Americans. These changes may help Despite a sizeable elderly and disabled population in the US, there is not enough affordable housing to accommodate those individuals. About 26% of the US population — or about 61 million people — have a disability, Casey said. At the