Urban Institute researchers monitor and assess housing market trends, affordable housing, homelessness, federal housing assistance, racial disparities and housing discrimination, and community revitalization. We recommended greater regulation and reforms for subprime mortgages before the housing market collapse and continue to follow its effects on families and neighborhoods. Our research informs decisionmakers with neighborhood-level data and evaluations of federal housing programs. Read more.
In 2006, the Corporation for Supportive Housing launched its Returning Home Initiative (RHI) with two goals: 1) to establish permanent supportive housing as an essential reentry component for formerly incarcerated persons with histories of homelessness, mental illness, and chronic health conditions; and 2) to promote local and national policy changes to integrate the corrections, housing, mental health, and human service systems. The Urban Institute assessed the process of system change stimulated by the RHI activities in three communities that received significant RHI investment and other jurisdictions. In addition, the report identifies challenges and lessons learned from the RHI to date.
Growing up poor is a challenge—and growing up in a poor neighborhood is even more challenging. Because community distress undermines individual outcomes and trajectories, place-based strategies have played a role in anti-poverty efforts. The notion that we need to think of distressed neighborhoods in a broader metropolitan context, is relatively new. We argue that this approach—considering place in metropolitan context, seeing neighborhoods as a platform for mobility, and understanding the critical role of organizing—could move the needle on poverty. The new administration understands this framework, but applying it across agencies and programs requires conscious effort and commitment.
This is the first in a series of forums on issues raised by Obama Administration's proposed Preservation, Enhancement and Transformation of Rental Assistance Act (PETRA). PETRA would institute new rules governing key rights of tenants in developments converted under the plan, including rights to organize and participate in development management, and the right to choose housing in a different location. Panelists will discuss the role of organizing and other resident rights in the management and preservation of public housing, and how PETRA would strengthen, weaken, or simply change the rights of residents.
This commentary describes the genesis of the What Works Collaborative, a foundation sponsored research partnership that conducts timely research and analysis to help inform the implementation of an evidence-based housing and urban policy agenda.
This report was designed to shine a spotlight on the immediate physical and social environment of residents who were living in two distressed public housing developments in 2007. While past research has similarly described the high incidence of depression and the high levels of disorder and violence within older, urban public housing developments, this report was intended to bring those factors together to uncover the pathways that influence mental health. We find evidence that suggests that physical and social disorder create cues that take a toll on residents through negative feelings about neighborhood cohesion and the neighborhood's ability to come together in a time of need. In addition, we find that economic stressors, which include threats of eviction, not being able to pay bills, or buy food for oneself, is associated with depression.
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