Messaging And Report Category: Messaging Memo

On February 10th, the City of St. Paul, MN withdrew its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in Magner v. Gallagher, a potentially important fair housing case. Under Supreme Court rules, this action should soon result in an order ending the case and reinstating the decision below by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. In its now-withdrawn petition, St. Paul had argued that the Fair Housing Act outlaws only intentionally discriminatory housing practices, but not policies that unnecessarily discriminate in practice. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, as has every court of appeals to have considered the question. And a range of state attorneys general, fair housing groups, civil rights organizations, and housing industry leaders had submitted briefs on the other side, arguing that prohibiting both kinds of discrimination is what Congress intended, and is crucial to equal opportunity in America. In changing its position, the City of St. Paul now agrees; its public statement declared that if the Supreme Court were to have ruled too broadly in its favor, the result would have been to “undercut important and necessary civil rights cases throughout the nation. The risk of such an unfortunate outcome is the primary reason the city has asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the petition.”

Public Opinion on Equal Opportunity and Housing:

While there is little opinion research specific to the subject of fair housing, a large body of polling and focus groups1 on race, equal opportunity, and housing points to several persistent trends:

• Americans believe strongly in the value of equal opportunity, but are frequently skeptical that inequality of opportunity and, particularly, discrimination still exist — with white Americans being most skeptical on average, and African Americans the least skeptical.
• Americans of all races and ethnicities tend to start from the perspective of personal responsibility and the “self-made person,” and assume that unequal outcomes are largely the result of differences in individual effort and personal decisions.
• The public’s default understanding of discrimination relates to overt, individual bigotry; structural and institutional barriers to fair housing are largely invisible to most Americans.
• Americans are increasingly comfortable and desirous of living in racially and ethnically diverse communities, but are still resistant to integration with immigrants. And different groups prefer different levels of diversity.
• The values and themes of opportunity, interconnection, ingenuity, and the common good tend to be especially resonant across audiences when it comes to civil rights remedies.

This is an important moment to praise St. Paul’s decision as the right one, and to reinforce why the Fair Housing Act properly prohibits the full range of housing discrimination in America. This memo recommends ways of talking about this case that can build understanding and support for robust fair housing enforcement that prohibits unnecessary discriminatory effects. It is aimed at talking to “persuadable” audiences who are not yet fixed in their opinion. Our advice draws on existing public opinion research, analysis of media coverage, and communications experience.

I. Framing and Narrative

We believe this case and its resolution should be framed in terms of America’s interest in protecting equal opportunity and freedom from discrimination for everyone, a responsibility that benefits all of us and is shared by cities and states around the country. We should describe as common sense the notion that all forms of avoidable housing discrimination should be set aside to allow more fair and effective solutions. And we should make visible the structural and institutional barriers to fair housing, like unreasonable zoning restrictions that limit the options of all working Americans while especially excluding people of color.

Magner was a case in which landlords were trying to provide affordable housing to a diverse range of working-class tenants. They claimed that the city (St. Paul, MN) was hampering their efforts through extreme and allegedly false code enforcement, motivated by a predisposition against multi-family housing. If their story is accurate — a question that will now be determined at trial — then the city’s actions do violate the Fair Housing Act. Policies that serve no important purpose, yet discriminate in practice, should fail under the Fair Housing Act.

Opponents will try to describe the disparate impact standard as affirmative action (which it is not), as well as “racial bean counting” and closet “quotas.” With the public and the media, it is important to avoid arguing within that frame, but rather, to use our own frame of protecting fair housing and equal opportunity for all.

For example:

• “This case was about the obligation of cities and towns to protect equal opportunity in housing. That includes avoiding unnecessary policies that discriminate in practice, as well as those that are intentionally discriminatory. St. Paul did the right thing by embracing that responsibility.”
• “If a policy unnecessarily excludes people of a particular racial or ethnic group, or families with children, for example, it’s common sense that it should be set aside in favor of one that accomplishes the same goal fairly, effectively, and without discrimination. That’s been the law for over forty years, and it’s appropriate that it will continue to be the law.”
• “Governments have a responsibility to ensure equal opportunity and freedom from discrimination for everyone. That requires watching how different policies play out on the ground. When a city or town has evidence that a particular policy — like a zoning ordinance or uneven enforcement of housing codes — is likely to be discriminatory, it has a responsibility to reexamine or abandon that process and find one that’s fair and effective.

A longer-form narrative along these lines might include the following:

“Equal opportunity is a bedrock American principle, and critical to our national success. But despite the progress we’ve made as a nation, significant obstacles to equal opportunity still exist, particularly when it comes to housing and homeownership. There are still some real estate agents, landlords, and others who practice intentional discrimination against people of color, families with children, people with disabilities, and other Americans. But more often these days, local governments and real estate corporations engage in unjustified and unnecessary practices with the practical effect of discriminating against well-qualified Americans. Some cities and towns, for example, prohibit the building of smaller homes or apartments that working people could afford, which in many places excludes most people of color. That means certain Americans are unfairly and unnecessarily cut off from opportunities like quality schools, jobs, and business possibilities. That’s bad for all of us, and we applaud St. Paul — and every court of appeals that’s considered the question — for helping to uphold protection against that harm.

II. Recommended Do’s and Don’ts

Research and experience provide some Do’s and Don’ts for talking about the case with media and public audiences:

Do lead with values, particularly:

• Opportunity — Everyone deserves a fair chance to live in the neighborhood of his or her choice, free of unnecessary barriers.
• Equality — What you look like or where you come from should not determine the housing you have access to.
• Fairness — Unnecessarily excluding Americans of a particular racial group from a town or neighborhood is unfair as well as unwise.
• The Common Good — Protecting fair housing strengthens our communities and our nation.

Don’t use jargon or legalistic language, like:

• “Shifting burdens of proof,” “strict scrutiny”
• “Validity,” “standard deviations,” “metropolitan statistical area”

Do use plain language and straightforward ideas that all audiences can understand:

• “Equal opportunity”
• “Setting aside policies that are unfair and unnecessary”
• “Fair and effective”

Don’t imply that disparate impact discrimination is somehow a lesser violation, less harmful, or of less concern than is intentional discrimination.

Do acknowledge the progress America has made toward equal opportunity, while documenting today’s remaining barriers and obstacles.

Don’t talk with general audiences in terms of the rights of any one group — e.g., African Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities — making the case an “us vs. them” proposition.

Do talk about equal opportunity and fair housing for all, the importance of rooting out unfair and unnecessary barriers to equal opportunity, and the shared benefits of fair housing and inclusive communities.

III. Possible Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why is resolution of the case important?

A: This positive resolution of the case is important because overcoming unnecessary and unequal barriers to housing is crucial to ensuring equal opportunity for all and to building strong communities. Thanks to St. Paul’s action, we can be confident that that progress will continue.

One of the reasons why the Fair Housing Act’s full reach is so important is that it’s the primary tool to hold banks and subprime lenders accountable for abusive lending practices. The lending industry knows this, and that’s why the biggest banking organizations in the country signed briefs asking the Court to narrow the Act’s reach. The positive resolution of this case means that subprime lenders and other exploitative actors can be held accountable for racial discrimination.

Q: What is disparate impact?

A: Disparate impact is the idea that some policies have the practical effect of discriminating based on race, family status, or some other category, and are unnecessary or unjustified.

When a policy has a discriminatory effect and it is unjustified or unnecessary, the disparate impact approach says it must be set aside in favor of a policy that is both fair and effective. But if the policy has a solid reason behind it, and no other policy could achieve the same goal with a less discriminatory effect, then the challenged policy stands, even though it excludes more people from one group than another.

An example is when a city decides to keep out all housing that would be affordable to working-class people, and that has the effect of excluding most or all people of color, who are more likely to be in that category. If the city could not show an important reason for its policy, or if a more fair and effective alternative were available, then the policy would have to be set aside under the disparate impact approach.

Another example would be if a rental company decided to rent only to people from a particular zip code, and that zip code included very few people of color or families with children, compared with the larger community. If the company could not justify its policy, or if a less discriminatory approach could accomplish the same goal, then the Fair Housing Act would require a change.

Q: What were the facts of the Magner case?

A: The plaintiffs in the case were building owners in St. Paul, Minnesota who rent their properties to working-class people, including many African Americans. They claimed that the city was trying to push them and other rental owners out of town, in favor of owner-occupied housing, with the practical effect of excluding many African Americans from any housing in the city.

Q: Shouldn’t a city be able to enforce safety and cleanliness standards?

A: Cities and towns should be able to enforce fair and legitimate safety and sanitation standards. The claim here was that the enforcement of those standards was both discriminatory in practice and unnecessary in fact. If the plaintiff apartment owners can’t prove those two things at trial, then they ought to lose their fair housing claim. But if their claims have merit, they should win.

This memo offers communications ideas and guidance around messaging to promote an equitable economic recovery that includes all Americans. It is based on analysis of recent public opinion research and media coverage on economic issues, as well as strategic communications principles.

To ensure that we create and sustain an economy that works for everyone as we emerge from the economic crisis, we must make the case to the American people that recovery efforts should be equitable, fair, and transformational. To move the national conversation toward support for an equitable economic recovery, we recommend a shared narrative that emphasizes restoring the American Dream through commonsense policy solutions that strengthen our country by creating economic opportunity for all.

Lead with Values

Primary Values:

• Opportunity and Equality: Everyone deserves a fair chance to reach his or her full potential, and what you look like or where you live shouldn’t determine the benefits you receive or burdens you bear in society.
• Community and the Common Good: We’re all in it together, and we all share responsibility for the good of our society.
• Security: We should all have the basic tools and resources to provide for ourselves and our families.

Secondary Values:

• Mobility: Where you start out in life should not determine where you end up.
• Redemption/Renewal: People grow and change, and deserve a second chance after missteps or misfortune.
• Voice: We should all have a say in decisions that affect us.
• Accountability: People, institutions, and government must act responsibly and be answerable for their actions. Use this value with care, as it can be turned around to focus on individual actions and punishment to the detriment of our larger messages.

Organize Messages Around a Core Narrative

To shape public dialogue, we have to tell a bigger story, rooted in shared values, that engages the American people as well as policymakers. To create such a narrative we recommend using the following broad themes to paint a larger picture about why equitable economic recovery matters for us all.

• The American Dream. This country stands for opportunity. We need to focus on expanding opportunity, not restricting it or allowing historic barriers to foster inequality among us. The American Dream is central to our country’s success, and we can’t let the current economic crisis force it into obscurity. Economic security and stability, too, are crucial to securing the Dream for ourselves and future generations.
• Solutions. We have emerged from crises before by relying on American ingenuity and know- how, so it is within our power as a people not only to bring our economy back from this recession but also to tackle the inequalities that excluded many communities before the downturn began. We need to move forward, with government paving the way, on a commonsense, practical agenda that expands opportunity for everyone here.
• The National Interest. The causes and effects of this economic crisis have illustrated how we are truly all in this together. When we allow inequality to fester and harm whole communities within our national fabric, it weakens us all. Recovery needs to be about mending and strengthening the entire cloth, so that we are prepared to face the  future together.

Additional Themes and Considerations

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. The public, policymakers, and the media are all hyper-focused on unemployment and want to know that any potential policy solution will address that situation. We can leverage this concern by highlighting the need for good jobs that will support America’s families, and by pointing out that creating jobs should be a top priority, even over deficit reduction for the time being.

A positive role for government. Talking about government can be tricky, given the popular narrative of “big government’s” inability to solve problems. But holding up the government’s regulatory and investment role, as well as its past successes, is crucial to building support for further intervention. For instance, we should make the point that economists agree that government intervention in the form of the stimulus has actually been successful, if insufficient. Other ways to talk about government include:

• Public structures
• Protector of opportunity
• Planner for the future
• Connecter of Americans
• “Paving the way” for enterprise and innovation.

Acknowledge progress on equal opportunity, while over-documenting the barriers left to address. Whenever we talk about inequalities, it is important to talk about the positive steps we have made in this country as well as where we need to go. The election of an African American president, among other things, convinces some that our work to address inequality is done. We need to explain why and how this is not the case, providing solid data and examples showing the barriers to opportunity and how we can knock them down.

Tell thematic stories, connecting human stories to systemic problems and solutions. Show how we’re interconnected across communities, groups, and systems. Without sufficient context, audiences can limit a story’s implication to the individual level, attributing successes and failures to personal responsibilities and actions that have little to do with the system-level change we are seeking in our immigration system. We therefore suggest balancing powerful individual stories with the systemic implications they help to illustrate. Doing so highlights the solutions we are hoping the public will embrace.

Frame the opposition. While we do not suggest leading with divisive rhetoric, it is important to have messages ready to show the contrast between our approach and solutions, and those who oppose them. When doing so, we can make the case that our opponents are focusing more on anger than solutions and are divisive, impractical, and partisan—too much anger, too few solutions. Their approach can be described as promoting a “you’re on your own” mentality, as well as short-sighted ideas that are counter to our national interest, and out of touch with everyday Americans.

Themes to Avoid

Avoid trashing government as inherently ineffective or corrupt. We need to restore the public’s faith in government and effective government solutions, not fuel the fire. Instead, talk about an American can-do attitude and how government can support it.

Avoid leading with divisive rhetoric or accusations of racism, which are unlikely to start a productive conversation with persuadables. Instead, talk about the American Dream and how inequality, particularly that which is based on what we look like or where we come from, is a threat to it.

Avoid using a colorblind frame. We want to emphasize that we need an economy that works  for all, but that does not mean that the solutions can be one-size-fits-all. Different communities were at different levels of disadvantage before the crisis, so boosting everyone in the same way will only exacerbate those existing inequalities. This both violates our values and hurts the entire country. We need to address the cause and effect of historic, and recent, barriers to opportunity.

Avoid raising the threat of crime or violence due to tough economic times. This just reinforces unhelpful stereotypes about low-income and poor people. Instead, lead with the need for investments in education and other public structures, which benefit our communities.

Avoid competition for scarce resources, or “leveling the playing field,” which underscores  the notion that someone has to win, while others lose. We need to find solutions that work for everyone. There is room, however, to talk about how greater and more equal opportunity will serve the nation’s need to compete in a global economy.

Avoid emphasizing punishment for irresponsible behavior. While it is true that those responsible for the economic crisis should be held accountable, making this a main theme of communications can backfire, as many have tried to shift blame to low-income communities and people of color. Instead, emphasize the need for commonsense regulation to prevent future  crises.

Avoid myth-busting. There is a lot of misinformation in the public dialogue about the crisis and its causes. Some have attempted to blame poor people’s desire to own homes, for instance. However, there is evidence that simply refuting an assertion will not change people’s views and can instead further implant the wrong information in their minds. Worse, restating a myth can plant it for the first time with those who have not heard the misinformation before. An affirmative approach that states the real facts about the causes of the economic crisis is more effective.

Applying the Message

In order to deliver a consistent, well-framed message in a variety of settings, we recommend building messages by including Value, Problem, Solution, Action elements. Leading with this structure can make it easier to transition into more complex or difficult messages.

Value:  

Keeping the ladder of opportunity sturdy for everyone in our country is  crucial to America’s future, and to a lasting economic recovery.

Problem:    

But despite the progress we’ve made toward equal opportunity for all, far too     many Americans are unplugged from decent jobs, fair mortgage lending, or a shot at running a business. For instance, women in our state earn just 77¢ for every dollar that men earn, and women of color earn only 66¢ per dollar. That’s bad for our economy, and contrary to our national values.

Solution:

Commonsense laws that  protect  equal  opportunity  are  one  important  way  to ensure that everyone has a chance to achieve economic security and contribute to our region’s economy. We should adopt those laws, along with others like loan counseling and worker re-training that also strengthen our economy.

Action:    

Host  a  community  meeting  or  write  a  letter  to  the  editor  supporting  an Opportunity Action Plan for our state, including strong equal opportunity protections.

Talking Point Suggestions

Our country is strongest when it protects opportunity for all. Recovery efforts need to focus on how to preserve and promote the American Dream for everyone. Anything less is bad for all of us.

We need an economy that works for everyone, with new, fair rules for a 21st century reality. This is about investing in our nation’s future. Turning back the clock to pre-crisis conditions is not sufficient; we need a transformational recovery that moves all communities, particularly those that were hurting before the downturn even began.

America has the know-how to find the right solutions for the economy, and we have the determination to topple the barriers to full and equal opportunity. We have to renew our commitment to tackling these tough problems while redoubling our efforts to preserve our ideals of equality and a fair chance for everyone.

It’s time for innovative, practical solutions that work, not divisive politics. Research and experience show what works in this area and what doesn’t. Economists agree that we need to tackle jobs and the recession first, then turn to the deficit. The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work, so they can buy goods and pay taxes.

TALKING EQUITABLE ECONOMIC RECOVERY AT-A-GLANCE

• Lead with values. Primary: Opportunity, Community/Common Good, Security. Secondary: Mobility, Redemption/Renewal, Voice, Accountability (use with care)
• Organize messages around a core narrative focused on The American Dream, Solutions, and the National Interest.
• Focus on jobs: Investment in quality jobs over immediate deficit reduction.
• Acknowledge progress on equal opportunity, while over-documenting barriers.
• Emphasize Government as a connector, planner, able to pave the way for progress.
• Tell thematic stories, connecting human stories to systemic problems and solutions.
• Frame the opposition’s solutions as divisive, impractical, and out of touch.

Introduction

This memorandum recommends and discusses indicators to be used in evaluating geographic access to opportunity, including available sources of relevant data. We propose that these indicators be integrated into Department rules regarding the duty to affirmatively further fair housing.¹

Opportunity is the idea that everyone deserves a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential. Ideally, all people in the United States should have equal access to opportunity—which includes personal and economic security and healthy living conditions—without regard to where they live. In practice, however, our neighborhoods are the primary environments in which we access key opportunity structures such as high-performing schools, sustainable employment, safe neighborhoods, and health care, and those structures are too often unequal across neighborhoods and communities.² Conversely, place-based investments in greater and more equal opportunity can have lasting, intergenerational impacts on the life outcomes and prosperity of individuals, communities, and whole regions.

Under the Fair Housing Act,³ the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) has a duty to “administer the programs and activities relating to housing and urban development in a manner affirmatively to further the policies of [the Fair Housing Act].”⁴ The “affirmatively further fair housing” (“AFFH”) obligation requires HUD to do something “more than simply refrain from discriminating . . . or from purposely aiding discrimination by others.”⁵ Instead, HUD has an affirmative obligation to “provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing throughout the United States”;⁶ to “remove the walls of discrimination which enclose minority groups”;⁷ and to foster “truly integrated and balanced living patterns.”⁸ In other words, the Fair Housing Act requires HUD proactively to promote non-discrimination, residential integration, and equal access to the benefits of housing—that is, to opportunity as it relates to geography.

To achieve greater and more equal opportunity for all people in the United States, and as an addendum to our suggested reforms of HUD’s AFFH regulations,⁹ this memorandum sets forth the specific indicators of opportunity that we believe should be used to evaluate proposed and ongoing housing and urban development projects and activities. Our recommendations are based on a large body of social science research, legal precedent, and consultation with national experts. The indicators of opportunity that we have identified, and that we explore in further detail in this memorandum, are:

• Access to high-quality education (measured by the percentage of students eligible for free lunch, math and reading test scores, and high school completion rates).
• Concentration of poverty within a neighborhood (measured by the Federal Poverty Level (“FPL”) and considering the measure of income adequacy within a neighborhood).
• Racial segregation within a census tract or neighborhood (measured by variation from the proportion of the non-white population regionally).
• Environmental quality within a particular neighborhood (measured by the Toxic Release Inventory and the National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment).
• Access to health care (measured by data on health disparities from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and correlated to neighborhoods through their mapping software).
• Access to sustainable jobs (measured by data from the Census Zip Business Patterns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
• Crime rates (measured, to the extent possible, by data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and statistics provided by local police departments).

In this memorandum, we also discuss transportation-related indicators as subsets of both our environmental quality and our access to sustainable jobs indices.

Although this memorandum discusses each of the enumerated factors in a separate section, in practice, it is unwise to view any of the factors in isolation.¹⁰ Thus, to evaluate a housing or urban development project’s impact on opportunity within a given region, the evaluating body should measure the project’s effects in light of the aforementioned criteria and favor projects with the greatest opportunity yield, based on the totality of the circumstances.

If funding is contemplated in a metropolitan area in which the neighborhood markers of low- opportunity noted in this memorandum are met (e.g., a 20% concentration of poverty within a neighborhood, calculated based on the percentage of people within the neighborhood living at 150% of the FPL; a school system scoring more than two standard deviations away from the national averages in math and reading test scores, percentage of students eligible for subsidized meals, or high school completion rates; or a finding of 60% racial segregation within a neighborhood, calculated based on the racial dissimilarity index), these existing markers of low- opportunity should flag for the funding agency that all projects within its jurisdiction warrant closer scrutiny of the project’s ability to increase opportunity within the region. Conversely, there should be a presumption against federally assisted activities that increase the concentration of low-income people, racial, or ethnic populations in low-opportunity neighborhoods.

In the second assessment, the proposed project and any alternative suggested projects for which the funding could be allocated should be weighed against each other, based on the opportunity indicators presented in this memorandum.

Because these indicators are organized beginning with the factors with the strongest correlations to expanded opportunity (i.e., education, concentration of poverty, and racial segregation) and ending with the factors that are shown to correlate, but not as strongly, to opportunity (i.e., access to jobs and crime rates), these factors should be weighted accordingly in the evaluation calculus.

By necessity, the evaluation task requires some flexibility and adaptation to practical circumstances (e.g., a project concerning senior citizens may warrant placing greater weight on a community’s access to health care, rather than on its impact on the community’s access to education). In any evaluation, however, the evaluating body should be required to have a justification available of its calculus, in writing, based on legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons.

The data necessary to measure the impact of federal funds on opportunity in housing and community development projects is, for the most part, already available nationwide at smaller levels of geography (generally by census tract, zip code, or political jurisdiction). Most of the data we suggest assumes the use of census tracts to approximate neighborhoods within a metropolitan area. However, government entities should consider any local data that is available if such data provides a more accurate method of defining neighborhoods.

Methodology

In addition to The Opportunity Agenda’s ongoing research regarding the status of opportunity in the United States generally,¹¹ we identified opportunity indicators specific to the context of housing and neighborhood development by a review of the dominant literature in these areas and discussions with leading experts and researchers in the field.  In addition, our memorandum gives significant weight to the findings of a report produced by the What Works Collaborative,¹² entitled, “Building Environmentally Sustainable Communities: A Framework for Inclusivity,”¹³ which we found to be particularly insightful and salient on the question of opportunity indicators in the context of neighborhood development.

Opportunity Indicators

1.         Education

Access to quality education is one of the strongest predictors of opportunity in the United States. As Chief Justice Earl Warren stated in Brown v. Board of Education, “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”¹⁴

The duty to affirmatively further fair housing has always been intimately tied to the obligation to ensure equal access to educational opportunities. For example, the Fair Housing Act creates presumptions against locating housing projects in segregated neighborhoods,¹⁵ and an explicit part of that analysis is a consideration of the racial composition of local schools.¹⁶   Furthermore, a number of housing experts have detailed the reciprocal relationship between fair housing policies and school integration (which has well-documented effects on the quality of education for students).¹⁷ Educational quality should thus be a high priority indicator of access to opportunity stemming from housing and urban development decision-making.

Our research indicates that the most consistent measurements of educational opportunity at the neighborhood level are:

• Student poverty concentration (measured by the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch);
• Aggregate student test scores (e.g., the percentage of students passing standardized reading and math tests); and
• High school completion rates.

Student Poverty

The socioeconomic make-up of a school’s student body is the greatest external predictor of student success and achievement.¹⁸ One illustrative study analyzing data provided by the U.S. Department of Education’s School-Level Achievement Database found that a predominantly middle-class school is twenty-two times more likely to be consistently high performing than a high-poverty school.¹⁹ Conversely, research by The Century Foundation found that, on average, low-income students attending middle-class schools perform higher than middle-class students attending low-income schools.²⁰

The percentage of students in a public school receiving subsidized meals has been used by experts as a reliable proxy for student poverty.²¹ At the national level, this data is available from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data (“CCD”).²²  At the state level, it is typically available directly from each state’s Department of Education. This data may also be found on School Data Direct,²³ a web-based source of school and district data, with searching, comparison, and downloading features.

Student Test Scores

Research has indicated that differences in educational attainment and standardized test scores account for most of the differences in subsequent hourly wages.²⁴ According to ongoing research by the Kirwan Institute, a neighborhood’s average test scores have been shown to highly correlate with opportunity outcomes.²⁵ Reading and numerical skills, in particular, must be taken into account because the differences in scores on reading and math tests account for much of the subsequent differences in earnings and employment probabilities.²⁶

This data can be found on School Data Direct,²⁷ as well as the National Center for Education Statistics CCD.²⁸

High School Completion Rates

High school completion rates are an important opportunity indicator and, conversely, high dropout rates are linked to significant barriers to opportunity. With a more educationally demanding economy, the effects of dropping out are more negative than they have ever been, especially for people of color.²⁹ Additionally, women who have not finished high school are

much more likely than others to be on welfare, while men who have not finished high school are much more likely to be incarcerated at some point in their lives.³⁰ Dropout rates at the school level have shown a strong correlation with opportunity outcomes in some metropolitan areas.³¹

National completion rates may be derived from National Center for Education Statistics data by calculating the number of students in a graduating class divided by the number of students in grade 9 three and a half years earlier, the same formula may be used at the school level to determine dropout rates,³² based on data found on School Data Direct. At the state level, completion rates are typically available from the state’s Department of Education.³³

Pragmatic Considerations

Because the education data on School Data Direct is available at the school level, and any funding-allocation decisions for housing projects are typically made on a jurisdiction-wide or metropolitan-wide basis, we support the methodology used by the What Works Collaborative, in matching school level data to census tracts. In a report entitled, “Building Environmentally Sustainable Communities: A Framework for Inclusivity,” the What Works Collaborative states:

In order to match census tracts to schools, we draw Voronoi polygons separating elementary schools, creating what are in effect model catchment areas. We then measure the intersections of each census tract with those Voronoi polygons by land area to estimate the educational opportunity offered in each census tract.  In cases in which multiple polygons overlap with a census tract, we weight those multiple values by the percentage of the census tract covered by each polygon. By doing so, we are able to calculate the average public elementary school opportunity that a resident of this census tract faces, using free and reduced-price lunch data and 4th grade math and reading test score data. We choose 4th grade data because it is universally available under No Child Left Behind.³⁴

Specific Educational Considerations for Individuals with Disabilities

Expanding opportunity for all, particularly through housing and urban development projects, necessarily requires specific consideration of the needs of people with disabilities. Congress recognized the need for this special focus and enacted the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”), in part, to improve educational results for children with disabilities, and to ensure equality of opportunity, full participation in society, independent living, and economic self- sufficiency.³⁵

One way that the IDEA measures equal access to education is through the ability of disabled students to access the general education curriculum in the mainstream classroom to the maximum extent possible.³⁶

In implementing HUD’s AFFH regulations, school systems that best support equal access to education for disabled and nondisabled students should typically be favored for project funding. Access to equal education for people with disabilities may be measured by how much time disabled students spend in the mainstream classroom and the graduation/dropout rates.³⁷

Monitoring the graduation rates of children with disabilities will help determine the necessary transition services that will promote successful post-school employment or educational opportunities, which is an important measure of accountability for individuals with disabilities.³⁸ Indicators such as transportation and concentration of poverty for individuals with disabilities are often embedded within the issue of access to educational equity.

Note, however, that there are a number of special challenges and limitations to data collection for individuals with disabilities.³⁹ Consistent, reliable data is difficult to find, especially regarding the achievement of students with disabilities, the nature of their parents’ involvement, and their adult employment rates.⁴⁰ One reason for this lack of information is that the diversity of students with disabilities makes it difficult to reach general conclusions about their access to opportunity.⁴¹ Recent efforts to gather data from large-scale assessments have been relatively unsuccessful because the scores for students with disabilities are not reported as a subgroup, making the average score results unreliable.⁴² Self-reported data of graduation rates, employment, and earnings of individuals with disabilities on census and other surveys is often unreliable due to confusion over the categories of disability provided, or reluctance to disclose the extent of a disability.⁴³ Finally, most federal data for children with disabilities comes from data collected by each state; however, there is no uniform state-by-state data collection system, so the information varies based on quality, accuracy, and consistency.⁴⁴ While the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs has been working to produce more consistent data going forward, as of now there is still a lack of reliable data pertaining to individuals with disabilities.⁴⁵ We recommend coordination between HUD and the Education Department regarding the fair housing implications of this data.

2.         Concentrations of  Poverty⁴⁶

The concentration of poverty is defined as the percentage of all persons at or below the federal poverty line living in a geographically-defined neighborhood.⁴⁷ The effects on individuals of living in neighborhoods of high poverty concentration are overwhelmingly adverse.⁴⁸ Moving to low-poverty neighborhoods may improve the life chances of particularly young inhabitants through several distinct mechanisms: because of higher levels of neighborhood social organization that reduce the threats of violence and disorder; stronger institutional resources, such as higher quality schools, youth programs, and health services; more positive peer-group influences; and more effective parenting, due to parents living in safer, less stressful neighborhoods and enjoying better mental health or parents’ becoming employed.⁴⁹

Historically, discriminatory housing policies have been strongly associated with the creation of high-poverty neighborhoods.⁵⁰ Fair housing policies, therefore, must make affirmative efforts to dismantle concentrations of poverty at the neighborhood level.

Measuring Concentrations of Poverty

High-poverty neighborhoods are measured according to census data and are often defined as census tracts with poverty rates of 40 percent or higher.⁵¹ However, because that definition of concentration of poverty captures only the most extreme areas of poverty concentration within the United States, and does not convey the many adverse impacts on opportunity that living in an otherwise poor neighborhood might have on an individual, a more useful standard in the context of resource allocation decisions may be to define a geographical area as having a “high concentration of poverty” if ≥ 20% of its residents report income at 150% or less of the federal poverty level (“FPL”).⁵² Medium concentrations of poverty can be defined as 10%-19% of the residents reporting income at 150% of FPL, and low concentration of poverty neighborhoods should be defined as < 10% of the residents reporting income at 150% or less of the FPL.⁵³

Other measures, such as the Neighborhood Sorting Index, may be used to analyze broader economic disparities.⁵⁴ Because home values have been found to be highly correlative to greater opportunity outcomes, this indicator may also be a useful benchmark for determining neighborhood poverty.⁵⁵ Data on home values, or housing cost, may be obtained from census data as well.

Additional Poverty Considerations

Income Adequacy. In addition to the federal poverty level, governmental evaluating entities should consider using definitions of “income adequacy” to determine what constitutes a high- opportunity neighborhood under the aforementioned rubrics. Income adequacy statistics take into account resources as compared to the market prices of basic necessities, as faced by the average consumer. For example, a measurement of income adequacy currently being developed by Wider Opportunities for Women: (1) places emphasis on the expenses a family must cover to make ends meet and not under-consume or consume inferior goods that affect health or safety; (2) takes into account pragmatic necessities including health care, transportation, and child and elder care; (3) uses market prices wherever possible; and (4) includes asset development savings targets for emergency savings and retirement, and possibly for education and homeownership.⁵⁶

3.         Racial Segregation

Research has long established that racial segregation adversely affects outcomes for minority groups, contributes to unequal opportunities and disparities, and robs residents of all races of the benefits of diverse social networks.⁵⁷   One study of 204 metropolitan areas, for example, determined that a one standard deviation reduction in segregation (13 percent) would eliminate one-third of the gap between whites and blacks in most opportunity-related outcomes, where success was measured by high school graduation rates, jobs, earnings, and single-parent status.⁵⁸

Additionally, racial segregation (i.e., the concentration of racial minorities) is a significant predictor of the share of subprime loans a neighborhood receives, even after controlling for the percentage of minorities within the metropolitan area as a whole, credit score, median home value, poverty, and education.⁵⁹ By contrast, neither poverty nor unemployment is a statistically significant predictor of the percent of subprime loans.⁶⁰ A 10% increase in black segregation, on average, is associated with a 1.4% increase in high-cost lending; and a 10% increase in Hispanic segregation, on average, is associated with a 0.6% increase in high-cost lending.⁶¹   Thus, in addition to the statutory mandate to avoid perpetuating or exacerbating segregation,⁶² research shows that residential integration is an important geographic indicator of opportunity.

Measuring Racial Segregation

To track changes in racial segregation in metropolitan areas, government bodies allocating federal funding should rely on the racial dissimilarity index⁶³—the most widely used measure to capture the unevenness of a population’s distribution within a region.⁶⁴ Because racial dissimilarity indices are derived from census data, they are readily accessible to all regional government bodies allocating federal funds.

The racial dissimilarity index indicates how unevenly two mutually exclusive groups (e.g., blacks and whites, or Latinos and whites) are distributed within a geographic area. It can be thought of as the percentage of either group that would have to move in order to achieve racial representation in each of the area’s census tracts, proportionate to the composition of the two groups in the broader region.

For example, if Latinos make up 20% of the population within a metro Core Base Statistical Area (“CBSA”), the Latino/white dissimilarity index tells us the percentage of Latinos or whites that would have to move in order to achieve the 20% level in all of the metro CBSA’s census tracts. Thus, a 65 score on the Latino/white dissimilarity index means that 65% of Latinos or whites would have to move in order to achieve a representative distribution of Latinos and whites throughout the region.  The higher the dissimilarity index, the more the region is racially

segregated. Dissimilarity values of 60 or above are considered very high, while values of forty to fifty reflect moderate residential segregation.⁶⁵ An evaluating agency can discern trends of particularly notable increases or decreases in residential segregation by examining changes in residential segregation within a decade. Changes in dissimilarity values exceeding ten points within a decade are considered significant in this context.⁶⁶

4.         Environmental Quality

Research demonstrates that, even after controlling for income, land use, and other variables typically used to explain disparate patterns of exposure, people of color and low-income communities bear a disproportionate share of the nation’s environmental and health hazards.⁶⁷ Such disparities include: land use and facility siting; transport of hazardous and radioactive materials; public access to environmental services, planning, and decision-making; health assessments and community impacts; air quality and health risks; childhood lead poisoning; childhood asthma; pesticide poisoning; and occupational accidents and illnesses.⁶⁸ These disparities thus disproportionately affect the life chances and opportunities of communities of color. According to research conducted by the United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries, African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders alike are disproportionately burdened by hazardous wastes in the U.S.⁶⁹

Executive Order 12898: Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,⁷⁰ requires federal officials and those receiving federal financial assistance to incorporate into their respective cost-benefit analyses of federal projects a meaningful consideration of potential disproportionate adverse environmental and health impacts on minority and low-income populations. Embedded in this requirement is a set of considerations that need to be addressed by housing analysts as they evaluate the impact on fair housing of any proposed or ongoing housing projects.

Measuring Environmental Quality

Consistent with the suggestions of the What Works Collaborative,⁷¹ we recommend employing the following two measures of air and environmental quality: (1) the Toxic Release Inventory (“TRI”), a database that contains detailed information about the total amount of toxic waste released from industrial facilities; and (2) the National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (“NATA”), which provides a modeled risk assessment at the tract level from exposure to 180 of the 187 CAA toxics based on TRI emissions, as well as nonpoint sources.⁷²

The What Works Collaborative explains the method by which the TRI data may be matched to census tracts as follows:

[W]e used the approach adopted by Powell of creating a buffer of two miles around the address of a TRI emissions source. TRI has the advantage of including air, water, and land emissions. However, it ignores differences in the media into which emissions occur. For example, emissions into a river will disperse differently than those out of a smokestack.  Still, it is difficult to construct a universal system of modeling emissions and a buffer is a decent first approximation.⁷³

Additional Considerations

To simultaneously further the goals of neighborhood inclusivity and environmental sustainability, the What Works Collaborative suggests evaluating the walkability and transit accessibility of a particular neighborhood (i.e. focusing on how the neighborhood infrastructure allows households to avoid driving), in conjunction with other opportunity indicators.⁷⁴  To

determine the walkability/transit accessibility of a neighborhood, the What Works Collaborative recommends considering: (1) the percentage of commuters commuting to work by walking or by public transit, derived from U.S. census data; and (2) the daily vehicle miles traveled per capita, derived from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Household Travel Survey.⁷⁵  Due

to the disproportionate effect that environmental degradation has on disadvantaged populations, we support the analysis set forth by the What Works Collaborative. Thus, to the extent practicable, walkability and transit accessibility should be factored into a consideration of the impact on opportunity of housing or community development projects.

Although low-income communities and communities of color suffer from disproportionate rates of asthma, asthma data is difficult to consistently quantify. Some jurisdictions track hospitalizations, while others rely upon clinical admissions and results differ significantly based on which approach is taken. Data is further complicated by potential differences across metro areas in access to health care. Finally, because asthma incidence data are gathered at the health care facility, the addresses recorded are often incorrect. Accordingly, although we view asthma rates as an informative indicator of environmental opportunity, the available data sources limit its use on a uniform basis.

5.         Medically  Underserved Communities

Access to health care is an important determinant of one’s life chances. Minorities, however, are more likely to receive care in emergency rooms and lower-quality healthcare facilities.⁷⁶ These racial disparities exist even controlling for insurance status and income.⁷⁷ Thus, fair housing efforts must take into account the effect that housing and urban development projects have on increasing or decreasing the ability of community residents to access quality health care.

Measuring Medically Underserved Communities

National data on healthcare disparities is collected by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (“AHRQ”), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.⁷⁸ The AHRQ has developed mapping software that can be used with administrative data on individual hospital admissions to assess the number and cost of “preventable admissions” at the state or county level.⁷⁹

To ensure that housing and urban development projects maximize community access to adequate, and not merely equal or proportionate (but inadequate) healthcare within a region, funding agencies should also refer to data provided by the Department of Health and Human

Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (“HRSA”) on Medically Underserved Areas and Populations.⁸⁰This data shows which areas within a region are medically underserved based on both the availability of primary care physicians and the health needs of communities— specifically, infant mortality rates in communities, as well as income and age of residents.⁸¹

6.         Access to Jobs

Spatial access to skill-appropriate jobs has been used by a number of researchers as an indicator of access to opportunity.⁸² Due to shifts in labor demand from less-educated to more-educated portions of the workforce, well-paid, less-skilled jobs (i.e., in the manufacturing and other sectors) have significantly diminished, resulting in a skills mismatch that disadvantages less- skilled workers.⁸³ Job growth in the central city has been in sectors that require higher skills, meaning that central-city jobs are no longer functionally accessible to less-educated city residents who might reside in the central-city (due to factors including racial segregation and poverty concentration), even if the jobs are physically accessible.⁸⁴

Moreover, the physical distance from job-rich areas is exacerbated by the lack of automobile transportation.⁸⁵ For example, one estimate found that inner-city residents with cars had access to fifty-nine times as many jobs as their neighbors without cars.⁸⁶ Another recent study found that residential relocation and car ownership are the key factors in predicting the likelihood that welfare recipients will become employed.⁸⁷ Transit-oriented development can link low-income residents with job centers.⁸⁸ Because poor people are the least likely to have access to an automobile, transit-oriented development has been considered an approach to overcome barriers to opportunity faced by people in high-poverty residential areas.⁸⁹⁹⁰

Measuring Access to Jobs

To concretely evaluate the access to skill-appropriate jobs that a housing or urban development project will create, in accordance with analysis undertaken by the What Works Collaborative, government entities allocating federal funds for housing and urban development projects should consider:

• The absolute number of jobs requiring an associate’s level degree or below within a five- mile radius.
• The pattern of recent job growth within the area, to measure the total number of jobs as well as job trends.
• The ratio of total jobs requiring an associate’s degree or below within a five-mile radius⁹¹ to the total number of households earning under $50,000 per year within a five- mile radius, to control for likely competition for jobs.

This data can be obtained from the Census Zip Business Patterns, and may be filtered to focus on only those jobs requiring an associate’s degree education or below (those jobs most likely to be accessible to people served by HUD’s programs) by using Bureau of Labor Statistics (“BLS”) data showing the training required for each position.⁹²

7.           Crime and Security

Security from violent crime is an important opportunity indicator, particularly for women and girls.⁹³ In the Moving to Opportunity (“MTO”) experiment, for example, girls whose families successfully moved to lower poverty communities experienced a substantial reduction in the negative mental health effects of “omnipresent and constant harassment; pervasive domestic violence; and a high risk of sexual assault,” and also experienced less “pressure to become sexually active at increasingly younger ages.”⁹⁴ This diminished “female fear,” was linked to a reduction in the risks of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and dropping out of school to care for children.⁹⁵

However, in analyzing the effects of the MTO experiment on the psychological health of women and girls, evaluators of the experiment used low-poverty neighborhoods as a proxy for the prevalence of violent crime, instead of relying on actual crime rates.⁹⁶ Thus, the MTO’s conclusions regarding the effects of the “female fear” present analytical difficulties. We recommend, instead, direct reliance on available crime statistics.

The use of crime rates as an indicator of opportunity is difficult, but not impossible, to quantify at local levels.  The most commonly used measure of crime is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, which tracks both the violent crime rate and property crime rate.⁹⁷ While the Uniform Crime Report data is national in scope, it is consistently available only at the political jurisdiction level and not at smaller levels, such as zip codes or census tracts.⁹⁸In metropolitan areas with many small local governments, this shortcoming is not all that significant. In these cases, data supplied by the Uniform Crime Report should be relied upon by regional funding agencies in considering the proximity to crime of housing or urban development projects to be funded, and the resulting opportunity impact on the project’s residents or inhabitants.  In some metropolitan areas, the failure of the Uniform Crime Report to differentiate between different parts of a political jurisdiction may produce data with limited relevance. However, many police departments do break out their Uniform Crime Report statistics at the tract, precinct, or zip code level.⁹⁹ In such cases, those police department statistics on crime rates should be consulted in evaluating the opportunity impact of proposed and ongoing housing and urban development projects and activities. However, even the police departments that break out their Uniform Crime Report data at smaller geographic levels do not use a universal methodology.¹⁰⁰

Conclusion

To best fulfill the duty to affirmatively further fair housing, governmental entities should balance the opportunity indicators discussed above, based on the totality of the circumstances, but weighted with greater priority to the initial indicators discussed.

The way in which indicators are used will necessarily depend in part on the program or activity in question. An important distinction exists, for example, between the siting of affordable housing—which should generally avoid low-opportunity neighborhoods—and neighborhood resources and improvements—which may be used to increase opportunities in otherwise low- opportunity communities.

The Opportunity Agenda welcomes the chance to discuss these recommendations further, in the context of revised AFFH rules and other agency decisionmaking.

Appendix A:  Opportunity Indicators

Indicator

Measurement

Access to high-quality education

The percentage of students eligible for free lunch, math and reading test scores, and high school dropout rates

Concentration of poverty within a neighborhood

Federal Poverty Level (FPL) and measure of income adequacy within a neighborhood

Racial segregation within a census tract or neighborhood

Variation from the proportion of the non- white population regionally

Environmental quality within a neighborhood

Toxic Release Inventory and National- Scale Air Toxics Assessment

Access to healthcare

Data on health disparities from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, correlated to neighborhoods through their mapping software

Access to sustainable jobs

Data from the Census Zip Business Patterns and the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Crime rates

Data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and statistics from local police departments

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Notes:

1. The opportunity indicators described herein are intended to deepen and clarify, not supplant, the existing site and neighborhood standards set forth in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (“HUD’s”) existing regulations.  24 C.F.R. § 983.6 (2010).

2. See, e.g., JASON REECE ET AL., KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY, THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, THE GEOGRAPHY OF OPPORTUNITY: BUILDING COMMUNITIES OF OPPORTUNITY IN MASSACHUSETTS 7 (2009).

3. Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601 et seq. (2006).

4. 42 U.S.C. § 3608(e)(5) (2010).

5. N.A.A.C.P. v. Sec’y of Hous. and Urban Dev., 817 F.2d 149, 155 (1st Cir. 1987).

6. 42 U.S.C. § 3601 (2010).

7. Evans v. Lynn, 537 F.2d 571, 577 (1975) (citing 114 Cong. Rec. 9563 (statement of Rep. Celler)).

8. Trafficante v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 211 (1972) (citing 114 Cong. Rec. 3422 (statement of Sen. Mondale)).

9. The Opportunity Agenda’s recommended reforms to HUD’s AFFH regulations.

10. For example, a number of studies have linked racial segregation to an increased likelihood of perpetrating and being victimized by violence and crime; voluminous literature has examined the “spatial mismatch” between predominantly African-American, older urban neighborhoods, and the employment opportunities in the suburbs and exurbs; and residents of poor, segregated neighborhoods experience poorer health outcomes because of increased exposure to the toxic substances that are disproportionately sited in their communities.  See REECE ET AL., supra note 2, at 8.

11. See, e.g., THE OPPORTUNITY AGENDA, THE STATE OF OPPORTUNITY IN AMERICA: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (2006) (evaluating the state of opportunity in the United States based on indicators related to: mobility, equality, voice, redemption, community, and security) [hereinafter STATE OF OPPORTUNITY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ]; see also THE OPPORTUNITY AGENDA, THE STATE OF OPPORTUNITY IN AMERICA, 2010 (2010) ( updating the data in the 2006 report).

12. The What Works Collaborative consists of researchers from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, and the Urban Institute’s Center for Metropolitan Housing and Communities, as well as other experts from practice, policy, and academia.

13. VICKI BEEN ET AL., BUILDING ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES: A FRAMEWORK FOR INCLUSIVITY (2010).

14. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954).

15. See, e.g., Shannon v. HUD, 436 F.2d 809 (3d Cir. 1970).

16. Id. at 822.

17. See, e.g., Brief for 553 Social Scientists as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007)) (documented the effects of school integration on educational quality); Brief for Housing Scholars and Research & Advocacy Organizations as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents 7, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007). (“First, school segregation is practically inseparable from the many causes of housing segregation . . . residential segregation persists and is not simply the product of private free choice. Rather, the historical and contemporary practices of state and private actors, such as racial steering and mortgage lending discrimination, directly contribute to the persistent segregation of America’s neighborhoods. When a school district acquiesces to segregated residential patterns in drawing school attendance zones and setting student assignment policies it is in a very real sense affirmatively choosing segregation. Second, extensive social science research demonstrates that school integration programs support housing integration in both the short and long term. Parents are less likely to move when integration programs help to ensure racially integrated schools, and students who attend racially integrated schools are more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods as adults”).

18. KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY, K-12 DIVERSITY: STRATEGIES FOR DIVERSE & SUCCESSFUL SCHOOLS 4 (2007) (citing RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG, INTEGRATION BY INCOME, 193 AM. SCH. BD. J. 4, 51-52 (2006)).

19. Id. (citing HARRIS, D.N., EDUCATIONAL POLICY RESEARCH UNIT, ARIZONA STATE, ENDING THE BLAME GAME ON EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY: A STUDY OF ‘HIGH FLYING’ SCHOOLS AND NCLB UNIVERSITY (2006).

20.  Id. (citing Richard D. Kahlenberg, The Century Foundation, Can Separate Be Equal? (2004).

21. See, e.g., THE COALITION FOR A LIVABLE FUTURE, THE REGIONAL EQUITY ATLAS: METROPOLITAN PORTLAND’S GEOGRAPHY OF OPPORTUNITY 45 (2007).

22. See, e.g., National Center for Education Statistics, CCD 1999/2000 and 2002/03.

23. School Data Direct. (although School Data Direct is in the process of completing infrastructure upgrades, it is “targeting the middle of 2010 for a relaunch” of the website).

24. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, GOVERNANCE AND OPPORTUNITY IN METROPOLITAN AMERICA 67 (1999).

25. See Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (unpublished report, on file with The Opportunity Agenda).

26. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, supra note 24, at 67.

27. See School Data Direct, supra note 23.

28. See, e.g., National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, Mathematics: The Nation’s Report Card (home).

29. See Linda Darling-Hammond, Educational Quality and Equality: What it Will Take to Leave No Child Behind, in ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL: INSTIGATING OPPORTUNITY IN AN INEQUITABLE TIME 49 (Brian D. Smedley & Alan Jenkins eds., 2007).

30. Id. at 50.

31. See Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, supra note 25.

32. See Linda Darling-Hammond, supra note 29, at 49.

33. See, e.g., Oregon Department of Education, District Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Report (2008-2009).

34. VICKI BEEN ET AL., supra note 13, at 48.

35. Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-446, § 601, 118 Stat. 2647, 2649 (2004).

36. Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act § 601.

37. See, e.g., Stacey Gordon, Making Sense of the Inclusion Debate under IDEA, 2006 BYU EDUC. & L.J. 189, 224 (2006).

38. Id.

39. AMERICAN YOUTH POLICY FORUM & CENTER ON EDUCATION POLICY, THE GOOD NEWS AND THE WORK AHEAD 10-11 (2002).

40. Id. at 10.

41. Id.

42. Id. at 11.

43. Id.

44. Id.

45. Id.

46. Government entities should not use poverty levels alone to determine the opportunity impact of a proposed or ongoing housing or urban development program. There is evidence that HUD’s focus on poverty level alone as its metric of opportunity in the Moving to Opportunity (“MTO”) experiment led to reconcentrations of voucher holders in outer-ring city and older suburban neighborhoods that were below the poverty threshold, but otherwise not high opportunity. BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 53; XAVIER DE SOUZA BRIGGS ET AL., MOVING TO OPPORTUNITY: THE STORY OF AN AMERICAN EXPERIMENT TO FIGHT GHETTO POVERTY 93, at 65 (2010) (“[B]asic compromises were made, in the outline of [the MTO] social experiment, that limited its reach in important ways: defining the fuzzy concept of an ‘opportunity’ neighborhood, for example, as a census tract with a low poverty rate rather than something more direct, such as an area with high-performing schools, job growth, or other traits”).

47. PAUL A. JARGOWSKY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS, SPRAWL, CONCENTRATION OF POVERTY, AND URBAN INEQUALITY 6 (2001).

48. See, e.g., NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, supra note 24, at 54.

49. See BRIGGS ET AL., supra note 46, at 93 (internal citations omitted).

50. See JARGOWSKY, supra note 47, at 7 (“Poverty is concentrated in the United States for a number of different reasons.  Historically, the single most important factor was racial residential segregation”).

51. See id., at 6.

52. See, e.g., JOAN M. PATTERSON ET AL., ASSOCIATIONS OF SMOKING PREVALENCE WITH INDIVIDUAL AND AREA LEVEL SOCIAL COHESION 58 J. EPIDEMIOL. COMM. HEALTH 692, 693 (2004).

53. In the many areas in which a local tax base funds government services, the tax base capacity, as determined by income level, of a particular neighborhood or community may bear a strong correlation to structures of opportunity. However, in many states, local property taxes have a lesser impact on funding local services than statewide taxes. Also, different structures of local government make this factor’s importance vary widely from state to state. Thus, the tax base capacity of a particular neighborhood may not be the strongest, or most easily quantifiable, indicator of opportunity within a particular geographic area.  BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 53.

54. See BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 64.

55. See KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY, ongoing research (on file with author).

56. JOAN A. KURIANSKY & SHAWN MCMAHON, WIDER OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN, A BETTER POVERTY MEASURE IS A STEP FORWARD, BUT ECONOMIC SECURITY IS THE TRUE GOAL (2010).

57. See, e.g., NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, supra note 24, at 57-58.

58. See id. at 58; see also id. at 70.

59. GREGORY D. SQUIRES ET AL., SEGREGATION AND THE SUBPRIME LENDING CRISIS 1, 4 (2009).

60. Id. at 4.

61. Id. at 4-5.

62. The AFFH duty requires government actors to “remove the walls of discrimination which enclose minority groups,” Evans v. Lynn, 537 F.2d 571, 577 (1975) (citing 114 Cong. Rec. 9563 (statement of Rep. Celler)), and to foster “truly integrated and balanced living patterns.” Trafficante v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 211 (1972) (citing 114 Cong. Rec. 3422 (statement of Sen. Mondale)).

63. BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 64; see also RUCKER C. JOHNSON, LONG-RUN IMPACTS OF SCHOOL DESEGREGATION AND SCHOOL QUALITY ON ADULT HEALTH 28 (2009), (using the racial dissimilarity index to measure racial segregation); ANTHONY DOWNS, NEW VISIONS FOR METROPOLITAN AMERICA 25 (Brookings Institution Press 1994) (similarly using the racial dissimilarity index to measure racial segregation).

64. But see Bruce Murphy, Study Explodes Myth of Area’s ‘Hypersegregation’: Researchers at UWM Rethink Racial Arithmetic of Major American Cities JSONLINE, Jan. 11, 2003 (presenting critiques of the racial dissimilarity index to measure of racial segregation).

65. JOHN LOGAN ET AL., LEWIS MUMFORD CTR., UNIV. AT ALBANY, ETHNIC DIVERSITY GROWS, NEIGHBORHOOD INTEGRATION LAGS BEHIND 2 (2001).

66. Id.

67. See, e.g., MANUEL PASTOR, JR., RACHEL MORELLO-FROSCH, & JAMES SADD, THE CENTER FOR JUSTICE, TOLERANCE & COMMUNITY, UNIV. OF CAL. SANTA CRUZ, STILL TOXIC AFTER ALL THESE YEARS…AIR QUALITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN THE BAY AREA (2007); JOINT CENTER FOR POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES, BREATHING EASIER: COMMUNITY-BASED STRATEGIES TO PREVENT ASTHMA 2 (2004).

68. ROBERT D. BULLARD & GLENN S. JOHNSON, Just Transportation, in JUST TRANSPORTATION 10 (Robert D. Bullard & Glenn S. Johnson eds., 1997).

69. See ROBERT D. BULLARD ET AL., TOXIC WASTES AND RACE AT TWENTY: 1987-2007 xii (2007) (finding also that people of color comprise a majority in neighborhoods with commercial hazardous waste facilities, and much larger (more than two-thirds) majorities can be found in neighborhoods in which commercial hazardous waste facilities are clustered close together).

70. Exec. Order No. 12898, 59 Fed. Reg. 7629 (Feb. 11, 1994).

71. See BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 51-52.

72. Nonpoint source pollution is pollution “of or pertaining to a source . . . that is not readily and specifically identifiable, as water runoff.” THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY (2010). See also United States Environmental Protection Agency, What is Nonpoint Source (NPS) Pollution? Questions and Answers.

73. See BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 51-52.

74. See generally BEEN ET AL., supra note 34 (citing REECE ET AL., supra note 2, at 56).

75. Id. at 19.

76. Brian D. Smedley, Why Health-Care Equity Is Essential to Opportunity—and How to Get There, in ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL: INSTIGATING OPPORTUNITY IN AN INEQUITABLE TIME 137 (Brian D. Smedley & Alan Jenkins eds., 2007).

77. See INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES, UNEQUAL TREATMENT: CONFRONTING RACIAL AND ETHNIC DISPARITIES IN HEALTH CARE 5, 38 (2003).

78. See, e.g., U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES, NATIONAL HEALTHCARE DISPARITIES REPORT (2009).

79. See AHRQ Quality Indicators Software Download (2007).

80 See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Service Administration, Shortage Designation: Medically Underserved Areas & Populations; see also THE OPPORTUNITY AGENDA, DANGEROUS & UNLAWFUL: WHY OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IS FAILING NEW YORK AND HOW TO FIX IT 25 (2007).

81. See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, supra note 80.

82. Note, however, that low-poverty neighborhoods should not be used as a proxy for new job creation and net job growth, because closer proximity to low-poverty neighborhoods does not necessarily correlate with increased job opportunities. BRIGGS ET AL., supra note 46, at 221-22 (“At least in terms of the proxy measures of new job creation and net job growth, moving to low-poverty neighborhoods . . . did not necessarily reduce the spatial mismatch between residences and job locations. And single parents without reliable, high-quality, low-cost, institutionally provided childcare had to line up support, housing, and work locations—and commutes among them—in complicated ways that the one-dimensional version of spatial mismatch, with jobs sprawling toward the promising suburbs, simply does not capture”).

83  NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, supra note 24, at 68.

84 Id.

85. Philip Tegeler, Connecting Families to Opportunity: The Next Generation of Housing Mobility Policy, in ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL: INSTIGATING OPPORTUNITY IN AN INEQUITABLE TIME 86 (Brian D. Smedley & Alan Jenkins eds., 2007).

86. Id.

87. Id. at 87.

88. Myron Orfield, Land Use and Housing Policies to Reduce Concentrated Poverty and Racial Segregation, 33 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 877, 905 (2006).

89. See id.

90. For an analysis of the potential synergies and conflicts between neighborhood walkability and environmental sustainability on the one hand, and access to jobs and transit-oriented development on the other, see generally BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 9-10 (“Efforts to promote environmentally sustainable development sometimes may compete with efforts to promote inclusivity (e.g., by ensuring that all groups have access to neighborhoods offering sound educational and employment opportunities, safety and neighborhood quality). Although the potential for conflict between environmental sustainability and inclusion is serious, these goals can also be compatible . . . . In fact, one can argue that neither environmental sustainability nor inclusion can be fully achieved in the absence of the other. The challenge lies in finding strategies that respect and advance both goals rather than myopically pursue one at the expense of the other. [This report offers] some examples of how specific policies might present synergies or conflicts between inclusivity and environmental sustainability.”).

91. The What Works Collaborative and the Kirwan Institute both use the five-mile radius measurement to define how far workers should be expected to travel and, thus, as an indicator of “relatively accessible jobs.”  BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 49; REECE ET AL., supra note 2, at 55.

92. BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 50.

93. See, e.g., THE OPPORTUNITY AGENDA, STATE OF OPPORTUNITY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, supra note 11, at 22-23; BRIGGS ET AL., supra note 46, at 94.

94. Id.

95. Id.

96. See generally BRIGGS ET AL., supra note 46.

97. BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 48 (citing Federal Bureau of Investigations, Uniform Crime reports; (“Note that information gathered under the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is published annually in Crime in the United States.  The UCR track ‘offense information on murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson’”). In the coming years, jurisdictions may be able to increasingly rely on data provided by the FBI”s National Incident Based Reporting System. See Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based Reporting System.

98. Id. at 49.

99  BEEN ET AL., supra note 34, at 49.

100. Id.

This memo offers communications advice for promoting greater and more equal opportunity during the current economic downturn. It draws on recent opinion research, media analysis, and experience from the field to offer promising approaches and messages.

While the public mood is unquestionably gloomy, we also see some important opportunities for talking positively about social justice issues and solutions in the context of economic recovery. For instance, the downturn has inspired conversations about our interconnectedness as a nation and as a people—the notion that we’re all in this together. Current and future stimulus policies offer chances to ensure that our most vulnerable and historically overlooked groups and communities are included in any recovery plans. We can use opportunities like these to create messages that promote our shared values, center social justice issues in the national conversation, and inspire solutions that expand opportunity for everyone living here.

It’s in our nation’s interest for everyone to have economic security and the opportunity to move forward. We are all in it together in this economy; allowing barriers to opportunity to exist for any community hurts us all. Recovering from this financial crisis demands new rules for a 21st Century global economy that connect all groups and communities to economic recovery.

Talking About Opportunity

We believe that speaking about social issues in terms of opportunity is a good strategic choice. Opportunity—the idea that everyone deserves a fair chance to live up to his or her full potential—is an ideal that most Americans instinctively support. Framing policy and research in terms of opportunity can help to persuade new audiences and inspire action—tapping into hopeful, forward-looking values, while challenging Americans to support transformative policies. While some feel opportunity is there for the taking, most realize that our collective decisions and the resulting policies shape access to opportunity in profound ways. Measuring policies by their impact on opportunity can help connect complex policy ideas to core national values.

General Communications Principles

Lead with Values. Beginning with shared values helps to connect with audiences better than dry statistics or stories of despair. The most compelling values when talking about economic recovery include:

• Community: We are all in it together in our society and share interests and responsibilities for each other and the common good.
• Opportunity: Everyone deserves a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential.
• Security: All people should have the tools and resources necessary to support and take care of themselves and their families.
• Mobility (Moving Forward): Everyone in our society should have the chance to move forward in economic and educational status, no matter where they started out.
• Equality: What we look like or where we come from should not determine the burdens, benefits, or responsibilities that we bear in society.
• Redemption (Renewal): People grow and change over time, and deserve a chance to start over after missteps or misfortune.

Connect the protection and expansion of opportunity to our shared progress. Linking the economic progress of communities of color, immigrants, women, and other historically overlooked groups to our national progress and shared prosperity of all Americans is key in times of financial crisis. Our communications should be less an appeal to self-interest or charity as an appeal to the common good.

Promote practical solutions. Policymakers in particular are seeking pragmatic, achievable approaches to today’s difficult problems. The more we can be for workable and positive solutions rather than only against negative outcomes, the more traction we are likely to get with these audiences. Emphasizing solutions taps into Americans’ pride and counters people’s inclination to see a parade of social and economic ills as impossible to solve.

Don’t let divisiveness dominate our messages. There is more than enough blame to go around for the current crisis. However, pointing fingers at whichever group is taking the fall at the moment is not the best long-term strategy for our communications. This is not to say that messages cannot express anger, demand accountability, point out how certain trends and policies have been harmful to our economy and our country, or highlight how certain groups and communities have suffered long-term neglect while others have experienced the benefits of a booming economy. However, shoring up people’s community- spirited tendencies will, over the long run, serve us more powerfully than allowing divisive arguments to dictate the tone and spirit of our messages.

Frame messages thematically. While there are countless individual stories that underscore the hardships faced by Americans of different backgrounds, communications need to emphasize systemic causes and solutions. The public is more and more open to understanding that complex and thematic issues are at the root of the current crisis. We can expand on this understanding to highlight how various economic and social systems have negatively affected many groups of people over time.  In some instances, this calls for selecting compelling human stories that are directly tied to systemic causes and solutions—e.g., the pastor who sees a wave of foreclosures in his congregation, or the doctor seeing more and more patients who are losing their insurance.

Use VPSA Messaging. In order to deliver a consistent, well-framed message in a variety of settings, we recommend structuring opening messages in terms of Value, Problem, Solution, and Action. Leading with this structure can make it easier to transition into more complex or difficult messages.

Value:

When it comes to the economy, we’re all in it together.  It’s in our nation’s interest for everyone to have economic security and the opportunity to move forward.

Problem:

But the current economic recovery effort threatens to leave some groups and communities behind, and that hurts us all.

Solution: 

Recovering from this financial crisis demands new rules for a 21st Century global economy that connects all communities to economic opportunity.

Action:

We call on the new Administration to adopt the use of an Opportunity Impact Statement as a lens through which to target the investment of public funds. The Opportunity Impact Statement is a road map that public bodies, affected communities, and the private sector can use to ensure that public investments offer equal and expanded opportunity for everyone and lift the common good.

Talking Point Suggestions

• Opportunity, the idea that everyone should have a fair chance to live up to his or her full potential, is a cherished ideal and one of our nation’s most valuable national assets. The promise of opportunity consistently inspires us—motivating innovation and hard work, bringing newcomers to our shores, and giving hope to future generations. But for far too many Americans, the promise still rings hollow.  For example, even in 2007, one in eight Americans (12.5%) lived in poverty.
• The nation has made great strides in increasing opportunity in some areas and for some groups and communities. But many groups of Americans are being left behind in ways that hard work and personal achievement alone cannot address. In 2007, of those living in poverty, 10.9% were year-round, full-time workers.
• Even before the current economic downturn, different American groups and communities experienced starkly different levels of opportunity. The African American male unemployment rate in 2007 (11.4%) was more than twice as high as the white male unemployment rate (5.5%), and the Latino male unemployment rate was also much higher (7.6%). There is real reason to believe that the current crisis is affecting some groups and communities far more severely than others.
• It’s in our nation’s interest for everyone to have economic security and the opportunity to move forward.  We are all in it together in this economy and allowing barriers to opportunity to exist for any group hurts us all. Persistent problems such as the wage gap must be addressed—in 2007, women made only 78.2% the median income of men, African Americans only 75.2% of whites, and Latinos only 72.6% of whites. Recovering from this financial crisis demands new rules for a 21st Century global economy that connect all groups and communities to economic recovery.
• Any economic recovery policy should not only jump-start the economy in the short-term, but also invest in lasting opportunity for all. We must address inequalities that challenge our ability to move forward together, such as the fact that African American median household wealth is only one-tenth that of white households. As our economy continues to falter, stimulating greater and more equal opportunity remains crucial to both short-term rescue and long-term prosperity.
• Promoting opportunity should be a key factor each time our leaders consider investments in our nation. Plans like the economic recovery package can serve all Americans fairly and effectively, or they can create and perpetuate unfairness and inequality based on race, gender, or other aspects of who we are. It is up to all of us to ensure that these investments help all Americans by calling for the right spending, implementation, and monitoring of funds.
• Investments in opportunity—such as expanding skill-building job training, investing in education, and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure—would inspire the American people and restore consumer confidence while helping struggling folks to catch their stride. And such investments would not only address the country’s short-term woes but also invest in our long-term strength.
• The recent economic stimulus package has addressed some of the issues facing our communities, but we have to make sure that investment is spent in communities where it is needed most, and where it will create lasting opportunity. We have a better chance at success in these areas if we come together to ensure that all affected groups, including women and communities of color, and immigrants can participate and contribute to our economy.

Some Specific Areas of Concern:

Immigrants and Economic Recovery

• It is critical to remember that a lasting economic recovery must also include immigrants, who are an integral part of our economic and cultural life. We need everyone’s help and know-how to restore our economy. Instead of divisive and unrealistic demands, we need workable solutions that uphold our nation’s values and move us forward together, to repair our economy, improve education, and generate jobs.

Racial and Gender Gaps in Economic Opportunity

• Research shows that assets and incomes vary broadly between groups, reflecting significant gaps in opportunity across race and gender.  We cannot live up to our promise of opportunity as long as these gaps go unaddressed.
• The current financial crisis has shown more than ever that, when it comes to the economy, we’re all in it together. It’s in our nation’s interest for everyone to have economic security and the opportunity to move forward. That means improving economic security and mobility for everyone while bridging the gaps in economic opportunity that still too often break along lines of race and gender.
• Despite the real progress we’ve made in our country, there is still a racial gap in economic opportunity that must be addressed if we’re to move forward as a nation. The racial gap is caused by a mix of historic forces and current barriers to equal opportunity. We must address each of them head on—in fact, we have practical solutions that expand opportunity for all while closing the racial gaps that hold us back.

Education

• One way to see if we’re making progress in protecting and expanding opportunity is to look at our education system, and ours is not living up to its promise for many students. For instance, high school status drop-out rates increased from 2005 to 2006 by 3.8% for women and by 2.9% for African Americans. While status drop-out rates for men and whites decreased during the same period, a true economic recovery will need to renew the promise of mobility for all of our children.

Housing

• It is in everyone’s best interest to ensure a future we can all take part in. This means protecting what has historically been the most secure path to building wealth: homeownership, which has rippling effects on the national economy. But even prior to the current downturn, households of color experienced a large homeownership gap with white households. In 2007, the white homeownership rate was 75.2%, while the rate for African Americans was 47.2%, the rate for Latinos was 49.7%, the rate for American Indians was 56.9%, and the rate for Asian Americans was 60%. Where recovery efforts directly address the foreclosure crisis, programs must directly address gaps in homeownership that have been exacerbated by predatory lending practices.

Poverty

• Even before today’s recession, opportunity was unequal and at risk for millions of Americans. In 2007, 18% of all children in the United States were living in poverty. Moreover, a full 34.5% of African Americans children were living in poverty, over three times the poverty rate for white children (10.1%).  This is an insult to our core values. Denying children the opportunities afforded by an economically stable upbringing poses great risks to our nation’s future. That some groups of children are more likely to live in poverty than others hurts us still more. Standing by while these threats to equality, security, and mobility persist is not an acceptable option. Restoring the economy to 2007 levels will not be enough—it is in our national interest to expand opportunity to all of our country’s people and communities.

This document contains ideas and sample materials to use in media outreach around the October 30, 2009 release of stimulus spending data.

Coverage is likely to lean toward a frame of government waste or discussions of whether or not the funds stimulated general growth. It will take proactive efforts to ensure coverage includes an angle about equity and overlooked groups and communities. These tips are meant to be low-cost options for achieving this goal.

This document includes the following sample media materials:

• Sample Media Advisory
• Online Comment Suggestions
• Sample Blog Post

Sample Media Advisory

We recommend releasing a media advisory that includes questions to guide the media as they generate their coverage.

On October 30, 2009, the public will get the first look at how recipients of grants and loans distributed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are spending the funds, completing this current stage of stimulus spending reporting. Spending for contracts was reported on October 15th.

Although this reporting is by no means comprehensive, it will give us all a snapshot of the spending’s impact on communities and the nation’s economic recovery. (Please see the attached fact sheet for more background on the stimulus bill and reporting requirements.)

While many questions will surround the release of this information, it is likely that a critical angle of this story will be lost unless the right questions are asked. Namely, are these funds reaching communities and populations in ways they really need, and who is being left behind?

This is an important consideration given that many communities—particularly people of color, women, and immigrants—were missing out on key gateways to opportunity even before the economic downturn began to affect everyone else. Unless stimulus investments reach these communities, we are likely to perpetuate ongoing inequalities while hurting our chances for a full and equitable economic recovery. Further, the law requires in varying degrees that agencies spending these funds take into account equal opportunity laws designed to ensure the inclusion of these groups.

Following are some questions reporters can ask of government officials to round out this coverage:

• What evidence do you have that stimulus funding projects in your city/state are reaching communities on an equitable basis as required by law?
• What is the distribution of stimulus funded or created jobs, specifically, among men and women, and among different racial groups?
• Do all of the stimulus-funded projects in your city/state offer materials and services in languages that are accessible to the [immigrant group] community?
• Your city/state website does not provide enough specific information for residents to identify the precise jobs and other beneficial projects that they might access. What other ways are there, if any, for the public to obtain that information?
• What plans do you have to ensure that future stimulus spending supports the types of investment your city/state needs to prepare its communities to participate in the global economy?

To speak with experts in creating an equitable recovery, contact:

[Organization and Contact Name; Title; Email; and Phone Number]

Online Comment Suggestions

Commenting on articles about stimulus spending online is another effective way to get a message out. Following are some quick examples of the types of points that could be made in response to such articles.

• Any efforts to create a positive economic recovery need to do more than just return us to the conditions that existed at the beginning of this economic crisis. Even then too many communities and groups were experiencing ongoing and structural barriers to opportunity and economic growth. For instance, even before the worst of the downturn in 2007, African American individual income was only 75.2% of white income. If we don’t spend funds to help address these types of disparities, we’ll just be setting ourselves up for growing inequalities.
• Something that appears to be missing in this coverage is the fact that even before the economy started tanking, different groups of Americans experienced starkly different levels of economic opportunity. We can’t just spend money in an effort to return us to those inequitable conditions, but instead need to think about how to spend it in ways that help to create an economy in which everyone really has a chance at the American dream.
• What I don’t see in this story is any discussion of how this spending will affect communities that need investment the most. Even before the downturn, our economy did not serve everyone, creating and sustaining inequalities that hurt our ability to grow our economy and compete globally. The challenges faced by communities of color, for instance, have led to stark disparities in income and assets that can’t be addressed by considering our pre-crisis economy the goal to reach. We need solutions for an economic recovery that is transformative and prepares us for the challenges of a global economy, or we will continue to see sharply growing levels of inequality right in our back yards.

Sample Blog Post

We recommend this type of post for progressive and partner blogs who might not be covering this angle of recovery. Many persuadable audiences are likely caught up in their own issues around the recovery, but will be sympathetic to these arguments, and perhaps even likely to adopt them.

On October 30, 2009, the public will get a look at how funds distributed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are being spent when the reports from agencies receiving these stimulus funds are released.

While many questions will surround the release of this information, it’s likely that a critical part of this story will be lost unless we ask the right questions about this spending. Namely, is this stimulus really creating a recovery for everyone?

This is an important consideration given that many groups of Americans have consistently been left behind in ways that hard work and personal achievement alone cannot address. This was true even before the economic downturn began to affect everyone else, and it’s likely that the crisis has further worsened gaps in income and assets that existed already.

To get an idea of what some Americans faced before the crisis, just look at 2007, the year before the crisis began affecting everyone:

• Of those living in poverty, 10.9% worked year-round, full-time;
• The African American male unemployment rate (11.4%) was more than twice as high as the white male unemployment rate (5.5%), and the Latino male unemployment rate was also much higher (7.6%); and
• Women made only 78.2% the median income of men, African Americans only 75.2% of whites, and Latinos only 72.6% of whites.

These are just a few examples of the unequal reality many communities faced back when some felt we were all riding high. The economy these statistics illustrate, though, is not exactly a portrait of the American Dream in action, and it’s not the kind of economy to which the stimulus money should be returning us. With thoughtful investments in opportunity—such as expanding skill-building job training, investing in education, and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure—we can both restore consumer confidence and help struggling folks to catch their stride. Such investments would not only address the country’s short-term woes but also invest in our long-term strength.

Some will say we have to concentrate on stabilizing the economy first, and address the challenges described here second. But that simply won’t work. We need to have trained and ready workers at all levels of our workforce; we need to ensure that all communities experience investment and growth; and we need to protect all consumers from the kinds of financial products that have destabilized our economy in the first place. We are all part of a greater whole – both economically and morally.

Overlooking struggling communities won’t work, but it also is simply wrong to allow the inequalities our economy has perpetuated to continue.

So our goal for recovery has to be bigger than turning back the clock to 2007. If we ask the right questions now, and make the right investments, we have a real shot at a future in which American opportunity is within reach of everyone here.

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MEMORANDUM

DATE:    July 17, 2009

FROM: The Opportunity Agenda, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, The Center for Social Inclusion, and Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

RE: Proposed Metrics for Equitable and Expanded Opportunity in the Economic Recovery

This memorandum outlines a proposal from The Opportunity Agenda, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, The Center for Social Inclusion, and Leadership Conference for Civil Rights for measuring equity throughout the ongoing economic recovery process.

Ensuring that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA or the Act) meets its goals requires transparency and accountability with regard to equity and equal opportunity. Only by using performance metrics that look beyond simply whether money is being spent and toward whether the funds are expanding opportunity and working in a transformative manner can these goals be satisfied. For example, one important goal of the Act is to support long-term infrastructure for a new economy. Simply returning to the state of the country in 2007 before the worst of the economic downturn began will not build a 21st century economy. Ensuring that the recovery is fair, equal, and equitable is crucial to creating quality jobs and careers, sustainable industries, and housing and transportation that fulfills unmet needs and build paths of mobility for all Americans.

The data necessary to measure equity and the expansion of opportunity in a specific project will frequently be available from existing sources. After identifying the relevant geographic area, agencies can draw first from existing federal, state, and municipal data, including Census data, to determine likely impact.¹ Important equity issues, the relevant questions that agencies should be asking about how ARRA projects impact those issues, and potential metrics and data sources to answer those questions are suggested below for five areas: 1) Economic Development (including any job creation across all sectors); 2) Health; 3) Education; 4) Housing; and 5) Transportation and Related Infrastructure.²

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Notes:

1. Federal data that demonstrates access to opportunity is available on a wide range of issues. See The Opportunity Agenda, The State of Opportunity 2009.

2. Some questions and potential metrics are informed in part by a day-long meeting on June 19, 2009 co-hosted by Center for American Progress, The Center for Social Inclusion, Economic Policy Institute, Good Jobs First, Institute for Policy Studies, Jobs With Justice, OMB Watch, and OpenTheGovernment.org. The meeting, “Promoting Equity Metrics in the Recovery Act,” brought together groups from across the country working toward a fair and equitable recovery.

3. Health Resources & Servs. Admin., U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., HPSA Designation.

4. Institute of Medicine, State of U.S.A. Health Indicators.

5. Ctrs. for Disease Control & Prevention, Health-Related Quality of Life – Prevalence Data, Mean Physically Unhealthy Days.

6. Office of Minority Health, U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., National Standards.

7. U.S. Census Bureau, Housing Patterns..

8. Pew Hispanic Center, Racial and Ethnic Composition of Schools, August 30, 2007, Table 1.

9. Nat’l Ctr. for Educ. Statistics, U.S. Dep’t of Education, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

10. U.S. Census Bureau, Housing Patterns, supra note 23.

11. Opportunity Mapping, Kirwan Institute, Ohio State University.

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