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Messaging And Report Tag: economic justice

The State of Opportunity in America

Acknowledgements

This report was written by Meredith King Ledford, MPP, and reviewed by Juhu Thukral and Ross Mudrick of The Opportunity Agenda.

This report was made possible in part by a grant from The Libra Foundation. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the report’s authors and The Opportunity Agenda.

The Opportunity Agenda would like to thank the following individuals for their invaluable comments and assistance in the preparation of the report: Algernon Austin, Ph.D., Director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy Program, Economic Policy Institute; Marc Mauer, Executive Director, The Sentencing Project; and Brian Smedley, Ph.D., Vice President and Director of the Health Policy Institute, The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

We would also like to thank Eric Mueller and Ramona Ponce of Element Group, and Tony Stephens of The Opportunity Agenda, for their work on the design process. This report was produced using green and recycled materials, at Fine Print INC.

Opportunity in America

This report documents America’s progress in protecting opportunity for everyone who lives here. By analyzing government data across a range of indicators, it reports on the state of opportunity for our nation as a whole, as well as for different groups within our society.

Opportunity is one of our country’s most cherished ideals and one of our most valuable national assets. The promise of opportunity inspires each generation of Americans—regardless of race, ethnicity, class, gender, or national origin—to strive to reach his or her full potential. Fulfilling this promise not only benefits each of us individually, but also society as a whole. In order to capitalize on our nation’s potential, we must ensure that the doors of opportunity are open to all Americans as we work to move forward together.

The Current Economic Crisis

As this report goes to press, the nation is facing the most daunting economic crisis since the Great Depression, including steep increases in unemployment, home foreclosures, and lost assets. Yet, because public sources of governmental data generally reflect a time lag of a year or more, much of the full brunt of today’s economic trauma is not reflected in this report. On many indicators of opportunity, the present reality is likely far worse than the most recent available year’s statistics would suggest. The quickly changing economic environment emphasizes the importance of creating a centralized, public, online system that provides “real-time” access to government opportunity data as it becomes available, disaggregated by demographic and regional differences. Such a system would greatly aid governmental, academic, and civil society groups in their efforts to protect opportunity under challenging circumstances, and we recommend that the federal government take action quickly to establish it. In the interim, however, we provide here some of the most recent available data regarding opportunity during the current economic crisis.

Unemployment, Foreclosure, and Bankruptcy

As of early 2009, the economic outlook was dismal. According to three key indicators–the unemployment rate, the foreclosure rate, and the bankruptcy rate—economic opportunity was severely limited. Jobs were scarce, particularly in communities of color. As of February 2009, 12.5 million people were unemployed, putting the overall unemployment rate at 8.1%. Men were more likely to be unemployed than women–the rate of unemployment was 8.1% for adult males as compared to 6.7% for adult females. African Americans, with an unemployment rate of 13.4%, were nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as whites, whose rate was 7.3%. The rate for Latinos was also disproportionately high, at 10.9%. However, Asian Americans had a lower than average rate of unemployment, at 6.9%.1

The January 2009 foreclosure rate showed that a mainstay of the American dream and a historical path to wealth accumulation–homeownership–was increasingly out of reach even for those who had once been on their way to achieving this dream. RealtyTrac, a national online database of foreclosed properties, reported that between January 2008 and January 2009, the foreclosure rate2 increased 17.8% to 1 in every 466 U.S. housing units.3

As a result of the economic downturn, many Americans found themselves unable to keep up with their mortgage, credit card, and auto loan payments, which in turn led to a sharp increase in bankruptcy filings. According to the January Credit Trend report by Equifax, Inc., one of the largest U.S. credit bureaus, the bankruptcy rate increased 25% between January 2008 and January 2009. The same report showed that almost 7% of all homeowners were behind 30 days or more on their primary-residence mortgages in January 2009, up by more than 50% since January 2008. Moreover, 4.2% of payments on credit cards were at least 60 days late, up 29.5% since January 2008, and 1.9% of borrowers of auto loans from carmakers were 60 days behind on the loans, an 18.8% increase from January 2008.4

Our Assessment of Opportunity for 2009

Because achieving full and equal opportunity is a core national commitment, it is essential to measure our success in fulfilling that commitment, just as we measure our nation’s economic health and military preparedness. By gauging how the nation fares in protecting opportunity, we can build on our successes and address those areas where we are falling short.

In February 2006, The Opportunity Agenda released The State of Opportunity in America. The report analyzed and measured the nation’s progress along six values of opportunity, mentioned below. An update one year later, in the 2007 report, found that despite some positive changes, significant opportunity gaps persisted in wages, education, housing, the criminal justice system, health care, and other areas. In some important areas, such as access to health care, opportunity had significantly decreased.

Now, in 2009, examination of these and other opportunity indicators finds that access to full and equal opportunity is still very much a mixed reality. The nation has made great strides in increasing opportunity in some areas and for some communities, but many groups of Americans are being left behind in ways that hard work and personal achievement alone cannot address. A review of the latest two years of available data reveals that opportunity in the United States remains at a crossroads.

Why Measure Inequality?

As our analysis indicates, different American communities often experience starkly different levels of opportunity, and there is real reason to believe that the current crisis is affecting some communities far more severely than others.

For example, in recent years, Latino and African American families have already found themselves struggling to push forward and maximize opportunity. Latino families actually experienced a decrease in real median income even as the country experienced an increase in its gross domestic product.5 Latinos consistently had the highest participation in the labor force of America’s major racial and ethnic groups between 2000 and 2007. Their decline in real median income highlights their diminishing returns, in terms of income, from their work.6

African Americans also did not attain lasting economic security when the American economy was gaining ground, especially when considering the subprime mortgage crisis. From 2000 to 2004, African Americans were building wealth through homeownership. During this time, the homeownership rate for African Americans increased from 47.2% to 49.1%.7 However, between 2006 and 2007, the rate declined 1.5%, returning it to its 2000 level of 47.2%.8 This decline may be explained by African Americans’ disproportionate representation in the subprime mortgage market, which has had a high rate of foreclosure.9 Subprime mortgages, while sometimes beneficial to individuals who have less-than-perfect credit records, are often aggressively marketed to the elderly, people of color, and low-income individuals regardless of credit history.10

These data are indicative of a larger threat to opportunity and security in America. Research has found that a basic standard of living that provides financial security for a family of four costs $48,788 annually. Unfortunately, 29.8% of families have incomes below this amount.11 African American and Latino families fare even worse: 53.0% of African Americans and 57.4% of Latinos have incomes insufficient to achieve a basic standard of living.12

The Opportunity Agenda views opportunity through the lens of our most deeply held values: Security, Equality, Mobility, Voice, Redemption, and Community. This report measures the degree to which we as a society are living up to these values, and incorporating them into our most critical decisions. Key findings of this year’s report include:

Security

Americans believe that we are all entitled to a basic level of education, economic well-being, health, and other protections necessary to human dignity. Recent years saw only two areas where opportunity for security increased—decreases in heart disease and cancer mortality rates—while other indicators were mixed or reflected declines in opportunity.

Access to health insurance is one indicator of security. While the number of people without health insurance decreased overall and for most racial and ethnic groups, Asian Americans experienced an increase in lack of coverage. Moreover, Americans also experienced increases in out-of-pocket health care costs and the rate of delaying medical care due to cost.

Regarding economic security, the overall poverty rate did not change significantly between 2006 and 2007—12.5%, or 37.3 million people, lived below the poverty threshold of $10,590.13 However, the overall child poverty rate increased, as did the poverty rates for children of color. The overall child poverty rate was 18% (13.3 million children) in 2007, an increase of 3.4% since 2006.14 Poverty rates also increased for naturalized citizens and noncitizens. Additionally, although poverty rates for most groups of workers decreased, African American workers experienced an increase in poverty.

Finally, the unemployment rate increased significantly for all groups.

Our overall assessment indicates that opportunity for security declined for the years examined.

Equality

Ensuring equal opportunity means not only ending intentional discrimination, but also removing unequal barriers to opportunity. The wage gap is a crucial indicator of equality. In 2007, women’s median income was 78.2% of male median income, reflecting no significant change from 2006.15 Nevertheless, opportunity improved with respect to the gender wage gap, because white and Latina women made some strides toward closing their respective gaps.

The race and ethnicity wage gap continues as well. The wage gaps between African Americans and whites and Latinos and whites increased during this time. In 2007, African American individual median income was 75.2% of white median individual income, compared to 77.4% of white median individual income in 2006, a 2.9% increase in the gap. The increase in the Latino-white wage gap was smaller, increasing 2.0%.16 In the same time period, the gap between white individual median income and Asian American individual median income decreased.17

Regarding asset-building, a significant gap persists between whites and African Americans. However, the racial gap in households with debt or very few assets decreased between these two groups.

Gaps in educational achievement are also key indicators of equality. The gap in high school dropout  rates between African Americans and whites and Latinos and whites increased. However, the race and ethnicity gap in high school degree attainment decreased. In terms of college degree attainment, the gap between Latinos and whites closed significantly.

Finally, the racial gap in incarceration rates decreased for women, but increased for men.

Our overall assessment indicates that equality of opportunity was mixed for the years examined.

Mobility

Every person in America should be able to fulfill his or her full potential through effort and perseverance. Where a person starts in life economically, geographically, or socially should neither dictate nor limit his or her progress and achievement. In terms of individual median income, only whites took a meaningful step forward. However, median family income increased overall and for white and African American families. Furthermore, distribution of income by family increased, meaning that the share of family income for low- and middle-income families increased.

Education is a key indicator for mobility. High school degree attainment did not significantly change for the overall population or most groups, but it did increase significantly for Latinos. However, the high school dropout rate for women and African Americans rose. Finally, college degree attainment increased overall and for all groups.

Our overall assessment indicates that opportunity for mobility improved for the years examined.

Redemption

Americans believe strongly in the value of a chance to start over after misfortune or missteps. Access to drug treatment for prisoners and voting rights after completion of sentence improved. However, opportunity decreased as related to the incarceration rate, and to the increased incarceration of immigrants.

Our overall assessment indicates that opportunity for redemption was mixed for the years examined.

Community

A shared sense of responsibility for each other is a crucial element of opportunity. While public opinion that government has a responsibility to those who need assistance increased, trust in the government declined.

Another key indicator of community is racial segregation in schools. In the twelve years from 1993-94 to 2005-06, k-12 public education segregation significantly decreased for white and American Indian students, but significantly increased for African American, Latino, and Asian American students.

Our overall assessment indicates that opportunity for community was mixed for the years examined.

Moving Forward

From the assessments across these values, we found that, despite some areas of improvement, opportunity for all Americans is at risk, and millions of Americans are facing an opportunity crisis. These past few years have seen an economy in turmoil, impaired financial mobility, marginal prospects for educational advancement, and a broken health care system. These conditions thwart the nation as a whole as it strives to be a land of opportunity for the 21st Century. At the same time, women, people of color, and moderate- and lower-income individuals and families are being hardest hit and left behind as they face multiple barriers to opportunity.

Despite positive news in some areas such as overall degree attainment, representative government, and distribution of family income, these indicators reflect a nation in which opportunity is at grave risk across multiple dimensions. The ability of American families to make a better life for their children is stifled by increased child poverty; accessing health care is increasingly difficult; and more Americans are behind bars in federal prisons. And despite an historic presidential election, equality of opportunity has declined for millions of Americans, with the wage gap faced by Latinos and African Americans increasing, and Latina and African American women making less than 70 cents for every dollar made by men overall.

These barriers are a problem not only for individuals and families, but also for our economy and nation as a whole. They also present an opportunity. Addressing them now would translate to thousands more college graduates prepared for a 21st Century global economy, millions of healthier children in stronger communities, higher wages and greater productivity for American workers, far fewer mort- gage defaults and bankruptcies, and far less strain on our social services and justice system. Conversely, the areas of improved opportunity revealed by our analysis represent a foundation and lessons on which to build as the nation works to restore the American dream for everyone who lives here.

Recommendations Toward Fulfilling Opportunity for All Americans

This report holds important implications for policymakers, civic leaders, and all Americans concerned about the state of opportunity in the United States. Through bold leadership, innovative policies, and the participation of the American people, the nation’s elected leaders can ensure the promise of opportunity in America.

Security

A range of opportunity-expanding policies can enhance the security of our nation and its residents, especially in the context of economic, health, and safety concerns. Our recommendations include:

  • Assist low-income families and insecure communities in moving into the middle class.

Problems of poverty and income insecurity can be reduced by expanding policies that promote living wage standards; job training and skill-building for the 21st Century global economy; access to affordable child care; quality education; and temporary financial assistance programs. Ways to support low- income communities include promoting mixed-income housing; encouraging regional planning to address inequality between urban and suburban jurisdictions; and supporting public transportation programs that reliably and efficiently help people who live in areas of high unemployment to commute to areas of high job growth and opportunity. Use of an Opportunity Impact Statement in assessing the best use of public resources and infrastructure will maximize positive impact on insecure communities. (See Community recommendations for description of an Opportunity Impact Statement.)

  • Help low-income families develop assets.

Policies that help poor and low-income families to develop financial literacy and long-term assets like savings accounts, homeownership through fair and appropriate loans, and savings for college education are critical to supporting secure communities. These strategies shift the emphasis of poverty reduction from solely providing cash assistance to helping poor and low-income families acquire resources necessary to achieve greater financial security. Promising approaches include creating individual savings accounts; expanding the earned income tax credit and child tax credit; reducing asset limits for public benefit programs; and implementing anti-predatory lending measures.

  • Eliminate disparities in access to affordable quality health care and the tools for healthy living.

Health inequality and insecurity must be addressed by federal, state, and local efforts to develop a universally accessible, comprehensive, and equitable health care system. This includes ensuring the fulfillment of Americans’ human right to quality health care; providing greater financial commitment to local community-based health centers; increasing access to healthy foods and safe playgrounds for all Americans; providing safe, confidential, and reliable access to contraception and other reproductive health care needs in a manner that is linguistically and culturally appropriate; and creating clean environments that eliminate toxic air and water quality.

Equality

There is a continued need for vigorous enforcement of existing equal opportunity protections and strengthening of human rights laws and standards. Our recommendations include:

  • Increase the staffing and resources that federal, state, and local agencies devote to enforcing human rights and equal opportunity laws. Particularly in light of this year’s unprecedented federal economic recovery investments, there is a need to strengthen the capacity of the Coordination and Review Section in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. This Section is charged with the immense task of coordinating civil rights enforcement across federal agencies, and has not historically been utilized effectively. It is also critical that the offices for civil rights in federal and other agencies be fortified to properly protect equal opportunity. In light of substantial economic stimulus spending targeting job creation and infrastructure, and past neglect of civil rights enforcement, White House oversight and inter-agency coordination of these efforts are warranted. Increased attention to civil rights enforcement will result in concrete steps forward in opportunity for all Americans, whether it is in equal wages and work opportunities, fair housing, education, or other areas of public spending.
  • Institute, at the federal level, an Interagency Working Group on Human Rights and develop a U.S. Commission on Civil and Human Rights. Given America’s role as a leading player in establishing a human rights framework, it is important that we make a clear commitment as a nation to our obligations to protect and strengthen human rights both here at home and abroad. An Interagency Working Group on Human Rights can play a proactive role in ensuring that U.S. international human rights responsibilities are implemented and coordinated domestically among all relevant executive branch agencies and departments. In addition, there is a need to restructure and strengthen the existing U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, transforming it into an effective U.S. Commission on Civil and Human Rights. This body would operate as a national human rights commission, which would provide expertise and oversight to ensure that we progress toward provision of full human rights for all. Both of these institutions will address disparities as they affect racial and ethnic groups, women, and members of marginalized communities.
  • Improve methods and resources for detailed data collection for the general population and groups. It is critical that government, researchers, and everyday Americans have access to information that is disaggregated to help identify and resolve trends in unequal opportunity. This report illustrates that data currently available is limited. Improved data collection by all levels of government can assist in identifying discriminatory patterns in employment, education, housing, lending, and the criminal justice system, and lead the way to development of innovative solutions. For example, data can be used more effectively to better detect potential bias in the employment context by comparing companies’ workforce diversity with the composition of an area’s qualified workforce. We  therefore recommend a centralized, public, online system that provides “real-time” access to government opportunity data as it becomes available, disaggregated by demographic and regional differences.

Mobility

Renewing socioeconomic mobility requires that we ensure access to quality education, skill-building programs, and other gateways to wealth building and human development. Our recommendations include:

  • Promote early childhood and K-12 school programs that improve the quality of education and graduation rates. Innovative policies that invest deeply in children’s education and improve graduation rates can reap great rewards in mobility over a lifetime. Promising strategies include universal pre-k; increased funding to under-resourced schools; integrated services that address family and community needs; expanding the school day to increase time spent on learning; and providing programs for English Language Learning that promote integration and education for immigrant children.
  • Invest in comprehensive and integrated education efforts that expand opportunity for all. Education remains a path to mobility throughout our lifetimes. This means that investments must be made in education on financial literacy, including debt and business counseling, saving, and asset- building; job training and skill-building programs for a 21st Century global economy; educating incarcerated people for reentry; linguistic and cultural competence for immigrants; and reducing the financial barriers to college, with a special focus on increasing the share of need-based grants over student loans. It is critical that job training programs emphasize preparedness for quality jobs that pay a living wage and are tailored to the differing skills of all workers.
  • Expand living wage laws at the federal, state, and local levels to help ensure that full-time minimum wage earners can support their families. Living wage laws at the local level ensure that city or county governments will not contract with businesses that pay workers wages less than is needed to live above poverty levels, given local economic conditions. A focus on living wage— rather than merely on a minimum wage that rarely meets basic needs—would serve to close racial, ethnic, and gender gaps in wages, and also move all Americans closer to achieving financial stability for their families.

Redemption

The nation’s criminal justice policies should protect the public, deter future offenses, and provide restitution to victims. However, they should also restore and rehabilitate individuals and communities whose lives are affected both directly and indirectly by criminal justice policies. Our recommendations include:

  • Prioritize crime prevention, rehabilitation, and reentry over increased incarceration. There has been a growing trend toward incarceration as a problem-solving tool, particularly in low-income and minority communities, as reflected in high incarceration rates and persistent racial disparities. Criminal justice policy that supports opportunity requires successful crime prevention strategies while fostering rehabilitation and productive reentry. Such strategies include expanding availability of substance abuse treatment, both broadly in society and for those mired in the criminal justice system; basing criminal sentencing on individualized culpability, control, and circumstances,  rather than on mandatory minimum sentencing policies that have exacerbated racial and ethnic inequality; expanding use of restorative justice programs; ending the sentence of life without parole for youth; and promoting appropriate re-entry policies that provide support, living wage  jobs, and restoration of voting rights for people who return to society from prison and work to re-integrate into their communities.
  • Expand community policing—a crime-prevention strategy that emphasizes community input, collaboration, and tailored responses to crime and disorder. Policing policies should promote neighborhood safety, address community needs, and protect opportunity and human rights. Many community policing models emphasize a problem-solving framework that shifts the emphasis  from arrest and punishment to addressing community needs. Other models encourage prevention strategies that engage and provide support to youth and families. Such approaches are especially helpful where there is an increase in the homicide rate for communities of color. This policing framework draws heavily on the goals and law enforcement needs of the community, which suffers most when crime is poorly addressed and redemption is denied.
  • Promote workable immigration policies that uphold our national values. Increasing incarceration of immigrants, either for violations of civil immigration law or for arrests related to nonviolent criminal acts, is not a realistic policy solution for addressing immigration. Immigrant detention, especially of families and children, is harmful and counter to our national ideals of dignity, redemption, and the protection of vulnerable people. Immigration enforcement should shift back to the federal level, proven supervised release practices should replace detention, and a realistic pathway to citizenship should be adopted.

Voice

Many factors influence the diversity of voices that participate in the national discourse. Such participation is a key factor in achieving equal access to opportunity, both through focusing dialogue on the needs of underrepresented communities and by creating a venue for demanding accountability and transparency for actions taken by the public and private sectors. Our recommendations include:

  • Ensure and expand political participation among diverse groups of Americans. In order to achieve democratic participation and representation that reflect the full spectrum of American life, we need the active political participation of all groups in our communities. Central to this goal is equal access to the vote, with policies that address complications caused by geographic and language barriers, faulty voting equipment and infrastructure, inadequately trained poll workers, state laws disenfranchising people with felony convictions, and other state and federal policies that disproportionately limit voting among marginalized groups. For example, Election Day voter registration is a promising practice used by a growing number of states, as are laws restoring the voting rights of people emerging from prison.
  • Promote local ownership and operation of new and traditional media outlets. Deregulation and consolidation in the media and telecommunications industries have resulted in diminished opportunity for independent media that address the needs of diverse groups to gain a foothold. It is critical to ensure the participation of communities of color in political and cultural life by creating opportunities for diverse voices to affect the public discourse on issues that matter to them.
  • Bridge the remaining digital divide among diverse communities. The expanded availability of communications and digital technologies can and should result in concrete benefits for all sectors of American life. Equitable investment in digital infrastructure across communities will create economic and educational opportunities for all Americans, including information about financial literacy and local resources such as access to healthy foods and recreational spaces. Furthermore, protecting Net Neutrality is a key step in ensuring that the internet remains a diverse and democratic forum for all communities.

Community

Inclusive policies that tap the strength and contribution of all our diverse communities are crucial to the progress of our nation. Our recommendations include:

  • Evaluate public expenditures through the lens of an Opportunity Impact Statement. All levels of government can and should use a new policy tool—an Opportunity Impact Statement—as a requirement for publicly funded or authorized projects, especially those that are tied to economic recovery. Examples of potential projects that might require such an assessment include school, hospital, or highway construction, or the expansion of the telecommunications infrastructure. The statements would explain, based on available data, how a given effort would expand or contract opportunity in terms of equitable treatment, economic security and mobility, and shared responsibility, and they would require public input and participation. In addition to leading to concrete investments that move all Americans forward together, this participatory tool can help restore Americans’ trust in the government.
  • Make expanding opportunity a condition of government partnerships with private industry. Government agencies at all levels can and should require public contractors to invest in communities by paying a living wage tied to families’ actual cost of living for that particular locale; insisting on employment practices that promote diversity and inclusion; and ensuring that new technologies using public resources or receiving other benefits include public interest obligations and extend service to all communities.
  • Develop practical immigrant integration policies that assist newcomers in attaining full participation in the social, cultural, and political life of our nation. Given the important role that immigrants play in America’s cultural and economic life, it is critical that we create effective and inclusive immigrant integration policies. These include programs that educate new Americans about their rights and responsibilities in the workplace, in civic participation, and relating to law enforcement and other institutions. An important element of these policies is assisting new Americans in learning English and providing multilingual access to necessities like healthcare and basic rights like voting for citizens. A key corollary to this is the need to better equip our infrastructure and communities to incorporate diverse new members. These efforts should be pursued alongside immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants.

Measuring Opportunity —  Our Method of Assessment

For this report, we assessed the progress of opportunity by examining many of the same indicators as in The State of Opportunity in America, released in 2006. We measured “change” in opportunity by reviewing 2008, 2007, 2006, and 2005 data from mainly federal sources (Note: for a small number of indicators, the most recent official data is from 2004). For the indicators available, we calculated the percent change over the most recent year that data was available (i.e. from 2006 to 2007 or 2005  to 2006). For certain indicators, we measured a gap or a disparity between subpopulations and the majority population. For example, in the instances of racial and ethnic gaps, the white population served as the comparison group and in the instances of gender gaps, men served as the comparison group.

Change in opportunity for one indicator in the community dimension—k-12 public school segregation— was measured using longer trend data. We assessed public school segregation using enrollment data in public schools over a thirteen-year period from the 1993-94 to 2005-06 school years. Additionally, change in opportunity for three indicators in the redemption dimension–drug treatment for prisoners, voting rights while imprisoned, and voting rights after completion of sentence–was measured by assessing the passage of legislation over a one-year period.

Racial and Ethnic Categories

Each indicator calculated the change over the time period for the nation as a whole, as well as disaggregated by gender, race and ethnicity, and income when data was available. Because the data sources were largely federal, racial categories for many of the indicators in this report are the same as the racial and ethnic categories utilized by the federal government. Hence, the racial categories are defined as the following:

  • White: any person who self-identified as white only and non-Hispanic.
  • Black: any person who self-identified as black only.
  • Asian: any person who self-identified as Asian only.
  • American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN): any person who self-identified as AIAN only.
  • Hispanic: any person of any race who self-identified as Hispanic.

Because the Hispanic ethnicity category is not mutually exclusive from the race categories, there is some double counting of individuals who identified as black and Hispanic, Asian and Hispanic, and AIAN and Hispanic when federal sources were used. However, the white race category includes only individuals who identified as white in federal sources.18 Additionally, American Indian and Alaska Native data is rarely available in federal sources, which explains its large absence in this report. In a few instances, in which the data sources utilize different racial categories, this report’s indicators do as well. (Note: In the narrative of this report, we use these terms—African American, Latino, and Asian American—rather than the categories used in the sources in recognition that they are the prevailing terminology for race and ethnic categories.)

Limitations

We recognize that opportunity may be defined and measured in many ways. This assessment is limited in its ability to capture all dimensions of opportunity. Annual data were not available for some indicators, and therefore, some indicators that were in the original report and the 2007 update were omitted from this report. In addition, we encountered significant limitations in the data related to opportunity that government and other institutions collect. For example, data are often unavailable or are inadequate for many racial and ethnic groups other than whites, African Americans and Latinos.

Further, these broad racial and ethnic categories often fail to adequately capture the diversity within U.S. racial and ethnic groups, which may vary considerably on the basis of immigration status or nativity, primary language, cultural identification, and area of residence. A full assessment of opportunity should include a consideration of how opportunity varies along these dimensions. For example, we did not find group information such as variations among Asian American and Hispanic nationality groups.

Similarly, federal data are rarely presented disaggregated by both race and ethnicity and measures of social class or socioeconomic status. Yet the opportunity barriers for low-income whites may differ in important ways from those of more affluent whites and some communities of color. We encourage researchers to examine how opportunity indicators differ by race, ethnicity, gender and income, and to explore their interaction. We also urge federal, state, and local governments to collect and disaggregate data along the broader spectrum of dimensions discussed  above.

Nonetheless, by assessing progress across a range of opportunity indicators, as this report  does, we hope to provide a summary of how the nation is experiencing opportunity today. To see all of the indicators and for more information, please visit www.opportunityagenda.org.

Notes:

1. “The Employment Situation: February 2009,” The Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 6, 2009.

2. The foreclosure rate includes filings of default notices, auction sale notices, and bank repossessions.

3. “Foreclosure Activity Decreases 10 Percent in January,” RealtyTrac, Inc.

4. “Factbox-Equifax US consumer credit trends for January,” Reuters.

5. Austin, Algernon and Maria Mora, Hispanics and the Economy: Economic Stagnation for Hispanic American Workers, throughout the 2000s, Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper #225. October 31, 2008, pg. 1-2.

6. Ibid.

7. Austin, Algernon, Reversal of Fortune: Economic Gains of 1990s overturned for African Americans from 2000-2007, Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper #220. September 18, 2008, pg 6.

8. Ibid, and US Census Bureau, Housing Vacancies and Homeownership, “Annual Statistics 2007,” Table 20.

9. Austin, Algernon, Reversal of Fortune: Economic Gains of 1990s overturned for African Americans from 2000-2007, Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper #220. September 18, 2008, pg 6.

10.  For more information on subprime loans and predatory lending practices, see Subprime Loans, Foreclosure, and the Credit Crisis: What Happened and Why? – A Primer, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University and Women are Prime Target for Sub- prime Lending: Women are Disproportionately Represented in High-Cost Mortgage Market, The Consumer Federation of America, December 2006.

11. Lin, James and Jared Bernstein, What We Need to Get By, Economic Policy Institute, Briefing Paper #224. October 29, 2008, pg. 2.

12. Ibid., pg. 6.

13. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement, “Historical Poverty Tables – People”, Table 24 and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement, “Historical Poverty Tables – People”, Table 1.

14. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement, “Historical Poverty Tables – People”, Table 3.

15.  U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements, “Historical Income Tables – People” Table P-36. 16  U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements, “Historical Income Tables – People” Table P-4.

15. Ibid.

16. See the “note” section at the end of any federal source to find the definition of racial categories used.

17. Ibid.

18. See the “note” section at the end of any federal source to find the definition of racial categories used.

Moving Forward Together…

This memo sets forth themes and ideas on talking about immigration during the current economic downturn. While the challenges are great, there are also opportunities in talking to audiences who matter to us most, and who are most persuadable in this area. These include communities of color, low-wage workers, and progressives. Together, these groups comprise the support we need to ensure that local, state, and federal policies are realistic, effective, and uphold the values of fairness and opportunity. To inspire them we need messages that, in addition to speaking to fears about the economy, also build on the sense that we are all in this together, that we need to encourage a role for government in crafting solutions, and that immigrants have important contributions to make.

Immigrants have always had great contributions to make to our country and our economy, so it only makes sense that we include them as we address the economic downturn and our efforts toward recovery. We need to make sure that it’s possible for everyone to play a role in fixing the mess we’re in.

A Core Narrative:

Workable solutions that uphold our values and help us move forward together

We recommend structuring messages under a shared narrative, developed in concert with advocates from around the country in 2008.  This framework is based on recent public opinion research, insight from media monitoring and analysis, and the experience of a range of immigration advocates. It has also been well received in very early focus group testing.  This intelligence suggests the following principles for communications on immigration:

  • Emphasize workable solutions:  While immigration policy currently takes a backseat to anxieties about the economy, Americans generally agree that our immigration system needs fixing, and that it’s unrealistic to deport 12 million people. We need to continue to promote solutions that appeal to this commonsense acknowledgment, and that emphasize that economic recovery requires the input and participation of everyone here. It is also true that many of our key audiences do not realize or understand the barriers undocumented immigrants face in trying to become legal. Messages should emphasize that there are no workable solutions for many people already living and working here, and that those who are currently undocumented want to be here legally, but have limited or no options.
  • Infuse messages with values:  January’s inauguration helped to reignite Americans’ pride in core values like opportunity, community, equality, and shared responsibility. While invoking such values is not a silver bullet in messaging, research shows that the public reacts positively to values-based messages, and is motivated to protect the values they consider central to our country and our history. In the cases of due process and detention, research has found this approach to be particularly effective.
  • Encourage moving forward together:  The economic crisis gives anti-immigrant groups yet another opportunity to try to drive wedges between immigrants, African Americans, and low- wage workers. We should remind these audiences of shared values and common interests as well as solutions that expand opportunity for everyone—for example, combining an earned pathway to citizenship with enhanced civil rights enforcement, living wages, police accountability, and job training for communities experiencing job and financial insecurity.
  • Move from “Myth Busting” to documenting our story:  There are many myths and falsehoods about immigrants, especially undocumented workers, in the public discourse, and it is imperative that the truth be told. But research shows that a strategy of repeating and explicitly “busting” those myths generally serves to reinforce them in the public’s mind. We recommend instead using accurate facts affirmatively to support our own values-based story.
  • Know the opposing narrative:  Anti-immigrant spokespeople are consistent in their use of two dominant themes, regardless of their specific point: Law and Order (“What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?”) and the Overwhelming of Scarce Resources (the notion that there are not enough jobs, health care or education to go around).

Talking Point Guidelines

The following bullets are examples of how to talk about immigration during tough economic times. It is understood, however, that the immigration movement has diverse audiences, regional needs, and challenges. We propose using the shared narrative as a general guide while focusing on the following themes, but using the wording, symbols, and stories that best suit your needs.

We need workable solutions that uphold our nation’s values and help us move forward together…

  • We need everyone’s help and know-how to repair our economy, improve education, and generate jobs. Immigrants have a stake in those systems—we are caregivers and health professionals, teachers and students—and we are a part of the solution.
  • Reactionary policies that force people into the shadows haven’t worked, and they are not consistent with our values. Those policies hurt all of us by encouraging exploitation and low- wage, under-the-table employment that depresses wages. We need policies that help immigrants contribute and participate fully in our society.
  • It’s clear that our economy and our trade and immigration policies are no longer working for anyone but a select few. Instead of scapegoating immigrants and terrorizing families and communities, we should make America work for all of us.
  • Currently, it’s almost impossible for many undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked here for years to become legal, in spite of their great desire to do so. A system that denies a whole subset of workers the rights and responsibilities the rest of us enjoy is not workable or fair – and it’s not helping to repair our fractured economy.
  • We need to protect all workers and law-abiding employers. Our immigration system needs to work for everyone, not just for those employers looking for low-cost labor. Part of the solution is recognizing that it would be far better if all immigrant workers were here legally and could exercise the same rights on the job as native-born workers. Equal rights strengthen the bargaining power of all workers.  The first step toward realizing this equality is ensuring that our system makes it possible for undocumented immigrant workers to become legal, which it currently does not.1
  • Our policies must recognize that we’re all in this together, with common human rights and responsibilities. If one group can be exploited, underpaid and prevented from becoming part of our society, our common humanity is threatened, and none of us truly enjoy the opportunity and rights that America stands for.

Immigration Reform

  • To bring stability, opportunity, and fairness to American workers, families, and communities, we need to enact common sense immigration reform. Congress and the President need to work together to get a handle on our immigration system and find solutions that help all workers fully participate in our economy.
  • We need to protect American taxpayers. We also need to fix our immigration system to move towards eliminating the underground economy it perpetuates. By legalizing the undocumented workforce, we will bring these workers out of the shadows and put more workers and employers on our tax rolls.2
  • Anti-immigrant extremists are preventing a legal immigration system that works and distracting us from addressing real challenges like rebuilding our economy.

African American Audiences:

  • The African American community has always been the conscience of our country when it comes to human rights and dignity. Keeping 12 million people in the shadows, without human rights and subject to exploitation, is not in the moral or economic interest of black people, or our nation, and we have to stand against it.
  • Immigrants and African Americans are increasingly part of the same neighborhoods and communities, and we need solutions that enable us to rise together with all Americans. We each consistently list quality education and affordable health care among our highest priorities.  All of our kids suffer when we allow our urban schools and hospitals to flounder, and we all benefit, along with our country, when we invest in strong schools and quality health care, as well as living wages, decent working conditions and freedom from discrimination.
  • 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. We have a better chance at success in these areas if we come together to protect our most vulnerable communities, including communities of color, and immigrants.
  • These are tough times, but squabbling amongst ourselves will only hold all of us back. We need to work together for practical solutions that ensure opportunity and protect our human rights.

Notes:

1  From Talking Points from the National Immigration Forum, America’s Voice and the Immigration Policy Center.

2  From Talking Points developed by the National Immigration Forum, America’s Voice and the Immigration Policy Center

Campaign for Community Values Message Toolkit

What are Community Values and why are we promoting them now?

Community Values are long held American values. Community Values say that we share responsibility for each other, that our fates are linked. Whether described as interconnection, mutual responsibility, or loving your neighbor as you love yourself, Community Values are moral beliefs, a practical reality, and an important strategy.

For the past 30 years, the theme of individualism has dominated our national dialogue and common culture. Instead of favoring policy that works for everyone, this approach tells people to go it alone. We see the results in our fragmented healthcare system, the divisive debate on welfare reform, and in recent, though unsuccessful, attempts to overhaul social security.

Americans are becoming tired of this individualistic approach to policy, and to life in general. The country is ready for a new inclusive vision and a new generation of positive solutions. It’s time to reclaim values in the political conversation. It’s time to turn Americans’ attention to our long history of working collectively, standing up for each other, and upholding the common good.

The Community Values Toolkit

Included here are ideas, advice, and resources for moving toward this new political conversation, beginning with the 2008 presidential election.

  • Community Values Phrase Basket
  • General Talking Points
  • Building a Message
  • Examples of Language and Usage
  • Sample Media Pieces

Community Values Phrase Basket

We’re All in it Together – So Let’s Say the Same Things!

Below we’ve provided the drumbeat terms that we plan to track and measure the use of, to see how Community Values language is faring in the political debate. We’ve also included some terms to use to define the opposition.

It may feel awkward at first to weave the terms into your communications. But if you think about how others have used familiar terms such as “family values” or “tax relief,” you may start to get the idea of what it looks like when a term infiltrates the popular vocabulary.

Phrase Basket

Community Values Phrases:                                              The Opposition:

Drumbeat Phrases:

  • Community Values ideology)                                       “You’re on your own” (mentality, approach,
  • Policies of Connection                                                 “Go it alone” (mentality, approach, ideology)

Policies of Isolation

Also suggested depending on audience:

  • (We’re all) In it together                                             Community neglect
  • Stronger together                                                       Everyone for themselves
  • The Common Good                                                   Pull yourself up by your bootstraps
  • Sharing the ladder of opportunity                              Pulling up the ladder behind you
  • On the same team                                                     Standing alone
  • Looking our for each other                                         Leaving people behind
  • Standing together
  • Shared or Linked Fate

General Talking Points

  • This is really about Community Values. Are we going to acknowledge that we’re all in this together, and that we need to look out for each other? Or are we going to tell everyone to go it alone?
  • What’s missing here are Community Values. Telling people that [issue] is their individual problem is not only unworkable, it’s contrary to our nation’s long-held belief that we’re stronger together, that we look out for each other and work for the common good.
  • What we need are more policies of connection that recognize our reliance on each other, and how much more we thrive when we stand together. Simply telling people that they’re on their own is not an American option.
  • Look, we’re all on the same team here. This country thrives when we draw on our Community Values to solve our problems. There are those who say that we each need to figure it out on our own, but that go it alone mentality is obviously unworkable and not an option in today’s interconnected world.
  • I’m tired of the myth that we should all just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, buck up, and get on with it. When it comes to health care, to our public school system, to the future of social security, I don’t want politics of isolation to drive public policy. We’re in this together, and we’ll rise together.
  • We all know instinctively that we’re stronger together. And history shows that when we work together to solve our problems, placing the common good as a top priority, we all move forward. When we leave people behind, we all suffer. I’m for a country that embraces those kind of Community Values again, let’s leave the “go it alone” mentality behind.
  • We have to recognize that we live in an interconnected world. Our actions have consequences beyond ourselves. Our fates are linked. Insisting on an old-fashioned go it alone mentality is not only unworkable, it’s just wrong.

Building a Message

Where possible, our messages should: emphasize the values at risk; state the problem; explain the solution; and call for action.

  • Value at Stake

o Why should your audience care?

  • Problem

o Documentation when possible

  • Solution

o Avoid issue fatigue – offer a positive solution

  • Action

o What can your audience concretely do? The more specific, the better.

Example:

  • Our shared Community Values mean that we come together to solve our problems. We look our for each other and understand that leaving anyone behind is not an option.
  • But we’re falling short of that ideal—millions of Americans can’t live on the wages they are paid for full-time work. By refusing to address this situation in a meaningful and realistic way, we’re failing these workers and members of our community.
  • We need to ensure that anyone who is working full time can support their family.
  • Tell your Member of Congress to support a real and living wage. It’s about workers, families and supporting Community Values.

Messaging Questions

Some useful questions to consider when building a message include:

  • Who are the heroes and villains of this story? We need to think through various roles played by the characters in our stories. For instance, a common conservative frame is that of tax relief. If people need “relief” from something, it is an affliction. If taxes are an affliction, they are never good and those who relieve us of them are heroes. Those who propose more affliction are villains. Using this term, then, is not helpful to anyone promoting increased government support for programs.
  • Who does the narrative suggest is responsible for solutions? The conservative theme of individualism suggests that as individuals, we should solve the bulk of our problems ourselves. Instead of an inclusive health care system, for instance, we should have individual health savings accounts. Focusing on individual success stories can have the same effect. The story of an immigrant coming to this country, starting a business and becoming a model citizen can be helpful in many ways, but it doesn’t underscore the need for community or societal level programs to help newcomers. The solution is portrayed at an individual rather than a systemic level.
  • What are the long term implications of this narrative? Does it point toward the solutions we want? Sometimes, in hopes of providing a dramatic, media friendly story advocates use examples that can lead audiences in unhelpful directions. For example, in appealing for money for a specific child abuse prevention program, advocates might use dramatic statistics of children injured or killed each year by abuse and neglect. These statistics will get media coverage and draw attention to the problem of child abuse. However, they are unlikely to lead audiences to the solution that prevention advocates desire. If the long term goal is to increase funding for prevention programs that support parents, advocates have instead made their audience less sympathetic to parents, and more supportive of punitive measures that do not include prevention.
  • Does the story inadvertently invoke unhelpful cultural narratives? For instance, in talking about health care, we sometimes use a consumer frame. But this competitive frame is actually unhelpful if the solution we want to promote is universal care. Consumerism implies that we are economic players competing for limited resources. Instead, we want to promote the idea that the system is stronger when we’re all in it.
  • Does the story use our opponents’ narrative? Consider the recent debate about proposed immigration reform. Many advocates engaged in conversations about whether reform would or would not grant “amnesty” to undocumented immigrants. But by focusing on the word “amnesty,” advocates strengthened the “law breaker” narrative. In this story, “illegal” immigrants and those who fail to punish them are the villains. However well intentioned, arguments that immigration reform is “not amnesty” reinforce opponents’ arguments. We should be careful to avoid using such stories, particularly when we talk to persuadable audiences might support our positions if we framed them differently.

Community Values Caveats

Additional considerations when building a community values message.

Attacking personal responsibility

It’s important to note that promoting Community Values should not appear to abandon all forms of individualism. Americans believe strongly in the value of individualism and “personal responsibility.” And that belief cuts across ideological lines.

People want individuals to take responsibility and also to control their own destiny. These worries can prevent them from fully embracing Community Values if they view such values as letting people off the hook, providing handouts, or removing individual choices and empowerment. Bringing the idea of opportunity into the conversation can help us to point out that systemic barriers to opportunity prevent many individuals from moving forward.

Talking about interconnections that harm, rather than help, us.

In stressing community values, we want to emphasize the ties that bind us as neighbors, workers, Americans and humans. Our fates are connected, so it’s in all of our best interests to move forward together. However, we should not imply that we only need to care about other people’s circumstances if it’s in our best interest.

For instance, advocates might make the case that we should cover all immigrants in new health care reform plans because if we don’t, we are at risk of becoming infected with any diseases they carry. While invoking a linked theme, this narrative isn’t helpful in the long-run as it implies 1) that immigrants are a danger to us and 2) that if their health does not affect us, we don’t need to worry about including them.

Instead, we should emphasize that recognizing our connections is important not only to protect our own interests, but also to understand how we’re part of something bigger.

Invoking the charity frame when promoting the common good.

The term common is useful because gives a name to the entity we hope to benefit. It names exactly what we want to win: an outcome that is good for the community. However, this term can also lead people to think of charity first. This idea says that we help others – often termed the “less fortunate” – through “handouts.” There are certainly heroes to this story, but if we’re not careful, those benefiting from charity can be painted as the villains. In addition, this is a judgmental frame that does not empower groups that have typically faced the biggest barriers to opportunity. In invoking the common good, then, it’s important to point out the solutions we seek: shared power and responsibility, not a one-way, “privileged to unprivileged” exchange.

Using exclusive or nostalgic versions of community

Sometimes we lean toward limited or nostalgic Norman Rockwell illustrations of community that call up ideas of “the old days”, the Eisenhower years, childhood neighborhoods, or our own, limited surroundings. This is problematic for several reasons.

Neighborhoods, for one, are rarely inclusive, so that metaphor alone can be troubling. We need Community Values to mean benefit for everyone, not communities pitted against each other only looking out for their “own.”

Similarly, “the old days” didn’t hold a lot of promise for many groups. People do like the idea of old-fashioned small towns where everyone knows each others’ names, families are intact, and white picket fences prevail. But the old days in the form of 1950’s America was also home to racism, segregation, limited opportunity for women, and hostile to gays and lesbians.

Community Values should mean drawing on our shared history of collectively solving our problems. We can do this by using examples of how we’ve solved problems collectively, such as the New Deal or Civil Rights. This is an instance where patriotism can aid our cause by igniting people’s pride in our ability to work together.

  • History shows we move forward when we invest in an effective partnership between government and our people. Think of child immunization programs that have wiped out devastating diseases in our country. Think of our Social Security system that has enabled millions of seniors to stay out of poverty. Medicare has kept them safer and healthier without regard to their wealth, race, or region of the country. Think, even, of the interstate highway system, which connected us as a single prosperous nation. To address our health care crisis effectively, we need to invest in those kinds of policies of connection.

Applying Community Values to Health Care

Using the Value, Problem, Solution, Action Model

Value: When it comes to health care, we’re all in it together. We’re a stronger nation when everyone has the health care they need.

Problem: So when 47 million Americans lack health insurance, our whole nation’s health and prosperity are at risk.

Solution: We need policies of connection in our health care system that guarantee access to affordable health care for everyone in our country.

Action: Ask the presidential candidates if they’ll embrace Community Values and guarantee health care for every single member of our nation.

Messaging Examples

  • Embracing Community Values means creating a health care system that works for everyone. Anything less leaves people behind to suffer poor health, bankruptcy, and even early death. We thrive when everyone moves forward, so making sure health care is available for everyone is critical to our nation’s success.
  • Health care reform should create a system that works for everyone. That means health care has to be universal, free of racial and ethnic bias, comprehensive, and designed to meet community needs. If one element is missing, the system isn’t complete. For example, we might expand insurance to everyone in a state, but that doesn’t mean everyone is getting the same quality of care. We need policies of connection here, that look at and address all the pieces of our health care system equally. In taking a true Community Values approach to health care, we can’t overlook quality, access or other important issues when we think about coverage.
  • When it comes to health care, it doesn’t make sense to force people to “go it alone.” We need to promote a Community Values approach. When we spread resources fairly, everyone gets the care they need before problems become costly and more difficult to treat. All social insurance rests on this idea of pooling resources and sharing risk as broadly as possible, recognizing that we’re all in it together. This is particularly important in health care.
  • Our history shows that we’re stronger when we tackle tough issues together. When we have worked together for clean and healthy drinking water, to provide child immunizations, or to reduce smoking, we’ve all benefited. We’re currently looking for ways to address childhood obesity together. We know that this Community Values approach will work better than telling families to figure it out on their own.

Applying Community Values to Immigration

Using the Value, Problem, Solution, Action Model

Value: Immigrants are part of the fabric of our society—they are our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends.

Problem: Reactionary policies that force them into the shadows haven’t worked, and are not consistent with our values. Those policies hurt us all by encouraging exploitation by unscrupulous employers and landlords.

Solution: We support policies that help immigrants contribute and participate fully in our society.

Action: Ask your candidates what they would do to ensure that immigrants are treated fairly and given a voice in this country.

Messaging Examples

  • For America to be a land of opportunity for everyone who lives here, our policies must recognize that we’re all in it together, with common human rights and responsibilities. If one group can be exploited, underpaid and prevented from becoming part of our society, none of us will enjoy the opportunity and rights that America stands for.
  • Reactionary, anti-immigrant policies have repeatedly failed to fix the problem. They’re not workable and they’re not fair to citizens or to immigrants. They hurt all of us and make a bad system worse. We’re all in this together, and such policies of exclusion violate the core sense of community that has always driven the policies that have moved this country forward.
  • Our immigration system should reflect that immigrants have always been part of this nation. But immigration isn’t just a domestic issue; it’s an international reality. We need comprehensive immigration reform that works for the good of all and reflects the interdependence of nations, communities, and workers.
  • As long as our federal immigration system is broken, it’s up to local communities to decide how to work with immigrants. Would you rather live in a place that understands the meaning of Community Values, of working together with immigrants to find solutions? Or a place that moves toward punitive, exclusionary measures? In this country, we value people, and we value treating them the right way. Cooperation and common sense solutions for the common good are the way to go.

Applying Community Values to Workers’ Issues

Using the Value, Problem, Solution, Action Model

Value: America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where we rise together and leave no one behind.

Problem: But too many families are living on the edge of this dream, shut out by unfair labor practices and wages that don’t even put them at the poverty level.

Solution: Our policies must recognize that we’re all in it together, with common human rights and responsibilities. If one group can be exploited, underpaid and prevented from becoming part of our society, none of us will enjoy the opportunity and rights that America stands for.

Action: Ask your candidates what they would do to ensure that all workers are treated fairly and given a voice in this country.

Messaging Examples

  • Embracing Community Values means that we share a basic concern about one another, and accept that the well being of each one of us, and each of our families ultimately depends on the well being of all of us. As a wealthy nation, we have a shared responsibility to use our collective wealth to establish and support programs that help people rise out of poverty.
  • The fates of all workers are connected. When some employers pay workers below the minimum wage or don’t pay them for working overtime, these practices quickly spread and other employers try to profit by following these bad examples. This type of race to the bottom ultimately leaves workers competing with each other over lower wages and fewer benefits. Instead of emphasizing cost-savings and competition, we need to encourage ethical and compassionate business practices that are accountable to the community, and cooperation among workers.
  • We, as a community, must demand that all workers are fairly paid for the hard work they do. This doesn’t just make sense from the perspective of workers, but it’s good for society as a whole. Providing workers with a living wage makes it possible for them to better care for their families, save for the future, contribute to the community and build a stronger America.
  • A business is just another part of our community. But all too often, most of the people in the community have little or no voice or power in the business decisions that affect the community. We need business interests to recognize that they are part of us and have a responsibility to respect the needs of the community. That means paying workers a fair wage, being good stewards of the environment that we all share, and giving back to the community.

Sample Letter to the Editor

Letters to the editor are a quick and effective way to weigh in on issues that the media frequently cover. Often, more people read the letters page than the pages where the original article appeared or the opinion page. Letters need to be short – about 150 words – so it’s best to focus on one point. In the examples below, the letters focus on weaving Community Values into a call for federal immigration reform.

Letters do not need to be negative. Responding to an article that positively portrayed an issue you care about can set a tone friendlier to Community Values than the confrontational tone central to letters of disagreement.

To the Editor:

Thank you for your informative portrait of one town’s experience with immigration. This piece shows that we have a long way to go. But it also illustrates the community values that will ultimately help us address this issue.

Iowa needs and values immigrants, their work, and their contributions to the community. Yet the state’s ability to welcome its newest residents continues to be strangled by the federal governments’ inability to pass reasonable legislation. Instead of giving into the politics of division and isolation favored by anti-immigration forces, these Iowans have chosen to think about immigration in a community-spirited, humane and practical manner. The federal government should take note.

To the Editor:

Your recent article about immigration was a real eye opener. In the divisive rhetoric we hear in the immigration debates, I feel that this human story of community values is so often lost. Absent in this story were the one dimensional stereotypes of oppressive law enforcement or problematic immigrants. Instead, we saw a community-minded portrait of people working together to make the best of a system over which they have no control.

I believe we need more realistic reflections about what immigration really means to communities. Immigrants are already clearly a part of the community, why can’t the federal government not clear the way for positive integration, so that everyone can move forward?

Sample Press Release

Press releases are more than an opportunity to publicize an event or report. They are also messaging vehicles. While the main text of the release should be primarily informative – who, what, when, where, and why – you have a lot of room in the quotes you provide for elevating Community Values.

Heartland Presidential Forum Challenges Candidates:

How can we embrace community values?

News Release

DES MOINES – Ten presidential candidates will gather at Hy Vee Hall on Saturday, December 1 to answer Iowans’ questions about community issues ranging from health care and education to social justice and factory farming. Organizers, who expect an audience of over 5,000, say the theme of the debate, “Community Values,” is meant to focus candidates’ attention on the idea that the common good is too often overlooked in favor of individual interests.

“These core issues are important to Iowans,” said XXXX. “And it’s important that we focus on solving the challenges they present through the lens of community and the common good. When we think of how we’re stronger together, how we solve our problems more effectively when we’re all involved in the process, we all come out ahead.”

[Event details]

“Community values are such an obvious fit for Iowans,” said XXXX. “We look out for each other here, and we resist the politics of isolation that tell us that we have to solve societal problems on our own. Whether it’s health care or the environment, we’re going to do this together, with a positive role for government, and leave no one behind.”

[Continued details]

“We became involved in this event because of its focus on community,” said XXXX. “There’s a lot of lip service to valuing community, but we wanted to force candidates to explain what that really means to each of them on a policy level. We need more policies of connection that recognize how we’re all in this together, and draw on our collective strength. So we’re actively rejecting the “go it alone” approach to policy.”

The State of Housing in New Orleans One Year After Katrina

​Executive Summary

This report assesses the state of housing in New Orleans one year after Hurricane Katrina. It analyzes housing conditions in the city prior to the storm, progress made since, and areas in which the rebuilding effort has fallen short. In addition, it offers practical recommendations to ensure the reconstruction of housing is faster, fairer, and more effective.

Housing has long been central to opportunity and the American Dream. Our homes determine our access to schools, jobs, safety, health care, and political participation. They are a source of shelter, pride, and community. And homeownership provides the chief source of wealth building for millions of Americans. In short, fair and affordable housing is central to the very promise of opportunity—the idea that everyone deserves a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential.

Our research reveals that the natural disaster of Katrina uncovered and exacerbated existing man-made threats to fair and affordable housing, which have been created by specific policy decisions and years of neglect. The resulting lack of affordable units, low rates of homeownership, racial discrimination, and residential segregation, combined with a slow and uneven reconstruction effort, pose steep barriers to displaced and returning residents hoping to start over. Such characteristics limit residents’ chances of recovering from the storm as well as the entire region’s ability to rebuild.

Fortunately, effective tools and strategies exist to reverse these trends and to expand housing opportunity for all people in the region. In particular, reinvesting in effective government systems, many of which are already available, is key to creating safe, accessible, and affordable housing for the people of the region.

The report’s key findings include:

  • The pre-Katrina shortage of affordable housing in New Orleans has since erupted into a major crisis, robbing tens of thousands of displaced residents of their right to return. This crisis is disproportionately borne by the region’s poorest residents: a full 20% of the 82,000 rental units that Katrina damaged or destroyed in Louisiana were affordable to extremely low-income households.
  • The large loss of habitable rental space has caused sharp rent increases in many damaged areas.
  • The plans of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demolish four of the city’s largest public housing complexes instead of repairing and reopening them will further hamper returning residents’ opportunity to start over.
  • The affordable housing shortage is now accompanied by a failure to restore the neighborhood conditions and infrastructure that nourish and foster community. As of July 2006:
    • Only 18% of public schools have reopened.
    • Only 21% of child-care centers have reopened.
    • A mere 17% of public buses are operational.
    • Only 60% of homes have electricity service.
    • In the city of New Orleans only 50% of hospitals have reopened.
  • Over 100,000 evacuated households were still in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers as of May 2006, with 1,800 trailers in Alabama, 34,000 in Mississippi, and the majority—68,000—in Louisiana. These trailer communities are geographically isolated, leaving residents with limited access to the opportunities, resources, and community they need to start rebuilding their lives.
  • Evidence indicates that, throughout the Gulf Coast, displaced African Americans seeking apartments have experienced housing discrimination, receiving significantly worse treatment than white apartment seekers.

To meet these challenges the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), The Opportunity Agenda, and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity propose a Housing Opportunity Action Plan, which includes short- and long-term recommendations. Key to this plan is reinvesting in effective government systems that have a track record of promoting housing opportunity.

Recommendations for immediate action include:

  • Authorizing additional housing vouchers to ensure that a portion of rebuilt housing is affordable to low-income households.
  • Preserving existing federal housing resources by repairing and reopening—rather than demolishing—habitable public housing and replacing all destroyed units.
  • Shifting all temporary rental assistance programs to HUD’s Disaster Voucher Program in order to draw upon HUD’s experience in administering housing assistance and the infrastructure of public housing agencies.
  • Focusing federal civil-rights enforcement efforts on the Gulf Coast region and Katrina’s diaspora with an emphasis on Fair Housing Act enforcement.

Recommendations for longer-term reforms include:

  • Requiring a Housing Opportunity Impact Statement as a condition of public support for future rebuilding efforts.
  • Creating incentives for the development of mixed-income neighborhoods with equal access to quality schools, health care, jobs, and other stepping-stones to opportunity.
  • Fully funding the repair and rehabilitation of privately owned housing stock.
  • Promoting homeownership among low-income families through down-payment- assistance programs and rent-to-own programs.

Finally, because many of the housing problems revealed by Katrina flow from national trends, we call for a new national vision that expands housing opportunity for all Americans. Our long-term recommendations include scaling up many of the reforms described above to reach Americans drowning on dry land without access to safe, fair and affordable housing. In particular, federal and state policies should promote inclusionary zoning, an important tool with a proven track record in encouraging mixed-income housing. The Home Mortgage Data Reporting Act should also be expanded, and the Federal Reserve Bank should step up its fair-lending oversight to prevent discriminatory and predatory lending practices. When tax incentives and other indirect means of encouragement fail, state and federal governments must support the development of new affordable housing.

In a country in which we are increasingly interconnected, we must invest in increasing opportunity for all our residents. Ensuring housing opportunity for all is an investment in the prosperity of our nation that will provide returns for many years to come.

Introduction

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29, 2005, as a Category 4 hurricane. It passed within 15 miles of New Orleans, Louisiana. The storm brought heavy winds and rain to the city, and the rising water breached several levees built to protect New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain. The levee breaches flooded up to 80% of the city, with water in some places as high as 25 feet. The storm and flooding took over 1,500 lives and displaced an estimated 700,000 residents.1

Katrina and the levee breaches devastated the homes of hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents. Nearly 228,000 homes and apartments in New Orleans were flooded, including 39% of all owner-occupied units and 56% of all rental units.2 Approximately 204,700 housing units in Louisiana either were destroyed or sustained major damage. As of April 2006, 360,000 Louisiana residents remained displaced outside the state.3 Some 61,900 people were living in FEMA trailers and mobile homes.4

As the floodwaters receded, displaced residents began the difficult process of rebuilding their lives. Many viewed returning to their communities as a critical step in that process—but one that required access to safe, affordable housing that the state and federal government still has not helped to provide.

This report assesses the state of housing in New Orleans one year after Katrina. It analyzes housing conditions in the city prior to the storm, progress made since, and areas in which the rebuilding effort has fallen short. In addition, it offers practical recommendations to ensure the reconstruction of housing is faster, fairer, and more effective.

Our research reveals that the natural disaster of Katrina uncovered and exacerbated existing man-made threats to fair and affordable housing, created by specific policy decisions and years of neglect. The resulting lack of affordable units, low rates of homeownership, racial discrimination and residential segregation combined with a slow and uneven reconstruction effort pose steep barriers to displaced and returning residents hoping to start over. Such characteristics limit both residents’ chances of recovering from the storm as well as the entire region’s ability to rebuild.

Fortunately, effective tools and strategies exist to reverse these trends and to expand housing opportunity for all in the region. In particular, reinvesting in effective government systems, many of which are already available, is key to creating safe, accessible, and affordable housing for the people of the region.

We acknowledge that resolving the housing crisis in New Orleans will not be easy. Rebuilding the city presents challenges that our country has rarely, if ever, faced.  But doing so is crucial not only to the people of New Orleans but also to our national values and our strength as a country. Our ability and resolve to provide a way home for all New Orleanians—no matter their race, ethnicity, income level, or gender—are a test of our resources but also of our moral fiber as a nation. Ensuring that displaced residents receive fair treatment, economic security, a voice in decisions that affect them, and a right of return5 to their communities is core to our national identity as a land of opportunity.

Research and experience show that it is within our power as a society to rebuild New Orleans through strategies that expand opportunity for all. Key to these strategies is a positive and effective role for government in promoting safety and ensuring fairness. A renewed partnership between our government and our people, all of us looking forward while heeding the lessons of the past, can achieve these goals and serve as a model for our nation. We all have a role to play in creating cohesive communities. But it is government’s responsibility to establish public priorities and set rules that reflect our national values. When government has kept the doors of opportunity open, the American people have always been quick to walk through them.

Why focus on housing amid the many challenges facing New Orleans? Housing has long been central to opportunity and the American Dream. Our homes determine our access to schools, jobs, safety, health care, and political participation. They are a source of shelter, pride, and community. And homeownership provides the chief source of wealth building for millions of Americans. In short, fair and affordable housing is central to the very promise of opportunity—the idea that everyone deserves a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential.

It is from these fundamental principles—opportunity, fairness, and government of, by and for the people—that we at the NAACP, The Opportunity Agenda, and the Kirwan Institute report our findings and offer our recommendations for the rebuilding of housing in New Orleans.

Housing Conditions in New Orleans Prior to Katrina

Before Katrina struck, the people of New Orleans faced significant barriers to housing opportunity, including a severe shortage of affordable housing, a low homeownership rate, problematic housing policies, and acute racial and economic segregation. Understanding that landscape, and the decisions that caused it, is important in avoiding the problems of the past and in pursuing a fair and effective reconstruction process that can fulfill the promise of opportunity.

A Lack of Affordable Housing

Like most cities across the country, New Orleans already had an affordable housing shortage before Katrina. Two-thirds (67%) of extremely low-income households in New Orleans bore housing costs that exceed 30% of income, considered excessive under federal standards, and more than half (56%) of very low-income households paid more than half their income for housing.6

Low Homeownership Rates

Before the flooding, New Orleans already had a low homeownership rate–only 47% compared to 67% nationally.7 Of those owning homes, rates were not even among residents as African American and low-income families in New Orleans had far lower rates of homeownership than whites and higher-income families.8

Segregated Neighborhoods

New Orleans suffered acute residential segregation prior to Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, which contributed to the disproportionate impact of the storm on low-income and minority communities. Indeed, the city and region have an extensive history of legal segregation,9 which continued long after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Shelley v. Kramer10 and Brown v. Board of Education11 struck down racially restrictive covenants and legal segregation, respectively.

That pattern and practice of discrimination at times included the direct participation of the federal government. In 1969, for example, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana found that the U.S. Department of HUD’s practice of intentionally concentrating New Orleans’ public housing in African American neighborhoods violated the U.S. Constitution.12 The court said of HUD’s actions:

[T]he dominant factor in selecting sites for the location of public housing was the racial concentration of the neighborhoods. Its purpose was to perpetuate segregation of the races in public housing, and the present location of the sites will most likely perpetuate segregation. This is rank discrimination forbidden by both the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and [the Civil Rights Act of 1964].13

As a result of this history, New Orleans remained highly segregated when Katrina hit. While residential segregation in the city declined slightly between 1990 and 2000, it continued to remain significantly above the national average.14 U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2000 ranked New Orleans the 11th most-segregated city among large U.S. metropolitan areas.15

Racial segregation also played a part in the economic segregation of New Orleans, resulting in racially segregated high- and concentrated-poverty neighborhoods. Before Katrina, New Orleans had the second-highest rate of African American concentrated poverty in the nation, with 37% of the city’s African American population living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty.

Residing in areas of concentrated poverty depresses life outcomes and often results in isolation from the social, educational and economic opportunities necessary to better one’s life. Research by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University found that New Orleans neighborhoods with higher concentrations of African Americans, like the Lower Ninth Ward, Central City and St. Roch, were primarily “low opportunity” areas with limited access to quality schools, jobs, and safety from crime.16

After Katrina hit, these racially and economically segregated areas bore the brunt of the disaster. More than three-quarters of concentrated-poverty areas were flooded.17 And 80% of residents in the most flooded areas were nonwhite.18

Barriers to Equitable Housing Opportunities in New Orleans Since Katrina

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath displaced hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents, creating a diaspora of hurricane survivors around the region and across the country.19 Despite public promises, the rebuilding process has been unacceptably slow, and has poorly served African Americans and low-income residents—the very people who bore the brunt of the storm. Moreover, many aspects of the reconstruction threaten to worsen rather than redress the problems of high housing costs, discrimination, and segregation that existed in pre-Katrina New Orleans.

The Lack of Affordable Rental Housing

The shortage of affordable housing that existed in pre-Katrina New Orleans has since erupted into a major crisis, robbing thousands of displaced residents of their right to return.20 Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed 82,000 rental units in Louisiana, a fifth of which were affordable to extremely low-income households.21 The large loss of habitable rental space in many damaged areas has caused sharp rent increases. As the following table from the Brookings Institute shows, since fiscal year 2000 fair market rents in New Orleans are now at their highest levels, surpassing pre-Katrina rent prices:22

Despite this severe shortage of affordable housing, of the entire $11.5 billion Community Development Bloc Grant allocation for Louisiana, just $920 million is targeted towards rental housing for extremely low-and very-low-income people.23

Because affordable permanent housing has yet to be made available for returning residents, the number of occupied emergency trailers and mobile homes has swelled by 30,164 units since March 2006, while the number of households receiving rental assistance has increased by 33,350.24

This situation is not only preventing displaced residents from returning, but also hampering the rebuilding process. Housing available to reconstruction workers—the people doing the hard work of rebuilding the city—is inadequate and often inhumane. A recent survey by the Advancement Project indicated that:

  • Housing for reconstruction laborers is severely limited. Many live near construction sites in hotel rooms and shared apartments, and some even in cars or at the work sites.
  • On average, construction workers share housing with five others.
  • Over two-thirds of the construction workers surveyed have children, but less than half reported having had their families relocate with them to the Gulf Coast.25

Public Housing

Despite the lack of housing for low-income people, HUD intends to demolish four of the city’s largest public housing complexes: St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper and Lafitte. The agency also intends to reopen 1,000 units of housing by August 2006 in the Iberville, Guste, Fischer, River Garden and Hendee Homes complexes.26 But opening these units will not begin to meet the city’s need as an additional 3,000 units will still be necessary to bring New Orleans’ capacity back to pre-Katrina levels.27

Homeownership

The uneven rebuilding effort will likely exacerbate the existing racial gap in homeownership in New Orleans. Despite a low homeownership rate in New Orleans in general, many of the African American neighborhoods devastated by flooding had high ownership rates. The Lower Ninth Ward, which was 96% African American, had a homeownership rate of 54%. Similar characteristics were found in New Orleans East (86% African American, 55% homeownership rate) and Gentilly (70% African American, 72% homeownership rate).28 But many of the homeowners within these neighborhoods did not have flood and hazard insurance, creating a significant impediment to rebuilding. Approximately one-quarter of homeowners in New Orleans East and Gentilly and two-thirds of homeowners in the Lower Ninth Ward lacked insurance.29

Emergency Housing

Largely as a result of the lack of affordable housing, over 100,000 evacuated households still lived in FEMA trailers as of May 2006, with 1,800 travel trailers in Alabama, 34,000 in Mississippi and 68,000 in Louisiana. These trailer communities are geographically isolated, leaving residents with limited access to the opportunities and resources necessary to rebuild their lives.30 In addition, households in FEMA emergency housing are frequently forced to live in deplorable conditions. Thousands of displaced evacuees from New Orleans and its vicinity (St. Bernard, Cameron, Vermilion and Jefferson Davis parishes) have found themselves stuck in what the Washington Post described as “squalid, miserable, dangerous FEMA trailer ‘villages.’”31

Discrimination

Evidence indicates that throughout the Gulf Coast, displaced African Americans seeking apartments have experienced housing discrimination, receiving significantly worse treatment than white apartment seekers. A study conducted by the National Fair Housing Alliance found persistent housing discrimination on the basis of race. In phone tests that had white and African American individuals call numerous housing complexes, white home seekers were more likely to be told about apartment availability, rent, and discounts. Their African American counterparts were often denied this information. This study, involving housing complexes in seventeen cities and five states affected by the 2005 hurricanes, found that apartment complexes:

  • Failed to tell African Americans about available apartments, but told white callers that one or more units were available.
  • Failed to return telephone messages left by African Americans.
  • Failed to provide the correct information, or any information, to African American testers regarding the number of available units, rental price range, and security deposits.
  • Quoted higher rent and security deposit prices to African American testers. In one case, a white tester was told that her security deposit and application fee would be waived because of her status as a Hurricane Katrina victim, while an African American hurricane survivor had to pay both.
  • Offered special discounts to white renters. An example in Dallas illustrates that both white testers were offered a free 26-inch LCD television for renting at a particular complex. One of the white renters was told that there would be a $100 refundable security deposit plus a $400 admission fee, and the other was told that the security deposit was $500 with $100 refundable. An African American tester was not told about the television, but was notified that she would have to pay a $500 admission fee, as well as a nonrefundable $500 security deposit.32

These practices illustrate the potential re-establishment of segregation that existed in the region before Katrina, and to cut African Americans off from the traditional stepping-stones to opportunity—quality housing, schools, jobs, health care, and transportation.

The Loss of Community

In many neighborhoods in New Orleans, schools are not opening, health-care services are not available, and homes are not being rebuilt. In other words, community is being lost. Even if all the homes were rebuilt and all the residents returned, New Orleans would remain in crisis without the rebuilding of community characteristics that promote opportunity. For example, as of July 2006:

  • Only 18% of public schools have reopened.
  • Just 21% of child-care centers have reopened.
  • A mere 17% of public buses are operational.
  • Only 60% of homes have electricity service.33

In Louisiana 30 hospitals initially closed due to hurricane damage, and only 10 had reopened as of March 9, 2006.34 In the city of New Orleans only 50% of hospitals have been reopened.35

The Result: Unequal Opportunity to Return

As a result of the unfair and inadequate rebuilding process, the most vulnerable groups have faced the steepest barriers. Disparate opportunities for Gulf residents to return to their homes are creating rapid demographic shifts in the population. Low- income communities and people of color now make up a smaller percentage of the New Orleans metropolitan population.36 Because of the population shift and uneven return migration, the disparity in wealth is likely to influence which neighborhoods are rebuilt and which ones are not, further impeding low-income and minority communities from returning.37

In addition to the basic fairness of allowing everyone to return home, recent research has shown that African Americans who return fare better in finding employment. According to the Economic Policy Institute, only 32% of African American evacuees who have not returned have found jobs, while the rate is 60% – the same as for whites – among those who have returned.38

A National Challenge

In some ways, New Orleans represents an exceptional situation: as a highly segregated, high-poverty city with limited housing opportunity beset by multiple hurricanes and a catastrophic flood. But many of New Orleans’ housing problems—the lack of affordable housing, stagnant homeownership rates, residential segregation, and persistent discrimination— represent national trends away from opportunity for Americans across the country. Just as low-income Americans and communities of color are bearing the brunt of these forces in New Orleans today, those groups face the highest barriers to housing opportunity nationally.

After a period of significant national progress in making affordable housing and homeownership fair and accessible, our nation’s progress has stalled and, in some instances, the country is losing ground. For example, as noted in The Opportunity Agenda’s report The State of Opportunity in America:39

  • Nationally, of the 4.4 million “working poor” households in the United States, nearly 60% pay more than half of their incomes for housing or live in dilapidated conditions. These families—most of whom include children—are more likely to have trouble paying household bills, to lack health insurance, and to experience hunger.
  • Homeownership has slightly increased nationally over the last 25 years, from a 65.4% homeownership rate in 1979 to 68.3% in 2003. But large gaps in homeownership exist among income, racial, and ethnic groups. For example, between 1970 and 2003, homeownership among the top 20% of wage earners grew by over 10%, while slightly declining among the lowest fifth of wage earners. African American and Latino households are also far less likely to own homes than whites. Although this gap has narrowed slightly, it is large, and has persisted for decades.
  • Nationally, according to a 2000 HUD study of cities across the country, landlords and real estate agents favored whites seeking rental housing over similarly-qualified African Americans 22% of the time, and over Hispanics 26% of the time. Asian Americans and Native Americans also faced significant levels of housing discrimination.
  • Low-income African Americans are 7.3 times more likely than whites to live in high poverty neighborhoods (those with 30% or more living in poverty)—a gap that has increased almost 100% since 1960.40
  • HUD data show that African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders are more likely than whites to receive higher interest sub prime loans in the vast majority of U.S. metropolitan areas. These racial disparities are higher among more affluent borrowers than among less affluent ones.41

These findings make clear that New Orleans is not unique in facing a crisis in fair and affordable housing. While the extreme circumstances of the Gulf Coast demand immediate action, housing opportunity is a national concern that requires a swift and sure federal response.

Next Steps: A Housing Opportunity Plan for New Orleans and the Nation

Katrina exposed stark racial and economic inequalities that many Americans thought no longer existed in our country. In rebuilding New Orleans, we have a historic opportunity to reverse these trends in ways that will benefit all communities. It is not too late to dismantle residential segregation and promote housing opportunity for all Gulf Coast communities. Federal, state, and local officials must act immediately to speed the rebuilding process, to prioritize affordable housing, and to ensure that the burdens and benefits of rebuilding are shared by all, whatever their race or income.

To meet that challenge, the NAACP, The Opportunity Agenda and the Kirwan Institute propose a Housing Opportunity Action Plan that includes short-term and long- term recommendations. Key to this plan is reinvesting in effective government systems with a track record of promoting housing opportunity. Many of these systems are already available and require only adequate funding, activation or enforcement. In other cases, significant policy changes are needed to address the current challenge.

Recommendations for immediate action include:

  1. Shift all temporary rental assistance programs to HUD’s Disaster Voucher Program (DVP). The households remaining in FEMA’s transitional housing assistance program, and in state and local voucher programs, should be assisted instead through HUD’s DVP. Shifting responsibility would take advantage of HUD’s experience in administering housing assistance to people in need, as well as the infrastructure of public housing agencies that already administer two million vouchers nationwide. It would provide more flexibility and choice for displaced families, security to landlords who rent to evacuees and improved federal oversight of the use of federal resources. Additionally, such a shift would rectify the myriad of problems facing the approximately 200,000 households currently in FEMA’s transitional housing assistance program.42
  2. Authorize additional housing vouchers to ensure that a portion of rebuilt private housing is affordable to low- income households. Section 8 vouchers can be a part of the long-run solution, as long as funding is adequate for displaced residents to obtain market rate housing. Section 8 vouchers must be truly portable, allowing recipients to look for housing beyond areas of concentrated poverty.43
  3. Assist low- income homeowners in their efforts to repair or replace damaged homes. Much of the assistance provided, like that from the Small Business Administration, is unattainable for low-income households, who often have difficulty meeting repayment conditions. Additional funds must be provided to address this need.44
  4. Preserve existing federal housing resources in the Gulf. Because most of the subsidized housing in the region was destroyed, it must be rebuilt for those who need affordable housing. The Secretaries of HUD and the Department of Agriculture should act now to preserve or replace, on a one-for one basis, all federally assisted housing in the affected areas. Public housing and other federally subsidized housing that was not damaged should immediately be reopened and former tenants should be allowed to return. Developments or units that were damaged beyond repair should be rebuilt in a manner ensuring all former tenants a right to return. As former tenants await the reconstruction of their homes, they must be guaranteed temporary, affordable housing.45
  5. Require that HUD make its plan for New Orleans public housing available for public input. Any planning and redevelopment decision-making necessary for public housing in New Orleans must include, engage and be informed by representatives of all people affected.
  6. Step up enforcement of all applicable human rights laws. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit housing practices and publicly subsidized rebuilding efforts, respectively, that have a racially discriminatory purpose or effect. HUD and the U.S. Department of Justice should immediately direct enforcement resources to the Gulf Coast region and the Katrina diaspora, to ensure that all displaced people enjoy an equal right to housing opportunity.

In the longer term, significant investment is needed in government systems that create new affordable housing that is equally accessible to all of the people of the Gulf Coast region. Recommendations include:

  1. Require a Housing Opportunity Impact Statement as a condition of public support for future rebuilding efforts. Under this requirement, federal, state and local agencies should call upon developers, contractors, and others involved in the reconstruction process to demonstrate—based on available data—that planned redevelopment will ensure poor people and people of color equal access to safe, clean, affordable housing that is accessible by roads and public transportation to good jobs, quality schools, safe daycare, and nutritious food. The requirement should be coupled with incentives for the development of mixed income neighborhoods and ensure that environmental protections are respected in all communities. And it should afford local residents a meaningful voice in the planning and decision process. Existing federal laws, including the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorize, and may require, this approach.
  2. Fully fund the repair and rehabilitation of privately owned housing stock, for both immediate and long term housing needs, and for new construction for long term housing needs. Funds should be provided through the HOME program of grants to states and localities, which has income targeting and long term affordability requirements that would assure that the homes repaired with public funds would not be subject to speculative increases as the recovery proceeds. (The Community Development Block Grant) program is not bound by such rules. Funds should be prioritized to affected areas and jurisdictions with large numbers of evacuees and for rental housing affordable to extremely low-income households. Some waivers of existing statutory requirements will be needed to facilitate rapid deployment of funds.46
  3. Adequately support and enable HUD’s Flexible Subsidy Program to provide no and low- interest loans to damaged HUD project- based housing stock. HUD estimates that there is a $200 million gap between what is required to repair all damaged units and what insurance payments will cover. This program was successfully used to repair HUD-assisted housing damaged in the Northridge earthquake.
  4. Fully fund 13,500 new project- based vouchers to be tied to the production of new rental units developed through new Gulf Opportunity Zone ( GoZone) Low Income Housing Tax Credits ( LIHTC). These vouchers would enable the states to make roughly 25% of the units built with their additional allocations of LIHTCs affordable to the lowest-income households, including working poor families, senior citizens and people with disabilities. This provision was included in the Senate version of the 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill, but was dropped during conference committee negotiations.
  5. Promote homeownership among low-income families through down- payment- assistance programs, and rent- to- own programs. The American Dream Downpayment Initiative signed by President Bush in 2003, and expansion of the LouLease (Louisiana’s rent-to-own program) could assist families that had uninsured homes destroyed by the hurricane to return to ownership.47
  6. Extend the deadline by which all new projects built using GoZone, Rita GoZone and Wilma GoZone LIHTCs are placed in service to December of 2010. Creating more affordable housing stock and sustainable communities by extending the LIHTC would improve the ability of the tax credit to decrease concentrated poverty—and expanding HOPE VI, the only major federal program dedicated solely to the creation of affordable housing communities. Extend through 2009 the bonus depreciation eligibility deadline for residential rental property in the allotment of GoZone, Rita GoZone and Wilma GoZone LIHTCs. Provide a rules waiver allowing states to increase the level of tax credit subsidy per development.
  7. Reimburse federal housing and homeless programs that responded to the needs of evacuees using resources already in short supply. Soon after the hurricane, Local Housing Authorities (LHAs) and other agencies responded to the needs of displaced households with existing resources. In most cases, disaster victims displaced people with critical housing needs who were waiting for assistance before the hurricanes. LHAs and other agencies must be reimbursed for their disaster response costs, even in states that were not declared federal disaster areas.

Finally, because many of the housing problems revealed by Katrina flow from national trends, we call for a new national vision that expands housing opportunity for all Americans. Our long-term recommendations include scaling up many of the reforms described above to reach Americans drowning on dry land without access to safe, fair, and affordable housing. In particular, inclusionary zoning that encourages mixed-income housing is an important tool with a proven track record. In addition, the Home Mortgage Data Reporting Act should be expanded, and the Federal Reserve Bank should step up its fair lending oversight. When tax incentives and other indirect encouragement fail, state and federal governments must subsidize the development of new affordable housing.

Conclusion

In a country in which we are increasingly interconnected, we can’t afford not to invest in opportunity for all our residents. Ensuring housing opportunity for all is an investment in the prosperity of our nation that provides returns for many years to come.

Acknowledgements

While this report includes new analysis and policy recommendations, it relies heavily on research conducted by a range of scholars, institutions, and agencies over the course of the last twelve months. Without that foundation of knowledge and expertise, our findings and recommendations would not be possible. In particular, we wish to acknowledge researchers and analysts at the Advancement Project, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Social Inclusion, the Economic Policy Institute, PolicyLink, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council.

Finally, and most importantly, we thank and honor the people of the Gulf Coast who have endured so much yet continue to pursue the promise of opportunity for all.

Notes:

1. M. Hunter, “Deaths of Evacuees Push Toll to 1,577,” The Times-Picayune, May 19, 2006; Congressional Research Service, “Hurricane Katrina: Social-Demographic Characteristics of Impacted Areas,” November 4, 2005.

2. The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, “New Orleans After the Storm: Lessons from the Past, a Plan for the Future,” October 2005.

3. Louisiana Recovery Authority, “By the Numbers,” April 10, 2006.

4. Ibid.

5. The right of internally displaced people to return to their communities is recognized internationally, as in the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, to which the U.S. has looked in responding to disasters in other parts of the world. These guidelines call for equal and adequate access to resettlement, housing, education, and health care for affected people and communities, whatever their race or ethnicity. See U.S. Agency for International Development, “USAID Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons Policy,” October 2004.

6. S.J. Popkin, M.A. Turner, and M. Bert, “Rebuilding Affordable Housing in New Orleans: The Challenge of Creating Inclusive Communities,” The Urban Institute, January 2006.

7. Ibid.

8. Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, “Orleans Parish: Housing and Housing Costs,” July 2006.

9. In Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Louisiana’s segregated railway-car laws.

10. 334 US 1 (1948).

11. 347 US 483 (1954).

12. Hicks v. Weaver, 302 F. Supp. 619 (E.D. La. 1969).

13. Hicks v. Weaver, 623.

14. J. Logan, “Ethnic Diversity Grows, Neighborhood Integration Lags Behind,” Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research, University of Albany, December 18, 2001.

15. U.S. Census Bureau, “Table 5-4: Residential Segregation for Blacks or African Americans in Large Metropolitan Areas: 1980, 1990, and 2000,” n.d.

16. Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University, “Mid-Term Report: New Orleans Opportunity Mapping: An Analytical Tool to Aid Redevelopment,” February 1, 2006.

17. The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, “Katrina’s Window: Confronting Concentrated Poverty across America,” executive summary, October 2005.

18. The Brookings Institution, “New Orleans After the Storm.”

19. Congressional Research Service, “Hurricane Katrina: Social-Demographic Characteristics of Impacted Areas.”

20. Gwen Filosa, “Protesters Take Plight to the Avenue: Scarce Public Housing Has People Upset,” The Times-Picayune, June 18, 2006.

21. Louisiana Recovery Authority, “The Road Home Housing Programs Action Plan Amendment for Disaster Recovery Funds,” n.d.

22. A. Liu, M. Fellowes, and M. Mabanta, “Katrina Index: Tracking Variables of Post-Katrina Recovery,” The Brookings Institution, July 12, 2006.

23. The National Alliance to Restore Opportunity to the Gulf Coast and Displaced Persons, “The Aftermath of Katrina and Rita: The Human Tragedy Inflicted on the Gulf Coast,” n.d.

24. The National Alliance to Restore Opportunity to the Gulf Coast and Displaced Persons, “Progress in the Gulf Coast: 10 Months Later,” n.d.

25. Advancement Project, New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, and the National Immigration Law Center, “And Injustice for All: Workers’ Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans,” July 2006.

26. Housing Authority of New Orleans, “Post-Katrina Frequently Asked Questions,” n.d.

27. Ibid. Before Hurricane Katrina, the Housing Authority of New Orleans helped house about 14,000 families: 5,100 occupied public housing, and 9,000 families received Section 8 vouchers. See Michelle Roberts, “HUD Plans to Demolish Some of New Orleans’ Largest Housing Projects,” The Associated Press, June 14, 2005.

28. J. Logan, “The Impact of Katrina: Race and Class in Storm-Damaged Neighborhoods,” Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences, Brown University, January 2006.

29. Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, “Current Housing Unit Damage Estimates: Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma,” February 12, 2006, revised April 7, 2006.

30. Liu et al., “Katrina Index.”

31. J. Moses, “Katrina’s Trailer Exiles” The Washington Post, June 17, 2006.

32. National Fair Housing Alliance, “No Home for the Holidays: Report on Housing Discrimination against Hurricane Katrina Survivors,” December 20, 2005.

33. M. Fellowes et al., “The State of New Orleans: An Update,” New York Times, July 5, 2006.

34. Louisiana Recovery Authority, “By the Numbers,” 2006.

35. Fellowes et al., “The State of New Orleans.”

36. Louisiana Recovery Authority, “By The Numbers.”

37. National Alliance to Restore Opportunity, “The Aftermath of Katrina and Rita.”

38. Economic Policy Institute, “Economic Snapshot,” November 9, 2005.

39. The Opportunity Agenda, The State of Opportunity in America, February 2006.

40. Ibid.

41. National Community Reinvestment Coalition, The Opportunity Agenda, and Poverty and Race Research Action Council, “Homeownership and Wealth Building Impeded,” April 2006.

42. W. Fischer and B. Sard, “Housing Needs of Many Low-Income Hurricane Evacuees Are Not Being Adequately Addressed,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, February 27, 2006.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Popkin, Turner, and Bert, “Rebuilding Affordable Housing in New Orleans.”

47. Fischer and Sard, “Housing Needs of Many Low-Income Hurricane Evacuees.”

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