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Wealth Opportunities Realized Through Homeownership (WORTH): Baseline Report

May 15, 2023

This report is part of an evaluation of the Wealth Opportunities Realized through Homeownership (WORTH) initiative. Led by the Wells Fargo Foundation, WORTH supports efforts to close persistent disparities in homeownership in Atlanta, Houston, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Diego, and rural and tribal areas. In each market, we examine housing supply and demand, homebuying activity, homeownership trends, and preservation conditions. We found that in almost every market, white households have higher homeownership rates than every other racial or ethnic group. Moreover, macroeconomic forces driving market conditions, like higher interest rates and moderating house prices, can significantly dampen or thwart market collaboratives' efforts to boost homeownership rates for people of color. Future evaluation will examine the implementation processes used in each market. The larger body of work contributes to understanding the crucial connection between homeownership and wealth-building and the multitude of barriers that households of color face in achieving homeownership. It also supports research-backed strategies for increasing homeownership for households of color and for reducing racial disparities.

The South Has Something to Say - An Examination of Student Loan Debt in the South Part One: Atlanta

April 13, 2023

This paper series is an expansion of the Student Borrower Protection Center's exploration of the geography of student debt disparities and the economic distress that borrowers of color, particularly those who are Black and Latino, face in the student loan market. Research has increasingly shed light on the vast racial disparities present in the student debt crisis. Beyond rising balances and unaffordable monthly bills, student debt has far-reaching effects on the lived experience of student loan borrowers and the communities in which they live.In 2020, the SBPC published Disparate Debts, an examination of racial disparities in student debt burdens and borrower distress across US cities in general and in DC, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco in particular. Expanding on Disparate Debts, this series, Student Debt in the South, leverages previous work to examine the intersection of race and student debt throughout the South, including efforts to highlight the burdens that student loan borrowers face in both cities and rural communities.As a part of the Student Loan Law Initiative (SLLI) and in partnership with the University of California Berkeley, we have analyzed proprietary data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel (UCCCP) data on the far-reaching effects of student debt in several metropolitan and rural areas across the South. The descriptive and demographic insights gleaned from these data help us understand the local effects of rising student debt and borrower distress and to underscore where the student debt crisis disproportionately affects certain communities, particularly communities of color.The first report in this series focuses on the city of Atlanta, providing a case study on the effects of student debt on the Black middle class and the shifting impacts of student debt on communities of color over the past decade.

Revitalizing Civic Engagement through Collaborative Governance: Stories of Success From Around the United States

December 16, 2022

A growing level of political dysfunction and hyper-partisan polarization has led us to a critical point in the way we govern. With democracy under threat and deep distrust of democratic institutions, how can we instill innovative reforms centered around real influence and decision-making power? At a moment of extreme vulnerability, communities and civic organizations need to have genuine political agency by directly influencing policy decision-making. Collaborative governance—or "co-governance"—offers an opportunity to create new forms of civic power. This report offers lessons from across local, city, state, and federal policymaking and highlights effective models of co-governance from community leaders and those in government.

Collaborative Outcomes from the Youth Justice and Employment Community of Practice

October 18, 2022

Established in mid-2021, the Youth Justice and Employment Community of Practice (CoP) is a partnership of the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF), the National Youth Employment Coalition (NYEC), and Pretrial Justice Institute (PJI) formed to improve outcomes for youth with justice involvement by increasing collaboration among local workforce and juvenile justice systems. The CoP began during the middle of COVID-19 at a time when counterparts in each jurisdiction were seeking to reestablish pandemic-disrupted communication and collaboration. CoP participants met monthly to share knowledge and expertise on topics of importance to both systems. Based on work from the CoP, participating cities and counties produced notable improvements in building relationships, expanding partnerships, and promoting investments that benefit justice-involved young people in their communities. This report documents successes and offers recommendations for others seeking to improve outcomes for these young people.

Engaging Atlanta’s Youth and Young Adults in Economic Opportunity - Strategic Planning Research

September 6, 2022

This report explores findings from a research project led by and drawing on responses from youth and young adults in Atlanta. Study authors Creative Research Solutions (CRS) worked with five young leaders who, drawing from their experiences, developed a research strategy to better understand the educational and career aspirations of Atlanta's young people, as well as the obstacles they face in pursuit of their goals

Practical Guidance: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Lobbying in Georgia

May 24, 2022

Bolder Advocacy's Practical Guidance – What Nonprofits Need to Know About Lobbying state law resource series is designed to help nonprofits determine if lobbying rules in their state might apply to their state or local work, and if they do, how best to navigate them!Each Guide Includes:Summary of lobbyist registration and reporting triggers in the stateKey critical takeaways for nonprofit organizationsFAQs – giving practical perspective on how to interact with the state rulesCase study for a hypothetical small student voting rights organizationList of helpful additional resourcesWho are these Guides For?Nonprofit Advocacy Organizations: Leaders and staff of nonprofit organizations that work on (or are thinking about working on) advocacy initiatives at the state or local levelLawyers: Lawyers and compliance professionals interested in working with nonprofit advocacy organizations doing state and local level workFunders: Funding organizations working to ensure strong organizational capacity and infrastructure for the groups they fund doing advocacy work at the state and local level

Black Women’s and Birth Workers’ Experiences of Disrespect and Abuse in Maternity Care: Findings From a Qualitative Exploratory Research Study in Atlanta, Georgia

April 19, 2022

Public health research has generated increasingly sophisticated theories and methods for linking the biological to the social, and for understanding how historical and current forms of discrimination, trauma and injustice find expression in health outcomes. Stark racial disparities in maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity are particularly appropriate for this exploration because women's sexuality and reproduction has always been a crucial battleground for social control of disadvantaged groups, for assertions of biomedical dominance and professional hierarchies, and for humiliation—and selective celebration—of individuals to further promote specific gender and racial ideologies.Yet, simultaneously, women's sexuality and reproduction has also provided the setting for women to assert their personhood, express their community and cultural solidarity, and define and demand their political and social citizenship. Over the last four decades, women of color have built social movements to link this profound understanding of the personal and political meaning of reproduction to the wider struggle for social justice across a broad range of social institutions where racism finds different forms of expression–schools, police and courts, voting rights and political representation, media and social discourse. The recent surge of attention to what advocates, scholars, politicians and journalists now routinely call the "Black maternal health crisis" helps to create an important opportunity for research to link to action, indeed for research to be action.This report is just one step towards recognition of the role of racism in maternal health. It describes findings from an exploratory, qualitative research study of Black women's experiences during pregnancy and childbirth in Atlanta, which was conducted in 2018 in partnership between Black Mamas Matter Alliance (BMMA), the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) program of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Center for Black Women's Wellness (CBWW), and other local community-based organizations. This was part of a larger study conducted in New York City in 2017 (Freedman et. al., 2020). Specifically, the study in Atlanta sought to understand Black women's perceptions of the disrespect and abuse they experienced during pregnancy and childbirth. By focusing on disrespect and abuse during childbirth, the study links to a wider global movement that is mobilizing around the concept of respectful maternity care (Armbruster et. al., 2011). It also constitutes initial steps in pursuit of a wider agenda led by BMMA and women of color organizations that seek to transform knowledge and how it is generated, and by doing so, build power and shift culture, bending the arc of history toward social justice (Aina et. al., 2019).

The Impacts of Emergency Micro-Grants on Student Success: Evaluation Study of Georgia State University’s Panther Retention Grant Program

March 31, 2022

The Panther Retention Grant (PRG) program at Georgia State University (Georgia State) is one of the nation's pioneering examples of a retention or completion grant program, a type of emergency financial aid program aimed at supporting students with immediate financial need. The program, which specifically targets students who are in good academic standing and have exhausted all other sources of aid, automatically awards up to $2,500 to clear students' unpaid balances and allow them to remain enrolled for the term. Since the program was piloted in 2011, it has awarded over 10,000 grants to Georgia State students and has undergone many changes in scope, focus, and eligibility criteria. This study is the first to attempt to estimate the causal impacts of the grant on student outcomes and institutional finances.

Community-driven Development at Pittsburgh Yards

March 21, 2022

For nearly two decades, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has been a key partner in the redevelopment of a 31-acre former industrial site in Atlanta's Pittsburgh neighborhood. Though the project — now known as Pittsburgh Yards — has evolved since UPS first sold the land to AECF Atlanta Realty (a subsidiary of the Casey Foundation) in 2006, the mission has remained the same: spur more equitable career, entrepreneurship and wealth-building opportunities for Black residents in the surrounding communities of Neighborhood Planning Unit V (NPU-V).To realize that vision, staff in Casey's Atlanta Civic Site, which serves as primary investor and advisor on the project, used the Foundation's Race Equity and Inclusion Action Guide as a blueprint. In doing so, Casey and the Pittsburgh Yards development team have prioritized community engagement from the start, maximizing community-based strengths and assets and creating pathways for residents to participate in key decisionmaking processes.This brief describes those community engagement efforts and identifies lessons and recommendations that may be useful to other organizations interested in undertaking similar redevelopment efforts.

Extreme Gerrymanderers

February 22, 2022

Gerrymandering is the intentional practice of manipulating the boundaries of congressional districts to provide an unfair advantage for a specific party or group. The practice has increasingly created barriers to representative democracy and allows politicians to select their voters, rather than allowing voters to pick their politicians.New maps that create the boundaries between congressional districts are drawn every 10 years, following each decennial census. In the wake of the 2020 Census, state legislators crafted a number of hyperpartisan and discriminatory gerrymanders. This report highlights a dozen of the worst.

Understanding Narratives and Strategies that Build Black Political Power

February 1, 2022

The New Georgia Project's 2020 Autopsy research was designed to explore and measure the following:Did the power messaging from 2020 resonate with our target audience?What are perceptions of political power in our target audience post-2020 election?Measure awareness, enthusiasm for 2022 midterm elections?What would motivate them to participate in 2020 the way they did in 2022?While the results of this research was both broad and informative, the most salient findings that the New Georgia Project were able to action were:For Black voters in Georgia, POWER is not about winning elections; it's about delivering the resources that they needClick HERE Messaging: Connecting Black voters to the resources they needInformation as Persuasion: Learning about the responsibilities of elected officials is both motivating and mobilizingThe 2020 power message frames continue to be viable

“We Need Access”: Ending Preventable Deaths from Cervical Cancer in Rural Georgia

January 20, 2022

Cervical cancer is highly preventable and treatable. It typically develops over several years, providing ample time to detect and treat abnormal changes in cervical cells that could eventually lead to cancer.With access to information, preventive services, and routine gynecological care, most cases of the disease can be prevented and successfully treated at an early stage. If caught early before cancer has spread, the five-year survival rate is over 90 percent. Despite this, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimated that 4,290 women would die of cervical cancer in the United States in 2021.Although almost no one should die from the disease, some groups—those that are historically marginalized and neglected in the US, including women of color, women living in poverty, and those without health insurance—die more often than others. There are glaring racial disparities in cervical cancer deaths in the US and Black women die of the disease at a disproportionately high rate. Black women have a higher risk of late-stage diagnosis, and they are more likely to die from the disease than any other racial or ethnic group in the country. In the state of Georgia, Black women are almost one and a half times as likely to die of cervical cancer as white women and these disparities increase at alarming rates as they age. Black Georgian women are more likely to have never been screened for cervical cancer, are diagnosed at a later stage, and have lower five-year survival rates.Preventable deaths from cervical cancer thrive in contexts of structural racism, discrimination, poverty, and inequality. Disparities in cervical cancer for Black women and other marginalized and neglected individuals reflect exclusion from the healthcare system and unequal access to the information, interventions, and services necessary to prevent and treat the disease. These preventable deaths also represent a failure of the federal, state, and local governments to protect and promote human rights for all people and to ensure adequate and affordable access to the lifesaving reproductive healthcare services and information all people need and have a right to.