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Research & Policy
REPORT: Uneven Progress in School Diversity as New York City’s Neighborhoods Experience Change
A new report from the NYU Furman Center, The Diversity of New York City’s Neighborhoods and Schools, examines the racial and ethnic diversity of the city’s neighborhoods and public elementary schools. The report finds evidence of progress—for example, the concentration of racial and ethnic groups has grown less extreme over the past 12 years for Black, Hispanic, and white students.
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Research & Policy
How NYCHA Preserves Diversity in New York’s Changing Neighborhoods.
A new fact brief published by the NYU Furman Center outlines the critical role that the public housing plays in preserving racial, ethnic, and economic diversity in the city’s gentrifying and higher-income neighborhoods. The brief builds on previous work by the NYU Furman Center outlining NYCHA’s outsized role in housing the lowest-income New Yorkers. That crucial role in the affordable housing landscape combined with the geographic distribution of public housing developments in gentrifying neighborhoods means that many of the city’s neighborhoods owe their diversity to NYCHA’s public housing developments.
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Research & Policy
The Potential of the Fair Housing Act’s Affirmative Mandate and HUD’s AFFH Rule
NYU Furman Center Faculty Director Katherine O’Regan and NYU Furman Center Distinguished Fellow Ken Zimmerman recently published an article in the journal Cityscape, examining The Potential of the Fair Housing Act’s Affirmative Mandate and HUD’s AFFH Rule. The article reviews the Fair Housing Act (FHA) as well as HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule and reflects on the ongoing barriers to fair housing.
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Research & Policy
Policy Minute: Rent Regulation Reform
State lawmakers are gearing up to take action on the state rent laws that are set to expire in June. New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie recently announced a package of bills aimed at strengthening rent regulation laws and increasing tenant protections.
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Research & Policy
School Climate and the Impact of Neighborhood Crime on Test Scores
A recent article in The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences explores administrative data on middle schoolers in high-poverty New York City neighborhoods to understand whether school climate alleviates or exacerbates the effect of neighborhood crime on academic performance.
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Research & Policy
Faculty Director Vicki Been Testifies at Charter Revision Expert Forum
On March 21st, Furman Center Faculty Director Vicki Been testified on a Land Use expert panel before the 2019 NYC Charter Revision Commission. Her testimony focused on proposed changes to the city charter that would require the city to develop a comprehensive plan that sets long-term development goals. Been raised concerns about the proposal, noting that the city already carries out a significant amount of planning, and it is unclear how a comprehensive plan would differ from the city’s many efforts. She emphasized that the there is no clear agreed upon definition of comprehensive planning and that submitting such an ambiguous concept to a vote could prove confusing and dangerous for New York City and its voters.
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Research & Policy
Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability
Will building more housing lead to more affordable rents and lower home prices? Economics 101 says yes, but an increasingly vocal cohort of advocates and activists—supply skeptics—oppose new housing construction on the grounds that it will not enhance affordability in their communities and might, instead, increase prices and rents.
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Research & Policy
Policy Minute: Perspectives on Housing Supply and Affordability
This Policy Minute examines whether increasing the supply of market-rate housing improves housing affordability.
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Research & Policy
Fact Brief: NYCHA’s Outsized Role in Housing New York’s Poorest Households
As the largest landlord in New York, New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) units represent almost six percent of all occupied housing citywide, and almost nine percent of all occupied rental housing. The city’s public housing provides shelter to substantially more households than any other place-based housing assistance program in the city. In 2017 over 60 percent of the roughly 174,000 households in NYCHA’s public housing developments earned 30 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) or less. That translates to just $28,600 annually for a family of four. These households would have few housing options in New York City without the affordability offered in public housing.
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Research & Policy
Policy Brief: National Lessons of NYC’s Universal Access to Counsel Program
In 2017, New York City enacted the first legislation in the country providing legal representation for all income-eligible tenants facing eviction. The legislation, sponsored by Council Members Vanessa Gibson and Mark Levine, has been implemented in four zip codes in each of New York’s five boroughs, with citywide universal access mandated by July 2022. As major cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Newark, Cleveland, and Boston consider expanding access to counsel, New York’s experience offers important lessons for program design and implementation.
