Chart of the Week: Pittsburgh Mayor Peduto Signs Five Executive Orders on Affordable Housing

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto signed five executive orders last week aimed at preserving and expanding affordable housing in the city. The Affordable Housing Task Force, which developed a list of housing policies the City could enact to prevent the displacement of long-time residents and to mitigate the effects of the rapid development occurring throughout the city, informed the executive orders.

After decades of depopulation and a stagnant economy, Pittsburgh is coming back. Once dominated by the steel industry, the city is now becoming a knowledge and technology-driven economy. Young college graduates are moving to Pittsburgh and enjoying the emerging startup culture and opportunities arising from the redevelopment of the city — but many longtime residents and local businesses are not benefiting from Pittsburgh's resurgence. Some neighborhoods are gentrifying, rents and home prices are rising, and families are moving out of the city to the suburbs to find affordable housing options. At the same time, in this emerging market, other neighborhoods continue to await long-needed reinvestment.

Mayor Peduto's executive orders are a good first step to ensuring that everyone in Pittsburgh, especially long-standing residents, can benefit from the city's development. This week’s chart looks at renter housing burden in the city of Pittsburgh. Renter housing burden refers to the share of renter households spending more than 30 percent of household income on housing costs. Approximately 50 percent of renters in the city of Pittsburgh are cost-burdened. But, the burden is experienced differently among different racial groups. Nearly 54 percent of Black renter households are cost-burdened, compared with 47 percent of White renter households. Households of color are also significantly more likely than White households to be renters. Only 32 percent of households of color are owner-occupied compared with 56 percent of White households.

Housing is one critical component of a strong equitable development agenda. Policies that preserve and expand affordable housing options and ensure that all residents can stay in their community and benefit from redevelopment are critical to the health of a city's economy. To learn more about the work of PolicyLink and Pittsburgh partners to advance an equitable development in the city, check out “The Path to an All-In Pittsburgh.”

To see how renter and homeowner housing burden varies in your city, region, or state, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in your community, and share the chart using #equitydata.

Chart of the Week: Cincinnati Becomes a Sanctuary City

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

Immigration is a significant driver of population growth nationwide, yet the new administration continues to adopt hostile polices targeting immigrants and refugees — and the cities that seek to protect them. Just two weeks ago, the president signed an executive order blocking federal funds to sanctuary cities—jurisdictions that direct local law enforcement not to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with deportations. There’s no standard definition of sanctuary cities and there’s a spectrum of local law enforcement cooperation with immigration authorities, ranging from notifying ICE when someone in custody will be released to actively enforcing civil immigration laws. Despite the new president’s threats, several mayors of “sanctuary cities” are doubling down on their sanctuary status and vowing to protect all residents, including those without documentation.

This week’s chart highlights immigrants’ contribution to growth in one of the newest cities to defy the president and declare itself a “sanctuary city”: Cincinnati. Immigrants make up less than 5 percent of the Cincinnati population, but have accounted for all of the city’s population growth since 1990. As the chart below shows, from 2000 to 2014, the U.S.-born population of Cincinnati declined by over 35,000 people while the immigrant population added 1,200 new residents. Cincinnati was one of 20 cities (among the 100 largest cities in the country) where immigrants accounted for 100% of net population growth during that time.

It’s important to note that not all immigrants are undocumented or refugees, but it’s not uncommon for families and households to be mixed-status—meaning some members of a household or family may have documentation while others do not. Even though the executive orders thus far have targeted undocumented people as well as refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries, this type of rhetoric, surveillance, and enforcement has cascading impacts on all immigrants and people of color.

In addition to Cincinnati, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, adopted a “welcoming city” policy, and will not require proof of citizenship when granting business licenses. San Francisco has taken an even more proactive stance and filed suit against the executive order, charging that it violates the states’ rights provisions of the Constitution.

The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) has explained that “local jurisdictions have no legal obligation to assist with civil immigration enforcement, which is the responsibility of the federal government.” For a list of policies local jurisdictions can adopt, such as eliminating the use of local and statewide gang databases and the importance of county-level policies, check out “Expanding Sanctuary” and “Searching for Sanctuary.”

To see how immigrants have contributed to growth in your city, region, or state, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in your community, and share the chart using #equitydata.

National Equity Atlas Update

Dear Equity Atlas Users,
 
The new year has brought a whirlwind of leadership and policy changes – including many that place equitable growth policies and the data needed to inform them at risk. As updated demographic projections to 2050 reveal, America’s demographic shift toward a majority people-of-color country is a long-term trend that will continue regardless of political and policy sways. This means that the inclusion of communities of color will remain central to our economic fate as a nation, and your efforts to advance racial economic inclusion and opportunity are more important than ever.
 
We hope that our data and policy ideas help you protect, defend, and innovate to make equitable growth the reality in your communities.
 
Can a Targeted Jobs Strategy Reduce Racial Inequities in Unemployment in Your Metro?
Inspired by our maps showing neighborhood unemployment by community racial/ethnic composition, the Atlas team analyzed the relationship between racial and spatial inequality in employment across America’s largest 150 metros. Our latest brief, Race, Place, and Jobs: Reducing Employment Inequality in America’s Metros, shows how in several regions with large racial gaps in employment such as Youngstown and Milwaukee, unemployed workers of color tend to live in a small number of neighborhoods. In these places, neighborhood-targeted workforce development and job access strategies have the potential to increase racial equity and reduce disparities at the regional level, building stronger and more inclusive regional economies.
 
Beyond a People-of-Color Majority: U.S. Demographic Projections to 2050
The United States is projected to become a majority-people-of-color nation in 2044, but what does population growth look like beyond that year? Join the National Equity Atlas team on February 15 from 12-12:30 p.m. PT / 3-3:30 p.m. ET for a webinar discussion of the changing demographics of the U.S. and a live demo of four indicators that now include updated demographic projections to 2050: “People of Color,” “Race/ethnicity,” “Population growth rates”, and “Contribution to growth: People of color.” Register for the webinar here. In the meantime, PERE data analyst Pamela Stephens shares six key demographic trends to follow.
 
#SavetheData and More Charts of the Week
Collecting and publishing disaggregated data is critical to advancing equitable growth locally, and our three recent charts of the week from PolicyLink research associate Ángel Ross underscore this point.

  • Our January 11 “Location Matters for Health” chart illustrates how adult asthma and diabetes vary by race and place in the neighboring regions of Deltona and Orlando, Florida.
  • We joined the National Fair Housing Alliance in thanking President Obama for his support of fair housing and shared this #FairHousingThanksObama chart to support the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule (AFFH) as a tool to address inequities in access to opportunity.
  • Finally, we produced this #SavetheData chart to call attention to the very real danger that federal data disaggregation tools — like those used to track health disparities and enforce fair housing standards — will be defunded and eliminated.

 

Thank you!
 
The National Equity Atlas team at PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE)

Looking (Slightly) Beyond 2044: Six Reasons To Be Interested In The 2050 Demographic Projections

The National Equity Atlas was developed as a tool to measure and track demographic change and equity across America's communities.  By 2044, the nation is projected to be majority people of color, yet communities of color face persistent barriers to accessing the resources and opportunities they need to reach their full potential. These inequities are not only bad for the people being left behind: they threaten our collective economic future. As economist Lawrence Summers put it "as people of color become a majority of the population, the failure to end their economic exclusion means the failure of the American economy."

This month, the Equity Atlas team added updated demographic projections data to the Atlas through the year 2050, past the 2044 turning point. Our projections come from Woods & Poole Economics, a highly respected source used by many government agencies and researchers. These new projections can be found in the "People of Color," "Race/ethnicity," "Population growth rates", and "Contribution to growth: People of color" indicators and are available for counties, regions, and states. Here are six key demographic trends that deserve our attention:

  1. The population of color will continue to grow rapidly between 2040 and 2050. By 2050, 53 percent of the total population will be people of color, up from 48 percent in 2040. Between 2030 and 2040, 132 counties will become majority people of color. And between 2040 and 2050, 118 additional counties will join them, for a total of 737 majority people-of-color counties nationwide.


     
  2. Despite this shift, for most of these counties, Whites will remain the largest racial group. Only ten counties that will become majority people of color between 2040 and 2050 will experience a shift in their largest racial group.



     
  3. Most people will live in majority people of color counties in 2050. By 2050, 56 percent of Americans will live in majority people of color counties. Even though just 23 percent of counties will be majority people of color, most of the population will live in those counties.



     
  4. A handful of counties will revert back to being majority white. In 2050, three counties that are currently majority people of color are expected to become majority white – San Francisco, CA; New York, NY (Manhattan); and San Juan, Utah. As the country becomes majority people of color, nearly a quarter of all counties will experience growth in their White populations. About one in ten of these counties with growing White populations are majority people of color. However, these three counties stand out as counties that will actually shift to becoming majority white.  In New York County (Manhattan), this shift will happen as two major groups: Latinos and African Americans decline at rates outpacing White growth.



     
  5. Among the counties that will become majority people of color by 2050, many counties will still experience population decline for some of their communities of color. This phenomenon is most common with the Black population. Nationally, the Black population is expected to remain stable, growing from 12.2 to 12.7 percent between 2010 and 2050. But there is wide variation across counties, and 76 counties that will become majority people of color by 2050 will also lose Black population. Among these counties, Denver, CO will experience the largest percentage loss (26 percent) of its Black population as it moves to becoming majority people of color.





     
  6. Latinos and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) will drive growth among communities of color. Across all counties, 244 counties' Latino populations will double between 2010 and 2050, while 224 counties' AAPI populations will double. 153 will switch from being majority white or having a white plurality (the largest group in the absence of a majority) to majority or plurality Latino; 10 counties that are currently majority or plurality white will be majority or plurality AAPI.


The updated demographic projections through 2050 analyzed here underscore how America will continue to grow more diverse and less White for the foreseeable future. Dozens of indicators of economic inclusion, workforce readiness, and community connectedness in the National Equity Atlas reveal persistent racial inequities. Regardless of political sways and even immigration policy over the short-term, the truth is that communities of color are central to our economic fate as a nation, and investing in people of color and removing barriers to their full participation in our economy and democracy remains an urgent national priority.

Chart of the Week: Why We Need Data Broken Down By Race/Ethnicity

To add equity data to the national dialogue about growth and prosperity, every week the National Equity Atlas team posts a new chart from the Equity Atlas related to current events and issues.

UPDATE 2/24/17: The House of Representatives may bring its HUD funding bill for the remainder of FY17 to the floor for a vote next week. Rep. Paul Gosar will likely file an amendment that adopts some or all of the language in Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act of 2017. The National Fair Housing Alliance, PolicyLink, the ACLU, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition have coordinated to prepare a sign on letter in opposition to Rep. Gosar’s expected amendment. CLICK HERE to read and sign on to the letter, and please share with your local, state, and national networks! The deadline to sign on is Tuesday, February 28.

Just a month in the new administration, there are growing concerns among data analysts, researchers, and advocates about the preservation of federal databases, particularly those that disaggregate by race/ethnicity. Earlier this month, Representative Gosar (Arizona-04) introduced the “Local Zoning and Property Rights Protection Act of 2017” and Senator Lee (Utah) introduced the Senate Companion version. The bill is a general attack on the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which seeks to reduce racial segregation and concentrated poverty while expanding opportunity for all, but more specifically, the bill is an attack on data itself. Section 3 states: “no Federal funds may be used to design, build, maintain, utilize, or provide access to a Federal database of geospatial information on community racial disparities or disparities in access to affordable housing.”

Under the guise of “protecting local zoning,” this bill strips the ability of local officials to access consistent data about their jurisdictions. This bill goes beyond attacking HUD for requiring recipients of federal funding to address racial disparities in opportunity. It seeks to prevent local officials from even knowing about those disparities in the first place. It is an attack on the ability of local officials to advance effective, data-driven policy solutions.

To call attention to the very real danger that federal data disaggregation tools — like those used to enforce fair housing standards or track health disparities — will be defunded and eliminated, this week’s chart looks at neighborhood poverty in Arizona over time. Without disaggregated local data, planners and decision makers would only be able to see that overall the share of the population living in high-poverty neighborhoods (defined as census tracts with a poverty rate of 40 percent or higher) in the state more than doubled from 4.4 percent to 9.8 percent from 2000 to 2014. But it is clear that not all populations are equally impacted by concentrated poverty in Arizona. The White population is the least likely to live in concentrated poverty: less than four in every 100 White Arizona residents live in a high-poverty neighborhood. Native Americans, on the other hand, are nearly 11 times more likely than Whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods. Latinos are nearly five times as likely as Whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods. Poverty looks different for White people than for people of color because people of color are significantly more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods even if they are not poor. This not only highlights a long history of federally supported racial residential segregation, but it also underscores the importance of informed data-driven planning and policymaking.

Despite the threats to the AFFH rule and tool that arms local decision makers with the data to make informed decisions, some states and localities, including California and Philadelphia are vowing to push forward with their efforts to further fair housing. California Department of Housing and Community Development Director, Ben Metcalf, said in a recent article, with or without the federal fair housing rule, the State of California will continue to approach work through the AFFH rule because it furthers outcomes the state values: “ensuring that folks growing up poor in California’s communities have a shot of accessing the middle class and avoiding some of the negative consequences associated with segregated communities or neighborhoods of highly concentrated poverty.” Similarly, Philadelphia completed the nation’s first AFFH plan and the city’s director of planning and development promised: “If it isn’t important at the national level, it’ll still be important at the local level and will still inform a lot of the decisions we make.”

To see how neighborhood poverty varies in your city, region, or state, visit the National Equity Atlas, type in your community, and post the chart on social media using #equitydata and #SaveTheData. The data can also serve as a talking point when contacting local elected officials, local government staff, members of Congress, businesses, developers, and other decision makers. Include examples (like Philadelphia) of how AFFH is beneficial to the community. If you’re already using Equity Atlas, HUD, or Census data to guide your organizing or policymaking efforts, consider writing a letter and op-ed in support of the AFFH rule and other federal data disaggregation efforts.

For responses and reactions to the bill and threats to fair housing, check out the statement from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and a New York Times article on the tough battle ahead.

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