How Our Foundation is Using an Equity Framework—and Equity Data—to Guide Our Investments

For 95 years, the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo has been committed to realizing its vision of a vibrant, inclusive region with opportunity for all. Our foundation makes the most of its clients’ generosity by bringing together seemingly different groups to develop collaborative solutions that realize this vision in Western New York. Now, more than ever, there is momentum to take on the region’s longstanding challenges and reverse the decline of the past decades.  

One of our key community goals is to improve racial equity. Approximately 90 percent of all board-directed resources support communities of color. While racial equity stands on its own, it is also a critical factor in addressing our goal to improve educational achievement for low-income students. Other goals include enhancing and leveraging significant natural resources (using an environmental justice perspective), and strengthening the region as a center for architecture, arts and culture by ensuring that all children have access to consistent arts instruction. 

Key Equity Data Points Driving Our Work

Data that is disaggregated by race and ethnicity plays an important role in grounding our work and, in combination with storytelling, helps to inform our key initiatives. Powerful data points that drive our portfolio include the following:

  • The Buffalo Niagara region ranks 98th out of 100 metros in black/white equity and 89th in Latino/white equity (from the U.S. Census)
  • People of color are disproportionately clustered in urban centers and Buffalo is the third poorest city in the U.S. (also from the U.S. Census)
  • Population growth in the region is driven mainly by foreign-born people of color, recent immigrants to America (from City Vitals 2.0)

 

Our foundation selected these three data points very intentionally to make the case for increasing racial and ethnic equity, especially as a driver for economic growth. As communities of color grow as a share of the population, it is even more urgent to dismantle racial barriers and ensure all of our residents can access the educational and economic opportunities they need to contribute to the region’s revitalization, resilience, and prosperity.

Our Racial Equity Framework

We also adopted a framework introduced by PolicyLink to close the racial wealth gap through seven strategies:

1)     Fortify the cradle-to-career pipeline

2)     Reconnect the long-term unemployed

3)     Grow businesses owned by people of color

4)     Build power among a workforce comprised of people of color

5)     Open up access to economic opportunities in high-growth sectors

6)     Build wealth in communities of color

7)     Leverage urban resurgence to grow income and wealth

We adopted this framework because it articulates the community-level strategies needed to support a stronger regional economy that decreases our racial disparities and increases the equity dividend: the benefits to our whole region that will come from expanding opportunity for all. The framework also gave our board a new way to evaluate their work and investments.

Investing in a Data-Driven Equity Strategy: Say Yes Buffalo

Equity data plays a major role in several of foundation-supported initiatives that bring together stakeholders across multiple sectors to advance the seven strategies. One of the Community Foundation’s most powerful data-driven cross-sector partnerships is Say Yes Buffalo, which is aligned with the PolicyLink strategy to fortify the cradle-to-career pipeline. “Recognizing the clear link between future economic prosperity and educational achievement, the Foundation committed to launching Say Yes Buffalo in late 2011,” said Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, President and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo. “Say Yes Buffalo is an unprecedented, cross-sector partnership, focused on increasing post-secondary completion rates for urban youth.”

While the driving force behind Say Yes Buffalo is a universal scholarship program offered to students in the Buffalo Public Schools, financial aid for college is just one component of the effort, which seeks to remove all barriers to educational success. To the academic, health and behavioral challenges our students face, Say Yes Buffalo and its partners are putting people and programs run by respected community-based organizations directly into the Buffalo Public School buildings. For example, in 2014 with the help of Erie County and the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, 19 schools now have an on-site mental health clinic to provide students and families easy access to social and emotional supports.  

To date, Say Yes Buffalo has provided scholarships for over 1,500 high school students and after just the first year, the number of Buffalo Public High School graduates enrolling in two and four-year institutions increased by 9-percentage points.

“The leadership of the Community Foundation has set the groundwork for the transformational work of Say Yes Buffalo,” said Alphonso O’Neil-White, chair of the Say Yes Buffalo Scholarship Board. “Say Yes Buffalo and its partners are committed to implementing data-driven programming to enhance Say Yes Scholarships by removing barriers that prevent students from being academically successful.”

Credit: Say Yes Buffalo

Equity Data Helped NYC Advocates Expand Transit Access Through Bus Rapid Transit

Better policies and more equitable outcomes result when data informs policymaking. In New York City, advocates used data to highlight urgent transit needs and built out the transit system to meet these needs. Maps and charts compiled into a Transportation Equity Atlas provided power visuals of the racial and economic inequities in the city’s transit system. Advocates could then point out where transit routes could be placed to better serve low-income communities and communities of color. This data gave policy makers the information they needed to make the transit system more equitable.

The Pratt Center for Community Development has been working on transportation equity since 2007. New York City has a widely developed public transportation system and the Pratt Center wanted to see how well it was serving all New Yorkers. To do so, the Center developed a Transportation Equity Atlas with maps illustrating where people lived and worked to understand commuting patters of 289,000 residents in 13 predominately low- and moderate income communities in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, as well as nearly 300,000 workers at major job centers.

Through this analysis, the researchers found substantial disparities in transportation access between higher-income, professional workers and low-wage manual and service workers. The Atlas showed that over 750,000 New Yorkers traveled more than 60 minutes each way to work and two-thirds of these commuters were from households that earn less than $35,000 per year. Workers or color were also more likely to have longer commute times.

The Pratt Center and its partners in the coalition Communities United for Transportation Equity (COMMUTE) began to explore whether Bus Rapid Transit could improve transit options and reduce commuting times for underserved communities. Together, they created a vision for a citywide Bus Rapid Transit Network that would collect fares before riders boarded, have dedicated street lanes, and receive priority at traffic signals to allow the buses to quickly connect underserved neighborhoods and workplaces.

The data on the racial and economic inequities of transportation access helped bring the coalition together to focus on transportation equity. As Joan Byron, Pratt Center’s Director of Policy said, “Data helped move people and make the case for Bus Rapid Transit. The basic thing data did was raise up transportation and transit access as an equity issue.” This was a new and uniting issue for many advocates according to Byron. “Social, economic, and environmental justice advocates work on a vast array of issues and there wasn’t a sense of ownership of transportation as a social justice issue. The disparity in commute times across race and issue showed how commuting time was, in fact, a racial and social justice issue.”

The coalition’s vision became a reality when the city’s transit departments launched the Select Bus Service (SBS) program that incorporated key Bus Rapid Transit features in 2008. The Phase 2 study from the transit agencies adopted the Pratt Center transit equity approach and looked at underserved areas and difficult connections to identify priority transit corridors. As the map below shows, seven SBS routes have been implemented providing substantial reductions in travel times and improved reliability to low-wage residents and communities.

The data in the Transportation Equity Atlas combined with the data presented in the Bus Rapid Transit vision has helped decision makers and advocates work together to improve transit access for workers across the five boroughs. They are now working toward an even more expensive Bus Rapid Transit system.

Byron said, “As they (the transit agencies) have moved forward on the Bus Rapid Transit routes, they have engaged in a real process with stakeholders down the corridor. The agencies have really learned to work with communities.”  The result is a transit system that is more accessible and responsive to all New Yorkers, regardless of race or income.

Tell the Census to Keep Important Questions on the ACS

The National Equity Atlas is part of a growing movement toward data-driven decision-making and policy happening in this country—and consistent collection of data by government agencies is a critical foundation for these efforts. But data is almost always on the short-list when it comes to government spending cuts.

Case in point: the Census Bureau just announced plans to drop six questions about undergraduate education and family structure from the American Community Survey. At first glance, these cuts might sound fairly benign, but in reality, it would be a huge loss. These data points are critical for understanding—and developing policy solutions for—some of the country’s most pressing challenges.

Here are some of the equitable economy-related questions that we will not be able to answer if these cuts go forward:

  • Are America’s students learning the skills that are in increasing demand by employers?
  • Are we reducing racial inequities for students of color and female students in access to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education
  • ​Which undergraduate fields of study lead to good-paying jobs? In which fields is there greater pay equity by race and gender?

​

Please join us and other data advocates in telling the Census not to cut these questions! Send Jennifer Jessup in the Department of Commerce (jjessup@doc.gov) an email request to keep these questions.

My letter is below. You can use it as a template to make your own points or simply copy and paste it into an email with a quick note at the top saying “I agree with Justin Scoggins’ points in his letter below. These questions are important for researchers, practitioners, and advocates working to ensure equitable access to higher education, strengthen the workforce, and build an equitable economy.” Whatever you do, please copy the folks at the University of Minnesota who are leading the advocacy effort (nhgis@umn.edu).

For more information:

 

Dear Ms. Jessup,

I am writing to express my dismay at the intent to drop questions on marital history and field of undergraduate study from the American Community Survey (ACS). I can understand the constraints imposed by budgets and wanting to keep the survey less burdensome for respondents – which can arguably improve response rates and data quality – but the costs of losing this valuable information are likely to outweigh any gains. These two particular sets of questions are highly important to the study of the impacts of changing family structures as well as field of study on economic and policy outcomes.

There are currently no other regularly updated and sufficiently detailed sources of information in the U.S. on marriage, divorce, widowhood, and remarriage. Given the ways in which federal allocation of Social Security and other entitlement programs are, in part, based on marital status, lack of good data means less efficient allocation and forecasting of public expenditures. This constrains our understanding of how marriage impacts economic well-being (which is particularly important as family structures shift).

There are myriad reasons why the questions on field of undergraduate study are important to keep. As costs of education are spiking, real questions are surfacing about the financial prudence of making an investment in one’s education – long assumed to be the most sound. Of course, financial returns vary widely by field of study, so without this information it is not possible to draw any strong conclusions on the value of this investment or whether its returns are in fact diminishing. Keeping this question will allow us to provide data-driven answers.

Perhaps more important, the questions on field of study help us understand how well we are doing at improving equity in pay by race and sex, and also at equipping the next generation with the sorts of skills that are in increasing demand by the labor market – such as those gained from a background in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Our nation is faced with the challenge of a stark underrepresentation of young people of color in STEM fields, a challenge that is particularly alarming (even for those less concerned with social and racial equity) given imminent demographic trends that suggest people of color will be the majority of the workforce by 2050. Fortunately, there are people and organizations from various sectors working to improve access to STEM fields of study and equity in pay, but without good data the ability to track progress will be difficult at best.

The proposed elimination would sacrifice accuracy for efficiency. Given the high stakes in accurately measuring demographic and educational shifts, it is vital that we preserve these questions. I appreciate your consideration of my thoughts on this matter and hope that prompt action is taken to avoid the loss of these valuable questions from the ACS.

Sincerely,

Justin Scoggins
Data Manager
USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity

Getting to Equitable Growth in the Heartland Region

Nationally, the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro—locally dubbed the Heartland region—stands out for its admirably low unemployment rate. As of September 2014, only 3.6 percent of the region’s residents who are in the labor force were unemployed, compared with 5.7 percent nationally. That means the region is at full employment, if you measure it based on Dean Baker and Jared Bernstein’s standard of 4 percent.

But as is often the case, this broadbrush statistic masks quite a bit. Not everyone is thriving in the Heartland. The unemployment rate for African Americans is closer to 12 percent: three times the average. While communities of color are driving the region’s growth, more and more Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans cannot make ends meet, even if they are working. And the region has not escaped the challenge of flat wages, either: when you account for inflation, most workers haven’t gotten a raise in the past two decades. (Hopefully Nebraska’s recent minimum wage hike will help budge that statistic.)

This afternoon, community leaders are gathering in Omaha to talk about these trends and why they matter not only for those who are being left behind now, but for the entire region’s economic future.

As a part of the Heartland 2050 process to plan for how the region can double in size by 2050 while increasing equity and resilience, PolicyLink and PERE partnered with the Metropolitan Area Planning Agency and many local organizations to develop a report that lays out the trends and presents strategies for equitable growth.

Released today at a pre-event to Voices for Children in Nebraska’s “Race Matters” conference, the Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region illustrates the region’s changing demographics, shows how different groups are faring in the regional economy, and describes what can be done to reduce inequality and steer the region toward equitable growth. You can access the full profile and the summary (which includes the recommended strategies) here.

Here are a few of the trends highlighted in the report:

The region is experiencing a major demographic shift. Between 1980 and 2010, its people-of-color population doubled from 10 to 21 percent. Communities of color will continue to drive growth in the coming decades, growing to 39 percent of the population by 2040.

 

Credit: Racial/ethnic composition/National Equity Atlas 

Omaha-Council Bluff's African Americans face disproportionately high rates of unemployment at every level of education.


Credit: Unemployment rate by race/ethnicity and education/National Equity Atlas

Working poverty, defined as working full-time with an income less than 1.5 times the poverty level, is on the rise regionally and is particularly high for Latinos and African Americans.

Credit: Actual GDP and estimated GDP without racial gaps in income/National Equity Atlas 

The Equity Atlas and DC KIDS COUNT: A Portrait of the Lived Experiences of DC Residents

Here at DC Action for Children, we recognize the power of data, when presented clearly and creatively, to shape the conversations we have about the well-being of children in Washington, DC. Given our interest in the intersection between data and public policy, we wanted to highlight the National Equity Atlas, a fascinating and instructive new data tool created by PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity.                       

Taking the recent rapid growth of inequality in the America as a starting point, the site explores data on equity related indicators locally and nationally. Similar to our work with the Data Tool 2.0 for DC Kids Count, The Equity Atlas finds creative ways to visually represent data through interactive maps and charts, illustrating how complex issues like demographic and income trends vary over time and geography.

While their focus on income inequality is not explicitly related to children and youth, their work supplements and overlaps with ours. In this blog post, I wanted to highlight some of the Equity Atlas indicators that are especially relevant to understanding the relationship between education and child-well being in the District and inequality. Taken together, the data offered by The Equity Atlas and DC KIDS COUNT present a more encompassing portrait of the lived experiences of the residents of our city.

The gaps between the District’s white and minority residents—in both educational outcomes and economic well-being—are the defining challenges facing our city today and in the future. In order to begin closing this income gap, residents of all racial/ethnic backgrounds must have the education necessary to compete for jobs in the changing twenty-first century economy. In 2020, 63.6% of the jobs in the city will require at least an Associates degree, yet only around one-quarter of the District’s native born Black and immigrant Latino/Hispanic residents have the necessary educational attainment to qualify for these jobs.

Credit: Current educational attainment and projected state/national-level job education requirements by race/ethnicity/National Equity Atlas 

Furthermore 23% of the city’s 16 to 24 year olds of color are unemployed or not in school, a rate more than seven times greater than for white young adults of the same age. Given how interconnected educational attainment and income are, these figures offer a sobering prognostication for income inequality in the future.

Credit: Percent of 16 to 24 year olds not working or in school by race/ethnicity/National Equity Atlas 

The relationship between economic outcomes and educational attainment is also reciprocal; a 2010 study found that a $3,000 increase in income to a working family between a child’s prenatal year through the age of five is associated with 19% higher earnings when that child reaches adulthood. Closing racial gaps in income and employment would mean a nearly 150% increase in the average income for people of color in the city.

Credit: Income by race/ethnicity/National Equity Atlas

Combating inequality will require a comprehensive approach that includes both a quality education that gives all students the skills needed to succeed in careers when they graduate as well as increased economic investment in the city’s low-income neighborhoods and material assistance to help lift children and their families out of poverty. Our success today will go a long way in determining the type of city Washington will be in the future.

Welcome to the National Equity Atlas!

The Equity Atlas team at PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) are thrilled to share the National Equity Atlas with you!

We built the Atlas as a tool for those who are working to transform America's economy into one that is equitable, resilient, and prosperous—region by region, and state by state. 

Think of it as your one-stop-shop for accessing data and policy ideas to track, measure, and advance inclusive growth—in your region, your state, and the United States. At the click of a button, you can access 20 relevant, useful, field-tested indicators of demographic change and racial and economic inclusion. The Atlas currently includes data for the largest 150 regions, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the United States as a whole.

The Atlas is a tool for social change. It equips community leaders and policymakers with facts and analyses to:

  • Understand how your community’s demographics are changing;
  • Assess how well diverse populations can participate in your community's economic vitality, contribute to its readiness for the future, and connect to its assets and resources;
  • Catalyze and inform new conversations about why—and how much—equity matters to your community’s future; and
  • Inform policies, plans, strategies, business models, and investments to advance equitable growth.
     

Our aim is to democratize data and make it easy for you to understand, discuss, and use. Explore the Atlas to find:

  • Data summaries that provide a snapshot of how your community is doing on six key indicators of demographic change, equity, and the economic benefits of equity;
  • Charts, graphs, and maps to share with your colleagues and add to your presentations, fact sheets, reports, and funding proposals;
  • Stories about how local leaders are using equity data to drive new conversations and implement new equitable growth strategies and policies; 
  • And much more!

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The Atlas is a living resource. We will be adding new data on a regular basis and we invite you to tell us what data you'd like to see. We also invite you to share your story about using equity data for social change. Please sign up  for our email list to find out about new data, analyses, and stories about how people are using data to build an equitable economy.

Enjoy exploring! 

Sarah, Jennifer, and the entire Equity Atlas team (Justin, Pamela, Josh, Victor, Rosa, Angela, and Manuel)

Portland's Regional Equity Atlas: Institutionalizing Equity Since 2007

The nation’s first regional equity atlas originated out of Portland, Oregon. Launched by the planning and policy advocacy group Coalition for a Livable Future in 2007, the original Regional Equity Atlas provided a visual representation of equity and inequity across the region and catalyzed a metrowide discussion about equity and inclusion. Today, equity is seen as an outcome to strive for by advocates and government officials alike, and the equity atlas played a major role in that shift, according to Mara Gross, the coalition’s Executive Director.

The first Equity Atlas was a book that included maps and text about the distribution of people and assets in the region, and the relationship between demographics and opportunity. In 2013, CLF launched version 2.0, an online tool that maps a wide range of measures of health and well-being.

Equity Atlas 2.0 includes data on the issues that stakeholders from across the region view as priorities, including:  

  • Demographics:  Race/ ethnicity, income, age, and household composition
  • Access Measures:  How well the residents of a particular geographic area can access key opportunities including a healthy environment, food, housing, transportation, parks and nature, education, economic opportunity, services, and other community resources
  • Health Outcome Measures:  Key diseases that are affected by the conditions in which we live, such as the rates of asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, as well as other health outcomes such as obesity and birth outcomes
  •  

With the health outcome measures added, advocates and decision-makers can map different variables to see correlations with health outcomes. Seeing how race, income, geographic distribution, or access to transportation corresponds with health helps pinpoint where interventions and supports should be targeted.

As Beth Kaye, Healthy Eating Active Living Cities Campaign Manager at the Oregon Public Health Institute, says:

“Maps are the language of cities. They help tell the story of inequity because pictures don't lie.  It’s really powerful to show that obesity rates are higher in places with few sidewalks and poor access to transit, parks, and greengrocers. That correlation is usually invisible, but a good map makes it evident. Community voices add nuance by describing their experiences living in a place.  Maps push local governments to think about physical fixes, like installing sidewalks and safe crossings between an affordable housing development and a playground."

The impacts of the Equity Atlas are wide-ranging. Organizations and government agencies working on health equity, transportation and land use, affordable housing development, anti-poverty initiatives, and food access have all used the Atlas to inform their efforts.

Institutionalizing an equity focus within government agencies is a key outcome. “The greatest impacts from the Equity Atlas are that it has helped prompt local governments to start institutionalizing an equity lens,” says Gross. Atlas data has “shaped investment priorities, guided system design, and supported advocacy campaigns.”

Here are several examples of how government initiatives have used the Atlas:

  • The Oregon Prosperity Initiative used Equity Atlas maps to inform which communities should be targeted for a pilot program that aims to address and prevent poverty through systemic reforms in several areas, including education, economic and workforce development and healthcare. Atlas maps helped pinpoint which areas were most in need.
  • The Washington County Women Infants and Children (WIC) department located its new WIC office based on information provided through the Equity Atlas’s transit and demographic maps showing where transit was available in relation to where low-income populations live.
  • The Portland Bureau of Transportation used Equity Atlas data to determine where to prioritize investments in street lighting upgrades. They used Equity Atlas maps to see which neighborhoods had the highest level of need based on demographics, access to active transit, and transportation safety.

 

Still going strong and evolving to meet community data needs, Portland's Regional Equity Atlas illustrates how equity data and maps can be crucial tools for embedding equity throughout institutions and building inclusive communities across regions.

12 Facts About Wage Trends in the States and Regions Where Minimum Wage is on the Ballot

UPDATE (11/5): Voters said yes to raising the minimum wage in all of the state and city minimum wage propositions described below.

On Tuesday, voters in voters in four states—Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota—will decide whether to raise their states’ minimum wages. In Illinois, voters will also cast their ballots on an advisory measure to raise their state minimum. According to an analysis by Ben Casselman at FiveThirtyEight, raising the minimum wage in these five states (by a $0.25 per hour in Arkansas to $1.75 per hour in Illinois) could affect 680,000 low-wage workers. Minimum wage hikes are also on the ballot in the Bay Area cities of Oakland and San Francisco.

Moving the minimum wage closer to a family-supporting “living wage” is a critical policy to shift the nation toward inclusive growth. Most of the jobs being added to the economy are low-wage jobs, and nearly everywhere, the minimum wage is simply not enough to make ends meet (the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour). Since low-wage workers are disproportionately workers of color, raising the minimum wage has the double benefit of addressing racial as well as economic inclusion.

Interested in learning some more facts behind these wage debates? The National Equity Atlas is a great source of data on long-term wage trends in states and regions. Here are 12 facts—two about each of these five states and two from the San Francisco Bay Area—drawn from the Wages, Income Growth, and Job and Wage Growth indicators in the Atlas:

ALASKA

#1 Alaska’s full-time workers at the 10th percentile earned about $7,700 less in 2012 than in 1980—a 25 percent decline.

#2 Over the past two decades, Alaska grew low-wage jobs (74 percent increase) much more quickly than middle- (21 percent) or high-wage ones (53 percent).

ARKANSAS

#3 In Arkansas, full-time workers at the 10th percentile earned about $1,700 less in 2012 than in 1980—a 9 percent decline.

#4 Since 1980, the median wage for workers of color in Arkansas has been $13 per hour and the median wage for white workers has been $17 per hour.

ILLINOIS

#5 In Illinois, full-time workers at the 10th percentile earned about $5,000 less in 2012 than in 1980—a 20 percent decline.

#6 Since 1990, Illinois grew low-wage jobs (22 percent increase) much more quickly than middle- (.3 percent) or high-wage ones (7 percent).

NEBRASKA

#7 Nebraska’s full-time workers at the 10th percentile earned about $800 less in 2012 than in 1980.

#8 The median wage for Nebraska’s workers of color in 1980 was $18 per hour; in 2012 it was $13 per hour.

SOUTH DAKOTA

#9 South Dakota’s full-time workers at the 10th percentile earned just $670 more in 2012 than in 1980—a 3 percent raise over more than three decades.

#10 The median wage for both white workers and workers of color in South Dakota today is a dollar less per hour than it was in 1980.

SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND-FREMONT METRO AREA

#11 In the Bay Area, full-time workers at the 10th percentile earned about $2,500 less in 2012 than in 1980—a 10 percent decline.

#12 The median wage for white Bay Area workers has increased from $27 to $34 per hour between 1980 and 2012; for workers of color the median wage only increased from $22 to $23 per hour during that time period.

Follow us on Twitter (@PolicyLink and @PERE_USC) for more facts and charts about wages in these states and regions, as well as others that are debating legislation to raise their minimum wage.

Denver's Regional Equity Atlas: Improving Urban Planning With Equity Data

Data can, and should, play a central role in urban planning. In Denver, CO, the Denver Regional Equity Atlas overlays educational, income, health, and other equity metrics on the new transit network to paint a picture of how transit impacts equity. As a result, the Atlas has helped advocates fight for better transit access, strengthen existing partnerships and engage new partners. The Atlas continues to be an important organizing tool.

Using Data to Advocate for Transit

Transit routes that help connect people to the places in which they work are particularly important for low-income families, who heavily rely on public transportation. Using data from the Atlas, advocates were able to save a bus route that served low-income residents but had been slated for closure when the city’s new light rail service opened. Coalition coordinator Davian Gagne says, “The Equity Atlas helped us understand which communities we needed to be prioritizing for outreach and where bus services routes had the highest level of impact.”

Bringing Partners Together

Mile High Connects, the creator of the original Atlas, sees it as one of the most fundamental tools in forming their equity collaborative. A partnership between private, public, and nonprofit organizations that are committed to developing inclusive, affordable and livable communities within walking distance of public transit, Mile High Connects engaged new partners through the original Atlas. As Dace West, Director of Mile High Connects says, “The first Atlas was a static map and it was instrumental in bringing people to the table, especially the philanthropic community, which hadn’t been as involved in equity work until then. It was a way to invite our public sector partners to take a look at some of the other actions taking place around the region.”

The Atlas is now in its second iteration as an online interactive tool that creates custom maps and summaries of statistics for particular interest areas in the region. The online tool was launched in partnership between Mile High Connects and the Denver Regional Council of Governments, the regional planning office, along with the Piton Foundation. The planning agency hosts the website and the foundation created the data engine and open data framework that makes the data accessible and sharable. A Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Sustainable Communities Initiative Grant allowed these groups to deepen their relationship and have joint ownership over the Atlas. 

The Atlas also facilitates data sharing and coordination between the two, a benefit that will lead to more equitable long-term planning. “The Equity Atlas is a piece of the story and through the Sustainable Communities Initiative Grant there are a number of ways we are interacting with our MPO, including a longer term Memorandum of Understanding to preserve the work we have done together,” said West. “Over several months, we’ve had the opportunity to explore more ways in which we can work together that go even beyond the Atlas.”

Now that the Atlas is online, Mile High Connect is looking to respond more directly to the interests and needs of their partner organizations, especially when it comes to the data they are most interested in and that they access most frequently. The maps created through the Atlas help provide a visual tool to help advocates make the case for areas that need fresh food or transit connection from housing to job centers, for example. West say, “The Atlas has really provided the ability to visually represent where some of those mismatches are happening.”

A Tool for Organizing Communities

The Atlas can also be an important tool in organizing communities. Stephen Moore, a policy analyst at FRESC, uses the Atlas with community leaders so they can map their own communities and see what impact developments can have on their communities. When a development is proposed, Moore can show community leaders what happened in similar communities. Moore said, “We can show the displacement caused in other communities and say, ‘here’s some information about what these communities used to look like and what they look like now. The median house cost has increased and demographics have shifted. Looking at that neighborhood and looking at your own, what do you think about the kind of displacement that is likely to take place?”

By providing a visual understanding of the change taking place in the City, the Denver Regional Equity Atlas is helping advocates shape how they want their communities, and region, to look and advancing equity through smart, community based urban planning.

3 Ways to Use the National Equity Atlas

Last week, Angela Glover Blackwell, the founder and CEO of PolicyLink made a bold statement at a conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: “if people of color don’t become the middle class, there will be no middle class.”

Her statement, grounded in forecasts that predict that America’s population will be majority people of color by 2043, is a sharp synopsis for the subject of that conference, “The Inequality of Economic Opportunity.” It also poses a challenging follow-up question: “Now what?”

Enter the National Equity Atlas, a website that we built in partnership with PolicyLink and the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) at the University of Southern California. 

At Bureau Blank, whenever we are faced with a big challenge, we look for whatever data we can find to inform our approach. Now, with the Atlas, policymakers, educators and community leaders can access a large pool of data to use in research and advocacy for racial equity. 

It’s not a vault of PDFs. It is truly a tool to visually analyze this data based on location and it’s easy to use!

So, how does the Atlas help users tackle the middle class question? Here are 3 step-by-step approaches to investigate key areas:

#1 Disconnected Youth: Are all young Americans ready to enter the workforce?

How to find it

  1. Click Indictators in the navigation bar
  2. Select the Equity indicator "Disconnected youth" under Readiness
  3. Here's what you'll see

The data

In 2012, 14% of all 16 to 24 year olds were not in school or working. Native-American and Black youth experienced the highest rates of disconnect, at 27% and 22%, respectively.

Why it matters

Educational and work opportunities for young people translate into higher lifetime earnings and decreased reliance on public assistance.

#2 Homeownership: How do my region’s rates compare to other U.S. regions?

How to find it

  1. Click Indicators in the navigation bar
  2. Select the Equity indicator "Homeownership" under "Economic Vitaility"
  3. Click "Ranking" in the "Breakdown" bar and "Region" in the "Geography" bar under the graphic
  4. Begin typing your city where you see "Enter a region state" and click the arrow
  5. Here's what you'll see

​The data

In 2012, 61.9% of Boston metro area homes were occupied by their owners, putting it in the bottom third of the 150 metro regions listed. Whites in Boston had the highest rate of homeownership at 68.4%, while Latinos had the lowest at 25.4%. Click "By race/ethnicity" in the "Breakdown" bar to toggle this data.

Why it matters

Communities of color were disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis, placing an imperative on policies like California’s Homeowner Bill of Rights to guarantee basic fairness and transparency for homeowners.

#3 Economic benefits: If we achieve a country with no inequality, what is the payoff?

How to find it

  1. Click Indicators in navigation bar
  2. Select the Economic Benefits indicator and click "GDP gains with racial equity"
  3. Here's what you'll see

The data

In 2012, the United State’s annual GDP was $15.6 trillion. If racial gaps in income or employment were closed, the projected GDP would increase by over $2 trillion. What’s not to love about that? 

Why it matters

Rising wages, particularly for households in the lowest income groups, leads to increased spending power which is a key driver of job creation and economic growth across groups and income levels.
 

Links to policy campaigns, advocacy groups and strategic initiatives accompany every indicator on the Atlas, so users can see real examples of action around the country. By aligning data, narrative and action, the Atlas demonstrates that these disparities are more than a matter of fairness – they will determine our collective economic future. 

As Angela Glover Blackwell says, understanding where we stand now, region by region, state by state is the first step toward building a more equitable and prosperous future for us all.

How will you use the Atlas to connect the dots in your work? Tell us about it on Twitter @bureaublank!

Cross-posted from Bureau Blank's blog. See the original story at http://bureaublank.com/#/blog. 

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