A proposed rule change from the Department of Housing and Urban Development would make it much more difficult to bring discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act. Politico reports that “the update to HUD’s 2013 disparate impact rule would require plaintiffs to meet a five-step threshold to prove unintentional discrimination, replacing the current three-step “burden-shifting” approach. It would also give defendants more leeway to rebut the claims, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by POLITICO It’s the latest effort by the Trump administration to roll back the Obama administration’s use of disparate impact — the legal theory that holds business and governments accountable for practices that disproportionately affect minorities even if no discrimination was intended — to root out discrimination.” In a statement, the National Fair Housing Alliance said that proposed changes would “gut effective disparate impact enforcement.” Lisa Rice, president and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance said that, “at a time when racial disparities in housing are stark, the racial wealth gap is growing, the African American homeownership rate has declined to historically low levels, and over four million instances of housing discrimination occur each year, it is critical to preserve and strengthen the tools we have to ensure that everyone is treated fairly in their search for housing… Some policies can appear neutral on the surface, but unfairly exclude certain groups of people in practice. Disparate impact allows us to identify and eliminate harmful, inequitable, and unjustified policies so that everyone is treated fairly.”
The American Civil Liberties Union revealed that the US government has taken 911 children from their parents at the US-Mexico border since a federal judge ordered the government to stop separating families last June. The Washington Post reports: “In a lengthy court filing in U.S. District Court in San Diego, lawyers wrote that one migrant lost his daughter because a U.S. Border Patrol agent claimed that he had failed to change the girl’s diaper. Another migrant lost his child because of a conviction on a charge of malicious destruction of property with alleged damage of $5. One father, who lawyers say has a speech impediment, was separated from his 4-year-old son because he could not clearly answer Customs and Border Protection agents’ questions.”
The Guardian shares snapshots of gentrification and displacement around the world. Of Lisbon, which is experiencing tourism-related displacement, a resident writes, “This is a turning point. The city is becoming an entirely segregated, exclusive place. Local and national governments are doing nothing to stop this happen. The issue of gentrification has been dismissed or called collateral damage. Some activist groups have been stirring the waters, but it is very difficult to fight the power of money especially when it’s supported by government.” Lynda Lopez of Chicago writes, “The push for affordable housing is coming from the community, not elected officials. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has a slogan called ‘Building a new Chicago’; what does that mean? There is already a Chicago here. There is obviously an agenda to gentrify and attract tourists to make Chicago a ‘global city’. We should be subsidising affordable housing, instead of downtown hotels. We need rent control and eviction laws. As a lifelong resident of the north-west side of Chicago, I’m afraid of there coming a day when I don’t recognise my neighbourhood, when the stores, the people, the library are all gone. That gets to the root of gentrification: this loss of familiarity and home.”
A new study published in Educational Researcher finds that Latino children are more likely to attend elementary schools, with Latino children facing “severe isolation” in large urban school districts: “in 2010, in the nation’s 10 poorest districts, Latino elementary students attended, on average, schools that were just 5 percent white—down from 7 percent white in 1998.” The study also found that, while racial segregation in elementary schools has intensified since the 1990s, low-income students from all racial groups are more likely to attend school with middle-income peers than before.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, testified before the House Committee on Budget this week on the cost of climate change and anticipated health consequences, calling climate change the “greatest public health challenge of the 21st century… Children, pregnant women, older adults, outdoor workers, and low-income and marginalized communities are disproportionately vulnerable. By midcentury, more than 90 million people in the United States – a 100-fold increase – will experience 30 or more days with a heat index above 105°F in an average year. Such extreme heat and heat waves will increase hospitalization for heatstroke and cardiovascular, respiratory, and kidney disorders and could cause thousands of deaths annually. Degraded air quality and higher pollen concentrations will increase the incidence of respiratory illnesses, heart attacks, asthma, and allergies. More people will be exposed to infectious diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and ticks (such as Zika and Lyme disease), toxic algal blooms, and waterborne diseases. Cases of tick-borne disease have already more than doubled from 2004 to 2016. Severe storms can disrupt critical healthcare systems and infrastructure for months, as well as directly costing lives.”
This week, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released a bill—America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act of 2019—to authorize $287 billion over five years for surface transportation projects. Safe Routes Partnership breaks down funding and policy priorities for the Act’s Transportation Alternatives Program, bicycle and pedestrian safety measures, climate change mitigation, and other programs, including a new “Community Connectivity pilot program provides competitive grant awards to help communities plan for or tear down highways that displaced and divided communities, most often to the detriment of communities of color. While small ($120 million over 5 years), this program is the first time the federal transportation bill has recognized the harm that was done to many cities by building highways through formerly vibrant neighborhoods and seeks to address it by replacing the highways with boulevards friendly to active transportation and transit connections, parks, and public spaces.”
A Huffington Post story examines GRIP (Guiding Rage Into Power), a prison rehabilitation program that challenges traditional gender roles around masculinity, dominance, and violence. GRIP started at San Quentin in 2013 and now operates in five California state prisons. “During the trainings, inmates open up about their traumatic experiences, such as sexual assault, abandonment by their family and domestic violence inflicted by loved ones. Revisiting what they call this “original trauma” is an integral part of their work. It’s the experiences they had as young boys that formed the basis of their coping mechanisms and survival tactics… The trainings at Avenal take place once a month over 12 months. Throughout the program, inmates learn about the “male role belief system.” They learn that when men live “inside the box,” they’re only allowed a narrow field of emotions ranging from anger to indifference. It’s what many might recognize as some of the basic tenets of feminism… “Society says the male dominates,” [George] Luna said. “They try to breed it in you that you can’t be anything else, except [a] masculine, hardcore, callous person, but men can be loving and have compassion.””
Reverend Deanna Hollas, the Presbyterian Church's first minister of gun violence prevention, wants to change the conversation and take action on gun violence: “The saying ‘thoughts and prayers’ has been co-opted by the gun lobby to keep the church from taking action so they can increase their profits,” Ms. Hollas, who was installed in her new role by the Presbyterian Church earlier this month, said in a recent interview. “While all that we do as Christians should be rooted in worship and prayer, it should not stay there. It is like breathing — worship and prayer is the in-breath, and action is the out-breath.”
And, finally, in our new Prevention Institute podcast released this week, Community Organizing to Prevent Violence, Reggie Moore, director of the Milwaukee Office of Violence Prevention, talks with PI’s Lisa Fujie Parks about how the Milwaukee Blueprint for Peace was created with leadership from communities most impacted by violence. The development of the Blueprint has coincided with a three-year decline in Milwaukee homicides and non-fatal shootings. Moore says, “When people ask ‘what is the cost of prevention?’ My response is, ‘what is the value of your life?’ If we can invest in stopping a young person from being unintentionally shot or a mother from being unnecessarily killed, or any other form of violence that harms an individual, a neighborhood, a school, a community, I can’t put a price tag on that. But what I do know is that we have not equitably and fairly invested in prevention to the degree that we’ve invested in cops, cages, and corpses. What we want to see as a community is a city, a county, a state that is committed to investing in prevention instead of pain.”