Last time I explained how our voting system is broken and proffered a mandatory voting law as a resolution to this problem. Now I demonstrate this policy’s benefits and drawbacks. You know your wacky neighbor or uncle always spouting some loony policy that no one seems to agree with, but somehow manages to be supported…
In Matt’s second piece on mandatory voting, he asks about the cost of low voter turnout.
Our society is made up of a wide range of groups with very different needs and aspirations, and therefore have different requirements of their candidates at election time. Thus, who actually participates has real material consequences in our community. So out of those who do choose to vote, who specifically is turning out?
Lisa K. Bates, Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Urban Studies in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, updates us on research in the Access to Opportunity Project.
When thinking about assessing the impact of Humboldt Gardens’ GOALS program, which is the project‘s version of HUD‘s Family Self-Sufficiency Program (FSS), it is useful to know the program‘s context. The concept of FSS is straightforward — parents participate in programming designed to promote employment and financial stability, working with a case manager to set goals.
When you think about your rent increasing and how ridiculous paying $1000+ for 400 square feet of space is when others pay less for an entire mortgage, I bet all you want to do is punch your greedy landlord in the face. In many cases, the parents of other young professionals are frustrated too because like in Failure to Launch, they want their “naked room,” but their kids just won’t move out. With a parent’s age and wisdom, they recognize that landlords are just pawns; it’s the developers that are cheating us.
The USC Price School of Public Policy is pursuing a plan to establish a special doctoral program in public policy and management in Armenia, designed to build the academic infrastructure to address the significant public management needs of this growing country and region.
by Janna Rezaee
This past June, I co-organized the Political Economy and Public Law (PEPL) conference here at USC with my colleague, Abby Wood. The goal of this small conference is to strengthen the connections between legal scholars and social scientists doing work at the intersection of politics, economics, and law.
This was the tenth annual PEPL conference. Prior to USC, PEPL has been held at Cornell, New York University, University of Rochester, Washington University in Saint Louis, University of Virginia, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.
By Alexandra Metz
Access to Opportunity researchers are engaging with families that take part in specialized programs for the recently homeless, and families taking part in a new cohort program designed specifically for single mothers, called the Power of One program.
By Emily Lieb
ARCH’s “sphere of influence” sits across Lake Washington from Seattle, one of the fastest growing (and most expensive) cities in the country. In many ways, its member cities are stereotypical American suburbs: they’ve got quiet streets lined with single-family homes; well-funded, highly regarded schools; and commuter-clogged interstate highways.
By Dr. Lisa K. Bates
Joining the Access to Opportunity team is bringing me into dialogue with amazing scholars and practitioners with deep understanding of policy systems, focusing on an under-studied context of west coast cities. I am looking forward to sharing the research from Portland as we complete this initial round of work. We are looking at Humboldt Gardens, a development of Home Forward (the Housing Authority of Portland), as a site for understanding low-income parents’ (mostly parents of color) strategies for accessing ‘opportunity’.
Dr. Shawn Flanigan, San Diego State University, shares the next installment of our blog on the Access to Opportunity Project. San Diego is consistently ranked among the least affordable housing markets in the United States, topping that list in 2015! Coming in at number two on the list in 2016. Rather than looking exclusively at housing costs, assessments of housing affordability consider housing costs in relation to how many residents of a community could afford to purchase a home at the median price. In 2015, real estate industry research showed that less than half of households could qualify to buy a median priced home in 93.3 percent of San Diego zip codes. This was the highest ratio of any city in the study.