Minority Health and Health Equity Archive
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769
Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.
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Item Housing assistance in Making Connections neighborhoods(2008) Kingsley, G. Thomas; Hayes, ChristopherMaking Connections is a decade-long initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s based on the belief that the best way to improve outcomes for vulnerable children living in tough neighborhoods is to strengthen their families’ connections to economic opportunity, positive social networks, and effective services and supports. Launched in 1999, the initiative operates in selected neighborhoods in ten cities across the country. This brief examines the scope and composition of housing assistance being provided through HUD programs to residents of the ten Making Connections neighborhoods. It also describes selected characteristics of the families that receive housing assistance and how their circumstances changed between surveys conducted in 2002/03 and 2005/06. At the latter date, the average share of eligible households that received assistance was 25 percent, the same as the national average, but there was considerable variation across sites: 46 percent of eligibles were assisted in Hartford and Louisville compared to only 13 percent or fewer in Des Moines, Indianapolis and Milwaukee. Among families with children, characteristics of housing assistance recipients contrasted markedly with those of other renters living in these neighborhoods. Assisted families were much more likely to be minorities and single parent households, had much lower incomes, and were considerably less likely to have a family member with stable employment or a savings account, although differences in factors like volunteering, satisfaction with services and optimism about the future of their neighborhood were less marked. Both groups had about the same, surprisingly high, likelihood of having moved between surveys (68-69 percent), and the distances moved were also similar. When designing approaches to helping both groups advance toward self-sufficiency, the major differences in their characteristics suggest alternative approaches and should certainly be taken into account.Item MAKING CONNECTIONS CROSS-SITE SURVEY: BASIC DEMOGRAPHICS(2010) Kingsley, G. Thomas; Hayes, ChristopherThe Making Connections Cross-Site Survey provides a wealth of information on resident perceptions of services. The survey has entailed interviews with large samples of families in Making Connections neighborhoods in all 10 sites at two points in time: first in 2002 or 2003 (depending on the site), and second in 2005 or 2006. A third wave was then conducted in the selected neighborhoods in 5 of the 10 sites in 2008 or 2009 (Denver, Des Moines, Indianapolis, San Antonio, and White Center). These fact sheets focus on the 2008/09 survey and significant changes between it and earlier waves in the 5 sites. They provide selected data on the demographic makeup of Making Connections neighborhoods and how the relevant indicators had changed over time. We expect that data on these basic indicators will inform understanding of many other branches of research using the survey data. The topics covered are: • Types of households (households with and without children) • Race and ethnicity (households with and without children) • The foreign born (households with children only) • Age and gender (households with children only) Gaining clarity at the outset in differences between the characteristics of households with children and childless households is important. These two groups differ from each other in important ways. Families with children have been the focus of the Making Connections mission and, on many dimensions, they need be looked at separately. Lumping households with and without children together can create indicators that are often difficult to interpret.Item MAKING CONNECTIONS CROSS-SITE SURVEY: SOCIAL AND NEIGHBORHOOD CONDITIONS(2010) Kingsley, G. Thomas; Hayes, ChristopherThe Making Connections Cross-Site Survey provides a wealth of information on changing conditions in low-income communities. The survey has entailed interviews with large samples of families in Making Connections neighborhoods in all 10 sites at two points in time: first in 2002 or 2003 (depending on the site), and second in 2005 or 2006. A third wave was then conducted in the selected neighborhoods in 5 of the 10 sites in 2008 or 2009 (Denver, Des Moines, Indianapolis, San Antonio, and White Center). These fact sheets focus on the 2008/09 survey and significant changes between it and earlier waves in the 5 sites. They provide selected data on social and neighborhood conditions in Making Connections neighborhoods and discuss how the relevant indicators have changed over time. We expect that data on these basic indicators will inform understanding of many other branches of research using the survey data. The topics covered are: 1. Social networks 2. Civic participation 3. Community mobilization 4. Overall neighborhood conditions and safety 5. Neighborhood disorder/incivility In almost all sections, we note statistically significant changes in indicators between the first survey (2002/03) and the third (2008/09). In the first part of the first section (Table 1.1) however, we note changes between the second survey (2005/06) and the third, because key questions related to respondents getting and giving non-financial help were not asked in the first survey.Item Metropolitan Contexts for Community Initiatives: Contrasts in a Turbulent Decade(2010) Kingsley, G. Thomas; Williams, AshleyThose implementing community improvement initiatives recognize that conditions in their metropolitan areas have a powerful influence on what they can accomplish at the neighborhood level. A specific neighborhood workforce development strategy cannot be expected to yield the same result in a declining metropolitan labor market as in a metro where job growth is booming. An approach to bolstering neighborhood housing conditions that worked well in a metro with a generally strong housing market is not likely to be as successful in one where the average house price is plummeting. Differences like these, however, are seldom taken into account explicitly. The purpose of this report is to illustrate the wide range in conditions and trends that America’s metropolitan areas have experienced over the past decade to give community planners a basis for thinking about implications for their work. To ground the research, we highlight 14 metros that have been the focus for investment by the Annie E. Casey Foundation over the past decade: Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, Des Moines, Hartford, Indianapolis, Louisville, Milwaukee, New Haven, Oakland, Providence, San Antonio, Seattle, and Washington DC. As will be shown, these 14 are strikingly diverse along many dimensions and are reasonably representative of the diversity in circumstances that exist across America’s large metropolitan areas.