The State of the Union: Policy Priorities for the Next Four Years

| Posted: February 12th, 2013

Once a year, the nation turns its full attention to the state of public policy in America. By most accounts, tonight’s State of the Union address is of particular importance as President Obama will attempt to set the policy agenda for the next four years.

In light of this speech and the weeks of discussion that will inevitably follow, the MetroTrends staff asked some of our leading experts to comment on the direction they think public policy should take between now and 2016. They took into account political realities and proposed agenda items that are both critical and achievable. Their answers covered a range of policy topics.

Crime and safety

John Roman, Urban Institute Senior Fellow, advocates thinking creatively about the intersection between crime and neighborhood economic status: for example, how could tax code reform encourage gentrification that would reduce gun violence?

The institute’s Justice Policy Director Nancy La Vigne observes that there is bi-partisan agreement that we can no longer afford mass incarceration. States are implementing innovative methods to reduce criminal justice populations and save money. She argues that the Federal government should follow the good examples set by the states, implementing criminal justice reforms to reduce the federal prison population and relieve pressure on the federal budget.

Senior Fellow Akiva Liberman believes that high-profile discussions of criminal justice policy in the political context often lead to symbolic tough-on-crime posturing that produces bad policy. Criminal justice policy reform will be more constructive if it is bottom-up and driven by the states, especially because sentencing is mostly a state matter. On this issue, President Obama would be wise to “lead from behind.”

Employment and Economic Recovery

Institute Fellow Bob Lerman argues that a major expansion of apprenticeship training programs is the best way to build skills that enhance job quality and wages. An apprenticeship initiative requires little or no increase in government spending and can attract bipartisan support. Simply adding more funding for college will be far less cost-effective and far less progressive.

The institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center Director Greg Acs advocates for policies that nurture the recovery, create jobs, and reduce long-term unemployment. More specifically, we must avoid sequestration, invest in infrastructure, and enhance our national workforce development system.

Immigration reform has bi-partisan congressional momentum and public support. Immigration expert Erwin de Leon calls for a comprehensive immigration reform policy that provides a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, addresses the labor needs of our economy, and fixes flaws in our immigration system.

Poverty and Homelessness

Homelessness expert Mary Cunningham lauds the Obama administration’s successes combating homelessness among veterans, but says they will need to focus and boost their efforts to reach their 2015 goals. She adds that ending homelessness for all people will require a bigger investment in affordable housing programs and production.

Meanwhile, Urban Institute Neighborhoods and Youth Development Program Director Susan Popkin would like to see attention given to addressing the violence that stunts the life chances of so many children in urban communities.

Housing

Housing expert Peter Tatian describes a list of priorities to support the continued recovery of the housing market while avoiding another bubble. His top concerns: reforming the housing finance system (including the secondary market, regulation, and the tax code) and resolving outstanding troubled mortgages, promoting sustainable homeownership for more Americans, and making the most efficient use of government support to create and preserve affordable rental housing and end homelessness.

Healthcare

Urban Institute Health Policy Center co-Director Stephen Zuckerman says the big health policy priorities between now and 2016 will be implementing all portions of the Affordable Care Act, especially the coverage expansions, in as many states as possible and ensuring that people who are newly eligible for benefits are aware of their eligibility and enroll.

With some states opting out of the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, Urban Institute Health Policy Center co-Director Genevieve Kenney argues that it will be important to monitor outcomes for low-income individuals and their providers across states in the coming years to assess changes in coverage, access to care, financial burdens, and well-being.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: January 19th, 2013

MetroTrends bloggers this week described the unique challenges – and promises – in two particular communities. As always, The Urban Institute’s fact-based approach sheds new light on old problems, and suggests paths forward.

Molly Scott and her team won a Promise Grant for the Langley Park neighborhood in Prince George’s County, Maryland. This $500,000 award will design a system of family, school and community supports to foster children’s education from cradle to career in this high-poverty, immigrant neighborhood.

Jesse Jannetta of the Justice Policy Center wrote a four-post series about California’s incarcerated population. He started by examining the second annual 15,000 person decline in the Federal prison population. It’s not the success some claim – because California’s prison population also fell by 15,000; the prison decline is a California Story.

So, what is the California story? Legislative requirements have sent many California prisoners into the jail system instead, dramatically increasing jail populations.

The growing jail population is made up largely of sentenced prisoners serving their time in jails instead of prisons.

This creates a unique problem for jail reentry services – the support systems for prisoners transitioning back into the community after their sentences.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: January 5th, 2013

MetroTrends geared up for 2013 this week with two new posts:

• Peter Tatian made a persuasive argument against rent control as a means to provide housing to low-income families
• Aaron Horvath wrote about promising new research on deterring inter-gang violence in DC

As always, more next week.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: December 15th, 2012

MetroTrends Week in Review

This week’s debates over the Fiscal Cliff in Washington highlight the role of social services for low-income families and families living in poverty. While it remains an important and open question how wide or limited the government’s role ought to be, MetroTrends provided a range of empirical evidence about those families in need.

• Amanda Mireles wrote two posts about the damaging effects of living in concentrated poverty, and about promising new Urban Institute strategies to combat that poverty
• Mary Cunningham responded to the announcement about a drop in Veterans Homelessness with 5 critical suggestions for the Obama Administration to reach its goal of ending homelessness for Veterans by 2015
• Zach McDade wrote about a rare piece of good news in the Nation’s still-troubled housing market: over $26 billion have been distributed by the country’s five largest mortgage servicers to households on the brink of foreclosure

More next week. Check back.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: December 8th, 2012

It’s been Fiscal Cliff-awareness week in Washington, and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center published a Tax Calculator to help you determine how the proposed solutions would affect you and your family.

In the meantime the MetroTrends blog covered issues directly related to the Fiscal Cliff: its effects on the safety net and entitlements.

• Sarah Minton and Christin Durham posted the last in a three-part series about low-income working families’ access to child care subsidies. Securing affordable child care is crucial to finding and maintaining work – and where you live dramatically affects whether you’ll be eligible for support.
• Julia Isaacs published her annual predictions on child poverty for 2012, based on a model of her design that anticipates final numbers 9 months before release. The upshot: child poverty remained worryingly high this year.

We also posted on a wide variety of other important policy topics:

• Erwin de Leon argued that policy makers should take more care to understand the diversity of people, culture and policy needs among a group often perceived as monolithic: Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
• Bob Lerman takes an interesting look at income inequality: the reality of purchasing power disadvantage is more complicated than the size of your paycheck.

More next week: see you back on MetroTrends.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: November 10th, 2012

The presidential election is over and as a nation we must now assess what the results mean for public policy and our country. MetroTrends gave you a look at the role we hope to play in the coming months with four posts this election week:

• Lisa Dubay, Sharon Long and Emily Lawton of the Health Policy Center wrote about Massachusetts health reform and its effects on jobs and the economy. The upshot? Similarly-structured Obamacare – now likely to be fully implemented – probably won’t harm the economy
• Housing expert Claudia Sharygin wrote about housing markets in the swing states and the role they have played in the election
• MetroTrends reflected on its contributions to public policy in the election season, highlighting the importance of local variation in national economic conditions
• Katie Toran summarized the results of a new study about corporate taxation: which cities are most and least-heavily taxed?

Stay tuned: more to come next week.

Share this:

After the Election, Let's Turn to Policy

| Posted: November 6th, 2012

No issue has dominated this presidential election like the economy, but the debate has often overlooked crucial differences between metropolitan areas and how they have fared in the Great Recession and recovery. MetroTrends has filled that gap with clear, succinct policy analysis and recommendations to the nation, the candidates, and policymakers everywhere.

Agonizingly slow job growth marks this recovery, and two MetroTrends series address the job market. The first analyzed a central Romney jobs proposal, suggesting five major improvements. The second highlighted the strengths and shortcomings of recent public workforce stimulation (see figure below), emphasizing important lessons learned. Another post posed tough questions about the returns to education and career choices over the coming decade.

Recovery in metropolitan housing markets has also languished, and NeighborhoodInfo DC and MetroTrends have zoomed in on Prince George’s County, a majority-black Washington, DC, suburb where one in every six homes has entered foreclosure proceedings in the past two years. Persistent mortgage relief scammers and a few large banks have exacerbated this strife.

Neither candidate has paid much (if any) attention to another critical economic issue: poverty. MetroTrends has, arguing that despite perspectives to the contrary, poverty matters and in fact is a growing national problem. Child poverty rates are up significantly since the beginning of the recession, as is participation in the national food stamp (SNAP) program, though this can be viewed as a success for our social safety net. MetroTrends also mapped levels and variation in poverty in the Washington, DC, area and in the nation’s top 100 metros.

These posts represent just a snapshot of our work, and we commit to providing this depth and breadth of analysis well into the next presidency: not just for specific policies but also for the policy process generally. For example, in an unprecedented era of painful budget shortfalls, who ought to receive the most expensive treatments and who needs just a small nudge into greater prosperity? Research’s “gold standard”, the random controlled trial, is expensive and may not always be the best approach for finding answers to these and other tough policy questions.

The Urban Institute’s research experts are uniquely able to provide this type of valuable perspective, and MetroTrends will be their outlet—stay tuned.

Until then, go vote!

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: November 3rd, 2012

The MetroTrends blog had just two posts this week, due to the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Our best wishes are with everyone affected by the storm. Next week we will be back in full force with new posts about the election and about the public policy that will inform the next Presidential administration.

This week:

• Julia Isaacs provided an interactive map and enlightening analysis about the doubling of food stamp use over the last five years. What is the right way to look at and assess that growth?
• Akiva Liberman wrote about a recent pilot study to reduce truancy rates in Washington, DC. The study’s results were mixed and raised more fundamental questions about school reform.

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: October 27th, 2012

All too often policymakers lack the resources necessary to address every problem faced by their constituents. Accordingly, much of the Urban Institute’s research focuses on how they can best spend available resources, targeting those people most in need or those areas with the most potential for valuable improvement.

This week our four MetroTrends blog posts all strive for that goal:

• Brett Theodos blogged about intensive case management in Chicago’s public housing, and discussed strategies for targeting services efficiently
• Sue Popkin argued for a move away from that research “gold standard,” the random controlled trial – sometimes populations and studies are best served by other approaches
• Brianna Lososya wrote about foreclosures in Prince George’s County, describing the latest NeighborhoodInfo DC data that could help target prevention resources
• Timothy Waidmann pulled together new research about preventable chronic diseases, discussing how some hard-hit metro areas could see valuable healthcare cost-savings

Share this:

MetroTrends Week in Review

| Posted: October 20th, 2012

In Tuesday’s presidential debate the candidates spoke about – among other topics – poverty and joblessness, professing desire for four years’ chance to combat those economic scourges.

The MetroTrends blog aided our next president with cogent assessment of existing policy on both topics, and by illuminating potential new policy.

• Tom Kingsley and Kait Franks made a compelling case for the use of project-based public housing as springboard for full neighborhood revitalization – it could be effective and efficient, they say.
• Stephen Wandner published his second blog series on joblessness, this time outlining the response of America’s jobs training and reemploying programs to the Great Recession.
  • Long term public workforce spending declines affected the most recent recession
  • Unprecedented increases in reemployment spending helped, but not enough
  • Ultimately Congress responded “passively” and not “actively”; read what that means
  • Stephen concludes by examining the effect of the temporary workforce spending at the state level
  • Don’t miss Stephen’s first series about the economic shortcomings of a central Romney employment proposal

Share this: