Building Opportunity-Rich Neighborhoods and Developing Pathways to Opportunity

The Opportunity Communities Program

Staff Contacts for the

Opportunity Communities Program

Jason ReeceSenior Researcher reece.35@osu.edu

Christy RogersSenior Research Associate rogers.441@osu.edu

Samir GambhirSenior Research Associate gambhir.2@osu.edu

For more information: kirwaninstitute.org

john a. powell, Executive DirectorAndrew Grant-Thomas, Deputy Director

kirwaninstitute.org

433 Mendenhall Laboratory125 S. Oval MallColumbus, OH 43210(614) 688-5429

Fair access to opportunity is critical to promoting well-being and advancement in any society. Accessing opportunity to better our lives and our children’s lives motivates us to move across town, across the country, or across the world for better jobs, a quality education, a healthy environment, or safety from violence. Fair access to opportunity is also essential to produce a truly democratic society. In the context of community development, neighborhoods are the primary environments in which we access key opportunity structures. Neighborhoods often determine access to critical opportunities needed to excel in our society, such as high-performing schools, sustainable employment, stable housing, safe neighborhoods, and health care.

In our metropolitan regions, opportunities are not equally distributed. Opportunities are often geographically clustered in a few communities, while they are lacking or insufficient in others, creating a web of high- and low-opportunity neighborhoods across metropolitan regions. Therefore, not everyone has equal access to the critical opportunities needed to excel or advance in life. Many low-income communities, particularly communities of color, are often spatially isolated and segregated from high-performing schools, quality health care and child care, and sustainable jobs. Many citizens are isolated from opportunity by patterns of residential segregation, exclusionary land use policies, sprawl, and disinvestment in urban areas.

Fifty years of social science research has demonstrated that racially isolated and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods restrict employment options for young people, contribute to poor health, expose children to extremely high rates of crime and violence, and contain some of the poorest performing schools. Neighborhood racial and economic segregation is also segregation from opportunities critical to quality of life, financial stability, and social advancement. Isolation and disinvestment threatens not only individuals and their families, but entire communities.

Kirwan Institute Opportunity Communities Program: Building Opportunity-Rich Neighborhoods and Developing Pathways to Opportunity

The Opportunity Communities

model has two goals: to bring

opportunities to deprived areas

and to connect people to existing

opportunities throughout the

metropolitan region.

OpportunityMapping

Opportunity-BasedFair Housing

Equitable Regional

Policy

NeighborhoodRevitalization

OpportunityCommunities

Program

Figure 1: Components of the Kirwan Institute Opportunity Communities program.

The Kirwan Institute has a number of significant projects, research, and collaborations to promote community development, fair housing, and social justice through our “Opportunity Communities” program. The Opportunity Communities framework is a model of fair housing and community development. It is based on the premises that everyone should have fair access to the critical opportunity structures needed to succeed in life and that affirmatively connecting people to opportunity creates positive, transformative change in communities. The Opportunity Communities model advocates a fair investment in all of a region’s people and neighborhoods—to improve the life outcomes of all citizens and to improve the health of entire regions.

The Opportunity Communities model has two goals: to bring opportunities to deprived areas and to connect people to existing opportunities throughout the metropolitan region. Opportunities can be brought into distressed neighborhoods by improving education, stimulating investment, and expanding employment opportunities in disinvested neighborhoods, while marginalized populations can be proactively connected to regional opportunity structures by improving housing mobility options and providing fair and effective public transportation. In addition, the model advocates managing sprawling growth to reduce the drain of jobs and resources from existing communities.

The institute’s Opportunity Communities program focuses on four primary activities to proactively connect people to opportunity: opportunity mapping, opportunity-based fair housing, neighborhood revitalization, and regional equity.

To learn more, read our full report on Opportunity Communities: A Framework for a More Equitable and Sustainable Future for All at kirwaninstitute.org.

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The first step in applying the Opportunity Communities framework is a critical one and it uses opportunity mapping to better understand and represent the dynamics of opportunity within a region. The Opportunity Communities framework is inherently spatial. It recognizes that inequality has a geographic footprint and that maps can visually track the history and presence of discriminatory and exclusionary policies that spatially segregate people. Mapping the geographic distribution of opportunity helps evaluate where these opportunity mismatches exist in a community.

To map opportunity in the region, we use variables that show high and low opportunity. High-opportunity indicators include the availability of sustainable employment, high-performing schools, a safe environment, access to high-quality health care, adequate transportation, quality child care, and safe neighborhoods. These multiple indicators of opportunity are captured at the same geographic scale and translated into a comprehensive opportunity map for the region.

This rigorous exercise allows communities to measure opportunity comprehensively and comparatively; to communicate who has access to opportunity-rich areas and who does not; and to understand what needs to be remedied in opportunity-poor communities. Opportunity mapping harnesses sophisticated mapping software and detailed data sets, enabling people to identify proactively where policy interventions are needed to remedy conditions of inequality.

Under the leadership of john a. powell, the Kirwan Institute has become a national leader in conducting opportunity mapping to support social and racial justice initiatives. The institute has completed opportunity mapping in more than a dozen metropolitan areas across the United States since 2003, often at the request of community groups and advocacy organizations interested in community development and fair housing.

Opportunity Mapping:Understanding Racial Isolation; Guiding Strategic Interventions

Recent Initiatives

The Geography of Opportunity and Foreclosure in ConnecticutCommissioned by the Connecticut Fair Housing Center

The Geography of Opportunity in Massachusetts Commissioned by Massachusetts Law Reform Institute and the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation

Mapping Strategies to Promote Public Health Research commissioned by the Opportunity Agenda to identify best practices in mapping to promote public health advocacy

The Geography of Opportunity–Austin Region Commissioned by the Community Partnership for the Homeless and the Central Texas Opportunity Initiative

To learn more about all of our opportunity mapping projects, read our full report on The Geography of Opportunity: Review of Opportunity Mapping Research Initiatives at kirwaninstitute.org.

Housing, in particular its location, is the primary mechanism for accessing opportunity in our society. Where you live is more important than what you live in. Housing location determines the quality of local public services, such as schools, the degree of access to employment and transportation, and the degree of public safety. Often this underlying reality is made evident in housing values, so where you live also determines how much wealth you can build through homeownership.

Currently, most affordable housing in our metropolitan regions is disconnected from opportunity. Some federal housing programs and exclusionary land use policies have worked to concentrate affordable housing in segregated, opportunity-poor communities. This is most evident in subsidized housing policies. Historically, subsidized housing was deliberately placed in racially segregated communities. Contemporary subsidized housing policies have continued this trend, locating the majority of new units in impoverished and segregated central city neighborhoods. The Kirwan Institute’s housing research focuses on providing fair access to opportunity communities through affordable housing development and fair housing policy.

Opportunity-Based Fair Housing:Innovative Housing Strategies Open Pathways to Opportunity

Figure 2: “Location, Location, Location.” Housing location is a critical point of intervention to connect people to opportunity structures in our society.

Safety & Health

Sustainable Employment

Education

Transportation & Public Services

Effective Participation

& Political Voice

Family Stability & Child Care

Housing

Fiscal Policies

Recent Initiatives

The Kirwan Institute Subprime Lending, Foreclosure, and Race Initiative The Kirwan Institute launched an outreach, advocacy, and research initiative to focus on the subprime lending and foreclosure crisis from a structural perspective. The initiative includes seeking solutions from leading thinkers and key stakeholders in the various domains impacted or implicated by the crisis.

Thompson v. HUD Research and expert witness activities on behalf of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Maryland ACLU for one of the largest fair housing cases in the nation.

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SourceCensus.gov; EPA.govTexas Education AgencyIndependent School DistrictsESRI; Geographynetwork.comICC; Tetrad; Capmetro.orgDateMarch 12, 2007

Comprehensive Opportunity Map, City of AustinThis map displays the spatial pattern of distribution of opportunity in City of Austin based on Economic, Mobility, Education, Public Health and Neighborhood Indicators.

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Map 3A: Comprehensive Opportunity Map withSubsidized Housing overlayBOSTON AND AROUNDThis map displays the spatial pattern of distribution of opportunity based on Education, Economic & Mobility,and Housing & Neighborhood indicators overlaid with subsidized housing locations.Source: US Census 2000; County Business Pattern; ESRI; EPA; Massachusetts Department of Education; MA State Police Date: July 17, 2008

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Map 3: Neighborhood Opportunity Map and2000 Distribution of Federal Subsidized Housing N

Source: Neighborhood Opportunity Analysis by the Kirwan Instituteand the U.S. Census Bureau

Author: The Kirwan Institute, The Ohio State UniversityDate: July 16th 2008

Note: Opportunity Analysis based on assessmentof 15 neighborhood based indicators of opportunity.

Please review report for full list of indicators.

LegendSite Based Subsidized Housing Sites 2000

County

Neighborhoods (Census Tracts)Opportunity Index Rank

Very Low Opportunity

Low Opportunity

Moderate Opportunity

High Opportunity

Very High Opportunity

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Decades of disinvestment, population loss, segregation, and neglect have left many urban inner-city neighborhoods in great distress. The suburban sprawl which traditionally drained resources from the inner city is now threatening our older inner-suburban communities. Neighborhood revitalization is therefore critical to bringing opportunity back to our distressed urban communities. The Kirwan Institute has worked on a number of initiatives that identify opportunities and challenges to neighborhood revitalization, while promoting policies that support the resurgence of these communities. The institute’s model of neighborhood revitalization aims to create neighborhoods of choice that are accessible to all residents.

Neighborhood Revitalization:Targeted Reinvestment to Bring Opportunity Back to Distressed Places

Equitable regionalism calls for proactive policymaking that gives all people access to neighborhood resources, connections to opportunity-rich areas within their region, and a voice in the future of their own community. It also affirms the need for every community to have a voice in the resource development and future of its region. Equitable regionalism builds and sustains region-wide, collaborative institutions with inclusive representation. The common goal is to improve the health of the whole and expand opportunity for all people and communities across the region.

Equitable regionalism creates access to opportunity, leadership, and responsibility, with a particular focus on low-income communities of color. Multiple strategies— including a focus on people, places, and the linkages among them—can connect these communities to opportunity. Investing in people, neighborhoods, and communities promises returns not just to a select few individuals or neighborhoods, but to the entire region.

Every region’s most important resource is its people— all of its people—and their energy, creativity, and hope for a better future. A cooperative commitment to equitable development acknowledges and works within the cultural, racial, and historical dynamics that characterize any region. This approach puts a region on a positive trajectory of growth, vitality, and sustainability for all of its communities.

Regional Equity: Promoting Fair and Equitable Regional Policy to Produce Healthy Regions

Recent Initiatives

Regional Equity and Opportunity-Based Housing for MichiganResearch and strategy recommendations prepared for the Michigan Roundtable

Regional Equity for Northeast OhioEquitable regional policy recommendations commissioned by the Presidents’ Council (of Cleveland)

Minority Business Development for ClevelandIdentification of strategies to grow the MBE sector in Cleveland and Ohio

Recent Initiatives

Pathways to OpportunityPartnership and Collaboration to Revitalize the Rosemont-Walbrook neighborhood in West Baltimore

Columbus Neighborhood Revitalization Assessment Prepared for The Columbus Foundation

Vacant Property InitiativesResearch and policy development to aid vacant property initiatives in Detroit and Baltimore

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