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The housing affordability crisis is likely to continue for low-to-moderate income households and people of color, according to a recent annual report from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. As the crisis has intensified, people and groups opposed to new housing developments in their neighborhoods have come under increasing levels of criticism. Such opposition is often characterized by the acronym NIMBY, short for “not in my backyard,” and the term NIMBYism. The San Francisco Bay Area has been plagued by a severe affordable housing shortage since the 1990s. In recent decades, anti-density activists have been elected to positions of power in Marin County, Palo Alto, and Cupertino, entrenching opposition to ...

Transitioning to employee ownership is a powerful strategy to preserve local businesses and jobs and support economic recovery and resilience. For the last decade, Project Equity has worked closely with numerous regions and economic development partners to unlock the power of employee ownership and create thriving local economies.

IEDC will kick off 2022 by focusing on strengthening our communities, attracting new industries, and advancing equitable economic growth. The Leadership Summit will concentrate on diversification—strengthening what we have by diversifying existing economic drivers, diversifying the regional economy and attracting new industries, and diversifying to advance equitable and inclusive growth for disadvantaged and underserved populations.

The pandemic has forced government officials, policymakers, and economics professionals around the world to confront a chicken-or-egg dilemma: Which comes first, health or the economy? With countries worldwide experiencing a vicious cycle of lockdowns, reopenings, Covid surges, and more lockdowns, should officials pursue policies to stabilize (or stimulate) the economy first or combat the pandemic first?

As part of IEDC’s Take Action Against Racism in Economic Development webinar series, four presenters spoke about the geography of inequality and the relationship between place and economic opportunity. Robby Habans, PhD, economist at The Data Center in New Orleans, and Robert Manduca, PhD, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, gave an overview of place-based economic disparities on a micro and macro level. Habans presented his work on how life expectancy and economic mobility can vary at the neighborhood level within a single metropolitan area. In New Orleans and across the country, data show that life expectancy in majority Black census tracts is consistently lower than in majority non-Black census tracts ...

From March 15–16, IEDC held the 2021 Leadership Summit, a virtual conference that was hosted in Phoenix. One of the sessions addressed the lack of useful and accurate metrics for economic inequality. Economic inequality is multifaceted and complex, making it difficult to measure its impact on local economies. The speakers agreed that inequality should be viewed as an intricate system and that good metrics could explain the relational outcomes. To measure inequality, the first step is to ask what the costs are, how large they are, and who pays them. This helps to quantify inequalities since costs are typically measurable. By examining inequality costs, the metrics and outcomes become more apparent. The costs of inequality can be ...

By Colton Campbell, IEDC intern When disaster strikes the United States, minority and poor communities inevitably bear the brunt. With COVID-19 the disparities are clear. Minority populations are less likely to have access to good health care and more likely to be working frontline jobs. Now, as Texas warms back up from the last couple weeks of freezing temperatures and utility grid stresses, it begs the questions of how disadvantaged groups were affected by the storm compared to the more affluent, and if there is something that can be done to address these issues that happen time and again. Before looking for answers, it is important to point out that what happened in Texas was a natural hazard that turned into a disaster. While the days ...

Gina Raimondo, President Biden’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Commerce, made it clear at her Senate confirmation hearings last month that she would prioritize jobs and workers. She aims to create jobs, address inequality, raise the federal minimum wage, and invest in manufacturing. Raimondo became Rhode Island’s first woman governor in 2015 and has a working-class background. Her father worked in manufacturing and lost his job in the 1980s as a result of offshoring. Raimondo is committed to championing American-made goods, aligning with Biden’s Buy American Act. “My dad always used to say there was something special about a job in manufacturing—the dignity of a job when you spend your day making ...