What mayors really think about the Inflation Reduction Act

About a year after President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, a group of Boston University researchers set out in the summer of 2023 to better understand mayors’ experiences with the landmark climate legislation.

Police are shaping and enforcing homelessness policies. It’s making the problem worse, researchers say.

As cities throughout the U.S. grapple with the rising number of people experiencing homelessness, many have asked police to enforce local laws against camping, sitting on sidewalks, and sleeping or eating in public, according to the brief. Pressure to use police to address homelessness often comes from residents and businesses that complain about the sight of unsheltered homelessness, it states.

‘Street crisis team’ aims to curb police involvement in homelessness response in San Francisco

In San Francisco, a “street crisis team” of trained practitioners will now respond to non-emergency calls involving people experiencing homelessness through a yearlong, $3 million pilot program announced by Mayor London Breed last week. Law enforcement has historically responded to these calls, and the new Homeless Engagement Assistance Response Team is part of a larger city effort to reduce the need for police to be the primary response for people experiencing a crisis on the street, according to last week’s news release. Decreasing the use of police can reduce cycles of incarceration, which are expensive for cities and harm people experiencing homelessness, said Charley Willison, an assistant professor of public and ecosystem health at Cornell University who co-authored a new policy brief on the role of police in cities’ responses to homelessness.

As more cities declare crises around climate and affordability, does change follow?

Hoboken is one of many cities that have enacted declarations in recent years that address ongoing societal, economic and environmental issues. The city council in Evanston, Illinois, recently approved a climate emergency resolution. Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and New York City passed declarations declaring racism as a public health crisis. Portland, Oregon, and Miami-Dade County, Florida, have announced emergencies around housing and affordability.

Memphis’ potential is about Black Memphians reaching theirs

Every time it seems that progress is being made, it is upended by another wave of repressive and oppressive laws and policies. Some people these days refer to Jim Crow 2.0, but truth be told, the residual impacts of Jim Crow 1.0 were never completely eradicated. The impacts were retained in institutional racism, predatory and discriminatory lending, barriers to opportunity and wealth, new restrictions to make voting more difficult, resistance to fully funding social net programs, obstacles to business capital, blame the victim poverty “reform” programs, lack of access to affordable and sustainable housing, entrenched racial income disparities, and neighborhood disinvestment.

Mayors concerned about racial wealth gap, but no consensus on solutions: survey

Boston University’s Menino Survey of Mayors found that 58% of mayors of larger cities expressed significant concern, compared with just 26% of mayors of smaller cities. It found 80% of Democratic mayors were concerned about the racial wealth gap in their community versus 32% of Republican mayors. Further, 22% of Republican mayors were not worried about the issue at all, with no Democratic mayors sharing that view.