Housing Gaps in Cities of Color: Affordability Trends in Newark's Inner-Ring Suburbs of Irvington, Orange and East Orange
Housing Gaps in Cities of Color: Affordability Trends in Newark's Inner-Ring Suburbs of Irvington, Orange and East Orange

Orange, East Orange, and Irvington are Black working-class suburban communities. While home to just under 20% of Essex’s population, they are home to almost 40% of all Black residents and only 2% of White residents. These communities are also growing fast, with surging Latino and immigrant populations from the Caribbean.

These inner-ring suburbs are challenged by elevated rates of poverty and a growing unaffordability, and they have few resources to address these pressing needs. In 2020, Orange, East Orange, and Irvington residents generated only $30,000-$40,000 in tax basis for essential public services, such as police, education and sanitation. Meanwhile, nearby Summit residents generated almost four and a half times as many resources as any of these communities, and to serve a much smaller population.

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PublicationRutgers CLiMEHousing, Inequality, Gentrification
Brutality by Design: Understanding Police Misconduct as Structural Inequality
Brutality by Design: Understanding Police Misconduct as Structural Inequality

This is a structural analysis of police brutality, primarily the exercise of lethal force against unarmed persons, following the 2020 summer of racial reckoning when millions braved a virulent pandemic to protest the lack of legal and institutional accountability that predictably follows the police killings of unarmed black people. A consistent lack of accountability is what binds the individual acts to a design structure in which evidence clearly shows that black bodies are subordinated to some other systemic goal. We do not identify that goal, but we do evaluate the structure that produces predictable outcomes. Our aim is to set out much of the reform landscape—the issues, approaches and proposals from law to policy—and to evaluate them on structural grounds.

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PublicationRutgers CLiMERace, Inequality
Homes Beyond Reach: An Assessment and Gap Analysis of Newark's Affordable Rental Stock
Homes Beyond Reach: An Assessment and Gap Analysis of Newark's Affordable Rental Stock

CLiME conducted an affordability and gap analysis of Newark's housing stock and found a severe gap in low-rent units. We estimate that the City needs an additional 16,234 units renting for about $750 per month to meet residents' existing needs.

CLiME’s approach to assessing affordability is rooted in the local context. We calculate a Newark Median Affordable Rent (NMAR) of $763 per month. This is $330 less than Newark’s median market rent, and more than $600 less than Fair Market Rent (FMR), created by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. We also develop a methodological innovation to integrate the City’s rental housing subsidies into the affordability analysis. This procedure, the first of its kind as far as we know, provides a much closer picture of affordability in a City where at least 28% of all units are subsidized.

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ReportRutgers CLiMEHousing, Poverty, Race, Gentrification, Inequality
Land Banks as Instruments of Equitable Growth: CLiME’s Recommendations to the City of Newark
Land Banks as Instruments of Equitable Growth: CLiME’s Recommendations to the City of Newark

Land banks are government-created institutions whose mission is to return vacant, abandoned and tax-delinquent properties into productive use. Land banks are empowered to acquire land, eliminate back taxes and tax liens attached to a property in order to create a clean title, maintain the land in compliance with local and state ordinances, and convey the property back into active use. As a mechanism for expediting the disposition of city-owned and/or abandoned properties, land banks can be a significant local government tool either for equitable growth or for more conventional economic development.

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PublicationRutgers CLiMEGentrification, Inequality, Housing
Pandemic Remedies
Pandemic Remedies

In this first installment of a faculty essay series, CLiME asked Rutgers professors affiliated with the center to provide brief analysis on some of the many institutional crises exacerbated by the Coronavirus pandemic and to offer solutions. Law Professor Rachel Godsil discuses the loss of public revenues to struggling communities and offers a pipeline to millions. Political Scientist Domingo Morel reveals the growing crisis in public pension fund commitments and a possible path to meeting those obligations. Law Professor Laura Cohen takes readers inside juvenile justice to show the increased risk of viral infection incarcerated youth face as well as the steps advocates are taking on their behalf. Director David Troutt looks into the future to interrogate claims that “we are all in this together” and offers an alternative set of policy priorities we would pursue if mutuality really mattered.

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ReportRutgers CLiMEInequality, Housing, Race
CLiME Fellows Explore the Pandemic and Inequality
CLiME Fellows Explore the Pandemic and Inequality

The coronavirus pandemic resembles nothing in any of our lifetimes, and its impact will be felt long after it ends. As an economic story, it will mean immediate loss and uncertainty for many households, probably recession, possibly depression. People who can’t afford to hoard or have jobs that can’t be done remotely will be exposed more often, putting everyone in their households at greater risk and subject to an overburdened health care system. These effects will heighten the social determinants of health for populations that already struggle with underlying conditions statistically more than others. And, with predictable cruelty, it will target black, Latino and lower-income families for disparate death and loss.  Recent reports from counties that keep data on race show that it has.

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NewsletterRutgers CLiMEInequality
DRIM Analysis of Newark's Central Ward

Based on the previous DRIM analysis and updated 2017 DRIM analysis, three Wards have been analyzed and found to be Displacement-Risk Neighborhoods: The Central Ward, the South Ward, & the East Ward.  

To better understand the trend of displacement that has occurred between years 2000, 2015, & 2017, we conduct a baseline study to analyze the specific displacement risk indicators for one Ward: The Central Ward.

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MemorandumRutgers CLiMEPoverty, Gentrification
DRIM Update Memo

With the increased use of public land for the sake of economic development, cities across the U.S. are facing an urban construction boom. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Newark’s construction boom focused on land-use policies, especially the tax abatement strategies for bringing about capital-intensive projects. Simultaneously, Newark’s shift to a more neo-liberal solution led to a decline in public housing and section 8 vouchers.

As Newark experiences unprecedented growth potential, Newarkers express more and more anxiety about the prospects of housing displacement brought on by the processes of gentrification that have transformed urban neighborhoods across the United States.

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MemorandumRutgers CLiMEGentrification, Poverty
Inequitable Gentrification: A Form of Exclusionary Zoning that Violates the New Jersey Constitution

From the perspective of many low-income families, gentrification is the ultimate social injustice; where “wealthy, usually white, newcomers are congratulated for "improving" a neighborhood whose poor, minority residents are displaced by skyrocketing rents and economic change.”

A social injustice promulgated by local government action, gentrification is no longer confined to our big cities and is increasingly impacting smaller cities and towns as municipalities seek to increase their tax base by luring wealthy residents in search of urban amenities and replace low income residents in the process.

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PaperRutgers CLiMEGentrification, Housing
Newark’s Right to Counsel: A Proposed System Design for Indigent Tenants Facing Eviction
Newark’s Right to Counsel: A Proposed System Design for Indigent Tenants Facing Eviction

As a member of a local affordable housing coalition and partner to Mayor Baraka's effort to implement the second right-to-counsel (RTC) ordinance in the country, CLiME led the research design of such a system and the supporting basis for its legality under New Jersey law.  

This memorandum was submitted to the City of Newark in early February, with recommendations for implementing a system of free legal services for indigent Newarkers (incomes below 200 percent of the median) facing imminent eviction proceedings in Essex County court.  

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MemorandumRutgers CLiMEInequality, Housing
The Cost of New York City’s Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project

ABSTRACT: Tax increment financing (TIF) has exploded in popularity on the municipal finance landscape as cities compete for scarce public resources to fund economic development. Previous studies evaluate TIF’s efficacy and ability to spark economic growth.

This research expands the evaluation of TIF by questioning the widespread understanding of TIF as a “self-financing” tool through an analysis of its risks and costs to taxpayers. We present a case study of the Hudson Yards redevelopment project in New York City, the country’s largest TIF-type project.

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ArticleRutgers CLiMEHousing, Poverty
Making Newark Work for Newarkers: Housing and Equitable Growth in the Next Brick City
Making Newark Work for Newarkers: Housing and Equitable Growth in the Next Brick City

Making Newark Work for Newarkers is the full report of the Rutgers University-Newark Project on Equitable Growth in the City of Newark, written by CLiME and incorporating research conducted in conjunction with a university working group whose work began last April. We viewed the goal of equitable growth first in the context of housing issues before expanding to think about the fabric of community life and economic opportunity in the city.

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ReportGuest UserGentrification, Inequality, Poverty, Housing, CLiME
Displacement Risk and Gentrification: The CLiME Displacement Risk Indicators Matrix (DRIM) Methodology
Displacement Risk and Gentrification: The CLiME Displacement Risk Indicators Matrix (DRIM) Methodology

As Newark experiences unprecedented growth potential, Newarkers express more and more anxiety about the prospects of housing displacement brought on by the processes of gentrification that have transformed urban neighborhoods across the United States. Given the recent history of other cities in its metropolitan neighborhood—New York, Hoboken and Jersey City—Newark would seem poised to attract the kind of global capital that has accelerated so much economic development among …

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ReportGuest UserGentrification, Poverty
Housing in Newark Research Brief: Status and Trends, 2000-2015
Housing in Newark Research Brief: Status and Trends, 2000-2015

The City of Newark is undergoing rapid transition, with creative political leadership and development cranes dotting its sky. In February 2016, CLiME launched a comprehensive study of housing trends in the City. In May 2016, CLiME led a Rutgers University-Newark anchor initiative that researching laws and policies that might promote more equitable growth in the City as it changes. This Housing Research Brief represents the first installment of our almost year-long work. It provides quantitative snapshots …

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ReportGuest UserGentrification
Recommendations to the City of Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka
Recommendations to the City of Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka

The Rutgers University-Newark Project on Equitable Growth was formed as a team of university researchers led by CLiME to provide research and recommendations about spreading the benefits of potential economic growth to all wards and neighborhoods in the City of Newark. Although housing and housing-related issues dominated our work, we viewed the task more broadly and asked: How does a working-class city in the midst of economic interest from a fast- growing metropolitan region harness …

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ReportGuest UserGentrification, Trauma, Poverty
Conference Brief - Psychological Trauma and Schools: How Systems Respond to the Traumas of Young Lives
Conference Brief - Psychological Trauma and Schools: How Systems Respond to the Traumas of Young Lives

On May 5, 2017, the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) hosted an interdisciplinary all-day conference on the institutional responsibility of schools in responding to childhood psychological trauma, particularly in low-SES communities where early life trauma exposure is disturbingly ubiquitous. The conference brought together a group of panelists and audience members from diverse fields related to childhood trauma.

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ReportGuest UserInequality, Poverty, Race, Trauma