Urban Institute

Established in 1968, the Urban Institute (Urban) conducts economic and social policy research and evaluation to understand and solve real-world challenges in a rapidly urbanizing environment. Its mission is to help expand opportunities for all people, reduce hardship among the most vulnerable, and strengthen the fiscal health of governments and effectiveness of public policies. The award supports Urban to serve as the intermediary for a national demonstration project to develop specialized housing models that directly address the link between housing instability and criminal justice system involvement. Deploying both grant funding and program related investments, the project targets the housing needs of people with justice system involvement who are unhoused or unstably housed and thus at heightened risk for incarceration. The project capitalizes on the unique opportunities opened up by the pandemic, including efforts to reduce jail populations and the overall footprint of the justice system, to address the persistent link between housing instability and jail incarceration, which has its roots in systemic racism. The desired impacts of the project are to reduce incarceration, reduce housing instability, and restore communities by generating an array of housing solutions that can permanently end the use of jails and prisons as “housing of last resort.”

Established in 1968, the Urban Institute (Urban) conducts economic and social policy research and evaluation to understand and solve real-world challenges in a rapidly urbanizing environment. This award enables Urban to produce a series of case studies documenting the experience of jurisdictions participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge during its first five years, with the broad aim of furthering the field’s understanding of how reductions in jail usage have been realized to date. All studies will have both qualitative and quantitative components, and will be designed to spread what has been learned and achieved as widely as possible, in order to generate national momentum for local criminal justice reform.

The Urban Institute (Urban) conducts economic and social policy research and evaluation to understand and solve real-world challenges in a rapidly urbanizing environment. The award enables Urban to work with the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG) to plan for the development of a series of case studies documenting the work of sites in the Safety and Justice Challenge Network: exploring options for case study development, creating a framework for organizing potential case study topics and identifying candidates for inclusion, and developing a timeline and budget for the series.

Established in 1968, the Urban Institute (Urban) conducts economic and social policy research and evaluation to understand and solve real-world challenges in a rapidly urbanizing environment. The award enables Urban to continue to administer and manage the Safety and Justice Challenge Innovation Fund, which provides competitively selected jurisdictions with project grants and technical assistance to support targeted efforts to safely reduce jail incarceration and racial and ethnic disparities in jail usage. In addition, the award supports Urban’s Housing Solutions for Jail Diversion project (Housing Solutions), which is designed to explore the intersection between housing instability and jail incarceration and to help inform a strategy of investment in housing as a way of preventing unnecessary jail usage. Through these areas of work, Urban expands the reach, scope and influence of the Challenge Network’s system reform activities and helps to generate innovative new solutions to the problem of the misuse and overuse of jails.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit research organization that, for more than 50 years, has brought objective analysis and expertise to the challenges of formulating sound policy and capable practice regarding cities. The organization will plan, organize and execute a three-day conference to mark the culmination of the Foundation’s affordable housing work. The conference has three main goals: 1) to share learnings from the accomplishments, challenges, innovations and progress of the nonprofit developers and specialized funding vehicles supported through the Window of Opportunity initiative; 2) highlight the findings generated through the How Housing Matters body of research; and 3) continue the work of making connections and building partnerships capable of securing, sustaining, and amplifying the impact of the Foundation’s 20 years of investments in housing across the country. Grant funds will be used for conference costs, including planning and coordination, venue, registration, travel, food and accommodations for conference participants, videos and case studies, creation and publication of conference materials, and media relations.

The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization whose work engages communities at multiple levels to understand the challenges facing America’s cities, will undertake a set of activities designed to generate conversation and ideas for the Chicago area’s newly-established Opportunity Zones. With this award, the Urban Institute is convening two meetings to gain insights from local stakeholders and raise awareness about this new Federal program. The meetings aid stakeholders in thinking about the civic infrastructure needed to support investments in the Opportunity Zones; aligning this forthcoming investment with other public, private, and philanthropic investment; and elevating different types of approaches that stakeholders can use.  These two events, plus a resulting brief, engage investors looking to invest in Opportunity Zones with those looking to support targeted communities.

Established in 1968, the Urban Institute (Urban) conducts economic and social policy research and evaluation to understand and solve real-world challenges in a rapidly urbanizing environment. The award enables Urban to administer and manage the second phase of the Safety and Justice Challenge Innovation Fund (the Fund). The Fund engages and supports targeted efforts in competitively selected jurisdictions to safely reduce the misuse and overuse of jails through project grants combined with technical assistance. Urban’s plans include continuing to engage and support the first cohort of Innovation Fund sites as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge Network, and selecting and supporting a new cohort of sites through an open request for application process to seed reform ideas and activities more broadly. In this second phase, Urban expands the Challenge Network reach and scope, helping identify sites for deeper investment as implementation sites, while expanding the number of jurisdictions participating in the initiative, building capacity for more ambitious efforts and accelerating progress in systems reform nationwide.

The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization whose work engages communities at multiple levels—city, state, and country—to understand the challenges facing America’s cities, will conduct a study that: a) establishes definitional clarity on place-based impact investing as a practical concept; b) advances understanding of the key goals, objectives, and approaches of practitioners in order to make recommendations based on the current state of the field; and c) shares resources with the field to lower barriers for new initiatives and facilitate knowledge exchange among existing stakeholders. The study includes research around capital caps, an elemental mapping of existing practices, a shared knowledge convening, and public dissemination to strengthen and increase understanding of place-based impact investing.

The Urban Institute is a nonpartisan policy research organization that conducts research, analysis and public education on a range of economic and social policy issues. Since 1995, the Urban Institute’s staff have managed the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), a peer learning network of local data organizations in 35 cities that has developed neighborhood-level information systems that are used to inform urban planning and development efforts. This final renewal award for the NNIP enables Urban Institute staff to continue to support a network that is recognized as a critical component of infrastructure for the urban development field and the broader non-profit sector. Expected outcomes of the grant include increased capacity among NNIP partner organizations to provide information services to entities working in their cities; broader, faster dissemination of information and greater adoption of data-informed practices across the network; and expansion of NNIP activities to new cities and partners.

The Urban Institute (Urban) is a non-partisan think tank with the mission to provide an evidence base that informs dialogue and decisions, and offers solutions through economic and social policy research. Urban is taking on the management of the How Housing Matters web portal (www.howhousingmatters.org) which makes accessible the growing body of literature that is illuminating the pathways through which decent, stable affordable housing makes a difference in people’s lives, beyond shelter. Urban is enhancing the site’s content and functionality in order to engage practitioners, policymakers, and researchers across disciplines, arming them with actionable evidence and best practices on how housing can align and integrate with other social policies and programs to improve individual and community well-being.

Established in 1968, the Urban Institute (Urban) conducts economic and social policy research and evaluation to understand and solve real-world challenges in a rapidly urbanizing environment. Its mission is to help expand opportunities for all people, reduce hardship among the most vulnerable, and strengthen the fiscal health of governments and effectiveness of public policies. The award supports Urban to establish and host the Safety and Justice Challenge Innovation Fund to engage and support local jurisdictions in addressing over-incarceration by safely reducing the misuse and overuse of jails. Designed to complement the initiative’s deep investment in 20 core and partner sites to implement systems reform, Urban’s plans include making small grants combined with technical assistance to local jurisdictions to seed reform ideas and activities more broadly. The Innovation Fund extends the initiative's scope and expands the number of jurisdictions participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge Network, helping to build capacity for more ambitious efforts and to accelerate progress nationwide.

The Housing Finance Policy Center (the Center) serves as a hub for informed dialogue among policymakers, practitioners, advocates, academics, and banking and finance experts. It conducts high-quality, evidence-based analysis of the forces affecting the availability and cost of credit for housing, as well as the impact of policy on housing markets, communities, and households. The Center’s research and analyses –including a monthly chartbook – informs sound housing and housing finance policy. It provides participants inside and outside of the housing finance industry with an independent and objective evidence base from which to speak and engage in the regulatory and legislative policy debates that focus on housing finance, capital markets and financial regulation. Grant support allows the Center to expand its work to include research on credit availability, access and affordability, and multifamily housing.

The Urban Institute is a nonpartisan, economic and social policy research organization with over 40 years of experience examining a range of issues affecting cities and communities. The Urban Institute is using grant funds to carry out a set of activities to support the Cities of Learning, a new MacArthur-led effort designed to align city resources, connect in- and out-of-school learning, and advance workforce development to prepare young people for college, career, and citizenship. Cities of Learning is the culmination of MacArthur's grantmaking in digital media and learning, building on the new knowledge, tools, and prototypes that have emerged from research and design experiments supported over the past ten years. With grant funds, the Urban Institute is providing guidance and expertise to new and emerging Cities of Learning locations on approaches to data sharing and governance; working with other national partners to develop readiness criteria for new locations; creating and launching a detailed plan to evaluate the initiative; and acting as a resource for national partners and cities on workforce development and governance Issues.

As a nonpartisan think tank, the Urban Institute’s mission is to gather data, conduct research and evaluations and offer technical assistance to promote and advance sound public policy and effective government. It will use this grant to bridge research, practice, and policy on topics supported under the Foundation’s How Housing Matters to Families and Communities (HHM) research initiative. Through cross-disciplinary roundtables and other strategic communications activities, the Urban Institute will identify policy innovations and highlight practical solutions that connect housing with education, health, economic inequality, economic growth and aging.

As part of the Foundation’s anti-violence program, support is being provided to the Urban Institute to study the Foundation-sponsored Violence Reduction Strategy—a partnership with the Chicago Police Department and local criminal justice agencies to reduce violence. The comprehensive initiative aims to reduce gun violence dramatically by holding entire gangs responsible for individual members’ crimes, especially homicides. This grant will enable researchers from the Urban Institute and Yale University to extend the period of the ongoing evaluation of the implementation and impact of the Violence Reduction Strategy.

The Urban Institute is a nonpartisan research organization that seeks to inform the development of sound public policies and more effective government. This grant supports its National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), a 35-city network of data intermediaries who have developed neighborhood-level information systems used to support urban revitalization efforts. The goals of the work are increased capacity among NNIP partners to provide information services to their cities; greater and faster dissemination of information and spread of promising practices across the network; increased visibility of NNIP among new audiences and potential stakeholders, and expansion of NNIP activities to new cities and partners.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research organization that works to build knowledge about social and economic issues and develop evidence-based solutions. This grant funds a two-year project to shape an urban Sustainable Development Goal within the United Nations Post-2015 Development Agenda and explore the opportunities that this framework will create to help cities around the world improve their capacity to use information to address complex challenges. If successful, the project will contribute to the launch of an urban Sustainable Development Goal that will influence the urban planning and development pathways and priorities of countries worldwide.

The Urban Institute is a non-partisan economic and social policy research organization with more than 40 years of experience examining a range of issues affecting cities and communities. The Institute will use this grant to develop an implementation framework for the Cities of Learning initiative - a prototype project that uses the entire city as a campus for learning; including an approach to documentation and evaluation and a plan for establishing a network of policymakers and practitioners among six cities currently implementing the Cities of Learning initiative (Chicago, Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, Columbus, Dallas and Pittsburgh).

The Urban Institute is an independent, non-partisan, policy research center that analyzes urban affairs and produces publications of broad relevance to policymakers, program administrators, business and academic communities. With this grant, the Institute will host a series of roundtables on research topics supported by the Foundation’s How Housing Matters initiative, to promote connections between the research and relevant policy and practice, and to identify policy innovations and practical solutions that connect housing with other institutions and service delivery systems.

The Urban Institute gathers data, conducts research, and evaluates programs, to diagnose problems and figure out which policies and programs work best--how, and for whom--to foster sound public policy and effective government. Urban conducts much of its work through its ten policy centers. This grant provides seed funding for a new Center for Housing Finance Research and Policy, whose goal is to make a major contribution to understanding housing finance and its relationship to housing markets, capital markets, and the broader economy, and to provide credible, accurate information to policymakers who must design, test, implement, and regulate a complex new system.

The Urban Institute is a nonpartisan research organization that seeks to inform the development of sound public policies and more effective government. This grant supports the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), a 37-city network of data intermediaries that has developed neighborhood-level information systems that support urban revitalization efforts. Project goals include: increased capacity among NNIP partners to provide information services to their cities; greater (and faster) dissemination of information and promising practices across the network; increased NNIP visibility among new audiences and potential stakeholders; expansion of NNIP activities to new cities and partners; and an external assessment of NNIP’s benefits to its partners and the field.

The Urban Institute is an independent, non-partisan policy research center that provides research and evaluation across a range of policy and program areas. The Foundation’s anti-violence program is supporting the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York to work with the Chicago Police Department and other state and local criminal justice agencies to undertake the Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy, which seeks to dramatically reduce gun violence. This grant funds an ongoing comprehensive evaluation of the implementation and impact of the Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy by the Urban Institute and researchers from Yale University.

The Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, carries out non-partisan economic and social policy research, collects data, evaluates social programs, educates the public on key domestic issues, and provides advice and technical assistance to developing governments abroad. It has received 13 grants from the Foundation for research related to the implementation of Chicago’s Plan for Transformation of public housing. Dr. Susan Popkin, director of Urban’s Program on Neighborhoods and Youth Development and co-authors will use this grant to complete a book, using decades of research in Chicago, to tell the story of "transformed housing and transformed lives."

The Urban Institute is an independent, nonpartisan policy research center that generates research and analyses on urban affairs. This grant supports two pilot research projects for the What Works Collaborative, a group of foundations and researchers from the Institute, the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy that has become a locus for defining and pursing a long-term policy focused research agenda on housing and urban policy concerns. The research and resultant reports will address fundamental questions facing the urban development field.

The Urban Institute is a non-partisan research center with a mission to inform public policy and effective government. This grant will provide supplemental support for research that is examining the relationship between public housing residents’ relocation and neighborhood crime patterns in Chicago. The Urban Institute has been conducting research on this topic under two prior Foundation grants and this final support for this effort will enable the completion of crime date analyses and a series of additional briefings and dissemination activities.

The Urban Institute is an independent, nonpartisan research organization that focuses on social and economic policy. This grant supports the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), an Urban Institute-managed network of local data management organizations, in an effort to engage, influence, and benefit from open data. Its goals are to create closer relationships between local data intermediaries and the public and private entities working to make data more accessible and useful; provide more and better local data to support community development initiatives; and develop a coordinated strategy to communicate the demand for and value of accessible, high-quality, local, public data.

As part of the Foundation’s efforts to address gang-related violence in Chicago, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York is working with the Chicago Police Department and others to undertake the Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy, which aims to dramatically reduce gang and gun violence, especially homicides. The Urban Institute, an independent, non-partisan policy research center that conducts research and evaluation about problems faced by America’s cities, will use this grant to undertake the first year of a three-year comprehensive evaluation of the Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy.

To prepare a white paper on local governments and state prison population policy decisions.

To evaluate and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of Safer Return, a prisoner reentry demonstration in Chicago (over twenty-seven months).

To examine the relationship between public housing resident mobility and neighborhood crime patterns.

To support the What Works Collaborative to conduct timely research and analysis to help inform the design and implementation of evidence-based housing and urban policies (over two years).

To support the Urban Institute Academy for Policy and Research.

In support of the National Neighborhood Indicator Partnership (over two years).

In support of the National Neighborhood Indicator Partnership (over two years).

To support a final round of surveys that focus on the lives of the families affected by the Chicago Housing Authority's Plan for Transformation (over two years).

To assess whether or not budget proposals from the executive and legislative branches of government pass a fiscal responsibility test.

In support of a book on neighborhood indicators.

In support of a book on neighborhood indicators.

To research the role of housing in child welfare outcomes, as part of the How Housing Matters to Families and Communities competitive grant program (over three years).

To support a rapid response research mechanism to educate and inform federal strategies about urgent housing and urban policy issues (over 16 months).

To determine if the relocation of public housing families effects neighborhood crime levels in origin and destination neighborhoods.

To support the evaluation and cost-benefit analysis of Safer Return, a prisoner reentry demonstration in Chicago.

To support the evaluation and cost-benefit analysis of Safer Return, a prisoner reentry demonstration in Chicago.

To support research on outcomes for residents of the Madden/Wells public housing development (over two years).

To support the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (over two years).

To support an extension of the U.S.-U.K. study exchange related to mixed-income communities, immigration, and comprehensive community development (over two years).

In support of a U.S.-U.K. study exchange related to mixed-income communities.

In support of planning a study on the long-term sustainability of HOPE VI developments.

In support of an evaluation and cost-benefit analysis of Safer Return, a prisoner reentry demonstration in Chicago (over three years).

In support of a collaborative planning effort with the National Opinion Research Center to design longitudinal research on public housing residents in Chicago.

In support of the project, Risk and Low-Income Working Families: Providing a Solid Empirical Base for Policy (over three years).

In support of Improving Outcomes for Hard-to-House public housing families.

In support of targeted research and program planning to establish a framework for a demonstration for "hard-to-house" Chicago Housing Authority residents.

To design an economic analysis and evaluation of Safer Return, a prisoner reentry demonstration in Chicago and Illinois communities.

In support of an impact evaluation of the HOPE VI housing program (over two years).

support of dissemination of research results about the impact of the HOPE VI housing programs.

In support of the Chicago Prisoner Reentry Demonstration Project.

For a national panel study of the HOPE VI program to revitalize public housing and an assessment of its implementation at the Ida B. Wells development in Chicago (over two years).

To map eligible housing and study the attributes of neighborhoods accessible to housing choice voucher recipients.

In support of a national research study of the re-entry of ex-offenders into communities, the impact on social capital, and ways to facilitate the transition from incarceration.

To support the Assessing New Federalism project (over three years).

To support research on the re-entry of prisoners into society, in particular the impact on communities (over three years).

To support a neighborhood impact assessment of a mixed-income housing development project in Chicago.

To assess the social services approach used at the Madden Park/Wells development and to add a Chicago component to a national study of the effects of mixed-income development on public housing residents and communities (over three years).

For a profile of Chicago in a national study of the support system for American artists.

To support the Assessing New Federalism project (over three years).

To develop an assessment process and feedback system with four housing relocation and mobility counseling programs.

To support a symposium about the effects of Section 8 subsidized housing on recipients' mobility and on neighborhood health.

To support a project to study equality of opportunity in America.

To study the effects of federal-to-state devolution of funding of social programs (over three years).

To plan and design the National Neighborhood Indicators Project.

To extend the Changing Domestic Priorities project (over four years).

To support the Changing Domestic Priorities project.

To support the Changing Domestic Priorities project (over two years).

To research the impact on nonprofit organizations of government budget cuts and related program changes.