July Community Corner
Aug.01.2022
July was Bebe Moore Campbell Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, also known as BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month. Bebe Moore Campbell was a writer, teacher, NPR commentator and advocate for mental health, particularly for the Black community.
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May/June Community Corner
Jun.23.2022
Happy Pride Month! The Network is continually inspired by the work of our community members who uplift and serve the LGBTQ+ community in supportive housing and beyond. As you all know, supportive housing was partially borne out of the AIDS epidemic in NYC, which disproportionately impacted the gay community, and the stigma attached to people who had been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease. It was through the fierce advocacy of ACT UP that our proud member Housing Works was created. Check out this informative and interactive history of Housing Works, including the documentary United in Anger: A History of Act UP.
April Community Corner
May.02.2022
In April 1968, the Fair Housing Act was passed into law, and to commemorate this historic legislation, April has been designated FAIR HOUSING MONTH. The Fair Housing Act -- which promised to end housing discrimination based on race, color, national origin, disability, religion, sex or familial status -- would probably never have been made it into law had it not been for Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Still, however, more than 50 years after its passage, overt housing discrimination has been largely replaced by exclusionary zoning blocking the creation of affordable (and supportive) housing and leaving the country with a shortage of an estimated 4 million affordable homes. This short video by Vox is a great summary.
Continue Reading …March Community Corner
Apr.01.2022
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced his plan to expand access to child-birthing healthcare services across the city. The expansion of the Midwifery Initiative, Maternity Hospital Quality Improvement Network, and Citywide Doula Initiative will provide free access to doulas for all birthing families across 33 neighborhoods and 38 facilities citywide. For the first time, the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) will be collecting data from public and private facilities to better understand the gaps in quality care, particularly when it comes to the racial disparities in childbirth mortality rates.
Continue Reading …January Community Corner
Jan.31.2022
In October 2021, the nation experienced a wave of walkouts by workers protesting unsafe working conditions and demanding better wages, benefits, and paid sick leave.
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November Community Corner
Nov.30.2021
The urgent need to create initiatives to combat climate change has highlighted the complex and interconnected issue of environmental racism and injustice. As Dr. Dorceta Taylor, Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment explains, “Environmental justice is really concerned with documenting and understanding the disproportionate and unequal environmental burdens that certain communities face. In the United States and around the world, low-income, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian people tend to be living in spaces where environmental hazards, extreme natural and human-made disasters, and environmental degradation occur more rampantly.”
Continue Reading …October Community Corner
Oct.29.2021
Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a contentious topic of discussion over the past year, though many people don’t understand the origins of the theory and how it is applied in policy, legal, and historical contexts.
Continue Reading …February Community Corner
Feb.24.2021
Historical racist land use planning in the United States has contributed to persistent residential segregation and ensuring inequity in the communities in which Black and Brown people live. The racist roots of zoning practices began in the late 1800s in which the earliest goals of land use regulation were to explicitly accomplish racial segregation via zoning ordinances. Racist land use policies remain today in the form of the exclusion and restriction of certain uses and density regulations. The podcast from Code Switch titled “Location! Location! Location!” provides an overview of how residential segregation is still shaping how we live.
Continue Reading …December Community Corner: American Policing
Dec.03.2020
This year, after the appalling murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police, the country saw its most sustained protests since the civil rights era as well as calls to #DefundThePolice and #DefundTheNYPD. American Police from NPR’s Throughline tracks the birth and evolution of policing in America, from its roots in “slave patrols” through the KKK to today.
Continue Reading …October Community Corner
Nov.02.2020
As advocates for vulnerable and marginalized communities, we are committing to active anti-racism and inclusivity. Each month, our Community Corner will highlight media focused on an overarching theme that helps us understand and interrupt white supremacy and other forms of oppression. We invite you on this journey with us wherever you may be in the process. Additionally, we will ask our community to make recommendations that we will highlight. You can make a recommendation here.
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