Urban Institute – PHENND

Virtual Workshop: Using Data to Drive Upward Mobility: Practical Lessons from Communities – Jun 9

hillarya — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:21:38 +0000

Join the Urban Institute’s Upward Mobility Initiative for a virtual workshop focused on how local leaders can use data to better understand community conditions, identify strategic priorities, and advance upward mobility from poverty. Participants will hear directly from local leaders who are using the Upward Mobility Framework, Mobility Metrics, and local data sources to shape planning, align stakeholders, prioritize investments, and monitor progress.

Date and Time: Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 1:00-2:30 PM

Learn more and register.

Policy Briefing: How Affordable Housing Contributes to Local Economies and Tax Revenues

hillarya — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:49:12 +0000

Oklahoma’s affordable housing investments generate substantial economic returns in jobs, labor income, and tax revenue. This publication presents original estimates of the economic and fiscal impacts of 45 affordable multifamily housing projects completed in Oklahoma between 2019 and 2023, all financed through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. Readers will find concrete data on job creation, economic output, and tax revenues, both during construction and over 10 years of property operations.

Read about why this matters and what we found.

Food Insecurity Remained High in 2025, As Safety Net Cuts Loom

hillarya — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:48:54 +0000

Using its Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey, the Urban Institute has found that in December 2025, nearly 1 in 4 (24.2 percent) adults ages 18 and older reported experiencing household food insecurity in the last 12 months. Working-age adults were more than twice as likely to report food insecurity as those ages 65 and older, though previous studies have found there are wide disparities within the senior population. Household food insecurity among working-age adults has been significantly elevated since 2023 and remained high in 2025 at 27.7 percent. Nearly one-third of working-age adults living with children (32.0 percent) reported experiencing food insecurity in 2025. Among these households, approximately half reported very low food security—a severe form of food insecurity in which household members may skip meals or go without food for an entire day.

Virtual Event: Updating the True Cost of Economic Security: What It Takes to Thrive in the US – Mar 17

hillarya — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:51:08 +0000

Affordability has become a central issue for millions of Americans striving to get by and get ahead. Building on previous work, Urban Institute researchers have updated and enhanced the True Cost of Economic Security measure for 2023. This comprehensive measure captures the full range of household costs and the resources families rely on.

Please join the Urban Institute and the National True Cost of Living Coalition, a partnership between the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies and the Community Service Society of New York, for a discussion on the updated measure and how policymakers and researchers can leverage insights from this research to improve American families’ well-being.

Date and Time: Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 12:00-1:30 PM

To register, click here.

Webinar: State of the Safety Net – Mar 6

hillarya — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:42:03 +0000

As states face potential funding cuts and shifting policies, understanding who is eligible, who participates, and where gaps exist is crucial for informing effective safety net strategies. State-by-state data on how many people receive safety net benefits is widely available. But data on how many people are actually eligible and what share of them participate has been harder to find. To fill this gap, the Urban Institute’s State of the Safety Net Initiative has created a web tool that provides, all in one place, eligibility and participation estimates for seven different programs. This webinar will introduce the tool and show how to use it.

Date and Time: Friday, March 6, 2026, 12:00-1:00 PM

Learn more and register.

Webinar: Overcoming Challenges to Evaluating Child Welfare Programs – Jan 28

hillarya — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 20:18:17 +0000

Evaluating child welfare programs and services requires cooperation and coordination with agency administrators, program managers, and frontline workers. Evaluation can require staff members to conduct additional activities, organize their work differently from their normal procedures, and make connections with other agencies not involved with the particular program or service.

This webinar, based on a new series of briefs, brings together researchers who have experience working with child welfare agencies and service providers to conduct rigorous program evaluations and agency staff members who have experienced evaluations from the inside to discuss common challenges.

Date and Time: Wednesday, January 28, 2:00-3:00 PM

Click here to register.

Kids’ Share: Analyzing Federal Expenditures on Children

hillarya — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:14:28 +0000

A new Urban Institute series looks comprehensively at trends in federal and state spending and tax expenditures on children—the kids’ share of public spending. Children can’t vote and they can’t lobby for public resources, but their well-being and development affect the future economic and social health of the country. Children also can’t work their way out of poverty, so the government has a special calling to protect them. Public investments are used to educate children; promote their health, safety, and well-being; ensure their basic needs are met; and help protect their families from financial hardship. These investments come in the form of direct spending on programs that serve kids and through tax benefits that offer their families financial assistance. Determining how government spends money, and who benefits, reveals our priorities. This series seeks to inform a national conversation about how best to invest the country’s resources by examining federal and state expenditures on children in the past and projected into the future.

The series includes special reports and briefs, the annual Kids’ Share chartbooks, web features and fact sheets, blog posts, events, and data appendixes.

Virtual Event: Unlocking Black Prosperity: Advancing Wealth through Small Businesses, Asset Development, and Community Investment – Dec 17

hillarya — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 20:27:18 +0000

Across the country, local leaders are driving bold, data-driven strategies to build inclusive economies and advance Black prosperity. A key pillar of this work is supporting Black-owned small businesses through expanded access to capital, increased capacity, and targeted policy changes. This virtual convening will explore innovative policies, community-driven initiatives, and cross-sector strategies that cities can implement to foster Black wealth creation, support asset building, and ensure long-term economic equity and prosperity.

Join the Urban Institute for a call to reimagine how cities invest in Black futures. Whether you’re a city official, a policy advocate, or a community changemaker, this session will equip you with the knowledge and tools to make data-driven decisions that foster lasting impact.

The event will take place December 17 from 12 to 1:15 PM.

Click here to register.

Virtual Workshop: Building and Strengthening Local Coalitions to Advance Upward Mobility in Your Community – Nov 13

hillarya — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 16:15:25 +0000

Creating lasting change that expands opportunity requires collaboration across sectors. Effective local and regional coalitions unite government, nonprofit, philanthropic, business, and community leaders to align efforts and drive systems change. Join the Urban Institute’s Upward Mobility Initiative for a virtual workshop on building and strengthening cross-sector coalitions to advance mobility for all residents in your community. Drawing on insights from the Toolkit for Increasing Upward Mobility, the session will highlight why coalition building is essential to creating equitable local systems and how communities are putting these principles into action.

The event will take place November 13, 1:00-2:15 PM.

Learn more and register.

Hybrid Event: Cash Assistance For Children: Research Roundup And Policy Future – Oct 21

hillarya — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 18:46:13 +0000

Join the Urban Institute and the Berkeley Opportunity Lab to examine the evolving conversation about the benefits and long-term impacts of safety net investments in children. Learn from leaders and experts on both sides of the aisle on where they see opportunities for progress and pinpoint areas for future research in the context of recent changes to the safety net for children.

The event will explore opportunities at the federal and state levels. This conference will build on insights from the 2023 convening and 2024 convening and serve as a capstone to the Innovations in Cash Assistance for Children Initiative, a research and policy initiative aimed at delivering new evidence on how best to promote economic security for families with children.

The event will take place from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. EDT on October 21.

Learn more and register.

Denver’s Progress on Homelessness Offers Promising Path For Other Cities

hillarya — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 23:26:10 +0000

The Denver Mayor’s Office recently announced a 45 percent reduction in unsheltered homelessness from January 2023 to January 2025. Before then, unsheltered homelessness was worsening. In July 2023, following multi-year increases in unsheltered homelessness, Mayor Mike Johnston announced the House1000 initiative to move 1,000 people indoors, followed by the All In Mile High (AIMHigh) initiative in January 2024. AIMHigh is a citywide strategy to effectively end unsheltered homelessness by the end of 2026. The Urban Institute is evaluating AIMHigh’s implementation and effectiveness.

Denver reported a reduction in their point-in-time count, and the evaluation analyses show a substantial reduction in the number of large encampments in the city: 98 percent fewer groups of 20 or more people and 89 percent less groups of 10–20 people. As communities across the country struggle with helping people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, and as responses to unsheltered homelessness are receiving additional public scrutiny, many cities have chosen to address this through sweeping encampments or criminalizing (arresting or fining) people for experiencing homelessness. But evidence shows criminalization and encampment sweeps don’t solve unsheltered homelessness. Early analysis from our evaluation of Denver’s initiative shows the AIMHigh strategies appear to be more effective—and are more humane—than criminalization or Denver’s previous efforts.

Request for Proposals and Webinar: Student Upward Mobility Initiative 2025 – Sep 9

hillarya — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 15:29:43 +0000

The Student Upward Mobility Initiative works to support students’ economic mobility by identifying the PK–12 skills and competencies that drive long-term success, especially for students from backgrounds of economic disadvantage. We launched our second request for proposals (RFP) in August 2025, which represents an additional step toward our long-term vision of equipping education policymakers and practitioners with a short list of key mobility drivers around which to design systems and structures.

An informational webinar for interested applicants will be held on September 9, 3:00-4:00 PM. Learn more and register for the webinar here.

Through this new RFP, we seek studies that identify the skills and competencies in late high school that propel students into economic mobility and the ways skill development and access to opportunity in early high school and middle school shape those trajectories. We prize innovative, audacious projects that make creative use of novel data sources and study designs to make groundbreaking advances in what we know about the drivers of mobility and how we can measure them. We invite projects that support these areas of inquiry across two tracks: (1) developing better measures of likely mobility drivers and (2) identifying and validating mobility drivers. We expect to award $3 million in grants ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 for projects lasting up to 24 months. We will share the same overview content across two dates and times to increase access and convenience.

Virtual Event: Rent Reporting as a Pathway to Credit Building – Jun 5

hillarya — Thu, 22 May 2025 17:17:27 +0000

It is exceedingly difficult to get by in the US economy without participating in the credit system. Rent reporting—providing data on tenant rental payments to at least one of the major consumer credit bureaus—has seen significant growth in recent years. The major credit scoring companies have begun adjusting scoring algorithms to include reported rental payments. Nonprofit housing providers and public housing authorities have incorporated rent reporting, and several states and municipalities have encouraged the adoption of rent reporting. Join Urban as they share findings from new research—results from the first randomized controlled trial that tests the impact of rent reporting on credit visibility and credit scores. Experts will also discuss the growth of rent reporting, and policy developments.

This event will be held virtually on June 5, 2025, 12:30-1:30 PM.

Click here to register.

Hybrid Event: Improving Household Financial Security and Upward Mobility: Insights for Effective Policy and Practice – Mar 25

hillarya — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 20:50:52 +0000

Amid ongoing inflation and persistently high living costs, millions of Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities such as food, housing, and child care. Policymakers and community leaders across the country are advancing evidence-based policies and practices to help households manage their daily finances and thrive. What will it take to sustain and build upon these solutions in the rapidly changing political, regulatory, and funding environment? Join the Urban Institute and a panel of researchers, policymakers, and community leaders to discuss what it takes to thrive in the US today and to identify durable strategies to advance upward mobility in communities across the country.

This event will be held virtually and in person at the Urban Institute on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 1 pm ET.

Click here to register.

Hybrid Event: Advancing Maternal Health Equity: How Can Research, Policy, and Advocacy Inform Solutions? – Feb 27

hillarya — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:07 +0000

Maternal and infant health inequities remain a significant challenge in the United States, disproportionately affecting historically marginalized communities. Despite gains in coverage through Affordable Care Act expansions, many women of reproductive age still face gaps in care and disparities in birth outcomes. These inequities stem from lack of access created by systemic and social barriers, including discrimination and bias, language differences, and educational and economic inequities.

The Urban Institute, in collaboration with Policies for Action (P4A), a signature research program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, invites you to join this robust, solutions-based discussion. Together with researchers, policymakers, advocates, and health care providers, we will explore evidence, experience, and policy considerations to achieve maternal and infant health equity. The ultimate collective goal is to create a future in which reproductive health equity is a reality for families throughout the United States.

This event will be held virtually and in person on Thursday, February 27, 2025, 1:00-4:00 PM.

Click here to register.

Virtual Event: Centering Community Voices to Improve Disability Research – Feb 26

hillarya — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 16:49:32 +0000

In 2020, Urban Institute researchers launched a Community Advisory Board to help identify ways to center racial equity in quantitative and qualitative research for a project focused on Medicaid and health equity. As a result of this partnership, which is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, board members have worked with researchers to incorporate a health equity framework in various projects, participated in research teams, served as coauthors, and influenced the identification, development, and execution of research focused on topics including the implementation of postpartum Medicaid extensions; approaches health organizations are taking to address diversity, equity, and inclusion issues; and disability and health.

Join the Urban Institute for a conversation about the impact of community engagement in guiding and identifying important research, with a focus on focused on barriers people with disabilities experienced when trying to access health care.

This event will be held virtually on Wednesday, February 26, 2025, 3:00 PM.

Click here to learn more and register.

Webinar: Using Demographic Data to Advance Health Equity – Jan 29

hillarya — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 18:47:52 +0000

The collection and application of demographic data to advance health equity is under way in California and can be a source of lessons and examples for other states. This webinar, hosted by the Urban Institute, is informed by findings from research in California and engages experts from across the state. Panelists will wrestle with what state and federal policymakers can do to enhance transparency and accountability for addressing disparities in access to and quality of care and outcomes. They will also discuss insights from health care practices and community-based organizations about using stratified patient data to identify and address disparities and will elevate use cases for why it is essential to make investments to improve data collection infrastructure and practices. The dialogue will elevate outstanding challenges to this effort and suggest public and private actions that can improve the collection and use of race and ethnicity data.

This event will be held virtually on Wednesday, January 29, 2025 at 1:30 pm ET.

Click here to register.

Virtual Event: The True Cost of Economic Security: What Does It Take to Thrive in the US Today? – Nov 20

hillarya — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 18:58:34 +0000

According to a 2023 Federal Reserve survey, 52 percent of US residents report that, at best, they’re just making ends meet and did not save any income in the previous month. Only 33 percent report they live comfortably. Yet conventional measures of economic insecurity, like the poverty rate, capture only acute need and don’t show the hardships of millions of people who struggle to pay bills and save for the future—people who are economically insecure and not poised to thrive. To better understand families’ circumstances, their resources, and the costs of fully participating in today’s society and economy, the Urban Institute developed a “true cost of economic security” measure. We designed the measure with accuracy and replicability in mind, using high-quality publicly accessible data collected regularly to capture variations across states and all areas, allowing us to explore differences by age, family structure, and race and ethnicity. Join the Urban Institute for a discussion on the new measure and how policymakers and researchers can leverage insights from this research to improve American families’ well-being.

This event will be held virtually on Wednesday, November 20, 2024, at 1:30 p.m. ET.

Click here to register.

Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative Catalyst Grant Program – Nov 22

hillarya — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 01:31:44 +0000

Urban Institute, Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative invite applications for Catalyst Grant Program

The Urban Institute and the Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative are collaborating on the Catalyst Grant Program to help nonprofits use data and technology to advance racial equity and reform at the front end of the adult criminal legal system.

Catalyst Grant Program goals include the following: create a space for locally embedded nonprofit organizations to implement data- and technology- focused projects that advance racial equity and reform at the front end of the criminal legal system; enhance the technological and data capacity of nonprofit organizations focused on promoting justice and racial equity through project assistance, peer-learning opportunities, and financial support; and disseminate innovative practices and lessons learned during implementation to stakeholders throughout the criminal legal reform community.

Selected applicants will receive $40,000 in grant funds; assistance on data, policy, and community engagement from the Urban Institute; access to Microsoft technology and related support; and peer-learning opportunities.

Projects must focus on reform and racial equity at the front end of the criminal legal system (i.e., criminal legal system activities and relevant actors up to and including sentencing and activities to prevent unnecessary criminal legal system involvement). Projects must also incorporate data and technology and be locally focused.

Projects are not required to use Microsoft technology, though projects that use Microsoft technology in ways integral to the proposed data and technology activities will be eligible for additional in-kind technology access and support.

To be eligible, lead organizations must be locally embedded 501(c)(3) organizations based in the United States, excluding colleges and universities. There is a focus on those organizations embedded in communities of color, particularly Black communities. Lead organizations may include partner organizations that do not meet lead organization eligibility criteria.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Urban Institute website.

Deadline: November 22, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. ET

Virtual Event: The Cost of Financial Insecurity: A Conversation about Democracy, Divisiveness, and Civic Engagement – Oct 30

hillarya — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 17:23:40 +0000

New research from the Urban Institute and Citizen Data reveals a strong correlation between financial well-being and civic activities, such as voting, volunteering, and donating to political parties. The research also shows that financially secure people are more likely to be satisfied with democracy, more likely to trust election results, and more open to reducing social divisions than those who are struggling financially. Collectively, these findings suggest that people with greater financial well-being have more political power, which undermines our nation’s commitment to representative democracy. But the findings also suggest that investing in financial well-being may strengthen our country’s civic institutions and democratic norms.

Join the Urban Institute and a panel of experts to learn more about these findings and discuss strategies to enhance financial well-being and repair the social fabric of America.

This event will be held virtually on Wednesday, October 30, 2024, at 3:00 PM.

Learn more and register.