A conversation with Chancee Martorell and Ella Mendonsa When I first met Chancee Martorell, we were standing outside of the hard hat area in East Hollywood that would one day be Thai Town Marketplace, discussing the 13 years of work that had led to this moment. It was through a tour with the Strong Prosperous […]

More than 2 million Americans are evicted from their homes each year and millions more forced to leave neighborhoods and communities because of a national housing and displacement crisis. All six SPARCC sites share the common challenge of displacement and it’s a major focus of our work. As SPARCC enters its third year and looks […]

It’s imperative that climate adaptation measures and reconstruction efforts after extreme weather are designed to include low-income and communities of color and bolster them against future climate, social, and economic hazards.

By Dr. Tiffany Manuel (@DrTiffanyManuel) All across the country, there is an explicit public conversation going on about gentrification and displacement. While such topics have been fodder for debate and analysis in academic circles, they are not ones that typically lead the nightly news or play out in contentious PTA meetings. Today, however, that’s exactly […]

Chicago is many things—a global city, a city of neighborhoods, a “City on the Make”—and also one of America’s most segregated cities. While the region creates 200,000 jobs a year, the unemployment rate among black Chicagoans is more than three times higher than that of white residents and one-and-a-half times higher for Latinos. Life expectancy […]

By Mariia Zimmerman Displacement of local residents, business, and culture has emerged as an increasingly common challenge among the regions in the Strong, Prosperous, and Resilient Communities Challenge. In late 2018, representatives from the six SPARCC sites and the SPARCC national team came together to elevate the crisis of displacement, to explore the drivers of […]

A formal assessment by the Center for Community Health and Evaluation (CCHE) takes a look at SPARCC’s mid-initiative progress, with trends aligning with a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s (FRBSF) community development research team, Testing our Hypotheses. Read the full CCHE report here. Much like the FRBSF’s findings, this report: Highlights […]

The Strong, Prosperous, and Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC) has a bold mission to change the way regions grow, invest, and build. The initiative kicked off two years ago as a partnership across a range of funders and nonprofit organizations from across the country to create new approaches to equitable regional development, focusing on three areas […]

by Lara Hansen and Marissa Ramirez A community organization in Los Angeles recently identified a crucial need for public spaces that provide a place for residents to cool off, while not increasing greenhouse gas emissions that would make it even warmer. Temperatures have already risen in Los Angeles by 1.5°F over the past century and […]