With urban inequality getting increased attention from politicians and pundits, many have wondered whether cities actually have the tools to address this growing challenge. A new federal initiative offers a promising solution.
"Brian Smedley, vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute at the D.C.-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, sees hope for a federal response [to enduring poverty] in the Obama administration’s new Promise Zones initiative. Smedley calls Promise Zones 'the biggest, most promising anti-poverty strategy' in decades."
"Promise Zones are intended to coordinate and focus community-based programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Department of Education (DOE), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Agriculture (DOA), on high-poverty communities across the country," explains Bernardine Watson. "The goal of Promise Zones is to accelerate these programs by using the administration’s new 'place-based' approach of integrating and aligning the resources of several federal agencies in areas of concentrated poverty."
FULL STORY: Are the Obama administration’s ‘Promise Zones’ a promising anti-poverty strategy?
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