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This work is a collaboration between the Institute and the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF) to identify and understand the geography of opportunity across the New Orleans/Baton Rouge super-region. As in Houston-Galveston, the NOLA/BR super-region encompasses a diversity of economic bases and community types and so lends itself to a typology approach. In addition, GNOF and their stakeholders have identified several key advocacy issues that can be informed and supported by the opportunity maps and engagement process.

The Institute provided analysis and assistance with the region’s opportunity mapping activities to aid equity issues in the development of a regional sustainable development plan. This work prompted housing authorities for Seattle, Tacoma and King County to consider opportunity maps for ways to improve their voucher programs – for example, by increasing voucher rates in high opportunity areas or making housing more affordable in those areas. This is also the first work to be represented on the Institute’s web site as an eReport .

This work is a collaborative effort between Green Doors, an Austin nonprofit to house the homeless, and the Institute. The work is also driven by a committee of other partners, including The City of Austin, Travis County, The Housing Authorities of the City of Austin and Travis County, and The Capital Area Council of Governments (CAPCOG), whose participation as a Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI) grantee will pull many of these findings into their regional Fair Housing and Equity Assessment.

The Institute is wrapping up local technical assistance, opportunity mapping and facilitation of civic engagement to inform the HUD SCI grant in coastal Mississippi. We will continue our involvement in the region to provide training and support for use of the resulting opportunity maps by GRPC and area stakeholders. Learn more about our HUD Sustainable Communities Initiative

On the national front, Kirwan partnered with PICO National Network and CCO in Kansas City, and with MICAH in New Orleans, to build a common understanding of sustainable and equitable community health.  Our studies mapped high concentrations of emergency room usage (“hot spots”), in order to better understand the primary care needs of the community, the costs of using the ER system, and how to reinvest in these “hot spot” communities to build healthier families (see the Bring Health Reform Home reports for Kansas City and New Orleans on our website’s new section, “Building Healthy Communitie

The Kirwan Institute has been providing technical assistance to the Detroit Civic Engagement Fellows as they work to craft an equitable civic engagement plan for the residents of Detroit and the surrounding region amid the city’s dramatic reorganization. Over the past nine months, the Kirwan Institute has helped plan site visits to communities throughout the country in order to experience new civic engagement models and innovative ideas that may be useful to civic engagement in Detroit.

The Institute is working together with PolicyLink to provide mapping support for an equity assessment, to be used by the Lakota tribe to apply for HUD funding for reservation housing. We are also providing expert advice as the tribe establishes a regional planning office.

By Sharon Davies, Executive Director,

The Institute is working in collaboration with H-GAC to facilitate an opportunity mapping initiative in the 13-county Texas Gulf Coast planning region to inform the region’s Fair Housing Equity Assessment (FHEA). At 12,500 square miles, the H-GAC service area is larger than 9 other states’ total areas and poses a challenge for opportunity mapping, both in scale and in geographic and economic diversity. For this reason, we are exploring with H-GAC the development of a meaningful typology of sub-regions for opportunity.

By Sharon Davies,

By Christy Rogers, Director of Outreach,

By Thomas Rudd,

Sharon L. Davies Director’s Message, January 2013 In the opening month of 2013 we have marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, witnessed the second inauguration of the nation’s first African American President, and heard news that Lincoln—a film celebrating the successful 1865 battle to adopt the 13th Amendment guaranteeing Black freedom—is a frontrunner for numerous Academy awards. Milestones like these are rightly celebrated, for they are testament to the human capacity to acknowledge our errors and wrongs and to rectify our mistakes.

By Jason Reece, Research Director,

By Thomas Rudd,

Fisher v. University of Texas The Amicus Brief filed on behalf of 2025 Network for Black Men and Boys:

By Sharon Davies, Executive Director, The challenge in the Fisher v. University of Texas case is about more than whether the University of Texas (and others like it) should be permitted to factor race along with numerous other aspects of an applicant’s biography when attempting to create a diverse learning environment. It is an attack on diversity and inclusion as a value.

By Jillian Olinger, Research Associate,

By Cheryl Staats, Research Associate,