The only way to understand and plan for our most critical and emerging issues is to keep each other informed. Send insights to tpearce@atlantaregional.org.
Based on 2-1-1 service requests, the demand for rental assistance has been on the rise through the holiday season. Service requests are largely concentrated in South Fulton zip codes.
Explore the data in the right panel of this page or with the full dashboard. This data is provided by United Way of Greater Atlanta and is updated monthly.
If you are in need of housing assistance or other services, call 2-1-1 or visit 211online.unitedwayatlanta.org.
Looking at the factors that contribute to (and/or result from) Atlanta’s ranking as #1 in economic inequality, a clear pattern emerges. The experiences and outcomes of Atlanta neighborhoods are divided along northeast and southwest lines in nearly every way.
When the highest income neighborhoods are living one and a half times longer than those with the lowest income, these inequities are a matter of life or death.
The Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education recently published its 19th edition of the Top Ten Issues to Watch Report, informing leaders of Georgia’s most critical education issues.
The issues in this report range from Early Childhood Support and Educator Burnout to School-Community Engagement and Ou-of-School learning. Each of them establishes a goal and a Call to Action laid out in three sections:
Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve been tracking eviction filings from Metro Atlanta counties to understand the time and geographic trends.
It’s clear the federal moratoriums prevented the “eviction tsunami” we heard so much about in 2020 and 2021, but even after the moratoriums, a tidal wave never came.
But as we continue to track the data (currently through November 2022), we’ve seen filing levels steadily rise, matching pre-pandemic levels since late summer.
On December 1st, Learn4Life held their annual convening to share the factors shaping the state of education in Metro Atlanta.
View the data and proposed solutions — including a panel of superintendents answering student questions — in the Facebook Live recording here. And read the full report on L4L’s website.
In not-new-news, AJC’s analysis of Census data shows Atlanta has the highest income inequality among major US metros.
“[M]any Black residents are not seeing the benefits of [strong economic growth], said Janelle Williams, co-founder of the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative. The median household income for a Black family in Atlanta is $28,000, while the median income for white families is roughly $84,000. Overall, Black residents account for half of the city’s population.”
This analysis uses the Gini coefficient based on the US Census Bureau’s 2016-2020 American Community Survey data. “The Gini coefficient measures how equally income is distributed among a population and is expressed in a decimal format ranging from zero to one.”
While the City of Atlanta is No. 1 among cities, “the Atlanta metro area ranks as No. 227 for income inequality, with a Gini co-efficient of 0.4708, significantly better than the New York metro area (No. 39) and the Houston metro (No. 117).”
The recently launched map of Georgia’s government-funded out-of-school programs highlights some communities with limited access to these learning opportunities. Out-of-school education programs are essential because consistent participation in these activities has been shown to improve academic outcomes, help to close the achievement gap, reduce school absences, and improve social-emotional outcomes. Some of GSAN’s highlights from the interactive map are:
Atlanta Public Schools reached an all-time high graduation rate in 2022 of 84.0%.
From the press release:
A new report from Child Trends (also covered in the New York Times) evaluates the biggest factors contributing to the unprecedented 30-year trend of decreasing child poverty. Key findings point to governmental safety net programs as key drivers.
Further, the US Census Bureau released pandemic-era child poverty estimates (through 2021) this week, saying “the new data show the significant impact the expansion of anti-poverty programs during the COVID-19 pandemic had on reducing child poverty.”
Additional recent studies, including from our partners at DataHaven in Connecticut found that food scarcity and child poverty rose after safety net programs ended.
What does that mean for social sector leaders?
First, the scale of government interventions offer opportunities to have the greatest impact. But blanket policies will always leave some households falling through cracks: immigrants, mixed-status and undocumented households, families that are newly navigating human services, digitally disconnected, underemployed, housing burdened, and others. Our role then, is (1) advocate for expanded policies and educate officials of the impact; and (2) find and directly serve the families that are left behind.
Second, the new philanthropic role of counties and cities distributing ARPA funds offers an opportunity, and maybe a model, to (1) build relationships with elected officials and (2) provide guidance in funding and programming decisions that have systemic impacts.
New research published this month found evidence that sharing historical context increased beliefs that (1) racial inequities exist and (2) that they are structural (not individual) in nature. It was most effective among White independents and Republicans. This research supports the importance of including historical narrative along with data and narratives when describing and addressing systemic inequities.
The housing treatment increased belief in racial inequality’s existence and belief in discrimination against African Americans as a structural cause of racial inequality among both white Independents and Republicans, but decreased racial resentment only among white Independents (and not white Republicans). By contrast, among white Republicans, the jobs treatment decreased racial resentment and increased belief in discrimination and a lack of educational opportunities among African Americans as causes of racial inequality, but did not increase belief in the existence of racial inequality itself.
Taken together, these results provide evidence that information about the historical roots of contemporary racial inequality can in fact shape racial beliefs. In particular, we found that white respondents in the treatment conditions, rather than engaging in motivated reasoning and exhibiting divergent beliefs, seem to update their beliefs in the direction of the information they receive about the existence of racial inequality and the extent to which it is caused by structural factors when presented with specific information about past discriminatory policies.
In new research from Raj Chetty’s team at Opportunity Insights (published in two parts in Nature and summarized in NYT), a massive analysis of economic and social networks found that exposure to and friendships among people of different social classes is one of the strongest predictors of upward mobility.
The study found that lower socio-economic groups make connections in their home neighborhood and at religious institutions, while higher SES groups tend to make their bridging connections in college. This research builds on their prior economic mobility analysis and development of the Opportunity Atlas.
So what do we do with this information?
Programs, services, policies, and investments that facilitate interactions across diverse economic groups will likely have lasting impacts. Policy level solutions might include inclusive housing and planning decisions. At a more local level, effort might be made to reduce in-school student segregation. Programmatically, even experiential programs outside of participants’ own neighborhood may have an impact.
A new WABE and GPB analyzes the impacts of the newly enacted law (SB 202) that affects the number and location of ballot boxes across the state. The finding point to disparate outcomes, including:
More than half of the roughly 550,000 voters who cast their ballot using a drop box in the state’s 2020 general election lived in four metro Atlanta counties — Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett — where about 50% of the voters are people of color.
Under the new law, the number of drop boxes in these four counties plummeted from 107 to 25.
Nearly 1.9 million people, a quarter of the state’s voters, have seen their travel time to a drop box increase from the 2020 election.
More than 90% of voters who saw an increase in their travel time to a drop box live in cities or suburbs, which are home to most of the state’s minority voters and vote heavily Democratic.
Through June 2022, an Urban Institute analysis found significant racial and geographic disparities in debt—a factor that contributes to the wealth gap. According to the data, debt and the racial gap are higher in Georgia than the national average. The disparity is significantly higher in several Metro Atlanta counties.
Learn4Life’s State of Education 2021 reveals a concerning trend: metro Atlanta students experienced interrupted learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Eighth grade math proficiency dropped 14 points from the 2018/19 academic year to the 2020/21 academic year. Reading proficiency has also declined since the 2018/19 academic year, reversing progress made in the year prior to the pandemic. Teacher burnout has exacerbated challenges in education, making it likely that learning loss will have lasting effects and be difficult to reverse.
Emsi Burning Glass recently released a report analyzing the shifting trends in rural and urban job postings. They found:
The Nonprofit Finance Fund surveyed 1,100 nonprofit leaders about the impact of the last two years on their organizations.
Read the full findings of NFF’s 2022 State of the Nonprofit Sector report.
Both the pandemic and higher prices have increased reliance on nonprofits. The Atlanta Community Food Bank’s (ACFB) President and CEO Kyle Waide said, “The current challenges that we’re all experiencing with higher prices, for gas, for food, for supplies, are causing demand for food assistance to increase and it’s making it more expensive and more challenging for the food bank to respond to that demand.” With high inflation and increasing demand for their services, ACFB’s food costs are 30% higher this year than last year.
Atlanta recently conducted its annual “Point in Time” count to evaluate the number of homeless individuals in the city. The count was canceled in 2021 due to the pandemic, but 3,240 people were counted in the city of Atlanta in 2020. The official numbers for the 2022 count will not be released until later in the year, but recent trends have shown that the pandemic may have worsened homelessness. Recently, more people have been sleeping outdoors rather than in shelters. In Atlanta, there are 2,800 beds available in shelters, but many individuals have turned down a bed due to COVID-19 concerns. Another new trend has emerged: there are more individuals that are newly homeless than ever before. There is some good news, though. As many as 700 previously homeless individuals were able to secure stable housing with pandemic-relief funding.
Takeaway: Reducing homelessness in the wake of the pandemic will rely on improved housing aid and policy as well as creative sheltering options to safely house individuals.
Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education (GPEE) recently released their report listing the top ten issues to watch in 2022. The report highlights the lasting effects of the pandemic on education, especially for Georgia’s most vulnerable populations including students of color, low-income youth, rural residents, workers lacking postsecondary training, and adults caring for children and elders. GPEE is focusing on equity as the state recovers from the pandemic, and the list of ten issues to watch serves as a starting point for GPEE’s goal of ensuring 65% of GA’s residents aged 25-64 will hold a postsecondary credential by 2032. The ten issues are:
Receive monthly newsletters from 33n and Neighborhood Nexus, as well as occasional updates and events.
"*" indicates required fields
