NNIP Selects 4 Partners for Inaugural Emerging Opportunities Fund

Urban Institute is excited to announce the NNIP partners in Boston, Durham, New Haven, and San Antonio selected through a competitive Request for Proposals for $50,000 subgrants from the NNIP Emerging Opportunities Fund. As part of NNIP’s expanded efforts to support local innovation, Urban launched the Fund to support network partners to take on projects that are poised community impact and that expands the organization’s portfolio, such as taking on a new issue area, engaging in new partnerships, and/or using new methods or data sources. This inaugural round of the Fund is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

• Community Information Now in San Antonio, Texas: To support equitable transit-oriented development and affordable housing in San Antonio, Community Information Now will analyze local data to understand property ownership, including investor and absentee owners. This analysis will inform strategies to prevent displacement, expand and preserve affordable housing, and increase community ownership along the planned Advanced Rapid Transit bus line system and across San Antonio.  

• DataHaven in New Haven, Connecticut: To inform coordinated local advocacy efforts for state legislation aimed at redistributing resources to address racial wealth gaps such as a child tax credit, free school lunches, and expanded Medicaid, DataHaven will calculate the impacts of proposed legislation by race/ethnicity and important intersections of gender, age, and immigrant status for small geographic areas across the state. DataHaven will share the analysis in interactive visualizations and work with United Ways and other community groups to get the data into the hands of local advocates.

• DataWorks NC in Durham, North Carolina: Collaborating with the Community Justice Collaborative, DataWorks NC will conduct a property tax equity analysis in Durham, Orange, and Wake counties to support community action and advocacy in response to upcoming county property revaluations. Their analysis will potentially support community-wide appeals of inequitable neighborhood assessments and outreach for tax mitigation programs. This project will help communities elevate the issue of disproportionate tax increases on lower-value homes and their effect on housing affordability and financial wellbeing of households with lower incomes.

• Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) in Boston, Massachusetts: Partnering with Healthy Neighborhoods Research Consortium, MAPC will expand their research on speculative housing investment through new methodology to identify corporate owners and their property portfolios. This information will help community advocates differentiate the behaviors and impacts of large investors from smaller investors and inform policy discussions to address drivers of housing instability and the state’s affordable housing crisis.

These projects will kick-off a 9-month period of performance in April 2024. Urban will be documenting lessons and emerging practices from the funded projects to inspire replication within the network and in local communities across the country.