Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout continues to drain families’ resources. In Washington, DC, an estimated 21 percent of respondents to the September Census Household Pulse Survey expected to lose income in the next four weeks. This income loss means families are struggling to afford basic needs, such as food and housing.

Racist policies and practices have facilitated gentrification and displacement, which have disproportionately harmed Black and Latine (a gender-inclusive identifier for Latinos/as) communities for decades.

On June 26, the US House of Representatives passed legislation to make the District of Columbia the 51st state by a 232–180 vote. It marked the first time either chamber of Congress approved a DC statehood bill.

Millions of people have lost jobs, health insurance, and housing during the cor

As researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders track and analyze the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 and racist policing on Black and Latine (a gender-inclusive identifier for Lati

When COVID-19 began to spread in early March, youth service agencies scrambled to close their schools and program centers to keep everyone safe. Then they quickly turned their programming into virtual content—all while ensuring families could meet their basic needs. The pandemic demanded rapid responses, so service providers developed innovative ways to meet young people’s needs this summer.

With discussions about a new federal coronavirus relief package up in the air, people with low incomes and people of color—the groups hit hardest by COVID-19—continue to suffer the coronavirus’s health and economic effects.

With the COVID-19 crisis leaving millions of Americans out of work, many renters face the prospect of not being able to pay another month’s rent. Calls for extended unemployment benefits, fully funded rental assistance, and national eviction moratoria have become major policy proposals to contain a probable and daunting surge in housing instability and homelessness.

Recent protests in response to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many Black people before them, as well as COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on people of color, are bringing renewed calls to examine how to dismantle systemic racism in the US. Improving public housing—and the lives of public housing residents—is one concrete area that could help address the nation’s long history of racial inequity.