Highlights

Back in the mid-1990s, a group of civic leaders in Salt Lake City looked out over the Wasatch Front and worried about what they saw. Even though economic growth had created many opportunities for Utahns and attracted unprecedented numbers of migrants from other states and nations, there were also costs. Traffic was becoming unbearable. Air quality was getting harder to maintain. And the sense of place that characterized many of the state’s older cities and towns was eroding.

The DC metro area is home to almost 177,000 children living in households headed by a parent who is limited English proficient (LEP), defined as speaking English “less than very well.” And almost half of those kids—about 85,000—live in a linguistically isolated household, where everyone age 15 and older is LEP.

In one of its final acts of 2014, Congress reduced the maximum size of mortgages guaranteed by the Veterans Administration (VA) to the size allowed for those guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (GSEs).