Blogs

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Increasing Financial Aid Access to Make College More Affordable

For students from low-income families, money is often a prohibitive barrier to entering and completing college. At the same time, however, many students struggle to access the federal resources that are available to help make college more affordable. In 1965, the United States created the Pell Grant program to help provide qualifying students with access … Continued

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Connecting Vulnerable Seniors to Services They Need In Long Beach

What would a city look like if it empowered seniors to be healthy, vibrant, and productive members of the community? That’s the question that city leaders in Long Beach, California, sought to answer with a new report analyzing gaps in resources and services for the city’s older residents. In a city of 470,000 people, one … Continued

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How Philadelphia is Battling Poverty by Building a Robust Workforce

The city of Philadelphia has made impressive economic gains over the last year. In 2017, for the second year in a row, the city added jobs at a faster rate than the nation as a whole. It also recorded its highest monthly average job numbers in nearly three decades. At the same time, Philadelphia has … Continued

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Designing a Patient-Centered Approach in the L.A. County Jail System

Los Angeles County is home to the largest jail system in the nation. On any given day, around 20,000 people are housed in one of the county’s jail facilities. For many of them, jail was the inevitable result of untreated mental or physical illness, substance abuse or drug addiction. A joint report by the Treatment Advocacy … Continued

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How New Orleans is Building an Open, Transparent Police Department

In 2012, the city of New Orleans Police Department was placed under one of the most sweeping consent decrees ever issued by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). In policing, these binding orders are issued in the wake of an investigation finding that a police department has engaged in systemic misconduct or bias. In a document … Continued

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In San Francisco, Video Series Raises Awareness About Affordable Housing

Though San Francisco’s rising housing costs are garnering plenty of headlines, lesser known among the community are the efforts on the part of the city to help connect residents to affordable housing resources. FUSE fellow Kimberly Dubin is working at the Mayor’s Office of Housing & Community Development (MOHCD) to bring more attention to these … Continued

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In San Jose, Making the City a Classroom

San Jose is the tenth largest city in the United States and the third largest city in California. For a city and surrounding suburbs supporting 1.8 million residents in the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose maintains a hyper-local, neighborhood vibrancy, even with 19 separate school districts that comprise a total of 103 schools. Though … Continued

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Life After Jail: In L.A. County, a Systems-Wide Approach to Reduce Recidivism

Over the past decade, there has been growing recognition of the societal, human and financial costs of mass incarceration. This is particularly true in Los Angeles County, where more than 17,000 men and women comprise the largest jail population in the nation. Recognizing the implications of managing a system of this magnitude, L.A. County is … Continued