Dear friend,

Welcome to Frontier, the monthly newsletter from the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America. This month, we continued to share the Foreclosure and Eviction Analysis Tool (FEAT) with users across the United States, presenting the tool in various fora, including at NYC Open Data Week. We're also increasingly exploring the intersections between climate change, and housing, land, and property rights. Later this spring, we'll be releasing an OpEd series reimagining the "Future of the Coasts" in partnership with Future Tense at Slate!

Here's what else we've been up to:

What We're Doing

Partnered Event with USAID: Women Leading Solutions to Climate Change

Climate change poses disproportionate challenges for women in the developing world, threatening global progress on gender equality. At the same time, women leaders have long been at the forefront of designing successful solutions that mitigate and adapt to climate change at the local, national, and international levels.

To recognize the sixty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), New America and USAID held a webinar exploring the many ways women are leading solutions to critical land, natural resource, and climate change challenges—from protecting marine ecosystems in Indonesia to managing community forests in Brazil and defending Indigenous lands in Colombia.

Speakers included Anne-Marie Slaughter, New America's CEO; Gillian Caldwell, USAID Chief Climate Officer; and Jamille Bigio, USAID Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment.

A recording of the event is available here.

The Evictions That Landlords Got Away with During the Pandemic

Sabiha Zainulbhai and Nora Daly discuss how evictions during COVID-19 may have largely been rendered invisible in a Slate OpEd. Informal evictions occur outside the courtroom through landlord harassment, coercion, or spreading of misinformation, and rest on power imbalances between landlords and tenants that leave no paper trail.

The OpEd draws on a brief published in January that sheds light on what constitutes an informal eviction, why they are difficult to track, and what measurements techniques currently exist for understanding this pervasive form of displacement.

Read Sabiha and Nora's piece here.

ICYMI: The Foreclosure and Eviction Analysis Tool (FEAT) Event Recap and Resources

In partnership with DataKind, and a cohort of over a dozen U.S. cities and counties, we developed FEAT, an open source tool that allows local leaders to upload local eviction and foreclosure data and generate insights that show where housing loss is most acute and who is most impacted.

On March 2nd, we hosted a FEAT release event, featuring a live demonstration and a robust panel discussion with city leaders from across the U.S. The full event recording is available here, and for additional resources, check out:  

• FEAT FAQs and a comprehensive step-by-step User Guide  

• GitHub Link to download FEAT

• Data to Drive Housing Loss Decision-Making Blog Series

What We're Reading

FLH staff share what has stood out to them lately on land, housing, and property rights in the U.S. and internationally.

Sabiha Zainulbhai

Doing "The Right Thing" Won’t Close the Racial Wealth Gap: In an article in Shelterforce, Anne Price from the Insight Center reframes the relationship between homeownership and the racial wealth gap—which is persistent and worsening between Black and white Americans. Price explains that in order to truly address this gap—which is over 400 years in the making—we must account for the ways in which wealth accumulation has played out differently along racial lines. This requires acknowledging that wealth does not stem solely from ownership of a single asset (a home), but from individual and collective hoarding of opportunities in some neighborhoods, and extraction in others, namely Black and Indigenous communities. In short, this article raises a critical question: how do we think about racial equity, wealth, and homeownership in ways that go beyond promoting individual solutions to deeply structural problems?

Tim Robustelli

Historic drought looms for 20 million living in Horn of Africa: Four failed rainy seasons in a row have led to the worst drought in decades for much of East Africa. Ruined harvests, dying livestock, and growing hunger are now a reality for millions regionally. This piece from National Geographic explores the drought’s origins—all the way in the Pacific Ocean, as the La Niña phenomenon affects weather patterns worldwide. It explains that the current crisis in the Horn of Africa is probably exacerbated by climate change, although recent investments in groundwater access and agricultural productivity may help to offset the worst outcomes for communities, their animals, and their livelihoods. Still, little let-up is expected in the coming years, and we think it’s likely that many individuals and families will eventually choose to leave their homes in search of a better life. They’ll join hundreds of millions of other “climate refugees” fleeing the negative impacts of our warming planet. We wonder how “climate havens” will welcome these migrants politically, socially, and economically?

Maya Thompson

UC Berkeley Enrollment Case Fuels Wider Battle for Student Housing: Despite increased enrollment over the past few years, California’s public higher education system has not made updates to affordable housing on-campus, causing an outcry among students who face housing insecurity. Due in part to construction restrictions, colleges and universities in California have resorted to turning dormitory lounges into bedrooms, allowing students to live in hotel rooms, and leasing nearby apartment buildings. Earlier this month, a judge ordered UC Berkeley to freeze its enrollment, leading to nationwide protests and an overruling by Governor Newsom that provides schools 18 months to address the housing crisis before implementing any changes to enrollment. As rent soars and housing stock decreases in California, how can school officials ensure that affordable housing is available for incoming students, notably those that are lower-income or do not have housing aid? And how can administrators do this without forcing students off-campus, to fend for themselves or wait until new developments are built on campus?

Thoughts on our work or where we're headed? Reach out to us at FLH@NewAmerica.org or tag us at @FLHatNewAmerica.

Until next month, the FLH Team.

About New America

New America is dedicated to renewing the promise of America, bringing us closer to our nation’s highest ideals. We’re a different kind of think tank: one dedicated to public problem solving. Our team of visionary researchers, changemakers, technologists, and storytellers study and seize the opportunities presented by dramatic social and technological change. We search for powerful ideas, wherever they are, and collaborate with civic innovators around the world to develop evidence-based solutions.

The Future of Land and Housing Program at New America aims to help solve today’s land and housing rights challenges, both in the United States and internationally. Through our research and writing, convening, and collaboration with civic innovators worldwide, we strive to connect new constituencies, shed light on underreported issues, and implement creative approaches in the property rights space.

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