Recent CHURP Activities
On October 3rd, 2024, CHURP researchers Ajeune Lynch, Angela Bodley, and Taylor Ross attended the Black Aging Summit, an event powered by AARP and hosted by Aging While Black and Raymond Jetson. Alongside them is Julie Miller, Director of Thought Leadership, Financial Resilience Policy, Research and International Affairs at AARP. The summit addressed problems and solutions to the economic challenges Black elders face. Aging While Black focuses on 3 pillars to improve the aging experience for Black elders: recalibrating the village, embracing rapid change, and leaning into “sankofa”. Select CHURP researchers were able to contribute to the conversation by representing the center’s Aging in Place and AARP projects, which both study older generations and the transfer of wealth, closely connecting CHURP’s research to the summit’s goals.
On September 15-16 Drs. Haydar Kurban and Rodney Green participated in this year’s annual National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia, PA alongside CHURP collaborator Dr. Musibau A. Shofoluwe from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Maria L. Milligan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. On day 2 of the conference, President Biden announced a promise to add $1.3 billion in funding for historically Black colleges and universities.
CHURP was well-represented at the 8th Annual Freedom and Justice Summer Conference, August 1-3, at Spelman College in Atlanta Georgia. The conference was organized by three economics organizations representing Black, Hispanic, and Native American social scientists and activists. Rodney Green, CHURP Associate Director, presented his latest research on police accountability in a session entitled, “Systemic Racism and Its Components”. His research analyzed an original, novel pooled dataset of 30 jurisdictions over 20 years, leading to the finding that US Department of Justice interventions in local police departments failed to reduce police misconduct. Other papers at the session included “The Murder of George Floyd and the Behavior of the Minneapolis Police Department”, “The Economics of the Montgomery Bus Boycott”, and “What Makes Systemic Discrimination ‘Systemic’? Exposing the Amplifiers of Inequity.” Selections from the over 30 papers presented at the conference are available at Freedom & Justice Conference
On June 18, 2024 Haydar Kurban presented at Urban Institute. Urban Institute collaborated with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Policies for Action research program to discuss policies to expand equity-oriented affordable housing. Haydar Kurban presented in panel 2 about CHURP’s Inclusionary Zoning research.
On May 23, 2024, CHURP Associate Director Rodney Green participated in The University of California Washington Center’s conference on reparations. This event feature reparations scholars and activists from California universities to discuss the advances of reparations legislation in California at both the state-wide and local levels. The scholarly examination of reparations is especially relevant to the District of Columbia, which established, on the initiative of Howard University alumnus Councilperson Kenyan McDuffie, a task force on reparations in 2023. The task force will address the racial wealth gap due to centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, land theft, redlining, and discriminatory legislation including the racially discriminatory GI Bill of the 1950s and the 1935 exclusion of agricultural and domestic labor from social security benefits. See a review of the legislation from the DC Fiscal Policy Institute here.
Dr. Haydar Kurban, Director of CHURP, participated in this conference’s discussion about how cities can support the development of mixed-used, transit-adjacent housing. HUD leaders, including Todd Richardson and Solomon Greene, were instrumental in this project that compared urban development policy approaches in the United States and Germany. The report that served as the foundation for the discussion is available at the German Marshall Fund website: https://www.gmfus.org/news/breaking-barriers-affordable-and-abundant-housing