Safe and Thriving Communities
Creating communities where residents feel safe and where the built environment supports their ability to thrive, including high-quality, affordable housing; a thriving commercial core; and access to recreational spaces, nutritious food, and transportation
Interactive Tool | Food Access Research Atlas
This U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) tool demonstrates food access indicators for low-income and other census tracts using different measures of supermarket accessibility; provides food access data for populations within census tracts; and offers census-tract-level data on food access that can be downloaded for community planning or research purposes.
Toolkit | Advancing Racial Equity in Housing, Land, and Development
This toolkit from the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) includes materials for local government staff and their community partners to embed racial equity in housing and planning agencies’ structures, policies, and practices. Materials include conceptual frameworks and the tools and best practices to apply these frameworks in a local government setting.
Toolkit | Advancing Mobility from Poverty: A Toolkit for Housing and Education Partnerships
This toolkit, developed by StriveTogether in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners, equips communities with tools and technical assistance to forge effective housing and education collaborations, crucial for advancing economic mobility and addressing racial disparities in cradle-to-career outcomes.
Video | Affordable Housing 101
This webinar replay from the California Affordable Housing Leadership Institute (CALI) provides insights into the core elements of affordable housing development finance, project feasibility analysis, and more.
Video | All In to Prevent and End Homelessness
This webinar replay hosted by the Maryland Philanthropy Network offers program resources and insights from 'All In to Prevent and End Homelessness,' featuring discussions with the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.
Case Study | Purpose Built Case Study: Rotational Capital Fund for Mixed-Income Home Ownership
This case study focuses on Purpose Built Communities network member Focused Community Strategies (FCS), based in historic south Atlanta. FCS used its Rotational Capital Fund to acquire, stabilize, and sell over 100 homes to existing residents and new neighbors in less than fifteen years, and to further acquire and stabilize approximately 30 additional properties in various stages of development.
This Purpose Built Communities Community Quarterback Leader Roadmap provides concrete framing and strategies for implementing two key pillars of the Purpose Built Model.
Framework | Purpose Built Communities Theory of Impact
Foundational Theory of Impact for Purpose Built Communities, which provides pro-bono guidance, coaching, and support to local leaders, their staff, and stakeholders in implementing and growing a holistic model of revitalization in their neighborhoods.
Framework | Purpose Built Racial Equity Philosophy
This document outlines the Racial Equity Philosophy of Purpose Built Communities, including their purpose, practice, and framework for action.
Interactive Tool | National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Crime Solutions
This searchable database is intended to help practitioners and policymakers understand which programs and practices work in criminal and juvenile justice, victims assistance, school safety, and youth mentoring. Ratings are assigned from standardized reviews of rigorous evaluations and meta-analyses. Note: The NIJ is currently revising their evaluation instrument for CrimeSolutions. By fall 2024, they plan to roll out the first new program profiles under the revised rating instrument and begin a re-review of existing programs.
Case Study | Estimating the Effects of Safe Streets Baltimore on Gun Violence
Evaluation of Safe Streets Baltimore, a community violence intervention (CVI) program designed to reduce gun violence in neighborhoods with high levels of gun violence. To estimate program effects, researchers analyzed variation in neighborhood-level monthly counts of homicides and nonfatal shootings for the period January 1, 2003 through July 31, 2022.
Case Study | More than Storefronts: Insights into Creative Placemaking and Community Economic Development
This paper draws on six case studies of programs that have used arts and culture to help spur economic revitalization of low-income areas, from Cajun and Louisiana Creole culture in rural Louisiana to creative funding for a dance and performance nonprofit in San Francisco to affordable live-work space in Cleveland. It examines how local efforts to explicitly invest in artists, arts-related businesses, and arts-and-cultural organizations can help advance community economic development and what it takes to connect arts and culture as an economic strategy with simultaneous efforts to strengthen the social fabric in the community and advance class, racial, or cultural equity, as well.
Guide | Building for the All: A Guide for Local, State, and Tribal Governments in the Infrastructure Moment
This guide informs federal, state, local, and tribal government officials about the levers of authority they have to act in support of equity during this time of significant infrastructure investment.
Toolkit | Community Violence Intervention Toolkit
This toolkit offers strategies for developing a community violence intervention (CVI) ecosystem to coordinate interventions and invest resources into the components of the CVI infrastructure, with a shared vision of violence reduction, particularly homicides and gun violence.
Toolkit | Economic Mobility and Opportunity Tools and Resources
This toolkit developed by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) provides guidance from ICMA and its partners on identifying, refining, and advancing local priorities for increasing upward mobility and decreasing inequities.
Video | New Directions in Housing (Bruce Katz at Groundwork Housing Summit)
Remarks by Bruce Katz, Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University. Starting at timestamp 6:12, Mr. Katz outlines the history, context, and future direction of U.S. housing policy and actions local partnerships can take to improve access to affordable housing. Delivered in May 2024 at the Creating Home Summit hosted by the Northwest Arkansas Council and Groundwork.
Collection | Creative Placemaking Resources
This list of resources created by LISC is intended to help communities and local governments use arts and culture to physically revitalize blighted neighborhoods, bring back economic vitality and engage communities around a common vision. Some resources detail how to plan and execute arts-based strategies, and others provide useful tips and orientation to the broader concepts.
Toolkit | A Guide to Investing in Safe, Healthy, & Hopeful Communities
Cities United shares how government funding can be invested in comprehensive and solution-based efforts toward gun violence prevention, including people-centered budgeting; safe, quality, affordable housing; guaranteed income; employment and business development; and incarceration alternatives. The guide highlights data points, challenges, opportunities, best practices, estimated cost to implement policy and practice, and examples of cities implementing the policy and practice.
Interactive Tool | Community Violence Intervention (CVI) Ecosystem Cost Estimator: Baltimore
Cities United shares how government funding can be invested in comprehensive and solution-based efforts toward gun violence prevention, including people-centered budgeting; safe, quality, affordable housing; guaranteed income; employment and business development; and incarceration alternatives. The guide highlights data points, challenges, opportunities, best practices, estimated cost to implement policy and practice, and examples of cities implementing the policy and practice.