“N.J. municipalities join forces to deal with vacant homes”
The role of Rutgers–Camden public policy students in helping to identify abandoned properties in Camden County was cited in this South Jersey section news story.
http://articles.philly.com/2014-07-21/news/51786297_1_vacant-properties-zombies-haddonfield
Victor residents are, in fact, reflective of what some hope a future Camden might resemble: Middle-class and professional, affluent, better educated.
And in a minority city dominated by Hispanics and African-Americans, the large percentage of whites living in the Victor stands out like a snowstorm in July.
Resident Stephen Danley is a professor of public policy at nearby Rutgers University-Camden. He expected a certain amount of heat for moving into a building so different from the city where he lives, teaches, studies, and blogs — sometimes pointedly and sometimes about two of his fellow Victor Lofts residents, state Sen. Donald Norcross and Camden school Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard.
To read the entire article, please visit: http://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/local/south-jersey/2014/07/19/victor-tale-two-cities/12898525/
But the reaction was more restrained from another group — academics and activists concerned over generous tax breaks for firms building in Camden.
Holtec International Inc., an Evesham firm that plans to make nuclear-power equipment in Camden, will receive $260 million in state aid under a deal approved this month by the state Economic Development Authority.
To read more, please visit: https://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/local/south-jersey/2014/07/19/critics-question-benefits-ers-holtec-projects-camden/12898847/
More children are attending preschool, fewer fourth-graders are failing reading tests, and more teens are graduating from high school.
More children are living in families where the head of household has earned at least a high school diploma, and the state’s educational achievement is second only to Massachusetts. Eight out of 10 3- and 4-year-olds in New Jersey’s highest-poverty districts are enrolled in high-quality preschools, according to the report.
To read the complete article, please visit: https//www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2014/07/22/report-nj-kids-health-improving/12979721/
As Joan Maya Mazelis explains, researchers have long agreed that social ties matter.
Studies document two common realities for the poor – either they rely on a dense network of closely connected and supportive kin or, in the absence of such a network, establish fleeting, disposable ties with strangers, says the assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University–Camden.
However, Mazelis argues, she has found evidence of yet another “in-between” category of support through social ties, a type of non-kin social tie with greater longevity than disposable ties. These bonds are based on a mutual understanding of support, often take on familial roles, and function according to set norms of reciprocity.
The researcher discovered the nature and depth of these sustainable ties through a comprehensive study on the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), an organization based in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington. Mazelis documents her findings in a chapter titled “Social Ties Among the Poor in a Neoliberal Capitalist Society,”in the forthcoming Handbook of Poverty in the United States from Routledge Press. She is currently writing a book manuscript as well, titled Our Strength is in Our Unity: Sustainable Ties Among the Poor.
To read more, please visit: https://www.camden.rutgers.edu/news/researcher-explores-sustainable-ties-among-poor-philadelphia-based-organization
