3 Rutgers-Camden Graduate Students Designing an Innovative Pilot Project to Address the Foreclosure Crisis in Camden County

Zachary D. Wood - Bio Pic
Zachary D. Wood, Ph.D. candidate

In 2009, the United States experienced arguably its most depressive economic period since the Great Depression.  The U.S. housing bubble had burst and many individuals were forced to foreclose on their properties in their last desperate attempt to shed debt and cut costs.  The effects of this economic downturn still have an effect today as many areas are still facing a rising number of foreclosures.  The same can be said about local municipalities in South Jersey. However, evolving from the work of a few students from Rutgers – Camden, a new method of transforming these vacant properties into homes for potential buyers is being formed.

Prentiss
Prentiss Danzler, Ph.D. candidate

Three graduate students from the Department of Public Policy and Administration here at Rutgers – Camden are spearheading a pilot program under the direction of Mayor Jim Maley of Collingswood, New Jersey.  Zachary Wood and Prentiss Dantzler, both Doctoral Candidates in the Public Affairs – Community Development program, and Jeanette Holdbrook, an MPA student in the Community Development track, are currently designing a pilot program to kickstart bank-owned vacant properties that have been stuck in the foreclosure process back onto the market for potential buyers.  Currently, these students are working with an extensive list of vacant properties from local municipalities including Collingswood, Pennsauken, Audubon, Oaklyn, Haddonfield, Haddon Township, and the Fairview section of Camden, NJ.     They hope to have the pilot program designed by the end of the summer.

Jeanette (3)
Jeanette Holdbrook, MPA candidate

 By collaborating with different municipalities, this team hopes to merge their academic experiences with practical strategic actions to enact change in these local communities.  While in its early stages, this project has attracted a lot of attention from local media sources as well as housing affiliated organizations.  The team has high hopes that this work may serve as a model for other areas nationwide to combat the     growth of vacant, bank-owned properties. “What’s most exciting about this project is the collaboration of a diverse group of local leaders, realizing a common goal,” said Dantzler and Wood about the project. “We simply don’t see this kind of partnership across borders much, but that is exactly what makes this project unique, and we think there may actually be potential for the elusive win-win situation here.”

RSF blog reviews center director Paul Jargowsky’s chapter in Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools (2014)

Read about Paul’s work in the Russel Sage Foundation’s blog post:

Neighborhood Segregation and the Concentration of Poverty

 
June 17, 2014

A new book from the Foundation, Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools (2014), examines the complex relationships between schools, neighborhood social networks, and larger patterns of inequality in order to offer new perspectives on the way that residential segregation continues to affect access to education.

In his chapter, “Segregation, Neighborhoods, and Schools,” public policy scholar Paul Jargowsky (Rutgers University-Camden) traces shifts in residential segregation over the last four decades, along both class and racial lines. He assesses the extent to which race drives class segregation, and vice versa, and finds that though a small amount of racial segregation is due to poverty status—and a larger amount of segregation by class is due to race—both largely work independently of each other to shape residential segregation.

To read more, please visit: https://www.russellsage.org/blog/neighborhood-segregation-and-concentration-poverty

 

CURE affiliated scholar Gloria Bonilla-Santiago interviewed about “The Miracle on Cooper Street”

Dr. Gloria Bonilla-Santiago (Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Public Policy, CFAS and director, Community Leadership Center) was spotlighted during an in-studio interview about her new book; the segment appeared live on the “Good Morning Philadelphia” show.

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/video?clipId=10154924&topVideoCatNo=230351&autoStart=true