News and Events

CURE is part of State Policy Lab established at Rutgers via $1 Million awarded by NJ Secretary of Higher Education

Date

April 26, 2021

Media Contact

Megan Schumann

848-445-1907

megan.schumann@rutgers.edu

Rutgers has received $1 million from the New Jersey Office of the Secretary of Higher Education to establish a policy lab that will analyze solutions to critical issues facing the Garden State.

The State Policy Lab, housed in Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and managed in conjunction with the Rutgers-Newark School of Public Affairs and Administration, will include expertise from a network of scholars, community members and external policy experts.

“Rutgers-New Brunswick and its Bloustein School have always focused on serving the people of New Jersey,” said Rutgers-New Brunswick Chancellor Christopher J. Molloy. “We are proud to collaborate with the state on this partnership, which provides another important venue by which our world-class research will help enhance the quality of life in the Garden State.”

The main purposes of the lab, which is being funded through Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2021 state budget, includes providing policy-makers with clear and accessible research on state and local governance while assisting stakeholders in troubleshooting unanticipated implementation issues; generating data modeling for policy recommendations to enable state policymakers to test different budgetary and legislative scenarios; and building coalitions across governments, institutions of higher education and community organizations to support evidence-based policy initiatives.

“We look forward to providing our expertise with policy research, big data analytics and community engagement towards evidence-based decision-making in critical areas of policy and operations within the state of New Jersey,” said Piyushimita (Vonu) Thakuriah, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. “I am particularly excited to be working with the School of Public Affairs and Administration in Rutgers-Newark, and a wider network of academic and policy collaborators throughout the university, statewide, nationally and even internationally to solve grand policy challenges. This is a fantastic opportunity for our students, as it is for us to be of service to our state.”

Charles Menifield, dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration said he is hoping the new collaboration with Bloustein will be the first of many.

“This is an exciting time for SPAA and we are excited to work with the Bloustein School in launching this endeavor,” Menifield said. “It is a great opportunity for Rutgers to provide expertise to the governor and state legislature. I hope this opportunity leads to other collaborations.”

For New Jersey to continue to be at the forefront of innovation throughout the nation, policy issues need to be carefully addressed, said Brian Bridges, secretary of Higher Education.

“High-quality research and analysis is crucial to ensure New Jersey remains at the center of innovation,” said Bridges. “This will be even more critical as our economy recovers from the pandemic, as the State Policy Lab will examine how to address long-term issues facing the state and improve the lives of New Jerseyans. I look forward to Rutgers’ leadership in this high quality research endeavor.” 

The State Policy Lab will utilize an equity framework to analyze policies and programs with the goal of identifying improvements that benefit all residents, particularly those from low-income backgrounds and those who have been historically disadvantaged.

Additional partners include the Walter Rand Institute (Camden), the Cornwall Center (Newark), the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling (New Brunswick), the Center for Urban Research & Education (Camden), the Rutgers Law School Center on Law, Inequality, and Metropolitan Equity, Kean University and New Jersey Institute of Technology. 

 

Posted in News.

Public Affairs Ph.D. Student Leads Camden’s Return to Urban Gardening Roots

Looking at the City of Camden, says Lew Bivona, its reputation as the community gardening epicenter of the Garden State, let alone the country, may not be outwardly obvious.

However, explains the Rutgers University–Camden doctoral student, there was a time when the city may have actually held the unofficial title. He cites a 2010 report from the University of Pennsylvania that led its authors to suggest that Camden growers may have created more community gardens per person than any city in the United States.

“The city’s rich legacy of gardening was built on maintaining cultural and historical ties,” says the Ph.D. student in public affairs. “Many gardeners had grandparents who were sharecroppers and much of the food produced was mutually shared among neighbors.”

…

View full story on Rutgers–Camden NewsNow at https://news.camden.rutgers.edu/2021/04/ph-d-student-leads-camdens-return-to-urban-gardening-roots/

 

Learn more about the Camden Urban Agriculture Collaborative (CUAC) project

Posted in News.

CURE Virtual Roundtable: Bandos, Symbolism, and Placemaking in Camden, NJ

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“Bandos, Symbolism, and Placemaking in Camden, NJ”

Thursday, March 25, 2021 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

In her forthcoming book Toward Camden, Mercy Romero writes about the relationships that make and sustain the largely African American and Puerto Rican Cramer Hill neighborhood in Camden, New Jersey where she grew up. She walks the city and writes outdoors to think about the collapse and transformation of property. She revisits lost and empty houses—her family’s house, the Walt Whitman House, and the landscape of a vacant lot. Throughout, Romero engages with the aesthetics of fragment and ruin; her writing juts against idioms of redevelopment. She resists narratives of the city that are inextricable from crime and decline and witnesses everyday lives lived at the intersection of spatial and Puerto Rican diasporic memory.

Toward Camden travels between what official reports say and what the city’s vacant lots withhold. In this virtual roundtable, Mercy Romero, Ph.D. was joined by Vedra Chandler, Rev. PJ Craig, and Sis. Anetha Ann Perry to talk about landscape, dispossession, and the making of public memory in Camden, New Jersey.

Panelists:

  • Mercy Romero, Ph.D. Associate Professor of American Literature and American Studies, Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, Sonoma State University, CA Author of Toward Camden (Black Outdoors: Innovations in the Poetics of Study). Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press (release date 10/15/21).

  • Rev. PJ Craig Sr. Pastor, Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Germantown, TN Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs at Rutgers–Camden. PJ’s work focuses on youth connections with place. In her current project, she worked alongside youth as co-researchers in North Philadelphia, PA and Camden, NJ to understand how youth shape stories about their neighborhoods and themselves.

  • Vedra Chandler (pronouns: she/her) Project Manager, Cooper’s Ferry Partnership. Born and raised in Camden, Vedra Chandler graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government before pursuing a careers in business, music and now community development and creative placemaking. Since 2017 Vedra has worked as a project manager at Cooper’s Ferry Partnership where she uses the arts as a vehicle to tap into the potential of Camden city and its residents. She coordinates the Connect the Lots and A New View initiatives which revitalize underutilized spaces with vibrant programming and public art.

  • Moderator: Sis. Anetha Ann Perry Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs at Rutgers–Camden. Sis. Anetha Ann Perry grew up in Camden. In her dissertation research she uses auto-ethnography to tell the story of her family’s home, Perry House, and investigates the uses of “good neighboring” as an African American survival strategy. Despite evolving societal dynamics, Anetha’s study purports to show how settlement houses such as Perry House practice “good neighboring” as part of a modern-day underground railroad support system to African Americans living in urban fragmented communities.

CURE Roundtable: After 2020 – A New Beginning for Political Activism and Civic Engagement?

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“After 2020 – A New Beginning for Political Activism and Civic Engagement?”

Thursday, March 4, 2021 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

The past few years have been a period of dramatic and consequential political change, on a local as well as a national level. Many first-time candidates for federal, state, or municipal offices spectacularly defeated their establishment-supported opponents; many communities across the U.S. experienced record-high voter turnouts in the November election; and the increased participation of Black and Latino voters had a decisive influence on election outcomes in many states and legislative districts.

New vehicles for promoting political activism, such as Indivisible and the Working Families Party became more influential at the same time as new initiatives designed to reduce voter participation were introduced in legislatures across the country.

What can be learned from the political turmoil of the past years about the prospects for creating a better informed, more fully engaged electorate in the future? In a roundtable conversation, John Kromer, Lorraine Minnite, and Shauna Shames will discussed their research on voting trends, electoral rules, and the influence of gender, race, and ethnicity on political candidacies and election outcomes, with particular reference to urban communities. They were joined by Rutgers-Camden undergraduate students Oriana Holmes-Price, Political Science major, Adrian Rentas, Urban Studies and Community Development major, and Jose Zarazua, Political Science major.

Panelists:

  • John Kromer is the author of Philadelphia Battlefields: Disruptive Campaigns and Upset Elections in a Changing City (Temple University Press, 2020), has participated in many local political campaigns as a volunteer, election worker, and candidate. He served as Philadelphia housing director during the mayoral administration of Edward G. Rendell (1992-2001) and as interim executive director of the Camden Redevelopment Agency during the state-administered Camden receivership (2006-07). He teaches a fall-semester class in The Politics of Housing and Urban Development at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Lorraine C. Minnite is an Associate Professor of Public Policy in The Department of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers-Camden. Her research focuses on issues of inequality, social and racial justice, political conflict, and institutional change.  Dr. Minnite is the author and co-author of two books on electoral rules and racial and class politics in the U.S., as well as other published work addressing various aspects of political participation, immigration, voting behavior and urban politics. 

  • Shauna Shames is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department of Rutgers-Camden. Her primary area of academic interest is American political behavior, with a focus on race, gender, and politics. Dr. Shames has published articles, reports, and book chapters on women as candidates, black women in Congress, comparative child care policy, work/family conflict, abortion, feminism in the U.S. and internationally, gay and lesbian rights, and U.S. public opinion.  She has designed and taught courses on race, class, gender, American politics, women’s studies, the history of feminism, freshman writing, and futuristic fiction and has lectured widely on gender, race, and politics.

CURE virtual roundtable: Community-based approaches to creating sustainable affordable housing

“Community-based approaches to creating sustainable affordable housing”

Thursday, January 28th 12:30pm – 1:30pm via Zoom.

This virtual roundtable we discussed housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and shared equity housing models as viable alternative approaches to creating sustainable affordable housing and building community wealth. Non-market strategies have proliferated over recent years as many lower-income communities, especially in “hot” real estate markets like NYC, experience rising housing cost, fewer affordable housing options, and long-term housing insecurity. The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a brighter light on the chronic and dire state of housing insecurity in the US as millions of lower-income households are facing evictions and potential homelessness. In this virtual roundtable, our panelists shared their insights on the processes of creating affordable housing collectives, and discussed the role of public policy, community organizing, and housing advocacy in the quest for fair housing.

Panelists:

  • Edward Garcia is lead community organizer and involved with community development at the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition and member of the Northwest Bronx Community Land Trust.
  • Judy Meima works with tenant groups and cooperatives as an independent consultant. She previously worked at the D.C. nonprofit Mi Casa Inc. and served as the manager of the organization’s TOPA program. In a recently published article in Shelterforce, she shares lessons from 20 years of enabling tenants to buy their buildings.
  • Ruoniu (Vince) Wang is research manager at Grounded Solutions where he focuses on evaluating affordable housing policies and programs, geography of inequality, and residential mobility. He has recently co-authored a report with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy that presents the most comprehensive study of shared equity housing programs conducted to date.
  • Stephanie Rivera, Esq. is a member of the nascent East New York Community Land Trust Initiative

Moderator:

  • Natasha O. Fletcher, PhD, Assoc. Director of CURE