Peter O’Connor’s CURE/CE seminar talk last Friday, November 16th, 2012, had seminar attendees (mostly comprised of Rutgers students, faculty, and others interested in Peter’s legacy of fair housing law advocacy) hanging onto every word.  Peter gave a succinct recount of the regional inequality picture of the socio-economically unequal distribution of resources throughout Camden County and New Jersey in general.  He particularly stressed the relationship between racism, money, power, and political clout in the region and State and its relationship to regional, affordable housing opportunities for its low- to moderate-income residents.  For more information on Peter and his fair share housing organization, please visit fairsharehousing.org, Peter’s organization is located in Cherry Hill, NJ.

Christopher B. Goodman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers University at Camden where he teaches public budgeting and finance, financial management and research methods courses.  Christopher’s research interests include local public finance, public financial management, urban policy, and economic development. Christopher earned his PhD from the University of Georgia in Public Administration with a fields in public management, public policy and public budgeting and finance in 2012.

Affiliated Scholar Lori Minnite was quoted in a recent New Yorker article, “The Voter-Fraud Myth”:

Lorraine Minnite, a public-policy professor at Rutgers, collated decades of electoral data for her 2010 book, “The Myth of Voter Fraud,” and came up with some striking statistics. In 2005, for example, the federal government charged many more Americans with violating migratory-bird statutes than with perpetrating election fraud, which has long been a felony. She told me, “It makes no sense for individual voters to impersonate someone. It’s like committing a felony at the police station, with virtually no chance of affecting the election outcome.”

Here is a link to the full article.

Investing in Urban Change

Alicia Glen

Managing Director, Head of the Urban Investment Group
Goldman Sachs

 

Friday, October 26, 12:20pm
Armitage Faculty Lounge, 3^rd Floor
Lunch will be provided

 

Alicia Glen is responsible for implementing Goldman Sachs’ Community Reinvestment Act business strategy. Under her  leadership, the Urban Investment Group at Goldman Sachs has become the industry leader in structuring complex public-private partnerships, catalyzing more than $4 billion of development across dozens of residential, mixed-use, and commercial projects, as well as financing job creation and neighborhood revitalization strategies like the $40 million New York Healthy Food and Healthy Communities Fund.  Alicia Glen serves on several public and non-profit boards focused on community redevelopment. She was a 2010 David Rockefeller fellow is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.

Peter J. O’Connor  

Founder and Executive Director
Fair Share Housing Development

 Friday, November 16, 12:20p
School of Social Work Building, Rm. B110
Lunch will be provided

Peter O’Connor is a longtime civil rights activist and co-counsel in the historic Mount Laurel litigation, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court, in 1975 (Mount Laurel I) and 1983 (Mount Laurel II) ruled that every municipality in New Jersey must plan, zone and take affirmative measures to provide its “fair share” of the region’s need for affordable housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income families.  Mr. O’Connor founded Fair Share Housing Development (FSHD), Inc., a nonprofit corporation, in 1986 to fully implement the settlement agreement in the Mount Laurel Township litigation with housing that would reach very low-income households.  Peter’s work as a nonprofit developer dates back to the 1970s when he worked with the Carpenters Union of South Jersey on several other projects that are now owned and managed by FSHD.  In 1975 Peter founded and is the Executive Director of the Fair Share Housing Center (www.fairsharehousing.org), a public interest law firm that is New Jersey’s lead organization fighting for the rights of the low-income families to live in high-opportunity neighborhoods with decent jobs and good schools.