The UI Academy for Public Policy Analysis and Research brings ten minority college students to the Urban Institute for a summer of policy seminars and skill-building in Washington. The Academy Fellows pick policy questions they consider important and design new empirical research to help answer these questions. This is the first installment in our New Voices series. Check back soon for more!

Kelsey Lyles: Does Better Health Follow When Subsidized-Housing Residents are Relocated?

Historically, subsidized housing residents have ranked among our nation’s most distressed populations. Commonly, residents face poor health, high crime rates, and lack of job and educational opportunities. These mobility barriers have been mainly attributed to the disproportionately heavy concentration of traditional public housing in areas where poverty is also concentrated and, thanks to disinvestment and discrimination, the poor are often disadvantaged and underserved. To read more, click here.

Camille Apodaca: The Unacknowledged Potential of Re-entry

The US criminal justice system, which is designed to deter criminal activity by using incarceration as a form of deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation, is failing to reduce recidivism. In April of 2011, the Pew Center on the States reported that over 4 out of every 10 adult American offenders returns to prison within three years of being released, similar to the 43.4% reincarcerated within three years of release in 2004. To read more, click here.  

Krystle Okafor: Bike Sharing and Neighborhood Stratification in Washington, D.C.

Like many other major cities during the mid-20th century, Washington, D.C. passed “urban renewal” policies. Ridding central cities of lower income, often minority populations, planners and policy makers thought, would beautify Metropolitan areas. While these policies may or may not have upgraded urban aesthetics, they surely isolated low-income populations. Communities in the bustling central city corridor were uprooted and confined East of the River, creating legacies of poverty and blight. These policies, and the class and racial differences underlying them, made D.C. a city divided in more ways than one. To read more, click here.