article thumbnail

Should We Build New Homes in a Burning World?

NonProfit Quarterly

With the increase of new industries in the area has come a flood of new construction; thousands of workers at a new car manufacturing plant, for example, need a place to live. But Casa Grande is a city in a desert, and not having enough water to supply these new housing developments may stop construction before it’s even started.

article thumbnail

What Makes a Family? Pushing States to Expand the Definition

NonProfit Quarterly

From the abolition of chattel slavery to the ending of Jim Crow laws targeting Black families, through LGBTQ+ marriage equality to ongoing attempts to reform and/or abolish the US child welfare system —the struggle for equality, dignity, and protection under the law for families of all kinds remains very much ongoing.

Law 52
article thumbnail

Tenant Organizers Are Fighting a Forever War

NonProfit Quarterly

You all may have heard on the news—there was an HB 2127 rule, nicknamed the “Death Star Bill,” which preemptively took away [power from] localities [so they] couldn’t make laws like [the one we worked on]. It was on the news a lot because one of the things that it impacted was rest breaks for construction workers.

article thumbnail

How to Preserve Existing Affordable Housing: The Value of Human Scale

NonProfit Quarterly

For new construction, larger buildings can result in smaller per-unit costs. The program is intended to preemptively address the displacement pressure expected from the construction of The Obama Presidential Center. Image credit: stevegeer on istock.com Affordable housing programs often neglect small buildings.

Values 135
article thumbnail

Giving Workers Power to Thrive in the Face of New Technology

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Unions also have other, less tangible effects on equality, from unions’ historical support for Civil Rights and voting rights to the fact that today, as research by the Economic Policy Institute has found, states with higher union density are less likely to have voter suppression laws and more likely to have higher voter turnout.

article thumbnail

How to End Wage Theft—and Advance Immigrant Justice

NonProfit Quarterly

Wage theft is not a legal term but rather a term used by advocates, attorneys, and policymakers when describing any action by employers that deprives a worker of receiving wages they are entitled to under the law. The law also strengthened workers’ options for recourse when employers fail to comply with these provisions.

article thumbnail

Segregation Helped Build Fortunes. What Does Philanthropy Owe Now?

Stanford Social Innovation Review

By Claire Dunning In early 1926, Cafritz Construction placed an advertisement in The Washington Post celebrating the speed with which their “Life-time Homes” were selling in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, DC. Perhaps potential buyers would be swayed by the “superior construction” or the “unusually big lots.”