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Housing and Homelessness: Breaking Down Silos for Systems Change

Stanford Social Innovation Review

America’s homeless response system has been called “the emergency room of society,” conjuring images of a space where the focus is on urgent intervention—finding shelter or managing encampments—rather than trying to prevent crises from happening in the first place. Housing is the solution to homelessness.

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The New Problem-Solving Skills That All Cities Need

Stanford Social Innovation Review

By James Anderson Here’s a new axiom fit for the 21st century: The greater the global challenge, the more likely it is to fall to local governments to fix. Local governments are left bearing the brunt and have, understandably, so far struggled. Or take the ongoing global migration wave.

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The Pitfalls of Personal Judgment

Stanford Social Innovation Review

By Logan McDonnell As a nonprofit professional with over a decade of experience working in homelessness programs and currently working in homelessness prevention, I’ve often heard coworkers describe how a person in one of these programs reminded them of a close relative or friend.

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Systems Change: Making the Aspirational Actionable

Stanford Social Innovation Review

In recent years, social justice leaders have consistently called for a systems change approach to redressing the root causes of social problems, rather than only mitigating their symptoms. After all, social justice is by nature utopian. Public awareness: to change the perception of a group at a societal or cultural level.

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How to Make Guaranteed Income Work: Ten Lessons from Newark, New Jersey

NonProfit Quarterly

Having worked in the social sector for a little over a decade, I have firsthand experience with the art and science of getting social impact programs off the ground. It is meant to supplement, rather than replace, the existing social safety net and job sector and can be a critical tool for improving racial and gender equity.

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How the City of Boston Is Investing in the Future of Its Youth and Home

NonProfit Quarterly

Image credit: Yannick Lowery / www.severepaper.com Editors’ note: This article is from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine ’s fall 2023 issue, “How Do We Create Home in the Future? Boston’s Green New Deal is a series of interrelated policies addressing climate, environmental, racial, and economic injustice.

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Housing and Health: Creating Solutions With Communities

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Decades of discriminatory housing, transportation, and land-use policy combined with economic disinvestment have resulted in communities that are residentially segregated by income, race, ethnicity, language, and immigration status. When housing is unaffordable, it leaves little money left over to buy healthy foods and critical medicines.

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