In a webinar last week, the Urban Institute shared real-world examples of cities and localities using the tools of its Upward Mobility Initiative to drive greater and more equitable economic opportunity for residents.
Representatives of Richmond, Va., Boone County, Mo., and San Mateo County, Calif, talked about how having access to tools such as Urban’s Toolkit for Increasing Upward Mobility, Upward Mobility Framework, and Upward Mobility Dashboard were invaluable as their communities began to create systems to promote upward mobility.
Spurred by research by Harvard University Professor of Economics Raj Chetty and others, the Initiative grew out of the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Partnership. Isabella Remor, Policy Program Associate, Urban Institute, said a central defining characteristic of the Initiative was to not view poverty as a matter of individual will and hard work.
“More and more research was showing that people experiencing poverty face a web of obstacles that undermine their best efforts and that the conditions people live in matter,” said Remor. “Enormously importantly, local leaders have real power to shape those conditions.”
Using a three-part definition of mobility from poverty—economic success, power and autonomy and dignity—with an overall emphasis on racial equity, the Initiative has offered strategic and technical assistance to local governments across the nation.
Frank Cardella, Economic Mobility Director, United Way of Greater Richmond & Petersburg, said local leaders in the Richmond area began gravitating to the Initiative tools when they found Richmond was ranked 49th out of 50 among major metropolitan areas for upward mobility.
Bringing community stakeholders together to commit to a ten-year plan, Cardella said the area’s RVA Rising effort, “is really a regionwide collaboration that's working to overcome generations of designed limitation and relocation. It's not a new program or a new organization, it's a shared infrastructure that connects and strengthens work that's already happening across the region so that partners in business, non-profit, philanthropy, local government, and the community can all move in the same direction.”
Illustrating the Initiative’s focus on data and transparency, Cardella said RVA Rising is developing a Data Compass that will “allow us to define shared priorities across the sectors so that when local governments and funders and nonprofits and employers are making decisions, they're all pulling in the same direction using a common definition of success.”
In Boone County, Enola-Riann White, the Program Coordinator of the county’s Upward Mobility Initiative, local leaders were faced with a siloed approach to promoting upward mobility and the challenge of building solutions in an area that has a urban/rural mix.
Her position also was created to give the upward mobility efforts a central hub and White said conducting a poverty simulation and an area housing survey were also very helpful in building momentum.
Ultimately, White said Boone County came up with three main pillars to focus their upward mobility work around:
- Fair and inclusive housing
- Early grade literacy
- Jobs and workforce development
She also said the key factors for success the Boone County team has discovered include:
- Clear messaging
- Shared ownership
- Understanding that collaboration takes time
- The importance of a dedicated coordinator
- Being willing to pivot
“We start by asking, how are we doing? What's the story? Who are the partners? What's working? What's our action?” White said. “And once we get to what's our action, we go back to how are we doing? What's the story? Who are the partners? What's working, what's our action?”
In San Mateo County, Shireen Malekafzali Taidi, Chief Equity Officer & Director of Economic Opportunity and Labor Standards, said county officials had to craft a plan that would create economic opportunity in 22 very diverse jurisdictions within the county.
“We have an hourglass economy,” Taidi said. “We have a lot of high-end jobs that then drive a lot of lower-end jobs, but also those high-end wages are driving our housing market, our cost of living. Therefore, anyone in the lower-wage work income area is really struggling to be able to keep up and we're getting squeezed out of our middle-wage opportunities.”
After coming together to help disperse federal aid during the COVID pandemic, Taidi said county stakeholders realized more work needed to be done. She said a crucial decision was conducting a sectoral analysis to make sure the right mix of people were represented in the upward mobility council, particularly those with lived experience with the problems it was trying to solve.
“Our approach not only codifies our interest in diverse representation, but in being data driven and informed, and having a very specific equity focused approach . . . ensuring that when we're identifying potential recommendations and solutions, that we're not doing it in a black box but that we're scanning the community for what already exists to build from, and then holding ourselves accountable.”