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| Housing |
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With 10,000 abandoned homes marring the city, Gary, Indiana, is selling select homes for $1 to willing and eligible buyers through its Dollar Home program. To ensure that buyers are committed to the properties and not to flipping them, the city requires that purchasers be residents of Gary for at least six months prior to applying. They must also agree to live in the home for five years and demonstrate the financial ability to bring the houses up to code. Aside from expanding its tax base, officials hope that the program, modeled after a similar program instituted by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, leads to fewer vacant properties and higher property values. The city hopes to have 12 new homeowners by the end of the year and the mayor’s goal is to increase the number of houses sold through the program to 50 per year.
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| Criminal Justice |
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The federal government is training veterans to help fight child pornography and online sexual exploitation. The Human Exploitation Rescue Operative Child Rescue Corps will train veterans in computer forensic analysis, child exploitation, and state and federal criminal laws on the issue and then dispatch them to Homeland Security Investigation offices across the country. Officials directing the one-year pilot program believe that the skills veterans used to track down enemies abroad will come in handy for tracking child predators at home. The program is underwritten with public and private funds, and the next round of recruitment is scheduled for early next year.
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| Health & Social Services |
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Across the country, colleges and states are stepping up support for their foster youth by offering scholarships, counseling, and housing to help them hurdle the extraordinary and mundane obstacles they face in pursuing higher education. The University of California, Los Angeles, for example, has created a bank of scholarships and offers year-round housing, academic and therapeutic counseling, tutoring, health care, on-campus jobs, bedding, towels, and toiletries for foster youth enrolled at the school. California joins Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Washington, and Virginia in having what are considered to be strong programs that support foster youth thanks in large part to federal and foundation support. About two-thirds of children in foster care never go to college and even fewer graduate.
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| Higher Education |
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The University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine is focusing its fourth-year medical students on the editing and improvement of high traffic but low quality Wikipedia medical articles. Aside from helping to provide accurate information about significant medical issues to the public, the goal of the class is to ensure that the next generation of health care providers is able to communicate in a language that the general population can easily understand. Vetted and improved articles will then be translated into multiple languages and distributed globally to those in the developing world who use cell phones to access the Internet to learn about diseases such as malaria or dengue fever. The initiative is believed to be the first of its kind to bestow medical school credit for such work.
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| Technology |
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To help ensure the security and integrity of its computers and networks, Michigan is launching the Cyber Civilian Corps. Under the plan, volunteers from government, education, and business will form rapid-response teams to assist the state and its businesses to counteract and recover from major computer attacks.
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| Illinois' Pension Mess: the Politics of Denial |
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Illinois' pension debt amounts to $100 billion, but the issue underlying the current debate is tax cuts. The state is currently is falling $5 million deeper in the hole every day it doesn't reform its pension system. Decades of denying the problem precipitated the current crisis.
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| Higher Education's Risky Search for the Silver Bullet |
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A Massachusetts college's traumatic leadership crisis has lessons for governance in the wider world of public universities. Wearing blinders in a fruitless search for silver bullets will only exacerbate the challenges so many public colleges and universities are currently facing.
Newsletter produced by: Jessica Engelman, editor; Brendan St. Amant, researcher and writer.
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About the Ash Center
The Roy and Lila Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation advances excellence in governance and strengthens democratic institutions worldwide. Through its research, education, international programs, and government innovations awards, the Center fosters creative and effective problem solving and serves as a catalyst for addressing many of the most pressing needs of the world's citizens. The Ford Foundation is a founding donor of the Center. Additional information about the Ash Center is available at http://ash.harvard.edu.
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