Cities and States

State governments wield enormous power and often create models that set the stage for sweeping national reforms of major policy. From pushing for a $15 minimum wage and paid sick leave to pioneering marriage equality and automatic voter registration, states have often taken the first steps toward massive social reforms.

But states have also been major sources of regression: restricting access to reproductive rights; limiting LGTBQ+ rights; fueling incarceration through punitive sentencing reforms; stymieing inclusionary housing and economic development policies; and undermining democracy through gerrymandering and the passage of voter identification laws. These systems and structures get replicated across states and infuse national debates.

Despite the significant power states hold over people's lives, national donors have not invested consistently in state-based organizations, coalitions, and networks to strengthen their collective ability to advance progressive policy change. Limited, issue-specific funding, often tied to short-term electoral cycles, makes it all the more challenging for leaders to form durable, multiracial coalitions that can bridge racial, economic, and rural-urban divides and advance bold reforms that stand the test of time.

The country's demographics are shifting rapidly, and America's growing diversity is a powerful force for transformative change. By 2040, people of color will represent roughly half of eligible voters in 17 states. But demography is not destiny. The same shifts are also creating new tensions that are being exploited to divide people by race and class and pit communities against each other.

We work to overcome these barriers by supporting organizations and networks in Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Texas that can build bridges between communities to foster solidarity and a shared progressive vision of governance inclusive of all Americans.

Women, communities of color, and people from low-income rural and urban areas have the potential to form powerful constituencies for change. To activate this changing electorate, we invest in efforts that engage communities year-round to ensure people from all backgrounds can become actively involved in policy decisions that affect their daily lives.

ANNUAL BUDGET

$8 million

BUILD budget

$30 million

BUILD grantees

20

Where we work

Number of Grantees

63

Shaping a shared future for Minnesota

With support from Ford, Our Minnesota Future helped bring together 22 faith, labor, environmental, and community organizations and their members across the state, including in rural areas and small towns, to push for progressive reforms. Over the past decade, when many states in the Midwest experienced widening inequality and declining economic indicators, Minnesota enacted many reforms to reduce inequality and improve economic outcomes for people of color. Innovative collaborative efforts such as the Race-Class Narrative produced in partnership with Demos—which engaged communities around questions of race and class to build solidarity and established more people of color and immigrants as civil society and government leaders—created a viable foundation for these policy victories.

Everyone—regardless of who they are, where they come from, or how much they make— deserves a safe, affordable place to call home. It is the foundation for health, economic security, and building community. However, the United States has failed to provide adequate resources and protections to ensure this basic need is met. Today, 10 to 15 percent of households report being insecure. And of the 43 million people who rent their homes, 38 percent report being burdened by the cost. As of 2018, a minimum-wage worker would have to work 122 hours per week to afford an average two-bedroom apartment. People of color, formerly incarcerated people, youth, immigrants, and people with disabilities face disproportionate exclusion, risk of eviction, and homelessness.

Years of federal, state, and local discriminatory housing and land use policies—such as redlining, urban renewal, and the construction of the federal highway system—have created the segregated and unequal systems still in place today. Despite clearly unequal development, the current real estate system has facilitated enormous profits for financial institutions, corporate landlords, and developers through weak or missing regulations and large federal subsidies.

With the arrival of COVID-19 and a rise in climate-related disasters, the nation’s housing crisis has become more visible. We must reimagine our market-driven systems of housing and community development, which too often prioritize the needs of investors over communities, and implement policies and practices that make sure everyone has a safe, affordable place to call home.

ANNUAL BUDGET

$10.2 million

BUILD budget

$45 million

BUILD grantees

15

Where we work

Number of Grantees

59

Building a national movement for housing justice

Public Advocates, PolicyLink, Right To The City Alliance, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Poverty and Race Research Action Council formed the Alliance for Housing Justice (AHJ) to build a national movement that not only mobilizes people across the country to push back on some of the federal government’s most harmful policies that undo discrimination protections, but also proposes a visionary agenda for how the nation should respond to COVID-19’s impacts on housing insecurity. While the government has rolled back its housing protections, AHJ members have made progress in a number of states—including California, Florida, Illinois, Oregon, and New York—to win new policies that protect low-income people from discrimination and center the voices of those most affected by housing insecurity in decisions about development policy and investment.

A national network supporting local housing reforms

Local Progress is a network of thousands of elected officials around the country that provides support for policy makers to enact and implement progressive housing reforms. It launched a working group of members seeking to reform housing policy to protect low-income renters and provide more affordable housing options. In Minneapolis, Local Progress members were able to end single-family zoning in the city. In places such as New York City, policy makers are advancing protections against eviction such as the right to counsel. In states like Florida and Texas, policy makers are ensuring that funds for disaster recovery are directed to meet the housing needs of those most affected by climate change.

Building grassroots power and equitable development

The Amplify Fund is a funder collaborative that believes community power is the key driver of just and equitable development. The Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG), a network of donors interested in supporting racial, economic, gender, and climate justice movements across the United States, partnered with Ford and a set of foundations to create the Amplify Fund. Amplify supports people of color and low-income communities in California, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, and Tennessee to build power to influence decisions about where they live. Through Amplify and its other work, NFG mobilizes philanthropic resources to build grassroots power and support equitable development.

Filing for bankruptcy allowed Detroit to invest $1.7 billion into improving ineffective city services. Despite this, it is still experiencing uneven economic growth and development, exacerbating long-term racial, class, and economic tensions that the city’s power brokers—both public and private—have never fully addressed.

Many Detroiters, particularly longtime black residents, are at risk of further marginalization as the city continues its recovery. Underinvestment in Detroit’s low-income areas has reduced black homeownership and left 30 percent of the city’s housing stock vacant. The city’s median income has steadily declined over the past 15 years, and almost half of its residents live at or below the poverty line. And yet the city’s downtown area—a mere 7.2 square miles of Detroit’s almost 139 square miles—has received almost $5 billion in investments, creating new businesses and housing for some but deepening the racial and geographic disparities for low-income residents.

While a growing number of local nonprofit leaders and organizations have called for more equitable recovery efforts, there is significant underinvestment in organizations and coalitions led by people of color and the communities closest to the issues at hand. The philanthropic, public, and private sectors historically have also approached these issues in fragmented ways, failing to collaborate effectively with local organizations to advance the city’s and state's goals of a prosperous recovery. As a result, Detroit has made limited progress in addressing its historic racial and economic inequalities.

Detroit has received more local, national, and global investments than any city of its size in the country since its bankruptcy. As interest from institutional and private investors continues, the city is at a critical moment to strengthen partnerships across the philanthropic, public, and private sectors to advance equitable growth and racial equity. We work to ensure that these investments work better together to benefit all Detroiters, no matter which neighborhood they’re born into.

Recent local and regional government appointments, as well as increased civic leadership among Detroiters, have sparked new momentum toward a democracy that fully represents all communities across the state. A growing number of local leaders, organizations, and networks are partnering across the city’s and state’s historically divisive lines to push reforms that expand voting rights, economic mobility, immigrant rights, and racial and disability justice for residents who face the greatest barriers to prosperity.

ANNUAL BUDGET

$13 million

BUILD budget

$5 million

BUILD grantees

3

Where we work

Number of Grantees

77

Providing legal support to racial justice movements

The Detroit Justice Center (DJC) is a nonprofit law firm that works to reduce poverty, end over-criminalization and mass incarceration, and build thriving communities. DJC has helped expunge criminal records for hundreds of Detroiters and supported efforts by Detroit residents advocating for alternatives to a new Wayne County jail, including investments in the community and its people. DJC surveyed Detroiters at various community events to provide their definition of safety, and held a design summit for young residents to envision the development of community resources in lieu of a new jail. DJC has also partnered with other legal organizations to create the Detroit Coordinated Defense Coalition, which provides legal support to protestors arrested in response to 2020’s fatal police shootings and the COVID-19 pandemic.