2018 Community Investment Annual Report

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of eviction, and address policy needs for different communities. However,findings suggest consistent and notable increases in eviction rates and eviction filing rates during the time. Though relationships between changing eviction rates and observed variables did prove inconsistent,the characteristics of high-eviction census tracts effectively demonstrate that high eviction is correlated with higher poverty, lower median income, and higher unemployment. High eviction is understood as a disruptive socioeconomic problem facing South Bend residents.As the City strives to implement data- driven solutions to resident needs,this analysis will create a more robust understanding of the problem of eviction in South Bend to inform effective policies.The City plans to continue analyzing this problem and developing policy solutions.As a first step,the City committed$5,000 in its 2019 budget to launch a pilot program with the Volunteer Lawyer Network to offer legal assistance to low-income residents facing eviction. Hurry Home Pilot Hurry Home is local, minority-owned,tech start-up that enables low to moderate income renter households to create wealth by providing a path to homeownership through a shared ownership model. Homes worth less than$50,000 account for approximately 12%of South Bend's housing stock but banks cannot profitably originate these loans. Because of this market failure these homes are often sold to cash buyer investors or remain vacant and abandoned. In 2018,the City has invested $40,000 in a pilot that supports down payment assistance for residents, housing counseling, as well as, default insurance.The goal of the pilot is to support 10 renters in making the transition to homeownership through Hurry Home. In 2018, Hurry Home transitioned (3)three renter household to homeowner households. Our team will collaboratively work throughout 2019 to promote the opportunity, work with PHA on a pilot program, and find an institutional partner to support an evaluation of the impact. MiT Jameel Latif Poverty Action Lab(JPaI) Evaluation-Quantifying the Impact of JAG The EET has been awarded a grant from JPAL to evaluate the outcomes of the Jobs for America's Graduates(JAG) program in South Bend.JAG provides skills training and job readiness programming for at risk youth populations.This evaluation may be used to make funding decisions about job readiness programs and could justify an expansion of the JAG budget.JAG's Multi-Year Program offers one to two years of instructional classes to rising high-school juniors and seniors from low-income families or students with a disability to keep students in high school through graduation.The City of South Bend wishes to partner with researchers from J-PAL and LEO to conduct a randomized control trial to answer the question and to understand (1)the tailoring required to optimize JAG performance in a South Bend context, and (2)the return on investment of the program for the purposes of understanding its relative sustainability and efficiency. We will recruit a total sample of 500 students and randomize 250 students into the treatment group and 250 to control. Our intermediate outcomes are on-time high school completion rate and GPA, and long-term outcomes include future income, college application and enrollment rate, etc.The long-term goal of the City is to provide more funding to and scale up the program, should the evaluation show positive and significant result,so that it can benefit all qualified children in the area. The Indiana Department of Workforce Development(DWD) has joined the collaboration to scale the evaluation statewide.The assessment itself will be performed by the Lab for Economic Progress at the University of Notre Dame. Miscellaneous Team Conferences, Presentations&Awards 1. Love Your Block Academy-Orlando, FL 2. MIT JPaI Academy(2)-Cambridge, MA a. Presenter(S. Karnovsky)-Data Governance&Community Partnerships 3. Cities of Service Engagement Summit&Awards-Brooklyn, NY 4. Reinventing our Communities Conference(John Hopkins 21'Century Cities Initiative)—Baltimore, MA 15