“Housing activists have fought for years to repeal or reform the harmful law, but the real estate industry has used its vast political connections to stop any change. As a result, California continues to lose affordable housing units year after year, with no way of getting them back.”

“From 2001 to 2024, renter incomes rose by 9 percent in real terms while rents rose by 30 percent.” Via: @harvard-jchs.bsky.social

📣 Police violence against Native peoples is among the highest of any group in the US. Yet little quantitative research studies it. In @pnas.org, we ask: are Native people living on American Indian reservations more likely to be killed by police? Short answer: yes, starkly. #episky 🧪 1/

Renters with Renters United living in horrific conditions are tearing the house down at this hearing to pass the #SafeHealthyHomesAct #SHHA in #Philadelphia city council ✊🏼

"The Department of Housing and Urban Development is telling landlords receiving federal aid to prove the citizenship and eligibility of nearly 200,000 tenants." https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/multifamily/hud-gives-landlords-30-days-to-prove-nearly-200000-tenants-are-us-citizens-132881

This reminds me of how people often have a faulty sense of the dynamic between belief and action, viewing only that action stems from belief --- when, far more often, belief stems from action.

I think a lot of us get hope wrong. Hope, I do not believe, is an emotion. In fact, hope makes space for lots of emotions to exist alongside it. You can DO hope scared, angry, sad etc... Hope doesn't find us. We make hope through action and struggle. It's a practice of living and is re-made daily.

New at Can We Still Govern: @agpines.bsky.social & @lizananat.bsky.social explain how the work volatility of low income service employees will make it hard for them to satisfy new SNAP/Medicaid work requirements, even when they work lots of hours. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/when-volat...

$98 billion in planned AI data center development was derailed in a single quarter last year by community organizing and pushback, more than all disruptions tracked since 2023. www.datacenterwatch.org/q22025

📣 Proud of our new paper revealing that 2 in 5 renters in cancer treatment can't pay their housing or utility bills, along with 1 in 9 homeowners. Cancer patients need housing supports and a healthcare system that doesn't impoverish families fighting life-threatening chronic illness. #episky 🧪

EXCLUSIVE: @laurenweberhp.bsky.social & I have spent the last year collecting school+county-level vaccination data from across the US and found that only about 28% of counties now have herd immunity for kindergartners from measles—that leaves about 5.2mn kids unprotected. Gift link: wapo.st/49zDc43

Disappointed to see Jon Stewart & co joke about masking in public. I do it for my medically fragile daughter (Batten Disease). People not masking properly led to her getting pneumonia, which led to her being on life support, which led to me getting price quotes on her cremation just in case.

On #DavidRemnick. The @newyorker.com has some great science writers. But there is an affinity high-up for COVID contrarianism: Jessica Winter's piece on school closures, Dan Immerwahr's ode to "In COVID's Wake," & the best of 2025 for that book. 1/

Since Trump returned to office, the Education Department’s civil rights office has not resolved a single racial harassment investigation. It sends a message that “people impacted by racial discrimination ... don’t matter,” one attorney said.

NIH funding is like pizza 🍕. Usually, the NIH gives many researchers a slice of the pie, but this year they decided to just give a few researchers the whole pie. The data show that, disproportionately, early career researchers went hungry. We need Congress to stop NIH multi-year funding mandates.

1-the one extended period where this ratio <2 (still >1 tho) *and* rates were low in absolute terms was post-peak pandemic in the Biden era (2022-4). 2-a target rate of 5-6% unemployment (policy for much of the last few decades) is a perpetual recession for Black workers.

We're half a decade into studies finding that improving airflow in classrooms will reduce disease transmission enormously, and that bleaching surfaces etc. does very little. And yet nothing changes. Waves of flu and colds wash over schools, and the schools pretend it's an act of God.

Black families spend more of their income on energy bills than the average U.S. household – a gap tied to older housing, rental barriers and the legacy of redlining.

The emails have Summers reporting to Epstein about his attempts to date a Harvard economics student & to hit on her during a seminar she was giving.

Our latest study @jamahealthforum.com shows the harms of work requirements for safety net programs. Women who were subject to harsher requirements and who received less cash assistance from TANF were less likely to breastfeed. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... @donmoyn.bsky.social @hsph.harvard.edu 1/

“A lot of families are going to have to determine if they’re going to feed their kids today or pay the rent tomorrow.” Via: @nbcdfw.com www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/d... #housing+ #urbanism #urbanism+

New study finds more generous state safety net policies w/ fewer administrative barriers are linked to better birth outcomes, esp for marginalized groups. Very relevant finding in current policy environment! doi.org/10.1016/j.so... @gabeschwartz.bsky.social @npwf.bsky.social @donmoyn.bsky.social

US Department of Agriculture says no food aid benefits will be issued next month reut.rs/3WohHMk

More than 330,000 low-income college students in California use #CalFresh to help pay for their groceries. But they may not receive their benefits in November because of the government shutdown. capolicylab.org/news/analysi... #CaLeg

“There are now more students who are homeless in [New York City] than the entire Dallas public school system.” citylimits.org/nycs-record-... By @citylimitsnews.bsky.social’s @patrickspauster.com and Jeanmarie Evelly #housing+ #urbanism+ #urbanism

bsky.app/profile/hong... credit card debt has exploded since 2021 or so - everyone is ringing sht up on the Plastic

I want more people to care that SNAP benefits are being cut off on November 1. 40% of SNAP beneficiaries are children. This is callous and vile.

The kids are not alright. Longitudinal research shows that rates of mental health distress among LGBTQ+ youth have increased since 2023, that they're less able to access mental health care, and that nearly 1/4 have been threatened with conversion therapy. www.latimes.com/science/stor...

📣 In a new paper using data on >11,000 kids, we find children who are #evicted suffer worse mental health & increased sleep problems... but so do children whose families simply struggle to pay the rent each month, implicating the health of 100,000s of young people in the housing crisis. #episky 🧪

#Philly’s City Council rejected a plan to proactively inspect rentals for health hazards. Even though research shows: relying on tenants to report unsafe housing doesn’t work, and leaves people at risk. By Gabriel L. Schwartz, Drexel University:

Earlier this month, #Philadelphia city council chose not to advance Nicolas O'Rourke's "Right to Repair" bill, which would have created a new rental inspection program. Research suggests that decision may harm tenants' health. My op-ed in The Conversation‬: theconversation.com/phillys-city...

“More than $100 million is set to flow to homelessness prevention programs, including income support for at-risk tenants and eviction defense.” By @latimes’ Andrew Khouri latimes.com/california/s... #housing+ #urbanism+ #urbanism

Read closely & you can see the sleight of hand: if unis claim the teaching & research you are *required to do* in order to *get paid* is “academic” and not “work,” the NLRB will let uni admin kick you out of your union & deny you labor protections 🫠 Appalling bs: www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Too many vaccines in the first year?Your child is 44% more likely to survive to one year if they are vaccinated than if they are unvaccinated.

Breaking: The Trevor Project received a stop-work order last night on its contract with the national 988 suicide prevention hotline. The Trump administration is eliminating the option for LGBTQ callers to the hotline to press 3 and connect with someone who specializes in LGBTQ mental health.

In a new Milbank Quarterly guest Opinion, @povertyscholar.bsky.social & @sarahgollust.bsky.social share public attitudes toward Congress’s proposed Medicaid funding cuts reported in their April 2025 survey.

Do tenant protection laws improve renters’ health? A new study by BHHI RAP Awardee Dr. Gabriel Schwartz and Lela Chu found little evidence that habitability laws reduce asthma, infections, or hospitalizations. ⬇️⬇️

📣 Poor housing conditions like mold, cockroaches, peeling paint, & dilapidation harm health. States have policies to protect tenants from those exposures, but until now, no one ever tested whether they work. In a new paper, we find these policies are failing: 🧵 #episky 1/

Breaking coverage @nytimes.com of push to end school desegregation. My team has NIH grant to examine health impacts of exactly this rollback of school desegregation, finding negative impacts on Black kids across their lifespan, & spillover impacts for other kids. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/u... 1/

You can be evicted for: calling 911 too many times; being wrongly accused of shoplifting; having a son with a disability who needs help; being a victim of domestic violence. This is "crime-free housing" in America. A searing, crucial investigation by Sidnee King Pineda:

Waivers of SNAP's work requirement are vital because many unemployed workers need more than the 3-month limit to find a new job, especially when the economy is weaker. But even when the unemployment rate is <5%, 1 in 3 unemployed workers need 15 weeks or longer to find work.

Cities won't fund housing—but they *will* fund cops to arrest people for the crime of having nowhere to live.

Over the course of this week, individuals from across Massachusetts have begun using the new online system to seal past eviction records—and it’s working! If you or someone you know may be eligible, here’s a step-by-step guide to get started:

Please join us tomorrow at the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative to hear from Dr. Diana Hernández about energy insecurity, housing, and health equity! #episky You can RSVP for a Zoom link here: drexel.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

The biggest project I've worked on for the last chunk of years was just published. It asks, how big are US Black-white lifespan differences? This might seem like a narrow question. I hope to convince you by the end that there are answers you didn't anticipate. And I hope some of them will move you.

Nearly half (48%) of single homeless adults in California are ages 50 and older. A new study shows that housing-insecure older adults in primary and/or emergency care are not being connected to services that may be able to help them. ⬇️

important context about the concentration camps in el salvador:

Homelessness is rising among older adults. Are healthcare systems meeting that challenge? Using data on 119k older patients in CA, we find the answer is 'no': even when clinicians identify them as housing insecure, only 7% get a social work referral. #episky 🧵1/