News Roundup

  • Residential Segregation Linked to Poor Diabetes Outcomes in Young Black People
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    A new study found a connection between persistent racial residential segregation and worse diabetes health in young Black people with type 1 diabetes, even after controlling for the effects of household income and neighborhood adversity. “In the world of adult diabetes, there has been a lot of focus on social determinants of health, but in pediatrics, there has been less,” said coauthor Deborah A. Ellis. “It’s important that we are asking young patients with diabetes about factors in their life beyond just, ‘What are you doing to take care of your diabetes?’”

  • Amid the Housing Crisis, More People Are Camping on Public Lands
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    Over the past few years, as housing affordability has declined, camping has increasingly become an option for people who have been waiting on affordable housing lists for years. And for families, it offers the option of staying together when they would likely otherwise be split up in a shelter. “[Many people] who are working and living in our shelter, they have savings. They have incomes. We can’t find housing for them. It’s really frustrating,” said Jodi Peterson-Stigers, who directs Interfaith Sanctuary.

  • Illinois Houses Wards of the State in Chicago’s Juvenile Jail
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    Illinois’s child welfare agency has been housing children who are wards of the state in Cook County’s juvenile detention center because it has nowhere else to place them. Last year, 84 young people were left in the detention center after a judge had ordered their release—some for months. This issue is not new, but data show it is worsening. “It’s a huge civil rights violation. It’s unimaginably cruel… and it’s exploding,” said Charles Golbert, Cook County public guardian.

  • Denver Passes Affordable Housing Policies
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    On Monday, Denver’s city council passed three measures to expand affordable housingpolicy. One requires developers constructing apartment or condo buildings with 10 or more units to set 8 percent to 15 percent of units aside as income-restricted affordable housing or pay steep fees. The units will have to be affordable to people earning between 60 percent and 90 percent of the area median income. The other measures update the city’s zoning and municipal codes.