Pathways to Opportunity

Two important factors connecting communities to employment, education, and vital services are affordable housing and transportation. While improving proximity and access to jobs alone certainly won’t solve our social mobility challenges, it can ameliorate problems like segregation, concentrated poverty, and low-density sprawl that pose real barriers to economic progress for low-income families.

Both the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Transportation are tackling barriers to opportunity head on. HUD recently released an “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) rule, representing a renewed effort to implement the Fair Housing Act’s mandate to address the persistence of racially concentrated poverty in the United States. For its part, the U.S. Department of Transportation has launched the Ladders of Opportunity Transportation Empowerment Pilot in seven U.S. cities, which provides technical assistance to attract public and private resources to game-changing community transportation projects.

On Tuesday, February 23, the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings will host an event to discuss these efforts to expand access to opportunity. Brookings Vice President and Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program Amy Liu will moderate a conversation between U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro and U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. The conversation will be followed by a response panel of experts from metropolitan areas across the country who will discuss local level impacts.