As a lifelong policy advocate, I don’t often get the chills. But this week in Kansas City, I did.

I was lucky enough to attend the second stop in the White House Office of Urban Affairs Listening Tour, which brought Obama Administration officials to help kick off the Kansas City Green Impact Zone, a “comprehensive, place-based plan to invest public and private funding to transform a neighborhood plagued by high rates of poverty and violence, unemployment, and abandoned property.” (Read more about the Zone here.)

It was moving to see top federal officials — like HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan; Transportation Deputy Secretary John Porcari; White House Urban Affairs Director Adolfo Carrion; and Special Advisor for Green Jobs Van Jones — on hand to really listen to the ideas and innovations of local leaders. There is a change afoot in how the federal government thinks of cities and metropolitan areas.

The Green Impact Zone — inspired by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, coordinated by the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), and funded in part by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act– promises to be a shining example of what we can do with coordinated, cross-sector investments in housing, transportation, energy efficiency, and workforce training.

But, perhaps most important, it could be a model for how the federal government and local innovators can work together to make sure all Americans can live in communities of opportunity.

I don’t think these chills will be going away any time soon.

Daily equity news

“NYC aids homeless with tickets home,” - The New York Times
City is struggling to keep families out of expensive shelter system

NEW YORK - They are flown to Paris ($6,332), Orlando ($858.40), Johannesburg ($2,550.70), or most frequently, San Juan ($484.20).

They are not executives on business trips or couples on honeymoons. Rather, all are families who have ended up homeless, and all the plane tickets are courtesy of the city of New York (one-way).

 ”Americans have tools to reverse obesity trend, conference told,” - Los Angeles Times
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urges adoption of ‘obesity strategies,’ focusing on healthy foods and activity.

Reporting from Washington — There’s good and bad news when it comes to American obesity, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Tuesday at an event addressing the nation’s increasingly costly and deadly weight problem.

The inaugural conference on obesity control and prevention — attended by health educators, policy analysts, epidemiologists and dietitians, among others, and sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — comes at a time when the average American carries an extra 23 pounds and the nation, collectively, is about 4.6 billion pounds overweight.

“Recession Probably Will Leave Kids Worse Off,” - Washington Post
Casey Study Looks at Health, Well-Being

Even before the recession, the health and well-being of a significant number of American children were growing worse, according to an authoritative report issued Tuesday.

The Kids Count assessment by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an advocacy group that funds programs designed to help disadvantaged children and families, concluded that their situation changed only modestly during the boom years of this decade and by some measures declined.

Daily equity news.

“Despite everything, more Americans see sunny skies ahead,” -   USA TODAY

 ”Not Paying the Mortgage, Yet Stuck With the Keys,” - Washington Post
Foreclosure Backlog Imperils Recovery

“How not to help the poor,” - The Boston Globe

This week’s updates on equity news. 

 ”For Victims of Recession, Patchwork State Aid,” - The New York Times

WASHINGTON — As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.

Health care, housing, food stamps and cash — each forms a separate bureaucratic world, and their dictates often collide. State differences make the patchwork more pronounced, and random foibles can intervene, like a computer debacle in Colorado that made it harder to get food stamps and Medicaid.

“SUPER MARKETING: BETTER FOOD CHOICES MAY BE AHEAD,” - City Limits Weekly

New York City is famous for innumerable gut-busting culinary delights enjoyed at delis, street carts and restaurants – though not as much for veggie-laden meals prepared at home. But a host of new proposals aimed at improving city residents’ access to healthy food could take a bite out of the city’s high-calorie culture.

The city is widely expected to soon introduce new zoning and financial incentives aimed at encouraging supermarket development in neighborhoods with few grocery stores. The Department of City Planning last week would confirm only that the city is working toward announcing the details of the plan – but details have been emerging.

“Cities Cry Foul on Stimulus Cash,” - The Wall Street Journal

As he unveiled his proposed budget earlier this month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg threw in a comment about the dollars that got away.

While the city stands to collect more than $2 billion of federal stimulus money over three years to help pay Medicaid costs, “we’re getting a half billion less than Congress was intending to give us,” said Mr. Bloomberg, an independent.

Updates on this week’s equity news.

 ”After the Great Recession ,” - The New York Times

Are there tangible ways that Wall Street has made the average person’s life better in the way that Silicon Valley has?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that some of the democratization of finance is actually beneficial if properly regulated. So the fact that large numbers of people could participate in the equity markets in ways that they could not previously — and for much lower costs than they used to be able to participate — I think is important.

Now, the fact that we had such poor regulation means — in some of these markets, particularly around the securitized mortgages — means that the pain has been democratized as well. And that’s a problem. But I think that overall there are ways in which people have been able to participate in our stock markets and our financial markets that are potentially healthy. Again, what you have to have, though, is an updating of the regulatory regimes comparable to what we did in the 1930s, when there were rules that were put in place that gave investors a little more assurance that they knew what they were buying.

 ”Study: Metro Detroit poor face more health woes from bad air,” - The Detroit News

Detroit — Metro Detroit is among the nation’s worst regions in terms of the health risks faced by low-income residents who are forced to breathe bad air.

A study released today by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of Southern California seeks to outline the areas of the United States where air pollution levels affect those demographic groups to a greater extent than their population would dictate.

“U.S. government awaits effects of stimulus bill,” - Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the past 10 weeks, the U.S. government has allocated billions of dollars for transportation projects under a plan to revive the languishing economy, but the effects of the historic effort may not be seen for months, the Transportation Secretary said on Wednesday.

Of the $48.1 billion the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act gave to the Department of Transportation to invest immediately, some $44.8 billion has already been made available to state and local agencies, said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Updates on this week’s updates equity news.

 ”‘Civic generation’ rolls up sleeves in record numbers,” - USA TODAY

Jobs are scarce. Money is tight. A speedy economic recovery seems unlikely. Yet none of that has stopped the Millennial Generation from helping others.

Young adults who grew up in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks and saw the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina are volunteering at home and abroad in record numbers. The generation that learned in school to serve as well as to read and write, the Millennials were the first global Internet explorers even as they pioneered social networking for favorite causes at home.

“Saying Stimulus Money Is Flowing, Obama Unveils 2,000th Transportation Project,” - US News & World Report

Under pressure to show the government’s speed and efficiency in getting out funds from the $787 billion stimulus package, President Barack Obama emphasized today that, with the 2,000th transportation project just approved, the government effort is “coming in ahead of schedule and under budget.” But in a nod to the careful line that he and other officials must walk in emphasizing speed versus quality in stimulus spending, he also hastened to say that the money is being spent responsibly.

“Some thought it would take months to get to this point,” Obama said, speaking at the Department of Transportation with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. “But we approved these 2,000 projects in just 41 days.” As well as spending money quickly, Obama emphasized, the government is saving more money than it thought it would. Because of fierce competition for jobs, bids have been, on average, about 15 to 20 percent lower than engineers anticipated, according to reports from state departments of transportation.

“States Slashing Social Programs for Vulnerable,” - The New York Times

PHOENIX — Battered by the recession and the deepest and most widespread budget deficits in several decades, a large majority of states are slicing into their social safety nets — often crippling preventive efforts that officials say would save money over time.

President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package is helping to alleviate some of the pain, providing large amounts of money to pay for education and unemployment insurance, bolster food stamp programs and expand tax credits for low earners. But the money will offset only 40 percent of the losses in state revenues, and programs for vulnerable groups have been cut in at least 34 states, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a private research group in Washington.

The $787 billion recovery package marks a big, bold and historic investment in creating green jobs and building more equitable communities. The package invests nearly $100 billion in funding for transportation and infrastructure, $48 billion in investments in job training and education, $41 billion for energy-related programs, and $20 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy.

But without substantial advocacy from local and state groups, these historic federal investments may not end up in the communities that need them most. That is why PolicyLink and Green for All are excited to release today a new report, “Bringing Home the Green Recovery: A User’s Guide to the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”

The in-depth guide offers tangible, up-to-date information and ideas for using and securing recovery dollars to help expand opportunity in low-income communities and communities of color.

The guide is a first step in what will be a vital nationwide effort to ensure the recovery package helps all communities rise stronger than ever from this economic crisis, and that community based organizations are at the forefront in crafting a green, equitable recovery.

A really, really disturbing statistic out of Detroit in a Chicago Tribune story today:

The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service.

Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it’s seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market.

Among the many dispiriting numbers that bleakly depict the decrepitude of this onetime industrial behemoth, the steep slide of housing values helps define the daunting challenge to anyone who wants to lead this shrinking, poverty-pocked city of about 800,000 people.

h/t Andrew Sullivan

A recap of this week’s equity news.

 ”A Governor With No Money Seeks to Improve the People’s Health,” -  New York Times

Snacking on shrimp and carrot sticks, doctors and nurses gathered at N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center to celebrate the opening of a new research center called the Center for Healthful Behavior Change.
 
They were tapping into the spirit of the times, and now Gov. David A. Paterson has done so as well, turning the familiar call for political change into an appeal for healthful living as he promotes a number of anti-obesity measures, from a sugar tax on soft drinks to posting calorie counts in chain restaurants.

“House Votes to Expand Child Health Insurance,” - Washington Post

The House easily approved an expansion of government health coverage for low-income children yesterday, a top priority for President-elect Barack Obama and the first in a series of stalled measures expected to move quickly through the Democratic Congress as President Bush leaves office.

Obama hailed the 289 to 139 vote and nudged the Senate to act with the “same sense of urgency so that it can be one of the first measures I sign into law when I am president.”

“In recession, poverty strikes middle class,” - Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chaun Frost ran up her credit cards when the U.S. economy was booming, and now the single mother is paying a heavy price.

To service her debt and buy food for her two children, she has taken a second job selling pizza on weekends and some week nights, supplementing the $2,200 a month she earns from her job coordinating volunteers at a children’s hospital.