The New York City Civic Engagement Commission (NYC CEC) was established by the 2018 Charter Revision Commission to enhance civic participation in order to strengthen civic trust and democracy in NYC. With the help of the Capstone team, NYC CEC sought to create an inclusive, diverse, and culturally sensitive policy framework for civic life in NYC. The team conducted background research on the state of civic engagement in NYC, analyzed past and present government civic engagement policies and initiatives, and collected information on existing civic engagement policy frameworks. The team determined engagement categories for a quantitative civic engagement index and recommended key indicators of civic engagement, strategies for data collection, and best practices for future outreach.

Urbane Development is a certified minority-owned business enterprise that develops and deploys customized wealth building and equitable community development interventions in underserved communities by cultivating “anchor” institutions and investing in entrepreneurial activities within the communities it serves. In the absence of a standard mechanism for comparing justice outputs across projects or identifying junctures at which justice might be advanced, the organization engaged a team to help develop and apply meaningful key indicators of justice to its work. The team examined different definitions and manifestations of justice, empirically validated methodologies for measuring justice within the community development sector, and performed an intensive literature review. The team synthesized its findings to develop a justice rubric consisting of evaluative questions for Urbane Development’s staff, and created a customizable dashboard for calculating quantifiable justice “scores.”

Enterprise Community Partners is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending housing insecurity by investing in affordable housing solutions through public and private partnerships, and scaling these solutions through political advocacy. Nationwide, justice-involved people struggle to find stable, affordable housing and access to the supportive services necessary to successful societal reentry after incarceration. As part of Enterprise’s focus on vulnerable populations, the organization engaged the Capstone team to identify affordable housing models and services that best meet the needs of justice-involved people, and to provide recommendations for housing developers seeking to build for this population. The team interviewed social service providers, mission-oriented housing developers, and justice-involved individuals to identify the greatest challenges to reentry and affordable housing development. Ultimately, the team produced a full literature review and a final report that outlines findings, recommendations, and three sample housing models to help Enterprise and its partners expand affordable housing development for justice-involved people.