The National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities (NIMC) initiative, founded in 2013 to help cities and organizations refine their mixed-income development strategies and shape public policy, is now an independent center at Case Western Reserve University.
Originally administratively housed within the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development (Poverty Center) at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, NIMC will now operate independently as it continues to conduct research and evaluation while providing technical assistance and consulting.
“Our goal is that NIMC will help reduce urban poverty and promote successful mixed-income communities by conducting high-quality research and making information and evidence easily available to policymakers and practitioners,” said NIMC founding director Mark Joseph, the Leona Bevis and Marguerite Haynam Associate Professor in Community Development at the Mandel School.
A strong partnership with the Poverty Center will continue, Joseph said. For example, a current collaboration is ongoing to conduct a needs-assessment initiative and provide strategic consultation to the mixed-income redevelopment of the Woodhill Homes public housing estate on the east side of Cleveland.
NIMC, an applied research center at the Mandel School, has worked in several Cleveland neighborhoods and in a dozen cities nationwide.
The center has eight full-time staff members, and its leadership includes Research Director Amy Khare, Strategic Director Taryn Gress and Center Administrator Diane Shoemaker. There are currently five students working with the center. In addition, 22 subcontractors around the country are working on NIMC-funded projects.
“I am grateful to this group for bringing their collective vision—for creating a center that has impact both locally and nationally—to fruition,” said Mandel School Dean Grover Gilmore. “This center embodies our school’s mission to advance leadership in social work and nonprofit education, scholarship and service to build a more just world and train change agent leaders.”
NIMC now joins other formal centers within the Mandel School, further expanding its depth of research expertise, leadership in innovation and opportunities for collaboration:
- Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education;
- Center for Evidence-Based Practices;
- Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development;
- Center on Trauma and Adversity
For more information, contact Colin McEwen at colin.mcewen@case.edu.
This article was originally published Sept. 10, 2018.