Loyola University Chicago
Here you will find all of CURL's research projects and publications.
(2000)
This project with Erie Neighborhood House facilitated a comprehensive programmatic participatory evaluation process and developed education and training services for staff.
Download Report Report of Erie's Strategic Planning and Evaluation Process Presentation to Board
(2000)
The following is a community needs assessment guide designed by CURL researchers to aid organizations in identifying community assets and potential concerns. The guide briefly details the steps of the Concerns Report Method beginning with the planning phases and ends with the implementation of action committees and the utilization of findings from the needs assessment.
Download Report A Community Needs Assessment Guide: A Brief Guide on How to Conduct a Needs Assessment
(2000)
Access Living and CURL began a collaborative partnership to document the conditions influencing the placement of disabled people in a nursing home, and to identify the barriers that prevent nursing home residents from living independently.
Download Report Barriers to Independence: A Study of Housing and Personal Assistance Issues for People with Disabilities Residing in Nursing Homes
(1999)
The Policy Research Action Group (PRAG), a now retired portion of CURL, established the Community Access to Technology Working Group to explore community access and training with regards to technology in the context of universal access within the City of Chicago. Additionally, the group sought to find out how technology resources are distributed in Chicago with particular emphasis on access at community centers, schools and libraries. The group’s final report outlines the numbers and findings of the availability of technology across the city.
Download Final Report Inroads to Technology: Evening the Playing Field for the 21st Century
(1998)
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development worked with the Policy Research Action Group (PRAG) to study the factors central to creating and sustaining viable, inclusive, diverse, stable urban neighborhoods. In each of nine cities presented here: Rogers Park, Edgewater, Uptown, and Chicago Lawn (Chicago); West Mt. Airy (Philadelphia); Vollintine-Evergreen (Memphis); Park Hill (Denver); Sherman Park (Milwaukee); Jackson Heights, Fort Greene (New York City); Southeast Seattle (Seattle); San Antonio and Fruitvale (Oakland, California); Houston Heights (Houston).
PRAG coordinated a team of researchers and local community-based partners to: interview residents, business people, and community leaders; review key documents; and otherwise assess the basis for diversity and stability within these special neighborhoods. Each team also drew on prior studies and census analyses.
View Journal Issue Racially and Ethnically Diverse Urban Neighborhoods
(1998)
This report describes a collaborative project between the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) and the CURL. The project, entitled Safety Enhanced Communities Utilizing Resident Endeavors (SECURE), was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of physical security improvements in affordable housing developments.
Download Report Crime Prevention and Perceptions of Residential Safety: Survey of Low Income Housing Residents
(1998)
The Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities commissioned CURL to write a report answering the questions, “What is the state of fair housing in the Chicago region today, especially related to race and ethnicity? What are its implications for economic opportunity and development?”
Download Report Black, White and Shades of Brown: Fair Housing and Economic Opportunity in the Chicago Region
(1997)
This project developed between the principal and the faculty of Pierce Elementary School and CURL researchers to make recommendations for strategic interventions to effect risk taking by their students. Dr. Vera and her colleagues went on to publish an article in the Journal of Clinical Child Psychology called "A Qualitative Investigation of Perceptions of Violence Risk Factors in Low-Income African American Children."
Download Report A Qualitative Investigation of Perceptions of Violence Risk Factors in Low-Income African American Children
(1997)
The research for this report was carried out by teams of community residents and university students to expand the residents' knowledge and awareness of defensible space strategies; to develop recommendations to improve the community; and to enable the residents to use the recommendations and develop a plan of action that increases community safety.
The report can be used as a how-to manual for future defensible space projects.
Download Report Detensible Space Project: Deterring Crime and Building Community in Rogers Park
(1997, 1998, 1999)
CURL, and Policy Research Action Group (PRAG), joined in collaboration with two community-based organizations, Howard Area Community Center (HACC)and Organization of the NorthEast (ONE), to study the potential adverse impact of welfare policy changes of 1996 on different types of public benefit recipients in the Chicago neighborhoods of Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park. This collaboration was motivated by the partners' grave concerns over how low-income individuals and families would survive when faced with the termination of life-sustaining public benefits, and how the communities would cope with increased impoverishment and diminished funds.
Research was collected through in depth interviews, focus groups, analysis of census data and observations of public meetings. These Reports were used by ONE and HACC to advocate for additional state funding for immigrants and were instrumental in successfully attaching $10 million to the Illinois state welfare budget in the late 1990’s.
Download Report Unraveling the Safety Net: 1997 and Welfare Reform (focuses on the cuts in benefits of legal immigrants) 1997.
Download Report From Welfare to Worse? Children, Welfare Reform, and Local Realities (focuses on early effects of welfare reform and future effects) 1998.
Download Report Cracks in the System: Conversations with People Surviving Welfare Reform (focused on TANF recipients and their barriers to employment) 1999.