Jefferson City, MO — On February 20th, 2020, Empower Missouri, along with more than 100 other individuals and organizations, signed and delivered a letter to Governor Parson and House and Senate leadership encouraging them to re-institute the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) statewide match. Missouri has a dire shortage of affordable and available rental...Read More

Empower Missouri’s Affordable Housing Coalition recently released their 2020 legislative priorities. You can read it here. Some things on the list are very straight forward, some are really big asks, and some are common sense. However, one in particular is a bit more complicated.  Cities and states have a slate of tools available to them...Read More

Public comment letters are an increasingly effective tool in legislative advocacy at the federal level, with advocates across the country utilizing this format as a way to submit feedback to the government and make their voices heard.Read More

We learned about successful campaigns to increase benefit levels, create child support pass throughs, add a diaper or toiletries allowance, or end a flawed policy like the “family cap” in some states.Read More

Housing is the key to improving these children’s outcomes and also helps to lower their healthcare costs. Children’s Health Watch provided examples of case studies where healthcare costs decreased by 90% when children were provided with stable housing.Read More

The Disparate Impact rule says that, even if it seems to apply equally to everyone, if a policy impacts protected classes more than others, it is discriminatory. A new proposal from HUD would effectively dismantle this important and needed rule.Read More

The September Empowering You Newsletter can be downloaded by clicking on the thumbnail below, and you can explore it’s contents by clicking on any of the links under the thumbnail. Putting an SRO in every Missouri school won’t make them safer – but here’s what might – Conner Kerrigan “Missouri has failed it’s voters” – Voter...Read More

In August 2019, Empower Missouri’s Executive Director, Jeanette Mott Oxford, offered testimony in a special hearing on Criminal Justice. “I think sometimes we wish we had a magic mirror, and we could hold it up to people and it would say, ‘I see racism in you. I see racism in you. No racism in you.’...Read More

To my ear, “sequester” is a lovely word. Despite what the dictionary says about its synonyms like segregate, seclude and withdraw or its chemical meaning related to binding and absorbing carbon dioxide, it has a certain lyrical quality. I almost expect it to be a dessert wine (“I’ll take a glass of the Sequester, please”)...Read More

While some of Section 8 funding is still project based, much of that money is now distributed through what is called Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs).Read More