This year we lived more deeply into our mission than any year before. In Detroit, we supported research by U-M faculty that is changing how the city handles tax foreclosure and housing instability. We collaborated with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services on new policies that will simplify a complex system of accessing aid and offer families more time to pursue their goals.

We convened dozens of events, bringing a diverse slate of speakers to campus that included the CEO of Walmart USA and the president of Community Change, the nation’s oldest national organization supporting community organizing. Inventors, nurses, elected officials, pastors—they enriched and deepened our understanding of poverty and made many connections with students and faculty. We’ve supported 44 projects across U-M’s three campuses, most pairing faculty with community partners. In Detroit, we continue to support work in partnership with dozens of community and neighborhood groups, and kickstarted 27 new projects to promote economic mobility.

As we’ve grown with our partners, we’ve come to view poverty as the result of interlinked systems —housing, education, criminal justice, labor markets — that fail to function as they should for people with low incomes, inhibiting their ability to live healthy and productive lives. We recognize that many of these systems failures are the result of long-term racial and socioeconomic inequalities. Such a systems approach can be overwhelming, but it also allows for many entry points to intervene, examples of which are seen in the pages that follow.

These examples show the power of uniting a top research institution with policymakers and practitioners; how together we can find new ways to bend the arc of change to empower families.

This arc of change can only bend if we inform each other along the way. At Poverty Solutions, we seek to be responsive to community voices. Listening to those most affected by poverty issues and sharing information broadly is a practice we embed in our work. It’s all too easy not to do it. We forget, we get comfortable, we get too busy. But we’re continually surprised about what we learn when we do. An example of this is what we learned about the cycle of poverty and auto insurance in Detroit.

We approach our work entrepreneurially, seeking opportunities for positive change with strong partners, and setting the agenda collaboratively with those partners. We also leverage the diversity of expertise and strengths of the University of Michigan to analyze data and conduct research to identify existing policy gaps. We listen, share findings, propose interventions, and evaluate and monitor—listening again as new models take shape. In the end, the goal is concrete change based on data, evidence, and analysis.

After three years, I’m immensely proud of the track record of success that Poverty Solutions has built and the ways our work is positively impacting the lives of people in meaningful ways. I’m deeply appreciative of our many community partners, and I look forward to building on our collective work in the future. We’re just getting started.

In partnership,
H. Luke Shaefer
Director, Poverty Solutions