Core project

The aim of this project was to pilot and assess the feasibility of a "community tech workers" model that equips Detroit residents to provide digital support to community members experiencing digital poverty.

A multi-year collaboration between U-M's Poverty Solutions and the Detroit Phoenix Center aims to include the perspectives of Detroit youth who have experienced housing instability in conversations about homelessness response.

A partnership between researchers at Poverty Solutions and Princeton University’s Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Understanding Communities of Deep Disadvantage seeks to unpack poverty beyond income-based measures to other dimensions of disadvantage, including health and social mobility.

U-M was an active partner in the local Washtenaw County Summer Youth Employment Program called SummerWorks. 

The Detroit Home Repair Resource Guide documents existing home repair resources available in the city and connects residents to the services they need.

Using monthly data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U-M’s Rapid Insights Jobs Report analysis provides key charts and findings that highlight new developments in the labor market.

Poverty Solutions partnered with the State of Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) to inform anti-poverty and economic mobility initiatives that enhance public benefit programs and identify pathways for sustainable employment for those with major barriers to work.

The Detroit Partnership on Economic Mobility creates high-impact opportunities for the City of Detroit and community-based organizations to identify and implement evidence-based strategies that improve economic opportunity and reduce poverty in Detroit.

Rx Kids is the nation's first community-wide cash prescription program for pregnant moms and babies.

Poverty Solutions is partnering with the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office on a data-driven project focused on uncovering potential racial disparities within the prosecutorial system and increasing the transparency and accountability of the system generally.

In this series, we invite people with various types of expertise to share their views on how poverty intersects with social systems.

Poverty Solutions and its partners have explored supportive land contracts as a path to homeownership and the policies needed to reduce abuse of predatory land contracts.

The Midwest Mobility from Poverty Network was focused on providing rapid response data and analysis to community stakeholders and policymakers who want to enhance economic mobility and decrease poverty.

Guaranteed Income to Grow Ann Arbor (GIG A2) was a two-year pilot that provided monthly payments of $528 to 100 Ann Arbor entrepreneurs and gig workers with low incomes, from January 2024 through December 2025. Another 100 people from the eligible applicant pool participated in a randomized controlled trial, without receiving the monthly payments.