Across the country, access to affordable housing continues to be a persistent issue for low- and moderate-income families. Inflation, rent increases, and the increasing homeownership gap between white families and families of color exacerbate the financial difficulties present on the long road to national economic recovery. To discuss the importance of community advocacy, access to housing and the issues surrounding persistent poverty, we interviewed Alicia Johnson, Executive Director of Step-Up Savannah.  

Hello Alicia, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Could you share a little bit about Step-Up Savannah’s mission and your work with the organization? 

Step-Up Savannah was originally created as a sectorial partnership here in our community over 15 years ago to focus on all the complicated issues surrounding persistent poverty. Our work has grown over the years, and we not only provide direct service programs that focus on economic inclusion in our community, but we also do a lot of advocacy and education and civic engagement work. We work to build coalitions, to create systematic, sticky solutions for low-wealth communities of color. And that includes everything from doing workforce development and financial literacy to being an intermediary in this region for both AmeriCorps VISTA programs and public benefits programs.  

How has your year been so far? What are the biggest issues Step-Up Savannah is working to address? 

When I came on to the organization, we were really at a place where we needed to retool and refocus our work. The year started with the approval of a new strategic plan, updating our mission and vision statements, and identifying our work for the future, which includes supporting a community still reeling from the pandemic. We have a severe transportation justice issue in our community because we don’t have countywide transportation. Not having a transit system that allows people to engage in the labor market in our community fully leaves people sorely behind. Access to affordable housing is also an issue. Around 30-60% of our population is currently rent burdened. The lack of affordable housing only underscores the persistent poverty issue in our community.  

How has your experience been working with Prosperity Now so far? 

Our work with Prosperity Now is extremely meaningful to us as we are beginning to reimagine and re-engineer what it looks like to advocate for low-wealth communities of color and build meaningful and innovative programming in closing the racial wealth divide. And I was just recently selected as one of the racial and economic justice fellows and am looking forward to continuing to work with Prosperity Now more closely. 

Anything else to add? 

Yes, I want to say that we are so thrilled to continue our work in partnership with Prosperity Now because we recognize its importance. Still, we also can broaden our ecosystems and access to best practices and have data to make our work more meaningful. We hope that we are a good partner for Prosperity Now to expand its footprint and bandwidth across the U.S. I also want to underscore one of the things that I say to people all the time is that socio-economic resilience is as important as any other resilience that we have in our community, and we cannot wait as community stakeholders for a white horse, right? So, it's up to the community to increase the pressure for people-centered policy creation. 

To learn more about Step-Up Savannah visit their website or follow them on social media!