Small Businesses (SB) create 1.5M jobs per year, and COVID-19 is having a negative impact on most of them. Under COVID-19, 35% of SB closed doors. For Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs, the prospects are more negative as 41% of Black-owned SB are closing in the same period. These two groups are also disproportionately affected by rising unemployment. This challenge proposes pilots in WA, MD, OK.

Anti-homeless laws produce various forms of police interactions that fall short of arrest, yet have wide-ranging impacts on the urban poor. Laws and enforcement fail to reduce urban disorder, but create instead a spatial churn in which homeless people circulate between neighborhoods and police jurisdictions rather than leaving public space.

Exploring the symbolic meaning of guns in the United States may be one the best ways to approach theoretical questions concerning the effect of culture in action because it focuses on a single object -the gun- which brims with symbolic power far beyond its physical utility.

Without neighborhood businesses and local hiring, community and household wealth cannot grow in a self-sustaining way and contribute to the overall population and household wealth. Historically, there is a lack of participation in traditional financial institutions in Black communities.

With the goal of giving start-up entrepreneurs and investors a novel way to connect, digital platforms and crowd-source funding can bring attention to socially conscious startups and get them the funding they deserve.

Food insecurity is growing among older adults. The food insecurity rate for all senior households was 7.8% in 2016, down slightly from the year before but up from 5.5% in 2001. At the same time, the percentage of seniors facing the threat of hunger has more than doubled. There are not enough resources to aid them in receiving food. There is a dire need in America to ensure food security for elders

Even as the economy continues to grow and the housing market rebounds from the Great Recession, Americans face widening inequality, and, for many, an inability to comfortably pay for housing as wage growth stagnates and housing costs continue to climb.

Thousand of buildings in the US, and globally, are operated with outdated or complex management systems that require significant time and resources to ensure building is running at optimal performance. The advances in Artificial Intelligence can automate and improve building performance reducing energy and carbon emissions while improving comfort and impacting the bottom line.

By leveraging crowdsourcing, social media and technology to offer citizens a platform they can get involved and engage with their local government in a way they never have before.

Race-related stressors that can affect the mental health of socially disadvantaged racial and ethnic populations. Although discrimination is the most studied aspect of racism, racism can also affect mental health through structural/institutional mechanisms and racism that is deeply embedded in the larger culture.