Our Policy Advocacy Focus on Living Wages, Improved Transit and Affordable Housing.
We advocate on our issue areas with decision makers at the city, county, state and sometimes federal level.
Just Economics has a Policy Advocacy Committee that meets at least every other month as part of our Quarterly general meetings. Just Economics hosts our Quarterly General Meeting the third Tuesday, every three months (February, May, August and November) at 6:30 at the United Way and on zoom. The Policy Advocacy Committee shapes the focus of our policy advocacy work and develops strategy. This committee developed our policy directions and policy advocacy process which was approved by our Board of Directors, our decision-making body.
About 2/3 of our policy advocacy work is done locally (City, County) and about 1/3 is statewide through coalition work. We advocate around the City and County’s annual budgets. We focus on living wages through our work with economic development in the region; Better Buses Together – a campaign to improve the public transit system; and affordable housing through the Buncombe Affordable Housing Network (BAHN), the Housing Steering Committee of the Buncombe County Long Term Recovery Group.
Just Economics has a list of policy directions that guide what we do and don’t get involved with and our policy advocacy decision tree helps us to determine what our level of engagement is. Our policy directions can be viewed and downloaded here.