Scrivner Policy Roundtable

The Denver Basic Income Project (DBIP) provides 12 months of direct cash assistance to 820 people experiencing homelessness in Denver. The DBIP theory of change acknowledges that individuals, regardless of their income or housing situation, know best how to meet their basic needs. By providing individuals experiencing homelessness with 12 months of unconditional cash transfers, these individuals will be able to make the choices they need to address their housing precarity. Interim results of DBIP are now available and a robust discussion is ensuing on the impact guaranteed income can have for people with limited financial resources. This presentation provided a description of DBIP and reviewed results from the interim report.

Despite a common value of using data to drive policy change, there is a known gap in making research evidence timely, relevant, and useful for decision-makers. Traditional ways of approaching rigor and research translation are falling short. The Colorado Lab presented on lessons learned from health, early childhood, and justice to illustrate actionable ways that researchers and evaluators can better align their evidence-building approaches with the needs and goals of policy decision-makers. In this session, we identified concrete methods to bridge the research to policy divide as we work together to improve the lives of Coloradans.  

While misinformation is not new, we are living in a moment where access to information has never been greater. And while this has presented us amazing opportunity as a society, it also comes with 21st century challenges such as threats to trust in information, science, institutions, and our democracy. The Institute for Science & Policy shared some of their work on engaging the public and community members on the topic of misinformation. They shared results from a from a series of events on the role that local journalism and communities can have in combatting misinformation and engaged the audience in a deliberative dialogue process.

The collection of quality, replicable data has largely been absent in relation to Colorado's aging community. As one of the fastest aging states in the country, this poses a significant problem for our state, and has been a roadblock to ensuring quality outcomes for older Coloradans. To fill this sizeable hole, the Bell Policy Center developed an inaugural State of Aging report to assess not only how older Coloradans are currently doing, but to provide information on both the systems supportive of these outcomes and indicators of future success. While capturing information about the present state of aging, this report also provides long-term value in creating a benchmark against which to measure future progress and change.

The Roundtable presenters were Common Sense Institute's 2021 Terry J. Stevinson Fellows, Evelyn Lim and Peter LiFari. With an influx in the Colorado population over the last twenty years, housing affordability has quickly become a pressing issue in many parts of the state. While this is not an issue unique to Colorado and its major urban areas, it remains an important issue to maintain Colorado's quality of life and economic competitiveness.