Getting Back on Track: Climate Change and State Transportation Policy, a new report by Smart Growth America and the Natural Resources Defense Council, finds that state transportation policies don’t reduce carbon emission rates, and sometimes actually increase them. States lack incentives for clean commutes and transit-oriented development, and they lack sprawl-inhibiting smart growth policies.

Connecting Residents of Subsidized Housing with Mainstream Supportive Services: Challenges and Recommendations, written by Rebecca Cohen of the Center for Housing Policy and prepared for the What Works Collaborative, examines ways in which HUD could strengthen and expand the role of subsidized housing as a platform for services that “enrich residents’ health, safety, economic self-sufficiency, and quality of life.”

Challenges and Policy Options for Creating and Preserving Affordable Housing Near Transit and in Other Location-Efficient Areas, published by the Center for Housing Policy, addresses administrative and regulatory steps that HUD and other federal agencies could take to increase affordable housing near transit, employment centers, and other location-efficient areas.

Building Sustainable Ownership: Rethinking Public Policy Toward Lower-Income Homeownership, a discussion paper by Alan Mallach for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, argues that public policy and resources should be directed less toward maximizing the number of lower-income homeowners and more toward maximizing the quality and stability of homeownership for lower-income owners.

Implementing the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP): Community Stabilization in the NeighborWorks Network, a new report from NeighborWorks America, presents case studies of 12 nonprofit housing and community development organizations working to stabilize communities hit hard by foreclosures.

A Review of Treasury’s Foreclosure Prevention Programs, the Congressional Oversight Panel’s December oversight report found that improvements to the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), like creating an online loan mod application and ramping up Treasury’s monitoring and intervention when borrowers fall behind on HAMP-modified mortgages, could help the troubled program further meet its goals.

Subsidizing Care, Supporting Work, released in January by the Center for an Urban Future, finds that the supply of subsidized child care in New York City has slipped in recent years even as affordable child care has become increasingly critical for low-income parents to get and hold jobs or complete postsecondary degrees.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and PolicyMap have developed the Map Your Community interface, a new tool that allows users to create a customized map of any community using economic and demographic data.

Moving Forward: The Future of Consumer Credit and Mortgage Finance, published by Brookings Institution Press, explores the roots of the current financial crisis through selected papers commissioned from leading academics and practitioners in the consumer credit and mortgage finance fields.