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Rural Child Poverty Widespread
Published October 03, 2009 @ 11:15AM PT
Thanks to Diane, we get a glimpse here of rural poverty in the U.S., a topic typically overshadowed by a national focus on urban poverty. Not surprising, given 80% of the country is classified as metropolitan, meaning there's a significant density of people and homes in the majority of the nation. But rural poverty is just as troubling and worrisome as poverty in the cities and suburbs, particularly given how many children are poor in rural America.
The Economic Research Service provides some #s from the recession's impact on rural America: Unemployment rose more sharply in metro regions, though it's about 9% nationwide. In rural communities, minorities and teens have the highest unemployment rates. Almost 1 in 4 kids in rural areas are poor, especially in communities with high minority populations. And well more than half of all rural counties have high child poverty rates where at least 1 in 5 children are poor. Child poverty is highest in well-known chronically poor areas: the Mississippi Delta, on Native American reservations, and along the border with Mexico.
Childhood poverty in rural America is a chronic problem; one that activists, advocates and policymakers are still trying to understand. It appears to be a perennial lack of educational and job opportunities, particularly for rural African-Americans, who have lived for generations with resources bypassing their communities and no particular means to get out. This is a topic I know very little about, but I do know this: the recession is by no means over, and if there was ever a time to refocus our priorities on these chronically poor, chronically forgotten communities, it's now.
NYT Stands With Mississippi
Published September 23, 2009 @ 01:27PM PT
Last April, we featured a campaign here called "I Stand With Mississippi," started by the MS Center for Justice, to protest Governor Barbour's plan to decline federal stimulus funds. Yesterday, the NY Times stood with Mississippi - expending editorial capital on the almost four-year fight by social justice advocates to compel the MS government to to appropriately and fairly spend federal disaster recovery funds on affordable housing for affected low-income populations.
The STEPS Coalition, an umbrella group of MS-based advocates such as the MS Center for Justice, is named in the editorial for a report it released at the anniversary of Katrina, documenting the state's poor performance in rebuilding destroyed affordable housing relative to its post-storm projections and compared to Louisiana. We've documented here the most egregious example of Barbour's misplaced priorities - taking $600M allocated for housing redevelopment and using it to expand the port of Gulfport. Only 20% of all the money meant for low-income households has been spent on them; 50% has gone to wealthier homeowners.
Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation, and a state with poverty and inequality so dire that even Louisiana, hardly a progressive bright spot on the map, easily surpasses them in affordable housing recovery. This post is sort of meta... it seeks to highlight the on-going progress and battle the STEPS Coalition and others are waging to bring all affordable housing back on-line to the thousands of state residents still displaced - in trailers and out-of-state. But it also highlights the coverage this struggle is finally getting - national attention it's long deserved. It's like someone on the NYT editorial staff finally had a chance to read that random Katrina report someone recommended last month.
Show your support for housing and social justice advocates in Mississippi: Check out the MS Center for Justice, the MS NAACP, and the Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center, the STEPS Coalition, and their allies. There is a tremendous amount of social justice work happening and a tremendous progressive community in the U.S. South. Get involved today.
(Photo of farmers' market at Point Cadet Plaza in Ocean Springs, MS, a few weeks before Katrina hit in August 2005; Taken by Ken Roberts Photography)
Housing Choice in Crisis
Published September 12, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
My organization, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOFHAC), recently released an audit report about discrimination against Housing Choice Voucher holders (“HCVP” or “Section 8”) in the Greater New Orleans rental market. Our study revealed that landlords refused to consider voucher holders as tenants 82% of the time. Preliminary results also suggest that, due to intentional discrimination and program dysfunction, voucher holders end up relegated to a small, isolated, and likely low-resourced segment of the rental housing market. This is particularly problematic, since one of the stated goals of the Housing Choice Voucher Program is to promote race and class integration.
Audits in other areas of the country have turned up similar findings and point to the need for serious reform in federal housing policy. We recommend 10 actions to make housing policy more inclusive, fair and effective.
Our study demonstrates that while 75% of landlord refusals were outright rejections, 7% of the time, landlords added additional terms and conditions for voucher holders that were tantamount to a denial.
Keep Poverty on the Agenda
Published August 30, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
With the death of Sen. Kennedy and the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina both happening this week, the topic of poverty was fresh in the public's mind. In eulogizing Kennedy, most of us could take pride in remembering his service to "working people" everywhere, his commitment to poverty reduction over the life of his career. With Katrina, it is also about a job unfinished, but with a much less nostalgic, sweet glow - the enduring problems of blight, housing insecurity, racial inequality and poverty are glaring, graphic, and depressing.
Whether you're motivated to action by the inspiring good works of folks like Senator Kennedy, or fueled by a sense of outrage over injustice, this past week offered plenty of reminders that poverty is a persistent, entrenched, political problem for which solutions exist. Investments in early childhood education pay lifetime dividends. Economic boycotts and union movements highlight workers' rights and benefits. Providing childcare, fair pay, and extensive family leave policies give mothers better opportunities to compete economically and earn enough to care for their families. And universal health care bankrupts neither households nor the entire medical system.
Change.org is just one platform where you can commit (and re-commit) to fighting poverty in the U.S. To start, let's begin by keeping poverty on the public agenda - as a problem we can and must solve. Let's not let it slip away as our weekend tributes wrap up. As Uncle Teddy and 15k volunteers in New Orleans remind us, the cause endures and the work goes on.
("Not Everyone in SF is Rich..." by Son of Groucho)
Half a Million Volunteer Hours Rebuild New Orleans
Published August 29, 2009 @ 08:43AM PT
In 2007, pollster John Zogby ventured that Hurricane Katrina would be the defining moment of our generation, signalling American hunger for a renewed, proactive government that led by example and empowered civic engagement. One positive outcome of Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on the Gulf Coast is the number of volunteers who have participated in the recovery. Now I see from HandsOn New Orleans that more than 15,000 volunteers have contributed over 500,000 volunteer hours to the revitalization of New Orleans alone.
HandsOn New Orleans is leading a volunteer service day today on this fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It is only one of countless recovery efforts still underway across the Gulf Coast. Preacher Jim Walllis in witnessing church groups visit the Gulf Coast repeatedly to participate in the rebuilding, has called the region is a '“converting ground' for a generation of 'new abolitionists' committed to eradicating global poverty, which they believe is the 'new slavery.'" I remember passing such groups praying near the river in my own work in NOLA.
As someone who believes passionately in government leadership to provide and care for all its residents, I am sometimes frustrated by the reality that so many of these volunteers have filled a critical void by our elected leaders. Yet I frequently comfort myself when thinking of Katrina by imaginging the number of Americans who will have personally contributed to recovery efforts; routinely when I describe my work or research, a listener will describe for me how they spent a week rebuilding homes, cleaning out a neighborhood or painting a school. And the beauty of our country is revealed when we mobilize government resources alongside civic participation.
On this fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, let's not forget that the work remains and the need endures - from Texas to Alabama. And let's say thanks to the thousands of residents, volunteers and non-profits who have given so much to restore an original American region.
(Volunteers repainting a house in New Orleans, 2008; by Editor B)
Katrina Reflections 4 Years Out
Published August 26, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
At field hearings of the Congressional Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity in New Orleans last week, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO) contrasted the polite behavior of the audience with the recent inflammatory behavior of participants in town hall sessions across the country regarding health care reform. Congressman Cleaver stated that this difference was curious to him, because as he saw it, Gulf Coast residents have so much to legitimately be angry about. But local advocates and residents can easily explain away the difference—we are exhausted.
Saturday will mark the four-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast back in 2005. It is a little daunting to try to write a post that incorporates the meaning imbued in this anniversary, and I’ve been pondering about what to write for several weeks now. In doing so, I have been confronted with how differently I felt about the date in years past than I do this year.
Grant My Birthday Wish: Support Rebuilding Together New Orleans!
Published August 26, 2009 @ 04:00AM PT
Happy 34th Birthday to Me! In honor of my birthday, I've set up a Facebook page where you can donate $34 to the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, a non-profit dedicated to the architectural and historic preservation of the city. Focused on more than just buildings and materials, the PRC also runs a program called Rebuilding Together New Orleans that rehabs the homes of the disabled and elderly so they may rebuld their lives and communities in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In less than two months I'm marrying an historic preservationist, a former VISTA volunteer who came to community planning and historic preservation through spending most of his 20s working as a resident services coordinator in a low-income housing community in Minnesota. Together he and I share a deep commitment to fighting poverty, to honoring and respecting the culture and histories of the communities in which we work and live, and a love for the City of New Orleans.
You can help me today continue the work of the PRC by making a donation through my Fb page. Please help bring older and disabled New Orleanians home to improved neighborhoods and more peaceful lives.
