Cities
ABC's of an Effective Jobs Initiative
Published October 30, 2009 @ 05:04AM PT
Driving the Learning Curve Express around backroads of the lower 48, my observation is America's human infrastructure is on life support. The latest unemployment indicators aren't real encouraging. CNN reports...
...the slide may signal that more filers are dropping off those rolls into extended benefits....The figures do not include those who have moved to state or federal extensions, or people whose benefits have expired.
In an op-ed column in The Baltimore Sun, Julianne Malveaux validates my ideas.
To commemorate this anniversary of the Great Depression, the Obama administration ought to engage in Depression-era tactics to jump-start the economy. We have spent $700 billion bailing out banks and $787 billion in economic stimulus. But we have not focused on directly creating employment, on lifting people at the bottom.
Come on! Let's kick something in gear that works.
Seeing Hartford
Published October 29, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
I arrived in Hartford, CT last Wednesday for a Friday night wedding at a 19th century-bank-turned-banquet-hall venue. In high spirits but absolutely rushing around in Boston earlier last week to get ready for the wedding extravanganza, I joked on Wed evening that my future mother-in-law was solving the great bridal nail crisis 2009, i.e., finding me a place in Hartford to get a manicure. In a city of 125k people, how hard could it be?
Very, it turned out, if you're from out-of-town and relying on local boosters to recommend services to you. Boosters are what we planners and political scientists call the folks who sell cities to us - the media, local politicians, business owners, real estate developers - so that we will want to come and live there, do business there, spend money there. A family friend, the banquet manager and the hotel concierge all recommended a single nail salon in the entire city, which didn't have enough staff to see me on Thursday. I finally settled on the concierge's third recommendation, which came with numerous caveats, and turned out to be as run down and rough as warned - but my manicure was only $10!
Connecticut's urban model is one of very wealthy suburbs surrounding deeply poor towns: just check out the differences in poverty between neighboring West Hartford (4.5%) and Hartford (31.5%). For everything we needed for the wedding we were directed to the suburbs - no grocery store downtown, no market, no spare salon that people in the service industry want to send a white, middle-class client to, for fear of my fear and reprisal. What was more amazing was that there was actually a market two doors down from my venue, though it did not sell milk, but looked an awful lot like a deli/bodega/convenience store otherwise.
Staying Warm This Winter
Published October 27, 2009 @ 11:13AM PT
In many regions across the country, the days are getting shorter and the colorful autumn leaves are slowly falling to the ground. This can only mean that the stinging cold of winter is just around the corner.
What this also means, particularly with unemployment rates still astonishingly high and the recession continuing, is that nonprofit organizations and government agencies are bracing for an increased demand for utility assistance over the next several months.
The main way that energy assistance funds are distributed in the U.S. is through the Low-income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. However, instead of providing assistance directly to the general public, the Department makes block grants to individual states who then distribute checks to needy households.
Food Pantry System Needs an Overhaul
Published October 26, 2009 @ 10:05AM PT
With many food pantries around the country being operated by "little old ladies in sneakers," hunger advocates are beginning to worry about who will staff these indispensable operations once an exceedingly aging volunteer base can no longer do it.
After popping up in major cities and small towns alike during the 1970s, food pantries are now being hit with the greatest increase in demand (which has risen between 30 and 70 percent over the past year) they have ever experienced. This is especially troublesome for the elderly volunteers whose bodies simply cannot work any faster or harder.
Many are hoping that as the civically-minded baby boomer generation heads toward retirement, a new group of hunger activists will begin to pick up the slack. It's certainly good news that out of the three billion hours baby boomers spent volunteering last year, nearly 25 percent of that time went to collecting or distributing food.
However, with the recession wiping out many retirement accounts, there's no guarantee that baby boomers will be able to actually leave their paying jobs for the volunteer realm anytime soon.
Cities Ravaged by Recession
Published October 23, 2009 @ 12:01PM PT
The perfect storm of high unemployment rates, shrinking salaries and a painfully slow economic recovery has thrown many U.S. cities teetering on the brink of survival into utter desperation.
Last year, median income for American households dropped a staggering 3.6 percent -- the greatest one-year decline since records have been kept -- and the recession dropped an additional 2.6 million Americans into poverty. Worse, The Economic Policy Institute predicts that incomes could drop another $3,000 and the poverty rate could rise another 1.9 percent by 2011.
Coupled with the assertion that the number of homeless could rise by 1.5 million in the next two years, this news is especially bad for the ten poorest cities in America -- a group of metropolitan areas chosen based on per capita income, the percentage of the population earning less than half the poverty line, the percentage of food stamp recipients, the percentage of people under age 65 receiving public health care and the unemployment rate. (All these statistics come from 2008 Census Bureau data.)
The Promise of Employee-Owned Businesses
Published October 21, 2009 @ 05:41AM PT
In a former life, I worked for years on the issue of increasing minority entrepreneurship and strengthening small businesses in low-income communities. Small business is routinely embraced as a fundamental economic development tool, as it shifts cash, risk and autonomy directly onto an individual business owner; suggests a rejuvenated street life if its an attractive storefront business; and theoretically creates a community stakeholder who cares about the health of the local economy and customers in which the business operates.
To that end, Cleveland has launched an employee-owned cooperative laundry in an effort to revitalize the low-income neighborhoods around University Circle; it's a grand gesture, featuring state-of-the-art, energy-efficient equipment and the goal of employing up to 50 workers, incl. ex-offenders. The laundry will serve local institutions in the area, incl. the universities and hospitals that abound there.
Poverty News Round-up
Published October 20, 2009 @ 01:25PM PT
Too many interesting tabs open in my browser to select just one story today. Here's the latest on poverty news and activism happening around the US:
- Thank you feds! For stepping in and telling Indiana that allowing private employers to use welfare data to screen potential employees is "inappropriate" and "not allowed." Ya think?
- If port cities Oakland and Long Beach, CA, have such similar demographic profiles, including lots of poverty, why is crime so much worse in Oakland? It's unclear, but fortunately there's a new police chief in town to try and reverse the city's terrifying trends.
- We've come a long way from the days of "No Irish Need Apply" - AG Andrew Cuomo in NY has charged EMC Construction with exploiting its workers, including using a three-tiered wage system for Irish ($25/hour), Black ($18/hour) and Latin@ ($15/hour) workers. Nothing encourages worker solidarity like abusive wage gaps!
- Mayor Bloomberg is creating jobs in NYC, but are they good jobs? The short answer: No.
- What the state gives, the market taketh away. Bloomberg builds or preserves 72k low-income housing units, 200k disappear due to vague and mysterious "market forces." Don't look under your beds at night, kiddies!
- And finally, let this be a lesson to other states: Indiana is pulling the plug on privatizing its welfare system, after thousands of eligible recipients lost benefits. One old measure they're bringing back in? Face-to-face interactions between recipients and case workers. Good to see we haven't quite eliminated jobs as we insist TANF recipients go find some.
(Photo of A.M. Walzer Co. US Inlay Puzzle Map by Marxchivist)
