Cities
Taking Stock: Hunger Across America
Published August 20, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
In previous posts, including this one, I've talked about the need for adequate summer feeding programs in order to make sure that children do not go hungry while school is out of session.
But as the economy continues to contract and unemployment continues to rise (although apparently levels of joblessness are beginning to level off), I've come to realize that it's not just children who are in need of food assistance this summer, it's everyone.
From middle-class families to single parents to young couples trying to support themselves on minimum wage jobs, it seems as though no one is immune to the pangs of hunger this season.
With this in mind, I decided to take a look around the country to see how bad it really is out there:
President Promotes Renting
Published August 18, 2009 @ 04:33PM PT
At least $8B, and possibly more than $10B, in stimulus and federal budget funds will be used to (re-)invest in affordable renting housing in the U.S. The Boston Globe describes this as an "ideological shift" away from Bush's Wild West Ownership Society; Calculated Risk points out that the Obama Administration is harnessing an existing trend: the supply of rental housing has been increasing since 2004, mostly due to conversions of ownership properties.
There's two elements to this initiative that I like: $4B to upgrade existing public housing (a drop in the bucket, but a drop, nonetheless!) and the purchase of foreclosed homes to be converted into affordable rental units.
Commenter Lori raises an interesting point over at Suburban Guerilla in response to this announcement: why aren't we pursuing more radical, less costly innovations to seriously expand the stock of affordable housing - including homeownership - in the US? Her actual statement reflects why Bush's unregulated, overzealous ownership dream went so awry: "If you want to have a nation of home owners, you have to build housing that people on the bottom can afford to buy." And is it really a good idea to leave renters at the mercy of landlords? She voices support for the re-use of shipping containers as low-cost (and roomy by my condo's standards) rent-to-own housing.
Concerning landlords, I think tenants' rights is a related but separate issue here. One thing I would emphasize is that federally rental initiatives like this will partner mostly with local non-profits and municipalities to refurbish and improve rental housing, which to me is a necessary alternative to the current private market purchasers of foreclosures who are using them as investment properties (29% of the homebuying market). From living in a neighborhood with an owner-occupancy rate of only 25%, moving the rental inventory from the hands of absentee landlords to community-based non-profits sounds like a great idea to me.
(Photo by TheTruthAbout...)
Saving with SaveNYC
Published August 17, 2009 @ 05:00AM PT
SaveNYC is an asset-building program run by the City of NY that encourages low-wage tax payers to set aside a portion of their Earned Income Tax Credit refund and receive matching savings in return. Initial results have been promising; 61% of participants saved $500 - the qualifying amount to receive the matching funds. More than three-quarters of the accounts remained open after one year.
Asset building initiatives are anti-poverty programs that help low-income people save more to use towards purchases in homes, small businesses, or education - the big ticket items that may help households build equity or earn more income to eventually exit poverty. What policymakers like about SaveNYC is its demonstration that local governments can play a leadership role in financial empowerment anti-poverty initiatives.
Forgotten Gulf Coast Poverty
Published August 12, 2009 @ 12:57PM PT
Spotlight on Poverty & Opportunity and the LA Disaster Recovery Foundation have released an interesting new report demonstrating that coverage of Gulf Coast poverty has declined dramatically since Hurricane Katrina struck almost four years ago. Gulf Coast states LA, MS and AL had some of the highest rates of poverty in the nation prior to the flood; it's a big contributor to the awful aftermath of Katrina in cities like New Orleans and along the rural Gulf Coast. Turns out, poverty is as big if not bigger crisis in the region since the disaster, as more families have plunged into poverty and those already struggling are further consigned to a life of hardship.
Coverage of Gulf Coast poverty was never a major media theme; it amounted to less than 10% of all post-Katrina coverage even in the first 3 months after the disaster. (In fact, looking at 3 month coverage increments, it looks like John Edwards's Presidential announcement was the only thing to inspire more than 10% of press coverage of the issue at any time.) If you're remotely familiar with the issue of poverty in the US, you'll know that it's not a very popular topic - ever. (One need only look at the membership rates of the Change.org blogs for confirmation of this sad reality.) So this report, to me, is no newsflash, just like the reality of Gulf Coast poverty for anyone who's been paying attention.
That said, here's a couple key factoids that we should keep in mind of the absolute necessity to stay focused on investing in and rebuilding the U.S. Gulf Coast:
- "Only 2 in 5 damaged affordable rental units in Louisiana will be replaced or repaired with recovery
assistance"; - The "homeless population of New Orleans has been doubled by the storm."
- A "public housing crisis [has contributed to] an estimated 37,000 Gulf Coast residents living in FEMA trailers as of August, 2008."
60% reduction in rental units, including the demolition of 4,500 public housing units in New Orleans alone. At least 12,000 homeless just in New Orleans, a city of less than 300,000. Here at Poverty in America we write about the Gulf Coast every Wednesday. According to this report, we're doing the bare minimum.
(Photo of a John Edwards 2008 visit to New Orleans, by Rachel Feierman)
Gulf Coast Census Imperatives
Published August 12, 2009 @ 05:12AM PT
Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system in New Orleans created unprecedented levels of upheaval and destruction in a frightening number of people’s lives. This upheaval has still not subsided, even as we approach the four-year anniversary of the storm.
Our collective refusal to account for and deal with the effects of the large-scale, forced displacement of Gulf Coast residents in 2005 has yielded problematic outcomes for survivors and host communities. Assistance programs did not accurately consider the needs of the displaced, and many “receiving” cities were not equipped to handle the needs of internally displaced people.
The conversation and planning leading up to the 2010 Census as it relates to New Orleans is another disheartening reminder that as a country, we still do not recognize the full impact that Katrina had (and continues to have, and will continue to have) on an entire region and its population. With the stakes as high as those associated with the Census population count, it is absolutely imperative that we get it right for the Gulf Coast. Federal funding and political representation are both determined using Census population counts.
Below are three recommendations for the Census Bureau to accurately gather data about the post-Katrina Gulf Coast.
Desegrating Westchester
Published August 11, 2009 @ 07:07AM PT
Westchester County entered into a landmark desegregation agreement on Monday that would compel it to create hundreds of houses and apartments for moderate-income people in overwhelmingly white communities and aggressively market them to nonwhites in Westchester and New York City.
The lawsuit was filed by a non-profit advocacy group known as the Anti-Discrimination Center, which states that the multi-year affordable housing production plan to be paid for the county is not a guarantee of racial desegregation, but opens up the possibility of such an outcome. I'm a bit confused by the equivocation there, but what's more interesting is how an affordable housing program to racially desegregate communities points to the nefarious intersection of race and class.
Prison the New Public Housing
Published August 10, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Affordable housing advocates, esp. pro-public housing folks like myself, spend a lot of time comparing the various subsidized housing options out there: public housing, Section 8 vouchers for renting in the private market, tax-credit funded housing built by non-profit developers. Turns out, we've been miscalculating by half the 4-6M or so units these different options provide, because we've been leaving out a major new source of publicly subsidized housing for the poor: Prison!
Yep, according to Ehrenreich's latest missive in the NYT (see our previous coverage of her series here and here), "the same number of Americans — 2.3 million — reside in prison as in public housing."
Ehrenreich wonders if the collision of rising extreme poverty and excess criminalization and incarceration policies will lead us to descalate both - resorting instead to humane treatment of the poor and a move away from criminalizing low-income people as, she fears, disgustedly, a revenue source in this extreme recession. I'd add the masses find it morally uplifting to torment the poor during tough economic times, as it reassures us with a strong "us" vs. "them" dichotomy and gives us a sense of control of the more chaotic zones of life, given we can't seem to stop the corporate pillaging going on above us.
I too wonder if sheer economic necessity will work in our favor differently, by leading to de-crowding of prisons and cessation of expensive housing demolition and development programs. Of course, our desire to clamp down on "concentrated poverty" and its alleged ills bodes differently for prisons versus public housing. Dispersal strategies suddenly seem a lot more worrisome when we're casting offenders into the winds.
Most importantly, reversing these punitive, cruel, expensive cycles really requires to see the poor as human beings like us, our brethren, locked in a similar struggle for economic stability and justice. It requires a framework that focuses less on poverty alleviation and more on poverty eradication. It requires a common framework that embraces all of us. Gee, I wonder what that could be...
(Photo of Fremantle Prison, a decommissioned prison in Australia, by amandabhslater)
