Federal
Report: One in Six Children in the U.S. Are Hungry
Published May 14, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
A new report (pdf) released last week by Feeding America claims that one in six young children (those who are five-years-old and younger) in 26 U.S. states face a constant threat of food insecurity. That adds up to 3.5 million young children in this country who do not have adequate access to healthy food.
The statistics in the report—Child Food Insecurity in the United States: 2005 – 2007—were compiled using data collected by USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS).
Perhaps an even more disturbing statistic is that the rate of food insecurity in young children is 33 percent higher than the rate experienced by U.S. adults, where only one in eight live at risk of hunger. I personally find it deeply troubling that there are so many hungry children in this country who don’t have the ability to provide for themselves.
Erasing the Decision-Makers
Published May 13, 2009 @ 12:59PM PT
Following up on Kate's terrific post from this morning, I'm reading this absolutely maddening article from The Times-Picayune about the impending mixed-income housing complexes that are replacing the projects, demolished last year. Absent entirely from this article are the decision-makers behind the demolition and redevelopment of the projects, whose proposal will reduce the # of deeply subsidized units from ~5k to fewer than 1,600. Check out the passive and/or anthropomorphic language journalist Katy Reckdahl uses:
New designs hope to avoid past problems in public housing complexes
Because we all know designs, when gathered around the board room table, are very focused on problem-solving. More inanity after the jump!
Policies that Make People Disappear
Published May 13, 2009 @ 05:47AM PT
I visited Chicago for the first time ever last week to participate in a panel about affordable housing in Chicago and New Orleans. The comparisons are striking and frightening.
In 1998, the Chicago Housing Authority embarked on its “Plan for Transformation,” a HOPE VI funded, ten-year plan designed to demolish traditional public housing and replace it with “mixed income” housing. According to the CHA website, the Plan “will improve the appearance, quality and culture of public housing in Chicago.” From a starting point of 38,000 units, the Plan calls for the demolition of 22,000 units and the replacement of 9,000 units, with an end count of 25,000 units.
Not surprisingly, there was resistance to the Plan. HOPE VI developments are notorious for permanently displacing residents. But I was particularly struck by one community organizer’s testimony from an older public housing resident who opposed the Plan. This gentleman had experienced urban renewal decades ago. He said that he opposed the demolition of public housing buildings because the buildings themselves remind others that people like him exist.
This observation was striking, and I thought of many examples of how post-Katrina policies have literally made people disappear.
Inequality Makes People Cruel
Published May 11, 2009 @ 12:02PM PT
Discuss.
Fellow blogger Alana (h/t) comes to that conclusion, with the aid of a Twitter survey (Twurvey?):
...that explains the people on the bottom end of the pyramid forced into cruel actions and cruel choices, and the people on the top end, so far from poverty that poor people and their problems no longer seem real to them. It’s easy to be cruel when you can’t see your victims. Or when you think their problems are inevitable and can’t be solved. Or when you think poor people make themselves poor or even aren’t quite human. Inequality creates the kind of distance that makes that happen.
Or when you're motivated by greed or entitlement.
What's missing here b/w these poles is the middle-class countries like ours possess; what is their role here? I'd venture ignorance or worse, indifference. To be blind to how our world works, or for failing to advocate for change, whether at a micro, personal level or at a collective macro level.
What do you think? It's an interesting discussion in light of recent global survey findings and the increased importance of the federal (central) government right now:
Are non-profits set to spend stimulus weatherization $$?
Published May 11, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
The state-run Weatherization Assistance Program for low-income families was singled out for big stimulus spending partly because it had worked the same way for nearly 35 years and didn’t need adjustments. But governors in some states are proposing brand new approaches that critics say could derail the tried-and-true home insulation program. [snip]
Targeted for hefty stimulus funding, weatherization has been attacked by members of Congress and taxpayer groups who say the local agencies that run the program won’t be able to spend the windfall fast enough to generate much needed jobs.
This is a fascinating article, because it gets at something I've mentioned here before: so much of our government and social sector infrastructure has been devastated in the last 8 if not 25 years. Now that we've got $$ to spend, we're worried the small but steady non-profits we've counted on to deliver these programs for years aren't up to it.
That's a legitimate point, in my opinion.
Tax Credits for Affordable Housing Dry Up
Published May 08, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
And another limit to market-driven affordable housing production is revealed:
"Mr. Brandt’s experience is being mirrored throughout the nation, demonstrating the shortcomings of a financing vehicle that was conceived more than two decades ago to inject market discipline into the development of income-restricted housing. The theory was that investors would support only those projects likely to be successful.
Many developers are finding themselves either unable to sell tax credits that they have been awarded or short millions of dollars because the price that investors are willing to pay for a tax credit has tumbled from $1 or more to less than 75 cents today.
Today, the total amount of tax credit equity available for low-income housing has shrunk to $4 billion to $4.5 billion, down from about $9 billion in 2007, Frederick H. Copeman, the national director of tax credit investment advisory services at Ernst & Young, said in an interview in his Boston office."
Despite our frequent hand-wrangling over that eyesore public housing, in reality the majority of subsidized housing today is tax-credit financed and produced by private sector developers, for- and non-profit. Yet, the limits to this approach fuel calls for state and federal affordable housing trust funds, to again prioritize the needs of the lowest-income Americans that public housing filled starting in the 1960s.
Mothers’ Day Reflection: Theory vs. Reality
Published May 06, 2009 @ 03:13AM PT
Julianna, a vivacious woman in AZ who works at a public school, finally took her 4 kids and left her abusive
spouse (who she later discovered wasn’t legally her spouse, another story for another day)—when she found out about the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Act, the federal law that protects stability of education for students who lose housing due to hardship. Her kids could remain in their same schools even when staying with friends in another part of town.
We’d like to think that all homeless families have nice shelters and all will be OK. Not so. Julianna’s family was unable to use local shelters because she has a teen boy—and many shelters, unbeknownst to most, don’t let families with older boys stay together. Splitting up their already traumatized family was not an option. Floors in a rotating series of friends’ houses became the erratic drill.
