Federal
25% NOLA Public Housing Residents Lost
Published August 25, 2009 @ 08:53AM PT
Saturday August 29 marks the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of the US Gulf Coast. The pre-storm problem of deep poverty and racial inequality has worsened, and gone largely unreported. Those of us at Change.org have an opportunity to reverse that trend. It begins by educating ourselves on the enduring struggles down there to provide a safe, affordable place to live for all those who lost their homes due to a lethal combination of a natural disaster and wrongheaded public policy. To start: HUD cannot locate over 25% of public housing residents who were living in the now-demolished "Big Four" projects prior to the storm.
More, including what you can do, after the jump.
Ask Congress About Medicaid
Published August 19, 2009 @ 01:04PM PT
After Congress failed to meet self-imposed deadlines to put together a comprehensive plan before the August recess, it's clear healthcare reform has run into some major issues. Some of them - like the wailings of a wacky former Governor about "death panels" (sounds like bad siding) are easily dismissed. Others are issues that are not likely to go away, and may well affect what happens to healthcare reform when Congress resumes in September.
The press and many progressive advocates have latched onto the "public plan", shorthand for some sort of government run insurance plan which would serve as a backstop for households when no other insurance option was available. The "public plan" has come to symbolize, for the right, the threat of a "government takeover" of healthcare... and for the left it has become a rallying cry of necessity if reform is to be done right.
Neither is entirely the case. First, I agree with other progressive advocates urging you to call your members of Congress about healthcare reform. But rather than emphasizing the public plan, if you're concerned about healthcare and poverty... ask them how they plan to defend and strengthen Medicaid.
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...)
Hillary Endorses Economic Human Rights
Published August 17, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
Courtesy of our Social Entrepreneurship blog, I see that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced support for economic human rights (EHR) in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. Following on her trip to Africa, and responding to the US attempts to promote human rights (HR) in Africa, SOS Clinton answers:
...I also think that it's important to look at human rights more broadly than it has been defined. Human rights are also the right to a good job and shelter over your head and a chance to send your kids to school and get health care when your wife is pregnant. It's a much broader agenda. Too often it has gotten narrowed to our detriment."
Nice! I wonder: does this reflect a governing ideology in the Obama Administration?
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.
Action Alert: Modernize Poverty Measurement
Published August 11, 2009 @ 01:01PM PT
Two bills have been introduced in Congress to update our federal poverty measure that is based on an extremely antiquated estimated proportion of a family's budget spent on food. Both the House and Senate bills rely on National Academy of Science recommendations in which "the cost of food, clothing, housing, utilities and medical expenses be considered. Income from non-cash benefits, such as food stamps and government tax credits, should also be counted" in an updated poverty measure (right now, these social supports can tip people over the poverty line and deny them much needed assistance).
The linked news piece above shows that by following the NAS recommendations, the new poverty line for a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 kids) in 2007 $$ would jump from about $21k to almost $28k, an increase of almost 25%. To my eye, it still looks extremely low. We really need to make geographic considerations when tying assistance programs to estimated costs of living.
This reform is at the heart of the work we do as anti-poverty activists. So far, the House bill, introduced in June, has 10 sponsors, all Dems, and has probably gone on to a quiet convalescence in the House Ways and Means and House Oversight and Govt. Reform Committees. The Senate Bill is less than a week old, introduced by Dodd and co-sponsored by Sen. Bingaman of New Mexico (D). It's gone on to the Senate Health (etc.) Committee, which might have its hands full right about now.
Healthcare reform or not, this is one issue that can't wait. Contact Your Representatives (and Committee Members above) and tell them to support an updated poverty measure today!
(Difference in NAS and official poverty measures, from The Stanford Ctr for the Study of Poverty & Inequality)
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.
