Housing
Incarceration Hurts Kids Most
Published August 21, 2009 @ 05:12AM PT
NYT columnist Nicholas D. Kristof strikes a resounding note of common sense in his "Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons" column,
It’s time for a fundamental re-evaluation of the criminal justice system...so that we’re no longer squandering money that would be far better spent on education or health.
Kristof makes a strong case for education over incarceration, something that resonates common sense, especially considering the devastating effects of poverty, homelessness, incarceration and the like on both parents and the kids of incarcerated parents.
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.
Katrina: Obama's Unfulfilled Promise
Published August 19, 2009 @ 06:32AM PT
The clamor for President Obama to mark the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is falling on deaf ears at the White House. Obama, who used New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as a campaign backdrop with the same aplomb as that rascal John Edwards, has declined to respond to calls for him to fulfill his campaign promise to make the equitable recovery of the Gulf Coast a priority.
In the meantime, activists and advocates are preparing commemorations, reports and report cards to mark the destruction of a region the size of Britain - a man-made disaster that has displaced tens of thousands of residents to this day. Recently, economic human rights advocates wrapped up an investigation for UN Habitat on the government's forced evictions in New Orleans. Read more after the jump and sign our pledge to support economic human rights!
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?
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.
