Policy
Bush Years Lost Economic Decade
Published September 17, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
There's been a great deal of coverage of the latest census data on the increase in poverty in 2008. The bottom line? Bush stole all your money, and your health insurance is short-lived.
Fortunately, there's a growing push to modernize the poverty measure, which is based on 1955 data on the cost of food, calculated in haste in the 1960s. Back in the day, food costs were a third of a family's budget. Now they're one-seventh. Exactly - you don't even know how much that is, but it's relatively nominal compared to the expense of housing, medicine, clothing, etc.
Here's a quick round-up of coverage - the infuriating and the promising - you don't want to miss.
White Recession, Black Depression
Published September 14, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Barbara Ehrenreich published her fourth and final NYT column on poverty in the U.S. this week, raising the perennial issue of racial economic inequality. (Our previous coverage of Ehrenreich's pieces are here, here, and here.) From 2000 to 2007, African-American employment and incomes fell almost 3%. Now, as the "Great Recession" has engulfed us all, the unemployment rate among African-Americans is over 15% (compared to less than 9% for whites). The black-white and overall ethnic/racial wealth gap is nothing new, but it is easily overlooked at times of crisis when competing senses of "we're all in it together" versus white racial resentment towards President Obama blind us to the disproportionate burden African-Americans face in economic downturns.
Housing Choice in Crisis
Published September 12, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
My organization, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOFHAC), recently released an audit report about discrimination against Housing Choice Voucher holders (“HCVP” or “Section 8”) in the Greater New Orleans rental market. Our study revealed that landlords refused to consider voucher holders as tenants 82% of the time. Preliminary results also suggest that, due to intentional discrimination and program dysfunction, voucher holders end up relegated to a small, isolated, and likely low-resourced segment of the rental housing market. This is particularly problematic, since one of the stated goals of the Housing Choice Voucher Program is to promote race and class integration.
Audits in other areas of the country have turned up similar findings and point to the need for serious reform in federal housing policy. We recommend 10 actions to make housing policy more inclusive, fair and effective.
Our study demonstrates that while 75% of landlord refusals were outright rejections, 7% of the time, landlords added additional terms and conditions for voucher holders that were tantamount to a denial.
Yuppie Foodies and Hungry Children
Published September 10, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
On Labor Day this past Monday, Slow Food USA kicked off its new Time for Lunch campaign by staging "eat-ins" in various cities across the United States.
The purpose of these events, as well as the campaign in general, is to raise awareness about the need to increase healthy food in schools by reauthorizing the Child Nutrition Act before the legislation expires at the end of September.
The message of this campaign is right, but the image and the branding are completely wrong.
Slow Food--although being an organization whose mission I support--is the epitome of the yuppie-foodie groups, a pay-to-play network of gazpacho sipping gastro-enthusiasts.
Latin@s Most Likely To Die on Job
Published September 07, 2009 @ 06:47AM PT
That's a harsh title to jolt you out of your Labor Day holiday reprieve, I know. Courtesy of Poverty & Policy, I see that the National Council of La Raza has released a report on Latin@s in the low-wage job market. Like the National Employment Law Project study we covered last Wednesday, NCLR's research reveals a dangerous and highly unequal workplace for low-wage Latino workers, many of them immigrants. The report shows that smart, ethical immigration reform is the "first step" towards reducing worker exploitation and improving the job market for all low-wage workers.
1 in 5 Elderly are Poor
Published September 05, 2009 @ 10:38AM PT
When calculating poverty using the modernized measure from the National Academy of Sciences, the number of older adults living in poverty is nearly double the official rate. The whole article is worth reading for the ways current poverty numbers - among children, single mothers, in cities, etc. - would change if we updated the federal poverty measure.
Everyday that I blog I find more features, reports, news items, etc. than I can possibly cover here. But I don't want to let these stories slip by. So consider this your weekend afternoon news dump on poverty in the U.S.
Willingham, Innocent & Poor
Published September 04, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
H/t to G.D. at Postbourgie for inspiring me to sit down with the chilling report on the wrongful execution in Texas of an almost certainly innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham. The investigation and findings pointing to his innocence, and the likelihood that TX may become the first state in the nation to admit to killing an innocent human being, has been extensively covered in the media and on the blogs - including by Matt at our Criminal Justice blog. (Matt's also got an excellent follow-up post about the declining role of the media as a watchdog.)
I highly recommend reading the original New Yorker article if you have a moment this long weekend. Like so many wrongfully convicted, Willingham was poor. At the intersection of poverty and criminal injustice, we need to work to stop the death penalty and improve legal counsel for the indigent.
