Social Programs
CA to become first state with no public assistance?
Published May 31, 2009 @ 08:28AM PT
Obviously, as long as government exists, it will provide some level of public benefit to us all. But Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposed budget cuts in California are so deep that they would outright eliminate temporary assistance to needy families (TANF, or "welfare"):
Ending cash assistance for 1.3 million impoverished state residents, for example, would make California the only state with no welfare program.
"Every single first-world nation has a safety net program for children," said Will Lightbourne, Santa Clara County's social services director. "This would return us to the era of Dickens — you'd have to go back to the 19th century to find a comparable proposal."
Dickensian. You know you're living through hard times when your governance is compared to the abject poverty and exploitation of 19th century England. That's rough.
The Governator's not the only bad guy here. Voters rejected ballot proposals last week to balance the budget via tax increases, borrowing and basically moving $$ around to plug holes. California's "direct democracy" has proven so dicey that for the first time in 150+ years, Constitutional reform might actually be in play. But will the state close all its parks, and drop welfare and healthcare and tuition assistance for low-income youth to make this happen? I shudder at the thought.
Photo of a mural from LAMP Community on Skid Row in Los Angeles, taken by lewisha1990. Can Californians come together for economic recovery? How many new households will end up on Skid Row?
The Reagan Revolution
Published May 28, 2009 @ 03:29PM PT
We're still feeling its effects today. I'm doing some dissertation research and I'm reading the book description of "Poverty and Power: The Political Representation of Poor Americans." Here's a stat I've long been looking for:
In 1981 alone, 70 percent of the $35 billion cut from the federal budget came from programs for the poor.
It goes on to talk about the "Reagan/Bush agenda," which seems fitting for George W. much more so than George H.W., wouldn't you say?
The high point of the 1980s, according to this book?
His findings delineate how electoral policy and economic change in the 1980s posed a direct threat to the welfare of the poor, and suggest reasons why no massive mobilization for social justice emerged. Still, the dogged efforts of advocates and activists culminated in the passage of the 1987 McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, the first positive federal intervention into domestic social policy since the Reagan inauguration.
Discuss.
Feeding the Hungry Healthy Food is Not "Snobbery"
Published May 28, 2009 @ 09:02AM PT
Despite the mushroom risotto sometimes served to guests at the Washington, DC-based homeless center Miriam's Kitchen, the organization's leaders are certainly not food snobs.
This is a fact apparently missed by National Review's Julie Gunlock who writes in her playfully-titled piece "Let Them Eat Arugala" that Miriam's Kitchen and other non-profit organizations serving the homeless throughout the nation should be ashamed for refusing to serve perfectly "good" food to their guests simply because it lacks any nutritional value.
She laments that the refusal of Miriam's Kitchen to serve high-calorie, high-fat donuts to its guests is driving the organization to stray from its goal of feeding the city's hungry population. The article goes on to state that the:
dismissal of donuts betrays an expanding food snobbery that once was confined to food magazines and ladies who lunch, but now is showing up in the unlikeliest of places, like food banks and homeless shelters.
What Ms. Gunlock does not understand is that feeding the hungry is about so much more than simply filling stomachs with empty calories.
Should We Embrace Power-Law Policies?
Published May 20, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Three years ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a long article in The New Yorker about permanent supportive housing - the social program that houses and provides social services the chronically homeless, often mentally ill - in which he explained the power-law theory behind the policy. I personally like designing policies around power-law distributions, even as it challenges our notions of universalism - equality of opportunity and social support for all, that is.
Maryland Poor Sue for Benefits
Published May 18, 2009 @ 04:00PM PT
Thompson is one of thousands of Marylanders who have waited longer than the legal limit for assistance approval. As of March, there were about 7,100 overdue medical assistance applications from children and parents, and 4,100 backlogged food assistance requests, according to the most recently available data from human resources.
The bad economy has exacerbated an already overburdened approval process. Assistance offices are being flooded with more needy applicants at a time when the state's dire financial straits prompted a state hiring freeze that until recently deprived the department of the workers necessary to ensure timely approval.
New child welfare programs offer respite care by volunteer families for overburdened parents in crisis. (Note I use the word "parents" and the NYT uses "mothers." Are there no fathers in crisis?)
Europe's strong social safety net to blame for its anticipated slower recovery than the U.S. Cuz we're clearly close to bouncing back ourselves...!
Next door to Disney World, homelessness is on the rise.
And in Chicago, permanent supportive housing shows health benefits for the homeless!
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.
