Social Programs
Public Housing Funds Spent on Middle-Class Families
Published August 02, 2009 @ 01:36PM PT
[Atlanta Housing Authority CEO Renee] Glover said that pushing out chronic public housing residents is the only way to break the cycle of poverty, and she has led many of the nation's housing authority leaders to the same conclusion.
Thanks to the Associated Press, I finally get some hard numbers on HOPE VI's - and our nation's housing authorities - impact on reducing deeply affordable housing in the U.S. As we've covered here previously, Atlanta is nearing the final demolition of its public housing projects. It's doubly sad to read about this as I learn that Atlanta was home to the first public housing project in the U.S.: Techwood Homes. As ATL abandons its developments for mixed-income complexes, we have also abandoned the original spirit and intent of the program, evoked by a former President:
President Franklin D. Roosevelt heralded the project as "a tribute to useful work under government supervision" and the first step in building a safety net for the working poor during the Depression.
These days, the US Dept. of Housing & Urban Development spends its money building housing for the middle class.
Annie E. Casey Foundation Calls for Updated Poverty Measure
Published August 01, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
As I'm scrolling through the weekend poverty news, I see that this week the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its 20th annual Kids Count report on child poverty in the U.S. The information is presented in a user-friendly on-line "data book" that I recommend checking out to learn more about the particulars of your state.
I took a look at the summary brief of the report and was pleased to see that in their recommendations for making better use of data to drive policy, that improvements include updating the US poverty measure to reflect contemporary economic and political realities. Why collect data if it's based on outmoded definitions of hardship? Excellent point! More on this below the fold.
KnoxNews.com has a handy round-up of the key findings in the report, based on data collected through 2006 (the current recession will be reflected in their next report):
The report documented improvements since 2000 in the infant mortality rate, child death rate, teen death rate, high school dropout rate, and teens not in school and not working. Four areas have worsened: low-birthweight babies, children living with jobless or underemployed parents, children in poverty, and children in single-parent families. (my emphases)
Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi - Katrina's darlings, weep - continue to rank worst among states for child well-being.
I rarely do this, but this extensive block quote from KnoxNews.com captures perfectly efforts to redefine the poverty measure is - check it out after the jump.
Subsistence is the Only Choice
Published July 29, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
Monday's post about the lack of housing affordability for anyone working minimum wage struck a chord with many readers; to date, it's driven the most readers to this blog. I noticed that after folks read it, they tended to root around in our Actions to see what they could do. There's a lot of options, but here's a couple suggestions:
- Join a campaign for a Living Wage;
- Join a coalition of affordable housing advocates to push for more quality housing for low-income Americans, especially for families, the elderly and the disabled;
- Fight for welfare "reforms" that count higher education towards work and expand access to subsidized childcare and for longer periods of time. (There's actually a lot more that could be done, but I'm trying to keep you all focused.)
Talking about poverty day in and day out can get pretty debilitating - I can't imagine how it is for my readers and loved ones who live it everyday. I'm feeling particularly beat down this morning by the combination of this absolutely horrendous report of the tragic confluence of child poverty, tenant exploitation and substandard housing from New Orleans, as well as the insistence from many readers around the web that minimum wage is generous enough - that if immigrants can get by, why can't we; that it will make teen workers more irresponsible, that it will hurt the businesses too meager or cheap or profit-oriented to even pay benefits. Bull. Bull. And more bull.
The CA budget's devastating local impact
Published July 27, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
I mentioned in passing last week California's plan to seize funds from cities and towns to close its budget gap. Now CA municipalities are gearing up to fight back against this "transfer of $4.4 billion in local tax revenue to Sacramento."
Consider the additional impact this reduction in funds will have on localities already juggling mandatory furloughs and layoffs of state employees, police, etc.:
- More layoffs;
- Further reductions in services and hours at libraries, public agencies, etc.;
- Public parks closed;
- Road repairs stalled;
- Redevelopment projects (good and bad) halted.
This last outcome is an interesting one.
New Federal Tenant Protections Passed
Published July 23, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
...Though immigrants find their civil and constitutional rights were violated by ICE "cowboys", according to a new report.
From Foreclosurebuzz.org:
The Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, PL 111-22 became effective May 20, 2009. It applies to foreclosures through December 2012 when the law sunsets. ... The new federal law enables a bona fide tenant (defined in the Act) who is leasing premises that are foreclosed upon to continue occupancy through the FULL TERM of the lease unless the new owner intends to use the property as his primary residence (in which case the new owner still must give the tenant 90 days notice to vacate).
Read the whole thing to understand the full extent of the new rule; the bill text is here (pgs 29-31).
Now if only we could do more towards expanding affordable rental housing and homeownership in the first place. The New America Foundation looks at Obama's 2010 asset building budget and concludes:
Despite these promising proposals, the landscape of asset-building opportunities for low- and moderate-income Americans remains limited. Not only do most tax subsidies go to those who already engage in the asset-building behavior that government wants to encourage, but few subsidies exist for asset building by people with lower incomes.
I'm working towards an afternoon deadline, so I'll leave it to all of you to discuss these developments.
Gorilla Marketing: Framing Poverty
Published July 21, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
As I was writing my brilliantly titled blog post this morning about California's budget cuts, :), I kept thinking about this report I heard on WBUR this morning concerning Mass. Governor Deval Patrick's proposed budget cuts and the impact on the state's zoos. The story ruefully points to the "benefit" of having two newspapers in Boston (for how much longer, one wonders) and how their warring coverage of the threatened euthanizing of zoo animals due to budget reducations distracted us from the direct human impact of those cuts.
"All the while this Animal House drama played out, other victims of the governor’s budget vetoes – from senior care to education to services for children and families – were virtually ignored.
Which brings us to the third eternal truth of budget-cut coverage: It’s a zero-sum game. Every photo of Little Joe displaces an image of elderly hardship or shuttered libraries.
That’s guerrilla warfare of an entirely different kind."
Pun intended! Chortle, chortle.
But in all seriousness, I get that reduction in amenities like zoos, libraries, music classes, etc. have a detrimental impact on our quality of life and human development. But, I'd argue, so does leaving our elderly to ration their meds or to let kids' asthma go untreated or to relinquish teens to idle, hot summer afternoons with little to do. I was one who fell prey to the zoo story (heh). I pay a remarkable little amount of attention to local politics given I was raised in this state and have been back for 5 years now, but I went so far as to post the zoo story on facebook, chuckling at the idea of the zoo admin holding the legislature hostage with threats of dead animals and weeping children. (The zoos' cuts were restored.)
I'm not sure what lesson to take here: reporter John Carroll's original point that kids and animals are winning causes every time, or the uglier, flip side of that that hearing about poor grandma eating her cat food or freezing to death in the winter makes us so uncomfortable that we'd rather just not hear about it. Why is that? I get our easy moralizing about poor mothers, given we're a society that believes we have the right to legislate reproductive behavior. But why don't we feel a similar level of protectiveness for our elders as we do for kids? Am I way off here? Social Security is fairly sacrosanct; so maybe I'm wrong.
But there's no denying that people are much more jazzed about their pets or zoo charges than they are their most vulnerable neighbors.
Privatizing Welfare
Published July 17, 2009 @ 12:30PM PT
Or so Schwarzenegger proposes (I swear, this guy'll do anything to keep himself in the PiA headlines!):
A proposal that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been pushing in closed-door budget talks would tie the state, with little oversight or review, into a multibillion-dollar computer system likely to be run by the private sector to enroll low-income Californians in welfare, food stamp and healthcare programs.
The concern laid out in the bulk of the article is the Governator's attempt in times of crisis to ram through a pet project that has not been fully vetted. The Administration makes the usual argument that cost savings lie ahead in a centralized system. Critics point to the disastrous results from other states' attempts to privatize and centralize public assistance admin. And as you might imagine, these enormously expensive investments in system-wide changes can be difficult to undo.
In principle, I am generally supportive of centralized systems, but they present their own set of problems as they tend not to acknowledge or be able to respond to the specifics of certain populations, regions, etc. (A national federal poverty line that doesn't reflect regional costs of living is a good example.) Of greater concern to me here is the privatization piece. Privatization also has its place, but there's a few too many big stories of awarding funds to private contractors on the assumption that they can run programs and services more effectively than the government only to have them completely botch the job. I find this is particularly likely when for-profit contractors enter the sensitive or "niche" space like working with people suffering from economic hardship.
This strikes me as a pursuit on purely ideological grounds - or to benefit cronies. Forgive me for not finding these answers before pontificating, but what exactly are Schwarzenegger's reasons for wanting to privatize public assistance? Beyond the speculative cost savings? What's the problem with the decentralized, county-based system? Are so many recipients so frequently moving around the state that too much data is getting lost in the system? What successes of the existing system would he seek to preserve? How much disruption in service could recipients feasibly expect?
These are just a few of endless questions we should be asking about this dubious proposal. With California, the drama just does not end. And the poorest among us are paying the price.
