Tag Archives: poverty

Economic Crisis related links for October 31st, 2009

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LA Independent: A one-man street team: Once one of Hollywood’s homeless, Mark Horvath turns his knack for storytelling into a personalized video chronicle of a national tragedy.: Through his experiences, he has come to realize that the only way to truly stop homelessness is by getting people off streets, and into homes and jobs.

NYTimes: Foreclosures Force Ex-Homeowners to Turn to Shelters: “So, as lean times endure and paychecks disappear, homeless shelters are absorbing those who have run out of alternatives.”

Homeless Resource Center: Fonfield-Ayinla, Gladys : My Experience Parenting While Homeless: It was never a goal of mine to be homeless, but it happened.

NYTimes: Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways : oreclosures, layoffs, rising food and fuel prices and inadequate supplies of low-cost housing have stretched families to the extreme, and those pressures have trickled down to teenagers and preteens.

NYTimes: For Runaways, Sex Buys Survival: Nearly a third of the children who flee or are kicked out of their homes each year engage in sex for food, drugs or a place to stay, according to a variety of studies published in academic and public health journals.

NPR: Poverty Rates Highest Since 1997 (and maybe higher than in the last 50 years?)

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NPR: Poverty Rates Highest Since 1997:

David Johnson, a senior statistician with the Census Bureau, says the increase is clearly linked to jobs.

“Children in nonworking families, children in female-headed households, children in families that receive food stamps, their poverty rate didn’t change much,” Johnson says. “Whereas children in earner households, the poverty was affected a lot. So you see a lot of it tied to the earnings change in 2007, 2008.”

That makes a lot of people nervous. If things were so bad last year, what about now?

“These numbers are grim — grimmer than we expected,” says Robert Greenstein, head of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He notes that joblessness continues to rise.

“This creates a very serious concern, that if we already were at just under 40 million Americans in poverty in 2008 — before the biggest increases in unemployment — poverty is going to go much higher than that in 2009 and 2010,” Greenstein says.

In fact, he predicts that it could go higher than it’s been in 50 years.

“People don’t realize that homeless does not mean bum, addict. Homeless means without a home.”

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That’s Aislyn Oliver, who , along with her husband, John Washington, recently talked with Daniel Rubin, and shared their inspirational story with and the Inquirer.

As economy breaks, those with least are hurt the most

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Philadelphia Inquirer: Camden’s Tent City homeless keep up hope:

… The homeless say that this year’s census will show their numbers are swelling. Tent City is a microcosm of the homeless, with recovering addicts, jobless veterans and the mentally ill – ages 22 to 74 – all represented, Banks said.

In each tent, amid piles of donated blankets and cans of ethanol used for heat, there is a tale of heartbreak.

…Tent City is also known as Veterans Camp, for the several Vietnam War vets who live there, or J-Camp, for Banks’ native Jamaica. In the summer, Banks said, as many as 60 people stay there.

Some of those interviewed yesterday have been at Tent City for only a few months, and most don’t plan to stay.

“I still have dreams,” Floyd said. “I still have things I want to do. I want to be a father, a family man. I don’t plan to stay here all my life. I told [my daughters] I’d make it.”

Speaking under a steady, freezing rain, Floyd declared: “It can’t stay rainy every day.”

The safety net is no longer

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Inquirer: What about the safety net? ‘A lot of people are falling through.’

As unemployment is failing, Welfare rolls grow for first time since the 90s.

Horrible case in point, reported in the LATimes, is the story of the Himmel family – now living in a SUV – their daughter, Destiny, 16, was diagnosed with leukemia.

High School Dropout Epidemic

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NYTimes: States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School:

…many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.