Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force
Social Responsibilities Round Table
of the American Library Association
D.C.'s 2010 Homeless Services Budget cut of 20M
Saturday October 3, 2009
“D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) said Friday that the $11 million cut in local funding and $9 million cut in federal funding for homeless services was revealed to him Thursday as he prepared for an oversight hearing.
‘Obviously, I was taken by surprise and furious because we have a tenuous relationship with the community as it is,” said Wells, chairman of the Human Services Committee, which oversees the city agency responsible for serving the homeless. “You have to have honesty and transparency in actions, and this undercuts the relationship we’ve developed with the community.’”
For the full article click here.
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Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
Monday September 7, 2009
Barbara Ehrenreich seems to think so. Read her article here.
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Housing as Health Care
Monday August 3, 2009
Dr. Jessie Gaeta, of Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, was interviewed on Talk of the Nation’s “What Works” segment at 3:00 p.m. EST today, August 3, 2009.
Listen to the interview archived at www.npr.org.
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How the "Already Poor" Are Faring
Monday June 15, 2009
Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed and This Land Is Their Land, reports on the U.S. recession:
The human side of the recession, in the new media genre that’s been called “recession porn,” is the story of an incremental descent from excess to frugality, from ease to austerity. The super-rich give up their personal jets; the upper middle class cut back on private Pilates classes; the merely middle class forgo vacations and evenings at Applebee’s. In some accounts, the recession is even described as the “great leveler,” smudging the dizzying levels of inequality that characterized the last couple of decades and squeezing everyone into a single great class, the Nouveau Poor, in which we will all drive tiny fuel-efficient cars and grow tomatoes on our porches …
When I called food banks and homeless shelters around the country, most staff members and directors seemed poised to offer press-pleasing tales of formerly middle-class families brought low. But some, like Toni Muhammad at Gateway Homeless Services in St. Louis, admitted that mostly they see “the long-term poor,” who become even poorer when they lose the kind of low-wage jobs that had been so easy for me to find from 1998 to 2000. As Candy Hill, a vice president of Catholic Charities U.S.A., put it, “All the focus is on the middle class—on Wall Street and Main Street—but it’s the people on the back streets who are really suffering.”
Recession porn? Here’s more.
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Plant a Row for the Hungry
Sunday May 31, 2009
Plant A Row
is a public service program of the Garden Writers Association and the GWA Foundation. Their program helps feed hungry Americans.
They write, “According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1 in 8 households in the United States experiences hunger or the risk of hunger. Many frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for an entire day. Approximately 33 million people, including 13 million children, have substandard diets or must resort to seeking emergency food because they cannot always afford the food they need. The demand for hunger assistance has increased by 70% in recent years, and research shows that hundreds of hungry children and adults are turned away from food banks each year because of lack of resources…
There are over 84 million households with a yard or garden in the U.S. If every gardener plants one extra row of vegetables and donates their surplus to local food agencies and soup kitchens, a significant impact can be made on reducing hunger.”
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