14%

Hard Times Spreading Just Like The Flu

Apologies for the long lay off, I'm blaming it on the holiday. That, and lethargy.

In any case, here's a little news roundup to bring us up to date.

The NLIHC has released a statement detailing a serious decline in the number of homes affordable to people with extremely low incomes:

This longstanding deficit of rental homes that are affordable for the poorest households is getting worse because the number of extremely low income households is increasing, while the number of rental homes they can afford dwindles. ACS data show that the number of all renter households in the United States increased by 2.4% between 2007 and 2008, but the number of extremely low income renter households increased by 3.5%. During the same period, the supply of all rental homes increased by 2.2%, but the supply of rental homes affordable for extremely low income families decreased by 1.8%. Households with extremely low incomes continue to be the only income group facing an absolute shortage of affordable rental housing.

According to the NYT, food stamp use has risen so much that it's actually losing some of its stigma:

With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

It has grown so rapidly in places so diverse that it is becoming nearly as ordinary as the groceries it buys. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.

The WSJ takes a look at the "jobless gender gap":

The unemployment rate for men, 11.4%, based on seasonally adjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, outpaces the rate for women, 8.8%. We now have the largest jobless gender gap since tracking became possible in 1948. The gap reached its previous peak, 2.5 points, in 1967 and 1978. Today's gap has exceeded that for three months. It's endured at two points or above for an unprecedented length, eight months and counting.

As of the end of October, the U.S. had lost 7.3 million jobs in this Great Recession. Men account for 5.3 million of that loss. The shift is so dramatic that women now constitute 49.9% of the work force and will soon outnumber men.

And Arizona began requiring that TANF recipients submit to drug tests:

The tests are mandated by a new state law that prevents DES from giving cash assistance to adults who test positive for illegal-drug use. Officials believe the bill, which the Legislature passed during its third special session, could save the state $1.7 million a year in cash assistance.

As of October, about 22,000 adults were receiving cash-assistance benefits as part of Arizona's welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The main goal for lawmakers was for the state to save money in "these dire financial times," said Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, a member of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.

An interesting quote, that last one. And here I thought that social welfare policy should be crafted in such a way that it actually improves the lives of those receiving it...alleviate poverty and all that...not save money in the short term.

Guess the Copper State and I are not of the same mind.  

Got You Locked In Like A Three-peat Offender, No Rights, No Votes

The Equal Justice Initiative just released a report on Alabama's sex offender registry law (the Community Notification Act), the title of which is "Creating Homelessness and Permanent Punishment." Which should give you a sense of the tone of the report.

As it turns out, Alabama has one of the most restrictive sex offender laws. It's so strict, in fact, that all sex offenders (even those convicted of misdemeanor offenses) are prohibited from living within 2,000 feet of a school, college, or daycare center. Essentially placing entire towns and cities off limits.

And it gets worse, some highlights below: 

"Alabama requires imprisoned sex offenders to provide a suitable address 180 days before their release from prison. Failure to provide a suitable address constitutes a new felony offense, punishable by an additional 10 years in prison. It can be impossible for someone who is poor and incarcerated to find a suitable home, particularly when his or her family residence is off-limits under the CNA. Prisoners’ phone access is limited and prohibitively expensive; they have no access to rental property listings, no access to the Internet, and no social services assistance or other way to identify available housing."

"The CNA makes no exceptions for mentally ill, disabled, or elderly people. In fact, the law has forced elderly patients who should be in nursing homes to remain incarcerated instead. One elderly EJI client completed his 20-year sentence in 2008, at age 74. Deaf and suffering from dementia, he needed nursing-home care, but no nursing homes could be identified that complied with the CNA. He was prosecuted due to his inability to provide an address and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he will likely die."

I can't help but think of Florida, where a similar law has forced people to live under a bridge--with the State's OK--because it is the only space in the city that does not fall within 2,500 feet of a place where children gather.

It continues to amaze me that laws so clearly intended to keep people from finding any stability after incarceration could possibly be considered good social policy. Even if you concede that someone convicted of a sex crime is dangerous once released (which, by the way, I do not normally concede) how does it follow that they will be less dangerous if disallowed from finding decent housing?  

First Years Of My Life I Thought That Food Stamps Were Money

Time for a Friday morning News Roundup.

Over in San Francisco:

The number of low-income households cut off by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. after they fell behind on their utility bills jumped 75 percent this year, according to a state report released Thursday.

For the 12 months that ended in August, 91,393 low-income households lost their utility service, compared with 52,202 in the previous 12-month period. Most soon paid to have service restored.

Anytime I start hearing claptrap about how things are getting better I like to check my urge to believe against facts like that.

Up in the Bay State budget troubles are gutting social service programs, placing hundreds of families on the edge of homelessness.

The state estimates that the children of 9,100 families with parents so severely disabled that they qualify for federal Supplemental Security Income benefits will lose their state cash assistance as a result of the $600 million in budget cuts that Governor Deval Patrick announced late last month. The $15.8 million reduction of the Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, on top of $8 million in cuts made earlier this fiscal year, means families who receive the assistance will lose an average of more than $400 a month.

And, after writing about those new hunger #s the other day I decided to do a little more digging. Below is a chart showing the increase in the number of food stamp recipients in NYC between 2005 and 2009. (You can find the original here.)

Long story short: Gotham was distributing food stamps to 1,083,305 in January, 2005, by September, 2009, that number was 1,583,581.

Put another way: The number of food stamp recipients in NYC is about equal to the populations of Boston, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore combined.

And I Got A Criminal Record That Will Never Come Clean

Finally, some good CJ news, seems like it's been awhile since we've had some.

On the final day of their legislative session the Mass Senate passed a huge piece of criminal justice legislation (it still has to pass the House) that includes some smart measures. An example: It calls for early release for non-violent drug offenders...that move alone would save the State an estimated 10-15 million a year.

But the part of the bill I'm most pleased with deals with Mass' criminal records law, which is called CORI (Criminal Offender Records Information). Advocacy groups have been fighting a low intensity war against CORI for years, and of late they've picked up some mainstream support (Mayor Menino, Governor Patrick). But reforming criminal records laws is just one of those issues that no one wants to be out in front of, and so even after it had entered the mainstream of debate reform efforts kept stalling.

While I was in Boston I developed a story about CORI that was never published (My editor pulled the plug at the last minute, saying "the issue just doesn't affect enough of our readers."). While developing it I interviewed a woman who, though she had never served any time, was shackled by the records law.

She had been living with a man who was dealing drugs, and when he was arrested she was charged in conjunction with him. She was offered what seemed like a good plea bargain. She took it and went on with her life without ever serving a day in jail. She had a job at the time, and so the consequences of having a criminal record didn't enter the calculus of her life until her employer went out of business and she was forced into the work force.

At the time it was legal for employers to ask applicants if they had an entry in the CORI database on their application forms, this was referred to as 'checking the box' (that has since changed). For more than a year this woman dutifully applied to jobs and checked the CORI box. She didn't receive a single interview offer--even though she had a 15-year history of steady employment. 

When her unemployment was about to end, and she was facing the prospect of becoming homeless with her three kids, she stopped checking the CORI box. She had a job within the month.

But it doesn't end there. She stayed at the job, liked it, and was given two promotions. Then she was offered a third promotion, and asked to fill out a new application form as part of the process. She came clean, admitted she had a CORI and apologized for not admitting as much when she was first hired. The promotion offer was rescinded, and she was out of work within a couple months. This, after having been at the company for more than three years.

When I met her she had been out of work for more than a year. She was depressed, and considering going on disability because she was sure no one was going to offer her a job. With all her new found free time she had hoped to volunteer at her daughter's grade school, but she was barred from doing so because she had a CORI entry. It seemed like that had been the last straw for her.

And understandably so, if you ask me.

Here's to the Mass State Senate, and to hoping that the House does the right thing.

Still Hungry, Ribs Is Still Touchin' My Chest

The Department of Agriculture has just released a report entitled Household Food Security In The US, 2008, giving us a fresh snapshot of the past.

"Household Food Security" sounds more than a bit wonkish so, just to be clear, lets clarify that the report is studying hunger. And, if you're a devoted reader of 14%, its contents are not shocking.

While most people in this, the wealthiest country in the world, have no trouble feeding themselves, 14.6% of households--a total of 17 million--were food insecure (read: unable to eat) at some point during 2008. That figure is the highest it has been since the survey began in 1995. Among that group 6.7 million households had "very low food security," meaning that "food intake of some household members was reduced, and their normal eating patterns were disrupted."

On a given day last year the number of people going hungry was significantly lower than the figure given above because the higher figure includes every household that had difficulty finding enough to eat at some point during the year. That said, make no mistake, it is nearly as disruptive to a life and a psyche to fear hunger as it is to be hungry. 

I'm not fond of drawing tenuous parallels between not-quite-related topics, but I'm gonna have to say that we should be ashamed that, as a country, we are willing to dump more than a trillion into a bailout package, but can't bother to fund federal food and nutrition programs sufficiently.

Down In The Shadow Of The Penitentiary, Out By The Gas Fires Of The Refinery

The National Alliance to End Homelessness has released an update to their homeless veterans report, "Vital Mission."

In it they document that:

Approximately 131,000 veterans were homeless at a point in time in 2008. This is a rate of 58 homeless veterans for every 10,000 veterans, more than double the rate of homelessness among the general population. New data on the demographics of veterans and homeless veterans also reveal that some veterans of the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are beginning to receive homeless services from the VA and that female veterans are increasingly represented in the pool of veterans who may face homelessness.

That figure, 131,000, represents a decline in the estimated number of homeless veterans since the last update in 2007. But unfortunately, the report concludes that the decline is the result of estimation refinement and does not represent an actual decrease in the number of homeless veterans. In fact, on the actual counting dates that were the basis for the 2008 estimate there was an increase in the actual number of homeless veterans counted. 

Additionally:

• While the general veteran and homeless veteran populations are overwhelmingly male (93 and 96 percent, respectively), the representation of female veterans is much higher among younger veteran cohorts.
• Though 40 percent of veterans are in the 65 and older age category, most homeless veterans are between the ages of 35 and 54.
• Combat veterans of the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq represent 4 percent of the homeless veteran population. Most homeless veterans with combat exposure served in the Vietnam War.
• The race/ethnicity distribution of homeless veterans is very similar to that of the overall homeless population. African Americans are overrepresented among both the homeless veteran and overall homeless populations.

The Highway Is Jammed With Broken Heroes

And of course, Pacquiao won. Congratulations to him.

The bar is ever set higher, after this win Pac-Man has won seven titles in seven different weight classes. A new record, not likely to be broken or matched anytime soon.

But in this case it was less important that he won than how he won. Though he dominated Cotto nearly from the beginning, he was never brutal. At several points he even stopped throwing punches when he could have pressed his advantage. I don't know the man's mind but it seems like he did so out of concern for Cotto. That's exactly the sort of behavior we need in boxing right now.

The most beautiful contradiction of the event is that boxing--brutal as it seems--was peacemaker for the night.

From the AP:

Southern Davao city's streets were virtually deserted and Mayor Rodrigo Duterte canceled his regular radio program to watch the fight.

Soldiers also took a rest from chasing rebels to watch in camp gyms. Muslim and communist rebels have said they also watched Pacquiao's previous fights but there was no immediate word from them.

At Manila's suburban armed forces headquarters, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and his son took the front seats at the army gym to watch the fight with thousands of officers and soldiers and their family members.

"That's what I call a war," Teodoro said after the fight. "The tenacity of Manny Pacquiao is really admirable."

Before I forget, here's to Z Gorres, who collapsed in the ring after winning his bout Friday night. He was fighting a lead-in to the Pacquiao vs Cotto fight, and after winning on points in 10 rounds he just wilted. Get better.

You're Now Rockin With The Champion, You Know You're In A War That Can't Be Won

The Manny Pacquiao vs Miguel Cotto title fight is upon us. In a little under an hour the pugilists in question will be jabbing and countering, acting and sweating, and hurting and hiding it.

There's plenty to say about this fight. It's the best publicized, best received fight in years. Pacquiao is going to win, Cotto is going to make a good showing. Their fight will save boxing and return it to the prominence it lost so-long-ago...the fight will be forgotten in a few weeks--and nothing can save boxing. Pacquiao is distracted, Cotto's trainer is inexperienced. The impending fight prompted Philippine guerrilla fighters to release an Irish priest they had been holding captive. (They explained themselves by telling him, “Your freedom is our freedom. We don’t want to be here for a long time, too. And we want to watch Pacquiao’s fight.”)

But none of that is very interested. (Except that bit about the Mindanao rebels and the priest, that's really something isn't it?) And, ultimately, none of it matters. What happens in the ring tonight will have only the slightest resemblance to the prognostications of the fighters, promoters and handicappers, because in boxing, as in war, the plan is the first thing to go.

Once I heard someone comment that writers like boxing because fighters, like writers, are held solely responsible for what they produce, for their victories and humiliations, their brilliance or dourness. I think there's something to that. Even though a boxer is produced by a team of trainers and nutritionists and managers, and acolytes, there is only one gloved fist raised at the end of the last round. Similarly, when us ink-stained-wretches win awards and get quoted and cited and envied, we don't mention our editors and sources and publishers.

Because we buy our own myth, so too do we buy the boxing myth.

But it's not only writers. Long before there were computers and role playing escapism, boxers were society's avatars. Jack Johnson either a god-send or a demon, depending (largely) on the phenotype of the observer. Same with Joe Louis. And Mickey Ward and Arturo Gatti (RIP) were either dim-witted brutes or gladiators and champions, depending on the color of your collar.

Which fighter wins and which loses matters, sure, but not as much as what the audience wants to see in the contest and the participants. 

And it's not only famous fighters, either. Put me in a folding chair at a Golden Gloves fight and I'll pick a favorite within 30-seconds. Maybe I think one of the fighters is too confident. I don't like them. Maybe one is sublimely earnest but keeps dropping their jab. Them I like. If I know the fighters records I root for the underdog. Whichever I choose, the other is a devil. I know this makes no sense, but so it goes. 

The most interested thing about Ali was that you couldn't put a finger on him. He was always The Champ, but the US government was after him, so he was also an underdog. And he was a braggart, but such a clever one that he charmed even doubters. Somehow it didn't matter that he was a social conservative, because he was against the Vietnam War.

Like Ali, it's hard to put a finger on Pacquiao vs Cotto, and that's the fascinating thing about this fight. 

Pacquiao is so confident, and he's a winner, so there's part of me that is dying to see a Douglas vs Tyson style upset. But then there's his standing in the Philippines. Ali in his prime had nothing on him when it comes to hero worship. That he's the hero of a country the US has tread upon so heavily makes me want the guy to win.

And then there's Cotto, from Puerto Rico, another island the US has besotted. He's more unassuming, and not favored to win. He's from a working class family, and his uncle just put a brick through the window of his sports car. He's real people, and I like that. His baby faced trainer, who barely speaks English, shook Pacquiao's hand recently and said, very softly, "Good Luck...you'll need it." It was a charming moment, and I'm a sucker for those.

How to wrap this up? I have no idea...so many potential digressions, so little time. I do need to wrap it up though, the fight will begin in minutes.

Maybe I'll just say "May the best man win," with full knowledge of how ridiculous that statement is, and knowing too that I don't mean it. I want My Guy to win: Better, worse, whatever. Now I just need to figure out which is My Guy.

Out Here Needin' Public Housing, Out Here Tryna Make Ends Meet

St. Barnard Parish--the Louisiana Parish I reported on in Sept that has been fighting all efforts by developers to build subsidized housing within their borders--has canceled a planned special election that was expected to result in a ban on all multifamily housing development.

Rather than continue to defy the courts, the Parish Council rescinded the ordinance that set up the referendum.

It's a quiet end to an ugly conflict. How ugly? So ugly that one community member (not an outlier) claimed during public testimony before the Parish Council that the occupants of the proposed apartments would “sit in the yard or the balcony all day with the music up, screaming at their neighbors, dealing drugs.” And that they would be “gang-banging somebody or... kicking the door down every couple of days." No one on the Parish Council hearing this testimony contradicted the statements made.

The residents of St. Bernard Parish (which is 90% white) were so set against multifamily housing that the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center felt the need to create a web site entitled Multi-Family Housing: The Facts, to dispel the racist myths swirling through the community--because four concurrent court cases and repeated court orders were not enough to soften their stance.

I'd like to think that the move signals a change in attitude rather than a resignation that the court was going to overturn their referendum, but I'm too pessimistic for that.

To Be Walkin This Borderline Of Detroit City Limits, It's Different

This summer my best friend and I scrapped together some extra cash, rented a cheap car, and aimed it toward the Rust Belt.

I don't think either of us ever came up with a great 20 word explanation for why we did that, but the gist was that we wanted to see what financial collapse really looks like. We didn't want the academic view, or the journalistic anecdote, we wanted to wander through Youngstown's abandoned city center. For a couple City Boys critical of our current economic system, it was an eye opening and largely worldview-affirming trip. 

When we returned I spent some time writing up a travelogue that I haven't been able to sell yet, but the trip, and the time I spent writing, cemented my interest in the US' forgotten industrial cities. And so it was with great interest that I read this New Geography blog suggesting that Detroit might become viable again if much of it was converted to farm land.

The argument being made is that by concentrating Detroit's population downtown, and opening up much of the newly freed land to small scale farms, you could create jobs, grow the economy, improve health (by improving food quality), and create a city of a manageable size.

Apparently, some of this is already happening, with positive effect:

About five hundred small plots have been created by an international organization called Urban Farming, founded by acclaimed songwriter Taja Sevelle. Realizing that Detroit was the most agriculturally promising of the fourteen cities in five countries where Urban Farming now exists, Sevelle moved herself and her organization’s headquarters there last year. Her goal is to triple the amount of land under cultivation in Detroit every year. All food grown by Urban Farming is given free to the poor. 

We didn't make it to Detroit this summer, we didn't have the time. But we did make it to Youngstown, and from what I've been able to discern the two cities share many issues. Reading that post I pictured Youngstown's open spaces filled in by parks and farm land instead of crumbling concrete, abandoned parking garages, and well-lit, empty office towers. There is no way to overstate how positive the change would be.  

(I took this picture in Youngstown. This abandoned hotel is right on the city's main commercial street.)