History > 2007 > USA > Poverty (I)

Tent city in suburbs

is cost of home crisis

Fri Dec 21, 2007
8:18am EST
Reuters
By Dana Ford

ONTARIO, California (Reuters) - Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.

The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.

As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.

While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it's just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.

"They don't hit the streets immediately," said activist Jane Mercer. Most families can find transitional housing in a motel or with friends before turning to charity or the streets. "They only hit tent city when they really bottom out."

Steve, 50, who declined to give his last name, moved to tent city four months ago. He gets social security payments, but cannot work and said rents are too high.

"House prices are going down, but the rentals are sky-high," said Steve. "If it wasn't for here, I wouldn't have a place to go."

'SQUATTING IN VACANT HOUSES'

Nationally, foreclosures are at an all-time high. Filings are up nearly 100 percent from a year ago, according to the data firm RealtyTrac. Officials say that as many as half a million people could lose their homes as adjustable mortgage rates rise over the next two years.

California ranks second in the nation for foreclosure filings -- one per 88 households last quarter. Within California, San Bernardino county in the Inland Empire is worse -- one filing for every 43 households, according to RealtyTrac.

Maryanne Hernandez bought her dream house in San Bernardino in 2003 and now risks losing it after falling four months behind on mortgage payments.

"It's not just us. It's all over," said Hernandez, who lives in a neighborhood where most families are struggling to meet payments and many have lost their homes.

She has noticed an increase in crime since the foreclosures started. Her house was robbed, her kids' bikes were stolen and she worries about what type of message empty houses send.

The pattern is cropping up in communities across the country, like Cleveland, Ohio, where Mark Wiseman, director of the Cuyahoga County Foreclosure Prevention Program, said there are entire blocks of homes in Cleveland where 60 or 70 percent of houses are boarded up.

"I don't think there are enough police to go after criminals holed up in those houses, squatting or doing drug deals or whatever," Wiseman said.

"And it's not just a problem of a neighborhood filled with people squatting in the vacant houses, it's the people left behind, who have to worry about people taking siding off your home or breaking into your house while you're sleeping."

Health risks are also on the rise. All those empty swimming pools in California's Inland Empire have become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which can transmit the sometimes deadly West Nile virus, Riverside County officials say.

'TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT'

But it is not just homeowners who are hit by the foreclosure wave. People who rent now find themselves in a tighter, more expensive market as demand rises from families who lost homes, said Jean Beil, senior vice president for programs and services at Catholic Charities USA.

"Folks who would have been in a house before are now in an apartment and folks that would have been in an apartment, now can't afford it," said Beil. "It has a trickle-down effect."

For cities, foreclosures can trigger a range of short-term costs, like added policing, inspection and code enforcement. These expenses can be significant, said Lt. Scott Patterson with the San Bernardino Police Department, but the larger concern is that vacant properties lower home values and in the long-run, decrease tax revenues.

And it all comes at a time when municipalities are ill-equipped to respond. High foreclosure rates and declining home values are sapping property tax revenues, a key source of local funding to tackle such problems.

Earlier this month, U.S. President George W. Bush rolled out a plan to slow foreclosures by freezing the interest rates on some loans. But for many in these parts, the intervention is too little and too late.

Ken Sawa, CEO of Catholic Charities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, said his organization is overwhelmed and ill-equipped to handle the volume of people seeking help.

"We feel helpless," said Sawa. "Obviously, it's a local problem because it's in our backyard, but the solution is not local."

(Additional reporting by Andrea Hopkins in Ohio;

Editing by Mary Milliken and Eddie Evans)

Tent city in suburbs is cost of home crisis, R, 21.12.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1850682120071221

Health Savings Accounts

for Poor Tested

December 15, 2007
Filed at 3:08 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The popularity of health savings accounts for the poor will be put to the test in Indiana under a program approved Friday by the Bush administration. Under the plan, someone making $20,000 a year could get health coverage for about $19 a week.

Bush has long pushed health savings accounts as a way to slow the rising cost of medical care and extend basic coverage to the uninsured.

Under the Indiana program, eligible residents can pay up to 5 percent of their incomes into state-subsidized ''Personal Wellness and Responsibility Accounts'' that cover their initial medical expenses up to $1,100. Once that deductible is reached, private insurance purchased by the state kicks in.

Eligibility is limited to adults with incomes below twice the federal poverty level. The poverty level is now $10,210 for an individual and $20,650 for a family of four.

The waiver is the first of its kind for the Medicaid program, a state-federal partnership that provides health coverage to the poor and disabled.

Indiana officials said they've already received inquiries from more than 1,000 people interested in applying.

The program will be monitored closely because of the philosophical divide among lawmakers about the value of health savings accounts for the poor. Many say such accounts work best for healthier and higher-income people with low medical expenses.

Judith Solomon, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said she doubts that many people making $10,000 a year can afford to pay $500 for health insurance. She said that about 50,000 people lost Medicaid coverage in Oregon after that state got permission to raise insurance premiums to $20 a month.

''You can say it's better than nothing, but I just don't see how many of those folks will be able to afford it,'' Solomon said.

Indiana has allocated up to $114 million for the program in 2008 after its legislature voted to raise state taxes on cigarettes from 55.5 cents to 99.5 cents a pack.

The state is encouraging employers to contribute to their workers' accounts. Any money left at the end of the year can be rolled over to offset the following year's contributions if the beneficiary obtains certain screenings and services that help prevent illness.

''This is a big step forward that will lead to approximately 120,000 uninsured Hoosiers having the peace of mind of health insurance,'' said Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican who once served as Bush's director of the Office of Management and Budget.

------

On the Net:

Healthy Indiana Plan: http://www.hip.in.gov

    Health Savings Accounts for Poor Tested, NYT, 15.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Health-Savings.html

Food Banks, in a Squeeze,

Tighten Belts

November 30, 2007
The New York Times
By KATIE ZEZIMA

MANCHESTER, N.H., Nov. 26 — Food banks around the country are reporting critical shortages that have forced them to ration supplies, distribute staples usually reserved for disaster relief and in some instances close.

“It’s one of the most demanding years I’ve seen in my 30 years” in the field, said Catherine D’Amato, president and chief executive of the Greater Boston Food Bank, comparing the situation to the recession of the late 1970s.

Experts attributed the shortages to an unusual combination of factors, including rising demand, a sharp drop in federal supplies of excess farm products, and tighter inventory controls that are leaving supermarkets and other retailers with less food to donate.

“We don’t have nearly what people need, and that’s all there is to it,” said Greg Bryant, director of the food pantry in Sheffield, Vt.

“We’re one step from running out,” Mr. Bryant said.

“It kind of spirals,” he added. “The people that normally donate to us have less, the retailers are selling to discount stores because people are shopping in those places, and now we have less food and more people. It’s a double, triple, hit.”

The Vermont Food Bank said its supply of food was down 50 percent from last year. “It’s a crisis mode,” said Doug O’Brien, the bank’s chief executive.

For two weeks this month, the New Hampshire Food Bank distributed supplies reserved for emergency relief. Demand for food here is up 40 percent over last year and supply is down 30 percent, which is striking in the state with the lowest reliance on food banks.

“It’s the price of oil, gas, rents and foreclosures,” said Melanie Gosselin, executive director of the New Hampshire Food Bank.

Ms. Gosselin said household budget squeezes had led to a drop in donations and greater demand. “This is not the old ‘only the homeless are hungry,’” she said. “It’s working people.”

Lane Kenworthy, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of Arizona, agreed, saying: “The overall picture is that household incomes are kind of stuck. There’s very little way to increase income, and most people have a very heavy debt load. Any event that increases your costs is really, really troublesome, because you’re already stretched thin.”

The food bank in Manchester delivers provisions to a housing project each week, and on a recent Monday, Matthew Whooley, 26, of Manchester, was waiting in line with his wife, Penny, and their four children.

“Every week there’s less and less food,” Mr. Whooley said. “It used to be potatoes, meat and bread, and last week we got Doritos and flour. The food is getting shorter, and the lines keep getting longer.”

In part, food banks are suffering because farmers are doing well. The food banks rely on supplies from the federal Agriculture Department’s Bonus Commodity Program, which buys surplus crops like apples and potatoes from farmers.

“Right now, the agricultural economy is very strong and the surpluses aren’t available for us to purchase,” said Jean Daniel, a department spokeswoman. “Certainly we’re empathetic, but unfortunately we cannot count on those bonus commodities every year.”

Supplies from the surplus program dropped to $67 million worth last year, from $154.3 million in 2005 and $233 million in 2004. Figures for this year are not available, Ms. Daniel said.

Food bank operators are lobbying for passage of a farm bill currently stalled in the Senate that would raise emergency aid for food banks to $250 million a year, from $140 million. That figure has remained steady since 2002.

Susannah Morgan, executive director of the Food Bank of Alaska said, “The biggest problem is that the federal government’s programs are dropping as need is growing.”

Ms. Morgan said the decline has affected rural Alaska, where native tribes run most food pantries. She said about 10 percent of the state’s rural food banks have closed because there is not enough federal help coming in.

“They don’t feel staffing and heating is worth it for the small amount of food,” Ms. Morgan said.

Further complicating the picture, Ms. Morgan and others said, is tighter inventory monitoring, which has left many stores with less to donate.

“They know exactly what they have, down to the can,” said Darren Hoffman, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, whose supplies are down 11 percent this year. “They can track a lot better and don’t order in bulk. Efficiency has kind of been the enemy of the food bank.”

Extra food — items that are not selling or seasonal inventory that is no longer needed — is now often sold to low-cost retailers, said Tim Viall, executive director of the Greater Stockton Food Bank in Stockton, Calif.

“We’re getting fewer canned goods than last year from retail grocers, because they’re selling it to warehouse food stores,” Mr. Viall said. “We’re putting more reliance on canned food drives, and we’re trying to ramp up the fresh fruit and produce. We are in the heart of one of the most productive agriculture areas in the world, and we’re trying to take advantage.” In places where community donations are down and there are no food manufacturers to solicit, pantries and food banks are making difficult choices. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul food pantry in Cincinnati is giving families less food this year because there is not enough. It has started to ask smaller families to take fewer products.

“Donations are down, and people who need help is up,” said Liz Carter, executive director of the food bank. “So what are we going to do. We just made the decision that instead of giving people six or seven days worth of food, we’re going to give them three or four days of food, which is a drop in the bucket.”

Ginny Hildebrand, executive director of the Association of Arizona Food Banks, said many pantries were facing similar situations.

At a recent conference for food bank employees, Ms. Hildebrand said, “Everybody was saying the same thing. They’re all hit by an increase in demand, all hit by the impact of the higher costs of food, and all hit by federal reductions. We just don’t have the quantity of products available that we used to.”

Ross Fraser, a spokesman for America’s Second Harvest, which distributes more than two billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually, said the shortages at food banks were the worst the organization had seen in 26 years.

“Suddenly it’s on everyone’s radar,” Mr. Fraser said. “Food banks are calling us and saying, ‘My God, we have to get food.’”

    Food Banks, in a Squeeze, Tighten Belts, NYT, 30.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/us/30food.html

Homeless Families in New York

Lose a Loophole

October 11, 2007
The New York Times
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

Beginning tomorrow night, the city will stop giving emergency shelter to families who are reapplying for a place to stay after being ruled ineligible, officials said yesterday.

The decision means that families who apply for benefits but are turned down — usually because the city believes they can stay with a friend or a relative — will find themselves without shelter as they reapply one or two more times.

The toughening of the policy, which follows a rise during the summer in the number of families given emergency shelter in free public apartments, was criticized as cruel by advocates for the homeless and by some of the people it will affect. But it was defended by officials as a necessary tightening of a munificent policy that was being repeatedly abused by a few families.

The city had allowed families who had been ruled ineligible to be given shelter for one night if they reapplied after 5 p.m. Some families using this emergency provision would keep their belongings with them and repeat the process, moving to a new shelter the next day, often late at night, the city said.

“Families began to realize if they came in after 5 they could evade that accountability,” said Linda I. Gibbs, the city’s deputy mayor for health and human services. “What we are doing now is closing the loophole.”

The number of families using emergency overnight shelter had remained small for a long time, most likely because moving from place to place at night entailed such a harsh existence. Families checked in for emergency overnight stays fewer than 75 times a month for most of 2006, but the number erupted this summer, climbing to nearly 800 stays in July. In August, that number increased slightly.

City officials and advocates for the homeless estimated that a core group of families, perhaps dozens, has stayed in this cycle for weeks or longer. Some families have been in the cycle for months.

“The actions of a few are threatening the culture for the many,” Ms. Gibbs said. “We have to stop it now.”

Officials said a vast majority of the families seeking shelter from the city accepted the outcome of their 10-day eligibility review. But the score or more families who remain in the system using emergency shelter night after night, they said, are setting a corrupting example for everyone else. (Entering shelter is thought to be desirable for those who are not necessarily homeless because it is a way to get subsidized housing.)

Some advocates for homeless families reacted strongly to news of the policy. Several said the city made too many errors in its reviews, and cited the hundreds of families that have been found eligible for shelter on second, third and even fourth applications.

“It is a system that is rife with errors, and children and their families will certainly be harmed,” said Steven Banks, attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, who filed a court complaint about the accuracy of the eligibility rulings. “Based on the past record, there is no doubt that children and families will again end up sleeping in public spaces and hospital waiting rooms and subways.”

For its part, the city says the error rate is less than 10 percent.

Several families waiting at the city’s main shelter intake center in the Bronx yesterday said that they had been in overnight placement for weeks, and that they were completely unprepared for the change in policy and had no idea what they would do next.

Grisel Rivera, 26, who says she has been using the emergency overnight system with her 6-year-old daughter, Jayda, since July, says the city has her case all wrong. The city says she can return to the one-bedroom apartment of a friend. She says the friend, who has a boyfriend and a child of her own, does not want her and has sent a notarized letter saying as much.

“Most of us can’t go to the last place we were,” she said. “If we could we’d be there already.” Asked what she would do tomorrow night, she said: “I’ll have nowhere to sleep. My daughter will have nowhere to sleep.”

The city’s decision is the latest turn in the Bloomberg administration’s long-running efforts to reduce homelessness in the city. In 2004, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pledged to reduce homelessness by two-thirds. While the number of single homeless people has decreased, the number of homeless families is at a record high of more than 9,500.

As part of efforts to revamp policies and services for the homeless, the city opened a new family intake center in the Bronx at the end of 2004, with new procedures for applying. The new system, city officials say, is fair and more humane: Long processing times were reduced by three-fourths, and social services assistance was offered for families found ineligible for shelter, including counseling and one-time rent aid.

But the city says the fairer, swifter process comes with responsibilities for clients as well. That is why in 2005 it won the explicit right from a state appeals court and from the state to deny shelter to families who had been through the application process and found to have a suitable alternative. The city has been cautious in exercising the new right, recognizing that it might not sit well with the public if families were turned away with no place to go.

 

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

    Homeless Families in New York Lose a Loophole, NYT, 11.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/nyregion/11homeless.html?hp

Number of Homeless Families Rises

October 7, 2007
Filed at 12:19 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

AMHERST, Mass. (AP) -- There is just enough space for Lisa Rivera's family to sleep at Jessie's House homeless shelter.

In one room, she fits the full-sized bed she shares with her 9-year-old daughter, the trundle for her 11-year-old son, a twin bed for her 14-year-old daughter and a playpen for her 1 1/2-year old son.

''It's comfortable, but it's hard sleeping all together,'' the 32-year-old woman said. ''Oh my God, sometimes it's so hard.''

Faced with domestic abuse, high housing costs and unemployment, Rivera's family finds itself among the growing ranks of the homeless in Massachusetts -- and possibly, the country.

About 1,800 homeless families were in Massachusetts shelters last week -- up from 1,400 in June 2006 and just under 1,200 in June 2005, according to state figures. There are more families in shelters now than at any time since the inception of the state's family shelter program in 1983, according to the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.

State officials blame a wide range of problems -- from cuts in assistance to the recent housing crisis.

''We're very concerned that this is going to keep going,'' said Julia Kehoe, commissioner of the state Department of Transitional Assistance.

Massachusetts is one of the few states that keep government records of the number of homeless families in shelters because state law requires the Commonwealth to shelter any family that meets income and other guidelines. The state keeps a daily count to show how many beds it needs, said Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.

Nationally, the picture is much less clear.

Data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development suggests there about 750,000 homeless in the nation on any given night, with about 40 percent of those members of homeless families, said Philip Mangano, director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

The overall number of homeless people is up from a few years ago, he said, but nobody can pinpoint an exact number of families because reporting requirements vary widely from state to state.

''Our desire would be to have many more states step up and track the data,'' Mangano said. ''Research and data, that's what should drive the resources that we make available. Instead it's often anecdote, conjecture and hearsay that does that.''

Kehoe attributes the increase in Massachusetts to a convergence of low wages, high housing costs, an increase in housing foreclosures and cuts in federal and state housing assistance programs. Two years ago, lawmakers also lowered the financial eligibility requirements to qualify for homeless benefits from the poverty level to those making 130 percent of what would be considered a poverty wage, she said.

''I think what we are seeing here is a perfect storm,'' she said. ''Until we have some investment in affordable housing, and some flexibility in using our resources, we're not going to see a leveling off of these numbers.''

Rivera lost her apartment in Springfield in 2005, when a domestic abuse case involving the father of her youngest child prompted the state to remove all four youngsters from her custody, she said. Without the money she had been receiving in Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Rivera could not pay her rent.

She moved in with friends, worked at a gas station, went to school to become a medical receptionist and fought in court to get her children back.

A judge eventually restored custody, but without a place to live, the family has moved from one shelter after another.

''It's hard to get an apartment anywhere, especially with the size of apartment I need,'' she said. ''There's none out there, and once one comes available, there are just so many of us out here that need, it gets taken up with the snap of a finger.''

The New England Farm Workers Council, a private nonprofit agency contracted by the state, is helping Rivera look for permanent housing. She has an income of just over $1,400 a month, all from either TAFDC or Social Security, which she receives for her 9-year-old who suffers from epilepsy.

The agency requires that families spend no more that 50 percent of their income in rent, a figure designed to make it more likely that families won't get behind on those payments.

But rents for a three-bedroom apartment in the greater Springfield area range from about $800 to $1,300 without utilities, said Tom Salter, the vice president of the agency's shelter and housing division.

''A minimum wage job for 40 hours a week is just not going to pay the rent in any area,'' he said. ''It just isn't.''

There are state programs that help once a homeless family finds a new place to live. Rental assistance, however, often is difficult to get. The state spends about $30 million on rental subsidies, compared with about $120 million 15 years ago, and there also have been no new incremental increases in major federal subsidies in about a decade, Kehoe said.

Commissioner Kehoe and Frost said families also are being squeezed by the recent national lending crisis, as high mortgages that have forced some landlords to sell or face foreclosure.

''Although most of the homeless were not homeowners, many could have been people living in units that had been foreclosed,'' Frost said.

Rivera said once she is able to find an apartment, she plans to enroll in another job training program.

''I want to try and live happily ever after if I can,'' she said. ''I try my best to hang in there and do what I got to do. I never want to try and let them be able to take my kids away from me again.''

    Number of Homeless Families Rises, NYT, 7.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Homeless-Families.html

A Challenge

to New York’s Homeless Policy

September 4, 2007
The New York Times
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

A score of families gather daily in the courtyard of a city office in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. The parents spend time chatting at the picnic tables while children play tag on a few patches of grass. The scene is gentle. But it poses a growing challenge to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s strategy for reducing homelessness.

Each of the families first came here to apply for a place in the city’s homeless shelters, a first step toward getting housing subsidies. They have all been evaluated and told they do not qualify because they have homes they can return to — most often the crowded apartments of relatives.

That was supposed to be the end of the story. But these families have not taken no for an answer. Instead, after the office stops taking shelter applications at 5 p.m., they stay and ask the after-hours staff for emergency shelter, which the city says is for families in a one-time crisis only.

Then sometime between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., they and their children take all their belongings — shopping carts and strollers laden with televisions, toothpaste, fans — to board buses for a city shelter. Sometimes they are taken to a shelter in the Bronx; sometimes they go to Brooklyn or Queens. It is different every night.

They unpack, shower and sleep until 6 a.m., when they are awakened by the shelter staff. At 7 they are bused back to the city office in the Bronx, where they wait in the courtyard until the office closes at 5 p.m. and their nightly routine begins again.

It is a brutal existence.

Until recently the number of families willing to undergo such hardship was small. Officials say that families were given emergency late-night shelter, and did not reapply during office hours the next day, fewer than 75 times a month for most of 2006.

But the number erupted over the summer. In July, such families checked in for emergency overnight stays nearly 800 times. City officials and advocates for the homeless estimated that a core group of families, perhaps dozens, stayed in this cycle for weeks or longer.

Some much, much longer.

Liset DeJesus says that she and her husband and two daughters, with the Bronx center their base, have been moving from shelter to shelter every night since June. She says that the girls, who are 10 and 15, have been out of school for a year.

Victor Pellot, who says he gets a military pension for an injured shoulder, says he and his son, 14, have been living this way for seven months.

The families say they have no choice, nowhere else to go.

City officials view the tenacity of these families with alarm. They say these are largely families who do not want to return to overcrowded situations, like doubling up in relatives’ apartments, that are less than ideal, but adequate.

And they worry that the families are reinforcing one another’s behavior in defying the city’s rules, and undermining the reforms made in recent years to make the shelter assignment process faster and less subject to abuse.

So serious are these concerns that the officials are considering denying even a single overnight shelter stay to families who have been evaluated repeatedly and told to return to the homes of relatives or friends.

“We cannot allow this subculture of ineligible families to cast a shadow on the entire process,” said Robert V. Hess, the commissioner of homeless services. “We need to get to the point where ‘no’ really means no.”

The question of who is really homeless has been an issue since 1986, when a state court ruled that the city is required to provide free shelter to needy families.

For a while, the city essentially took in all people who sought lodging at homeless shelters. Then, under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the city began a 10-day review of applicant families.

Although the city found that many families could return to their relatives, many of the rejected families were simply allowed to reapply and stay in a shelter for a 10-day grace period.

One-night-only placements existed, but usually only while families were in the application phase of the cycle, which could last two or three days.

The entire process was revised under Mayor Bloomberg. The city opened a new intake center at the end of 2004, with new procedures for applying.

Long processing times were reduced by three-fourths, and social services assistance for families found ineligible for shelter, including counseling and one-time rent aid, was offered.

Finally, in the fall of 2005, the city won the explicit right from the court and from the state to deny shelter to families who had been through the application process and found to have a suitable alternative.

The city has been tentative in exercising the new right, recognizing that it could cause a public relations debacle. But with record numbers of families filling the shelter system, more than 28,000 people at last count, city officials say they are forced to separate the miserably overcrowded from those in dire need.

“Overwhelmingly these are young moms who don’t like being doubled up,” Mr. Hess said. “They are using staff and other resources that are slowing the whole system down, and it could have a very detrimental effect on families truly in need. We can’t allow that to happen.”

Advocates for the homeless see it differently. They believe that the city’s evaluation process is still rife with errors. They point to the hundreds of families who have been found eligible for permanent shelter on second, third and fourth applications even in the last year.

The city says most of those cases involved changing family circumstances, but the advocates say the idea that a family would agree to such a crushing daily existence if they had options is ridiculous.

“The city is caught between publicly claiming everything is fine and the brutal realities of families and their children having nowhere else to go,” said Steven Banks, attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, who has filed a pending court complaint about the accuracy of the eligibility rulings. “It is a ticking time bomb.”

The families say they are willing to put up with the single-night stays without real hope that they will ever persuade the city to approve their applications.

Iatia Mabry, 19, says that she, her year-old daughter and her husband have been in the overnight cycle since the end of July. She had been living with a friend in Virginia, but when that woman’s boyfriend got out of prison and moved back in, living there became untenable. A high school dropout on public assistance, Ms. Mabry has not worked for a year. She says that she cannot work until she gets housing and that she cannot afford it on her own.

She says she was bused to a shelter as late as 3 a.m. Like most other families at the Mott Haven office, she has to carry basics like towels and toilet paper with her. Like most others, she says that in general the shelters are clean, but that a few are horrific — and full of mold, which has aggravated her daughter’s asthma.

Still, Ms. Mabry says she cannot return to her mother, with whom she has never gotten along. She ran away at 17. Neither will she live with her mother-in-law, who has an apartment just blocks away from the office in the Bronx and is holding some of their personal belongings. “I am the head of my own household,” Ms. Mabry explained, “and she doesn’t understand that.”

Besides, Ms. Mabry says, that apartment is already full, housing her mother-in-law, her mother-in-law’s husband, the woman’s daughter, and the wife and two children of another of the woman’s sons.

Although Ms. Mabry says she “cries every night,” she says she will not stop seeking the city’s help. The growing group of families at the Bronx office has become a source of comfort for her.

During the long days there, they use sheets from the shelters to make beds in nearby St. Mary’s Park. They take turns holding one another’s children. They share food. And they watch the others’ backs.

The group has “become like a family,” Ms. Mabry said, “and we are not giving up.”

    A Challenge to New York’s Homeless Policy, NYT, 4.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/nyregion/04homeless.html?hp

Inside a Jumble of Poverty,

Texans Build a Future

August 27, 2007
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

RIO GRANDE, Tex. — Along muddy roads invisible from the highway, some families crowd into battered trailers patched with plywood. Others jam into self-constructed dwellings that seem designed by Dr. Seuss — wood and tarpaper shacks attached to half-finished concrete-block rooms, wires and hoses snaking in.

The counties of South Texas are among the nation’s poorest, and their jumbled subdivisions, known as colonias, home to 400,000 Hispanic-Americans, can certainly look the part. Since the 1950s, developers have carved small lots from mesquite woodlands and floodplains, selling them to workers with the promises that utilities, sewers and paved roads would follow. They rarely did, and for decades the colonias were seen as hopeless slums.

But now a different picture is emerging. After years of protests by residents, belated regulation by the state, and an influx of aid from government and private groups, more than two-thirds of the colonia dwellers in six border counties finally have access to water lines, safe sewage disposal or both, compared with a small minority just 15 years ago, according to a report by the state in December.

Through frugality and hard work, in a process known as incremental building that is rare in the United States but common in the Third World, families are transforming hovels into homes, one wall and window at a time.

While the jerry-built shacks may look crude, they are often the works in progress of determined parents willing to spend decades to create a heart for their extended families. Many start with used trailers and upgrade as their finances improve. Their determination perhaps explains why the colonias, despite infrastructure gaps and lack of amenities like parks and street lights, are not suffused with the bleak resignation evident in the most blighted urban centers or parts of the deep south.

Delfino and Martina Martinez bought their lot three years ago on Las Lomas colonia near here for $19,800, paying 18 percent annual interest to the seller. They and their three children crammed into a battered “Holiday Rambler” trailer. As the family struggled along on his construction jobs and food stamps, Mr. Martinez, 49, built two concrete bedrooms. Next will come a kitchen, living room and bathroom.

“People see the colonias as a bunch of run-down places where all these Hispanics live in squalor,” Jorge Vanegas, director of the Center for Housing and Urban Development at Texas A&M University, said. But they are abuzz with ambition, and with recent government aid, he said, “we’ve seen progress on many fronts,” although new, underserved colonias “keep popping up in new areas.”

Belying another stereotype, a large majority of residents are long-term, legal residents or citizens, data show. Original buyers were often migrant workers, but now more residents work at minimum-wage retail jobs, in construction or in housecleaning.

As the infrastructure of the colonias (pronounced coe-LONE-yas) improves, however, the soaring price of land makes quality housing harder for workers to afford.

The Martinez family, with an annual income of about $15,000, worries about its $200 monthly payments to the seller. The family paid $700 last year for a septic tank — before that, they went to a relative’s house to use the bathroom — and several hundreds more for water and electrical hookups. To put a roof on their new bedrooms, they obtained a $2,500, two-year loan from the Community Resource Group, a nonprofit organization based in Arkansas that has helped thousands of colonia residents secure proper deeds and now offers small home-improvement loans.

On a recent evening, as a dozen chickens roamed, a fat pig grunted and the radio played lively Mexican music, Mr. Martinez was digging up the hard ground behind the bedrooms with pick and shovel, getting dirt fill for the slope where he will build the new rooms.

“We have faith our life will be better,” Mr. Martinez said, “as long as our health is O.K.”

The history of the colonias is filled with broken promises to buyers and contracts that left many vulnerable to losing everything when they missed payments. Titles were not handed over until land was paid for, and sometimes deeds were not officially recorded.

But protests by residents and groups like the United Farm Workers of America, as well as rising Hispanic political power, drew state attention. Since 1989, laws have tightened development standards. The state appointed ombudsmen to ensure that buyers got the required services.

In 1995, the Texas Legislature required developers of new colonias to install electricity, water lines and sewage pipes or septic tanks.

Federal and state grants have also helped bring utilities and paved streets to older colonias, though the task is far from complete. The 2006 state analysis of six counties found that the continuing lack of infrastructure and proper drainage in 442 colonias with 62,675 residents “exposes the population and surrounding communities to increased threats of infectious diseases and public health hazards.”

Some early residents used colonia homes as a springboard to moving on, but many have shown determination to sink roots in this region, where lax zoning standards permit them to live in houses as they build them. The results are not always pretty or safe, but for many, they offer a chance they could not pursue elsewhere.

“In our culture, once you have property, you belong, and even if it’s a shack, you stay,” said Blanca Suarez, the Starr County ombudswoman for the state’s Colonia Initiatives Program.

Despite their hard work, most residents remain poor, with longstanding problems like low high school graduation rates. Nearly all the children are covered by Medicaid, but Texas provides little health coverage to adults.

Elia Estrada, 35, is suffering the consequences. Ms. Estrada, her husband, a construction worker, and their three children have been living in a one-bedroom structure while she and several relatives help finish a house at Proyecto Azteca in San Juan, Hidalgo County. Families put in 550 hours of “sweat equity,” and then they can buy one of the 800-square-foot, three-bedroom homes for $30,000 on a 20-year no-interest mortgage. The houses are attractive and meet all codes.

“We’ll have our own bedrooms,” she enthused, taking a break from painting windows.

“But I’m sick a lot these days,” she added. She found a doctor who would see her for just $35 and discovered she has high blood pressure and diabetes. But she cannot afford treatment.

The oldest colonias tend to have the nicest houses, in part because families bought plots for $500 and have had decades to complete construction. In newer settlements like the eight-year-old Abraham colonia, also in Hidalgo County, empty lots now cost upwards of $20,000 and many residents are still at the early stages of making a house.

Alma Avila, 33, her husband and four children live in a yellow trailer in Abraham with missing window panes that they cover with plywood. The satellite dish is, she said with a laugh, “just for decoration.”

But Ms. Avila and her husband are taking the long view. They bought their plot five years ago for $14,000, on a 15-year loan.

“Once we finish paying for the lot, we’ll have money to start thinking about a house,” she said. “I hope this trailer will last 10 more years.”

Ms. Avila has already planted saplings and flowers.

“I want to live here forever,” she said. “Someday I can sit under those trees.”

    Inside a Jumble of Poverty, Texans Build a Future, NYT, 27.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/27/us/27colonias.html?hp

Edwards Embarks on Tour in South

to Focus on Poverty

July 16, 2007
The New York Times
By LESLIE WAYNE

NEW ORLEANS, July 15 — John Edwards came back on Sunday to a rainy New Orleans, the city where he kicked off his presidential bid last December, to start a three-day tour of poverty-stricken parts of the rural South and the urban Midwest in a bid to draw attention to one of his main campaign issues: the elimination of poverty.

The Edwards campaign billed the event as “a break from his normal campaign schedule,” although it was anything but. At the last minute, the campaign announced that Elizabeth Edwards, the candidate’s wife, was joining the tour.

The campaign also lined up more than 40 news organizations for the trip, and reporters and the Edwardses will travel in a chartered jet. And on Monday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards are scheduled to be on “Good Morning America” on ABC before hitting the road.

The eight-state tour is intended “to shine a bright spotlight on the issue of poverty in America,” the campaign said in a statement. “Edwards will meet with people struggling with poverty in order to share their personal stories with the nation.”

The tour may not be a campaign in the strictest sense. Mr. Edwards will not be traveling through early primary states, soliciting votes or holding fund-raisers. But the tour is intended to burnish his image on the issue he has made a signature campaign theme. In doing so, he is setting out to associate himself with leaders of the civil rights movement. He has scheduled a visit to Marks, Miss., where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began his Poor People’s March in 1968, and the tour will end in Prestonburg, Ky., where Robert F. Kennedy concluded a tour of impoverished areas, also in 1968.

Mr. Edwards, a former one-term Democratic senator from North Carolina and the losing vice-presidential candidate in 2004, is facing an uphill battle against Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who are leading him in polls and in fund-raising. And while Iraq and health care appear to head the list of voter concerns, Mr. Edwards is promoting himself as someone who cares about the poor and who has risen from the bottom himself. In doing do, he is staking a more populist stance than his opponents.

During his tour of the Lower Ninth Ward on Sunday night, Mr. Edwards spoke to residents and others who turned out in the devastated neighborhood.

“We have an awful lot of work to do,” he said. “You take the words ‘working poor’ — these are two words that should not be in combination in the United States. Most of the country is not aware of the rebuilding by you folks. You’re not getting any help, and America needs to be there for New Orleans.”

In the neighborhood, a broad expanse littered with broken-down houses, federal emergency trailers and empty lots, the Edwardses met with local housing activists.

“Looks like what I saw when I was here last time,” Mr. Edwards said. “Some people are working to rebuild their lives, but they’re not getting much help from the government.”

In making his presidential announcement last December, Mr. Edwards chose middle-class East New Orleans as his setting, and he called for greater citizen activism in the face of government inaction. This time, he started his tour with an evening walk through the Lower Ninth Ward, which has become a symbol of poverty and long-standing government neglect.

Since 2004, Mr. Edwards has incorporated his views on poverty into his political approach. Last week, at community meetings in Iowa, not a single person attending a campaign event asked him about poverty. But at each stop, he raised the issue, speaking with passion and calling it a “moral” issue facing America.

His association with the issue also helped keep him in the public eye while he was out of office. He set up the Center on Poverty Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina law school, which enabled the school to research poverty and also provided a platform for Mr. Edwards after he left Washington.

From a strictly political standpoint, it is unclear how much Mr. Edwards will gain from this theme. Dennis J. Goldford, a professor of political science at Drake University in Des Moines, said most people who turn out to vote do not think of themselves as poor and do not identify with the message.

“Even if they may be poor, many don’t think that they are,” Mr. Goldford said. “They don’t think that he is talking to them.”

It is unclear whether Mr. Edwards has made any headway among poor voters. A Washington Post-ABC poll in July showed that he drew scant support from Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents with household incomes under $20,000. Mrs. Clinton got the bulk of the support at 55 percent, Mr. Obama drew 20 percent and Mr. Edwards received 10 percent.

    Edwards Embarks on Tour in South to Focus on Poverty, NYT, 16.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/us/politics/16edwards.html

Apartments Welcome

Homeless Alcoholics

June 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:32 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SEATTLE (AP) -- When Brian Steik lived on the streets, the government spent tens of thousands of dollars on emergency room visits and other services to keep the alcoholic alive.

Now social-service agencies are conducting an experiment: Offering Steik and dozens of other homeless drinkers subsidized apartments where they can keep boozing at a fraction of the cost.

''The average citizen who hears about this project probably is appalled,'' said Bill Hobson, executive director of the city's Downtown Emergency Services Center, which constructed the apartments.

''Their concern runs something along these lines: 'Why do I want to spend my tax money on people who are not doing anything to help themselves?' The answer to that is: You're already spending it.''

The four-story $11.2 million building is one of few such facilities in the nation. Minneapolis has a similar program.

The Seattle apartments were built with taxpayer and privately donated dollars. The center expects to spend about $11,000 per resident to operate the building each year, less than 10 percent of the money chronic drunks would cost if left on the streets. Preliminary figures suggest the building will pay for itself in less than five years.

Before moving into an apartment, the 40-year-old Steik was a frequent visitor to the Seattle Sobering Center, a nonprofit agency where police bring homeless alcoholics to dry out. He spent 700 nights there in 2 1/2 years.

''I had a place to live every night as long as I was intoxicated enough,'' Steik said.

At the apartment building, residents pay less than $200 a month in rent and must buy their own alcohol. Seventy-five people live there, with more waiting to get in.

''We need more places like this,'' said Steik, who lives on disability payments. ''I can afford living here, but I can't afford an actual apartment someplace else.''

Residents are selected by social-service providers who agree on a list of the worst alcoholics. Once in, they can stay for the rest of their lives as long as they follow a few rules focusing mostly on avoiding violence.

On a recent visit to the building, a big sunny dining room was half-full of residents in various stages of intoxication. The air smelled slightly of alcohol, but there were no cans or bottles around.

Residents usually drink in their small studio apartments. Some have smaller cubicles with three walls and just enough room for a bed, a freestanding closet and a chair.

Some residents say the program has helped cut their drinking in half; one person claims to have quit drinking entirely.

Steik says his drinking hasn't changed that much -- he still consumes a couple of tall six-packs on most days. But he's eating better, watching his health and paying his rent on time every month.

The Metropolitan Improvement District reports alcohol activity on the downtown streets has been cut in half. Human-service agencies report their contact with downtown drunks has been reduced by 56 percent.

But the program still has its skeptics.

Police Sgt. Paul Gracy acknowledges it may save money at the emergency room, but officers continue to pick up drunks all over town.

The 75 residents represent a ''minuscule'' portion of the alcoholics on the streets, Gracy said. ''We still have to deal with these people.''

Dr. Michael Copass, chief of emergency services at Harborview Medical Center, thinks the results are worth it.

''Two or three people who were double or triple daily visitors are now down to two or three a week,'' Copass said. Getting chronic inebriates out of the cold and away from situations where they get beaten up or fall down improves their chances for survival.

A 1999 King County study of 123 chronic public inebriates found they cost government and social-service agencies more than $100,000 per person per year in emergency room costs alone.

Since the apartment building opened in late 2005, preliminary figures show emergency room visits by the worst cases have been cut by more than 90 percent. And use of the Sobering Center has dropped 24 percent.

At least one neighbor, a business called Northwest Trophy, is unhappy about the project, Gracy said. The owners sued unsuccessfully to block its construction and have complained nonstop about noise, litter and trespassing. In April, they announced they were giving up and selling their building.

Marriott Springhill Suites Hotel, another plaintiff in the unsuccessful 2002 lawsuit, has found the reality better than expected.

''They've kept things right. I've been surprised. It keeps people off the streets,'' Louis Haslett, Springhill's general manager, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Mike Webb, 46, had been living on the streets since arriving in Seattle about five years ago with hopes of working on a fishing boat.

The Marine veteran from Colorado Springs, Colo., survives on disability and whatever he makes as a street musician, playing blues harmonica with a guitar player who also lives at the building.

Webb said he values the family atmosphere in the building and the comfort of knowing that he has a safe place to stay.

''This is actually kind of a gift in a way,'' he said.

Webb said he still has a few friends on the street -- mostly people who tried the new building but couldn't get comfortable inside.

''Some of the people I know had their chance here and they blew it. They couldn't handle it. They prefer to be out there and that's their choice,'' Webb said.

Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness in Washington, D.C., was not surprised at the success of the Seattle project. But she says the issue is more about housing than alcoholism.

In the 1970s, chronic alcoholics could find cheap places to live, but affordable housing has all but disappeared in cities like Seattle.

''Now you need probably $3,000 and a clean credit history and a job just to get in the door,'' Roman said.

    Apartments Welcome Homeless Alcoholics, NYT, 18.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Housing-Alcoholics.html

Editorial

Hunger and Food Stamps

May 13, 2007
The New York Times

If you think people do not go hungry in America, you’re wrong. At last count in 2005, 35 million low-income Americans — about a third of them children — lived in households that cannot consistently afford enough to eat. Since 2005, the situation has most likely become worse. Last year, real wages for low-income workers were still below 2001 levels. This year, job growth is slowing and prices are rising.

And each year, the federal food stamp program — the bulwark against hunger for 26 million Americans — does less to help. In large part, that is because a key component of the formula for computing most families’ food stamps has not been adjusted for inflation since 1996. Over all, food stamps now average a meager $1.05 per person per meal.

Bolstering food stamps must be Congress’s top priority in this year’s farm bill, the mammoth legislation that covers the food stamp program.

Most important, lawmakers must stop the erosion in the purchasing power of food stamps, either by pegging the benefit formula to inflation or by making a big increase in the formula’s standard deduction. In 2002, when the last farm bill was passed, Congress improved the benefit formula for households with four or more people. But nearly 80 percent of all food stamp households have three or fewer members. It is unacceptable that their food stamps buy less food each year.

Congress should also repeal the provision that imposes a five-year residency requirement on otherwise eligible adult legal immigrants. (Illegal immigrants are not eligible for food stamps.) The children of such immigrants — 80 percent of whom are United States citizens — can receive food stamps without waiting. But confusion over the rules keeps many of them out of the program. The Department of Agriculture reports that of the children of immigrant parents who are citizens and eligible for food stamps, only 52 percent got them in 2004, compared with 82 percent of eligible children over all.

Taken together, those two reforms would cost roughly $3 billion over the next five years. In the competitive frenzy of a farm bill, that is money lawmakers would be inclined to fight over. But Democrats and Republicans alike must realize that improving food stamps is a moral and economic necessity. Food stamp allotments were cut in 1996 to free up money to ease the transition from welfare to work. But since then, food stamps themselves have become a crucial support for working families. Among food stamp households with children, twice as many work as rely solely on welfare.

Inadequate aid affects not only the amount of food a family can buy, but also the types of purchases. With too few dollars to spend, junk food becomes the best value because it is calorie dense, cheap and imperishable.

Adjustments around the edges of the food stamp program will not be enough. President Bush has proposed exempting families’ meager retirement savings when calculating whether they are poor enough for food stamps. He also wants to allow families to deduct their full child care costs from the benefit calculation. Both changes would be helpful and Congress should embrace them. But Congress also needs to make much bigger changes, now.

    Hunger and Food Stamps, NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/opinion/13sun1.html

Ore. Gov. Starts Week

on Food Stamps

April 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:56 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- If Gov. Ted Kulongoski seems a little sluggish this week, he's got an excuse: he couldn't afford coffee.

In fact, the Democratic governor couldn't afford much of anything during a trip to a Salem-area grocery store on Tuesday, where he had exactly $21 to buy a week's worth of food -- the same amount that the state's average food stamp recipient spends weekly on groceries.

Kulongoski is taking the weeklong challenge to raise awareness about the difficulty of feeding a family on a food stamp budget.

Accompanied by reporters and food stamp recipient Christina Sigman-Davenport, Kulongoski headed straight for a display of organic bananas, only to have Sigman-Davenport steer him toward the cheaper non-organic variety.

The governor pined wistfully for canned Progresso soups, but at $1.53 apiece, they would have blown the budget. He settled instead for three packages of Cup O'Noodles for 33 cents apiece. Kulongoski also gave up his usual Adams natural, no-stir peanut butter for a generic store brand, but drew the line at saving money by buying peanut butter and jelly in the same jar.

''I don't much like the looks of that,'' said Kulongoski, 66, staring at the concoction.

Other shoppers in the store were bemused by Kulongoski's quest.

''Obviously, he doesn't shop often,'' Barb Sours of Salem said, as Kulongoski bounced around the aisles in search of granola. ''He's all over the place.''

Kulongoski did pause to chat with shoppers John and Bonnie White of Salem, telling them all about his $21 limit.

''Don't spend it all in one place,'' John White warned.

Along the way, Sigman-Davenport, a mother of three who works for the state Department of Human Services and went on food stamps in the fall after her husband lost his job, dispensed tips for shopping on a budget. Scan the highest and lowest shelves, she told the governor. Look for off-brand products, clip coupons religiously, get used to filling, low-cost staples like macaroni and cheese and beans, and, when possible, buy in bulk.

At the check-out counter, Kulongoski's purchases totaled $21.97, forcing him to give back one of the Cup O'Noodles and two bananas, for a final cost of $20.97 for 19 items.

After the hourlong shopping trip, Kulongoski said he was mindful that his week on food stamps will be finite and that thousands of others aren't so lucky.

''I don't care what they call it, if this is what it takes to get the word out,'' Kulongoski said, in response to questions about whether the food stamp challenge was no more than a publicity stunt. ''This is an issue every citizen in this state should be aware of.''

    Ore. Gov. Starts Week on Food Stamps, NYT, 25.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-A-Week-on-Food-Stamps.html

In Custody Fights,

a Hurdle for the Poor

April 8, 2007
The New York Times
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

Custody battles are rarely gentle affairs, but if you are poor, such fights can carry an added frustration: waiting months to get a court-approved visit with your own child.

In cases involving allegations of domestic violence, which are increasing, or other issues, such as drug abuse and long absenteeism, judges often require that child’s visits with the noncustodial parent take place only in the presence of a professional, like a social worker.

But when judges order supervised visitation, neither the court nor other government agencies pay for the service, a growing problem in New York City and across the nation.

Because he cannot afford to pay for supervised visitation, which routinely costs $100 an hour, Juan Manuel Fernandez, 51, of Washington Heights, said, he has not seen his two daughters, ages 6 and 11, since last October. A year ago, he said, his wife walked out, moved the girls to New Jersey, and told the court he was threatening her. He denies the accusation, but the judge in his case ruled that supervision was necessary. So now he is waiting for free supervision through a nonprofit agency, which can take months.

“It’s very hard to have to wait to see your own kids,” Mr. Fernandez said in Spanish, through a translator.

“Imagine it, they’re just little girls. I felt like crying when I had to leave them,” he said, especially because he knew it could be a long time before he could see them.

In supervised visitations, a third party oversees the handoff of children between parents and then monitors the interaction. The concept is not new, and sometimes the supervision can be done by a member of one of the couple’s families. Still, more judges think it is safer to order professional supervision, particularly in cases involving domestic violence or sexual abuse, drug use, mental illness, a history of criminal activity or jail time, or simply longtime absenteeism.

When these factors turn up in custody fights, for low-income couples, the ensuing costs for supervised visits can be insurmountable.

The only option for most of those families is to get in line for free supervision through a nonprofit agency. But only a handful of groups provide the free service, and they say because of financing pressures, the wait can often reach six months.

Jacqueline W. Silbermann, deputy chief administrative judge of New York for matrimony matters, says of supervised visitation, “You can order it, but unfortunately we don’t control the resources. So finding affordable services is a very serious, serious problem.”

The need for subsidized supervision is growing around the country, said Nancy Fallows, executive director of Supervised Visitation Network Inc., a 15-year-old Tennessee-based association for nonprofit providers.

She said the increased push for supervised visitation comes from courts, which have become more sensitive to issues like domestic violence and more knowledgeable about controlled ways to bring a parent and child together.

“The courts have more of an awareness now that it might not be appropriate to leave a child alone,” with a parent with a history of certain behavior, she said. “Yet protecting and nurturing that relationship is very valuable to the child.”

Arrangements for supervised visitation vary greatly across the country, she said. It is almost nonexistent in rural areas, she said, where judges often order it even though there might be no one nearby who can provide the service. Cost is a problem everywhere. To illustrate that point, Ms. Fallows passed along a letter from a mother in Florida. She said she gets one like it every day.

“I am finding it very hard to find a facility that gives me affordable visits,” the mother writes. “Having to pay to visit my son is hard enough but to have to pay $75 per hour really limits my visits.”

New York City does not keep track of the number of custody and visitation cases in which supervised visits are ordered, but it does keep track of the kinds of cases that commonly generate such a court order.

Court records show that roughly the same number of visitation cases were filed in family court, which handles custody and visitation for unmarried couples, in 2006 as five years ago (23,440 compared with 21,552 in 2002). Yet the number of them involving a domestic violence allegation has more than doubled to 6,779 from 2,996. The number of custody and visitation cases with orders of protection attached has also doubled in the last four years, reaching 8,856 this year.

Among those cases is that of a man and a woman who crossed without meeting at the offices of New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children on a recent Sunday morning. The two, who are parents of twin girls and asked that their names be withheld because of embarrassment about the details of their situation, cannot even agree on how they got to this point.

The father said it was a stormy relationship. That he and the girls’ mother argued often, but he never laid a hand on her. And he said he just wanted to do right by his girls, now 18 months old. The mother said that he stalked her, and that the relationship was in no way consensual. She asked the court for an order of protection, and she got it. Still, the court insisted over her objections that he have access to the children.

A relative supervising the visits was out of the question because the two have no family in New York; his mother is dead, and her parents abandoned her to foster care when she was 15.

Since he was working only part time at temporary jobs, paying a social worker to conduct the visits seemed out of reach. “You have to pay it on top of child support,” he said. “It is really hefty.”

So he got on the society’s waiting list, which on a typical day is 30 families long for about as many available spots in the program, which lasts up to year. In the time it took to get a court ruling and into a program, almost a year had passed since he had seen his children. “When they saw me again they screamed and cried,” he recalled, “but they were so beautiful.”

The program, staffed entirely by social workers with master’s degrees and housed in a welcoming center with lilac-colored playrooms, is considered among the best in the city. The population it serves is poor; half qualify for public assistance, meaning that for a family of four the income is $11,000 a year or less. But the program is a dying breed because it is expensive to run.

Mary L. Pulido, executive director of the society, said, “It costs me nearly $700,000 a year to run the program, and I have to do a ton of private fund-raising.”

The program’s limited resources also mean that a parent can get free supervision for only six months. The aim, the society said, is to train the noncustodial parent to deal with a child in a way that builds trust so that the judge might allow unsupervised visitation. But parents who don’t “graduate” must start looking for a program all over again.

Time is running out for the father of the twin girls. On a recent visit, he sat on the floor and played cash register with the toddlers. But that might not be enough for the court. It is a prospect that has him a bit panicked. “If I lose this program it could be months, maybe a year, before I see them again,” he said. “And at this age that is too much.”

Anthony DePalma contributed reporting.

    In Custody Fights, a Hurdle for the Poor, NYT, 8.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/nyregion/08visit.html

New York City

to Reward Poor

for Doing Right Thing

March 30, 2007
The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL

Seeking new solutions to New York’s vexingly high poverty rates, the city is moving ahead with an ambitious experiment that will pay poor families up to $5,000 a year to meet goals like attending parent-teacher conferences, going for a medical checkup or holding down a full-time job, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday.

Under the program, which is based on a similar effort in Mexico, parents would receive payments every two months for family members meeting any of a series of criteria. The payments could range from $25 for exemplary attendance in elementary school to $300 for a high score on an important exam, city officials said.

The officials said the program was the first of its kind in the country.

The project, first announced in the fall. was scheduled to begin as a pilot program in September with 2,500 randomly selected families whose progress will be tracked against another 2,500 randomly selected families who will not get the rewards. Officials planned to draw the families from six of the poorest communities in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

To be eligible, families must have at least one child entering fourth, seventh or ninth grade and a household income of 130 percent or less of the federal poverty level, which equals roughly $20,000 for a single parent with two children.

The city has already raised $42 million of the $50 million needed to cover the initial program’s cost from private sources, including Mr. Bloomberg. If it proves successful, the mayor said, the city will attempt to create a permanent program financed by the government.

Likening the payments, known as conditional cash transfers, to tax incentives that steer people of greater means toward property ownership, Mr. Bloomberg said that the approach was intended to help struggling families who often focus on basic daily survival make better long-term decisions and break generational cycles of poverty and dependence.

“In the private sector, financial incentives encourage actions that are good for the company: working harder, hitting sales targets or landing more clients,” the mayor said in an announcement at a health services center in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

“In the public sector, we believe that financial incentives will encourage actions that are good for the city and its families: higher attendance in schools, more parental involvement in education and better career skills.”

Since Mr. Bloomberg outlined the plan last fall, reaction among antipoverty experts and advocates has been mixed, with some hailing it as an innovative approach that could become a powerful model for the rest of the country and ultimately win the support of the federal government.

Indeed, the program is being financed by several high-profile organizations, including the Rockefeller, Starr and Robin Hood Foundations, as well as the Open Society Institute and the insurance and financial firm American International Group.

The Rockefeller and Starr Foundations are donating $10 million each, while the Open Society Institute is giving $5 million and A.I.G. is donating $2 million. A spokeswoman for the Robin Hood Foundation did not return calls or an e-mail message, and Mr. Bloomberg’s spokesman, Stu Loeser, declined to say how much the mayor contributed.

Some antipoverty advocates have bristled at what they see as the condescending notion that poor people need to be told how to raise their families. Others have focused on the broader economic issues at play.

“It is encouraging that the mayor believes there’s a public role for addressing intergenerational poverty, inequality and economic mobility,” said Margy Waller, a former Clinton administration adviser who is a co-founder of Inclusion, a research and policy group based in Washington.

“What is troubling is the focus on personal behavior as the solution to what is at least in part a problem of the economy,” she said. “Given what we know about the growth of low-wage jobs and the shrinking of the middle class, it will be, in fact, impossible to bring more people into the middle class unless we improve the labor market as well.”

A similar concern seems to have emerged with Mexico’s program, known as Oportunidades, which is now 10 years old, has a budget of more than $3 billion a year and covers nearly one-fourth of all Mexicans.

Intended to replace the food subsidies that had dominated much of Mexico’s antipoverty efforts, the program offers cash stipends to families to keep their children in school and take them for regular checkups. Parents must also attend regular talks on issues including health, nutrition and family planning.

Outside evaluations have found that the program has been successful in raising school attendance and nutrition levels and that the percentage of Mexicans living in extreme poverty has fallen.

Still, there are questions about how much more effective the program can be in lifting large numbers of people permanently out of poverty, in part because jobs are lacking.

In January, Santiago Levy, one of the program’s creators and a former undersecretary of finance in Mexico, said at the Brookings Institution in Washington that even if the program were 100 percent effective, it alone could not solve the problem.

“Now’s he’s out with a high school degree, a healthy man: Is he going to get a job or migrate to the U.S.?” he said.

But others see cause for optimism in the results of Mexico’s program and similar ones in other Latin American countries. In Nicaragua, for example, primary school enrollment rates grew to 90 percent from 68 percent; in Colombia, secondary school enrollment in urban areas rose to 78 percent from 64 percent, said Laura Rawlings, a World Bank specialist who has studied the programs, which she said are active or being created in nearly 20 countries.

The idea to try the program in New York has its roots in the broad attack on poverty that Mr. Bloomberg has made a high-profile cause for his second term. Roughly one in five New Yorkers lives in poverty, according to the Community Service Society of New York.

In keeping with the administration’s emphasis on outcomes, city officials say they will closely monitor the test group’s progress against that of the control group with the help of M.D.R.C., a nonprofit policy research organization involved in the program’s design.

All 5,000 families will be asked to agree to participate in the program before knowing which group they are in, said Gordon Berlin, the president of M.D.R.C., and those not receiving benefits will be paid a nominal fee to submit to monitoring and surveys, he said.

Officials expect that some of the control families will inevitably drop out, but Mr. Berlin said that in conducting similar experiments in the past, he had found that most were willing to participate even without the benefits because they were informed that it would help guide a government policy decision in which they had a stake.

The families receiving the benefits will be given a list of goals they are expected to meet, as well as the values assigned to them. They will also get a “passport” for documenting the completion of tasks that are not automatically reported elsewhere, said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor overseeing the effort.

The city is working with state and federal officials, Ms. Gibbs said, to make sure that families do not lose other benefits because of the grants.

Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Mexico City.

    New York City to Reward Poor for Doing Right Thing, NYT, 30.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/nyregion/30poverty.html

Homeless Families in City Shelters Hit Record, Despite the Mayor’s Efforts

March 8, 2007
The New York Times
By TRYMAINE LEE

The number of homeless families living in New York City shelters reached a record high last month, halfway into the Bloomberg administration’s five-year plan to reduce homelessness by two-thirds, according to a report released yesterday by an advocacy group using city figures.

Last month’s total, 9,287 families, was the highest since the city started keeping and publicly releasing such figures in 1979, according to the group, the Coalition for the Homeless.

When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his plan on homelessness in August 2004, the number of homeless families was 8,850 and his goal was to lower that to 7,400 by this point.

The data also showed that while more homeless families were seeking refuge in city shelters, the number being moved into permanent housing fell last year by 11 percent compared with 2005.

The report comes at a time when the amount of housing affordable to low-income residents continues to shrink and the gap between average income and rent continues to grow, advocates for the homeless said.

In preparing its report, the coalition used figures from the city’s Department of Homeless Services. The agency did not dispute the data or the findings, but an agency spokeswoman said that the mayor’s plan was a work in progress and that it might need to be adjusted.

The spokeswoman, Tanya Valle-Batista, also accused the coalition of being more interested in seeking publicity than helping address the problem.

“While the rest of the nonprofit community is working with the city to address these issues, the coalition continues its opportunistic efforts to generate headlines,” Ms. Valle-Batista said in a statement.

The figures show that the city should rethink its strategy to move people into permanent housing, the coalition said. Much of that strategy focuses on a city program started in 2004 that replaced many of the federally subsidized housing programs that had been used to shift homeless welfare recipients into permanent housing.

But a little more than two years into the plan, the number of homeless in shelters is up nearly across the board, exceeding 35,000. In February 2006, according to the report, the total number of homeless New Yorkers in shelters was 31,472 and rose 11.1 percent to 35,252 by last month, according to the report. The number of homeless families in February 2006 was 7,805, rising 17.6 percent to 9,287 by last month, the report said. The number of homeless children in February 2006 was 11,925, and went up 18.1 percent by last month, to 14,287.

The one piece of good news cited by the report was a decline last year, for the second year in a row, in single adults living in shelters.

Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless, said flaws in the mayor’s program, called Housing Stability Plus, kept it from meeting its goals.

“The flaws in the mayor’s program have clearly made it hard for families in shelters to get safe and affordable housing,” he said.

One major problem, he said, is the 20 percent annual reduction in housing subsidies, which is intended to encourage participants to find better-paying jobs.

“This is a subsidy program that cuts the value of the housing subsidy by 20 percent each year, regardless of a family’s circumstance,” Mr. Markee said. “It serves as a work disincentive, and effectively prohibits families from gaining employment income because that would cut them from welfare.”

As a result, Mr. Markee said, some participants’ jobs exclude them from being eligible for welfare. In the meantime, their housing subsidies are cut, leaving them unable to pay rent and, often, sending them back into shelters, Mr. Markee said.

The Department of Homeless Services is planning to make adjustments in its housing subsidy program, Ms. Valle-Batista said. She said the coalition’s findings on homeless families were accurate, but noted that, unlike other large cities, New York defines families as including single parents and couples with no children.

Ms. Valle-Batista also said that the rise of homeless people in shelters meant, in one sense, that the city was doing its job by not turning people away.

Arnold S. Cohen, president and chief executive of Partnership for the Homeless, said that rather than simply being critical of the mayor, the coalition’s findings highlight the growing inequality in New York.

“This is the story about the other New York,” he said, “another city of unimaginable poverty. I don’t think we should ever look at this as a failure. This is an opportunity to learn from our past.”

    Homeless Families in City Shelters Hit Record, Despite the Mayor’s Efforts, NYT, 8.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/nyregion/08homeless.html

Study finds

more than 700,000 homeless

in the U.S.

Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:18AM EST
Reuters
By JoAnne Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There were an estimated 754,000 homeless people in the United States, in shelters or living on the streets on a single night in January 2005, U.S. officials said in a report to Congress released on Wednesday.

The snapshot of a "point in time" and a second count over a three-month period of the same year are results of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) estimate of the homeless population in the United States.

According to the study, from February to April 2005, an estimated 704,000 people in the United States used homeless shelters or transitional housing.

During that period, 47 percent of people living in homeless shelters were single adult men. Nearly one quarter were children 17 or younger. Less than 2 percent of the homeless population was 62 or older, compared with 15 percent of the total U.S. population.

Among other findings, the report said about 59 percent of the people in homeless shelters were members of minority groups. Forty-five percent of the homeless were African Americans, the report said.

Based on a sampling of communities across the United States, the study concluded that 24 percent of all adults in homeless shelters were disabled.

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said the data can be used as a tool to gauge the extent of homelessness and help communities develop solutions.

"Understanding homelessness is a necessary step to ending it, especially for those persons living with a chronic condition such as mental illness, an addiction or a physical disability," Jackson said in a statement.

"This first annual assessment offers all of us a more complete picture of, not only how many persons and families are homeless, but critical information about their needs," Jackson said.

HUD said the study will serve as a baseline for annual homelessness estimates it intends to issue from now on.

Advocates for the homeless say an estimate based on a point in time does not take into account homeless people living in other circumstances such as motels or those "doubling up" in someone else's home.

"I think we spend way too much time, energy and money in counting homeless people," said Michael Stoops, Director of the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless.

"Many cities in this country are trying to give the impression that things are better than they really are, that homelessness is decreasing. But in reality, homelessness continues to increase regardless of who is in the White House or who controls Congress," Stoops said in a telephone interview.

"It's okay to count homeless people. But we need to make sure that we're housing homeless people and not just doing our information gathering game."

    Study finds more than 700,000 homeless in the U.S., R, 28.2.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2722298120070228

HUD gets new view

of who's homeless

Posted 2/27/2007 11:48 PM ET
USA Today
By Wendy Koch

A groundbreaking survey of homelessness being released today found that 704,000 people nationwide sought shelter at least once in a three-month period.

Families with children accounted for one-third of those seeking emergency shelter or transitional housing between February and April 2005, the most recent period studied, according to the report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The rest were individuals, mostly adult men. Nearly half were black.

The count covered only those seeking shelter, not people living on the street, so the total number of homeless people would be higher.

"This first-of-its-kind study is a huge leap forward in our understanding of not only how many people are homeless, but also what their needs are," HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson says. The report says, for example, that at least a quarter are disabled.

HUD, which briefed USA TODAY on the report Monday, says it is the most comprehensive government estimate ever of homelessness. Previous counts looked only at the number of people homeless on a given day or week.

The three-month figure — equal to the population of South Dakota — is an estimate based on a sample of 80 communities. It will serve as a baseline for annual reports to Congress and may be expanded to include people living on the street.

Martha Burt, a homelessness scholar at the Urban Institute, says the new database has shortcomings. For example, it has limited information about the health of those seeking shelter, and she thinks future versions will have trouble tracking those living on the street.

HUD's report also cites a previously reported one-night survey of hundreds of communities in January 2005. That survey found 754,000 homeless people, including 45% who were living on the street. USA TODAY published its own estimate of 727,000 in October 2005, based on earlier tallies.

The three-month count found that on an average day, 335,000 people sought shelter, but more than twice that number sought shelter at least once during the entire period.

Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania who co-wrote the HUD report, says it's unclear whether homelessness has increased or declined, because past estimates were done differently.

He says poverty among blacks, who are more likely to live in urban areas, runs deeper than for other groups.

Culhane says families with kids have remained a steady one-third of the homeless, and he says government needs to do more to provide housing, such as expanding rent subsidies.

One of every three homeless kids has a diagnosable psychiatric disorder, such as post-traumatic stress, by age 8, says Ellen Bassuk, a psychiatrist who is president of the National Center on Family Homelessness.

"They have trouble sitting still and learning in school," she says.

Nine of 10 homeless mothers have been victims of violence, often domestic, she says.

Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless welcomes the new count but says more housing and shelters are needed as well as a focus on the root causes of the problem. He says homelessness "can happen to everyone."

    HUD gets new view of who's homeless, UT, 27.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-27-hud-homeless_x.htm

Report:

In U.S., record numbers

are plunged into poverty

Posted 2/25/2007 2:43 AM ET
AFP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The gulf between rich and poor in the United States is yawning wider than ever, and the number of extremely impoverished is at a three-decade high, a report out Saturday found.

Based on the latest available U.S. census data from 2005, the McClatchy Newspapers analysis found that almost 16 million Americans live in "deep or severe poverty" defined as a family of four with two children earning less than 9,903 dollars — one half the federal poverty line figure.

For individuals the "deep poverty" threshold was an income under 5,080 dollars a year.

"The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26% from 2000 to 2005," the U.S. newspaper chain reported.

"That's 56% faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period," it noted.

The surge in poverty comes alongside an unusual economic expansion.

"Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries," the study found.

"That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

"These and other factors have helped push 43% of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty — the highest rate since at least 1975. The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades," the report said.

It quoted an American Journal of Preventive Medicine study as having found that since 2000, the number of severely poor — far below basic poverty terms — in the United States has grown "more than any other segment of the population."

"That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began," said Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, a study co-author.

"We're not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we're seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty."

U.S. social programs are minimal compared to those of western Europe and Canada. The United States has a population of 301 million, but more than 45 million U.S. citizens have no health insurance.

    Report: In U.S., record numbers are plunged into poverty, UT, 25.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-25-us-poverty_x.htm

Housing boom revitalizes D.C. but displaces low-income families

Updated 2/22/2007 7:06 PM ET
By Lubna Takruri, Associated Press
USA Today

WASHINGTON — When Chimera Tucker and her fiance, Kevin Smith, ran out of housing options in Washington, they slept with their 2-week-old daughter under two large umbrellas at a subway station.

The city had twice turned away their requests for shelter. But after several days at the subway station last July, the couple got workers' attention — with help from little Jazzmine. "They looked at the baby and said, 'Oh wow, y'all need somewhere to stay!"' said Smith.

The family's story is a common one in Washington. The economic renaissance that has revitalized the city's neighborhoods, bringing high-end condos and stratospheric rents, is increasingly pushing out low-income residents like Tucker and Smith. And those displaced families are putting more pressure on subsidized-housing programs and emergency shelters.

A record 56,047 families from the District of Columbia were on waiting lists for public housing and Section 8 vouchers in November — the latest month for which statistics were available. That's up 7% from the same period in 2005, according to the D.C. Housing Authority.

For those families in line for emergency shelter, the city simply doesn't have enough supply to meet demand.

On any given day, about 300 families are waiting for a spot in D.C. Village, an emergency housing shelter under fire for overcrowding and infestations, among other problems. The shelter, which took in Tucker and Smith, has fewer than 70 beds under normal conditions.

Altogether, the city has about 200 family shelter units — not enough to serve families in need.

"They'll tell you there's no place for you, then they'll convince you that you should go back to where you came from, which might be a crack house or a terribly overcrowded house," said Mary Ann Luby, an outreach coordinator at the Washington Legal Clinic, a non-profit that advises homeless people.

Now that the frigid weather has arrived in Washington, homeless advocates are again worrying about where to place families in need.

The District of Columbia's hypothermia law requires officials to shelter homeless people on nights when the temperature dips below 32 degrees. Extra beds are put in D.C. Village and at D.C. General Hospital, and when that space runs out, groups like the Legal Clinic have in the past persuaded the city to pay families' hotel costs.

But when the weather is milder, homeless families have fewer options. Unlike other cities like New York, which requires that all people in need receive shelter, Washington normally has no units immediately available to homeless families. That forces most families to crowd into small apartments with other families or, in the worst cases, sleep outside with their children.

Experts say the affordable-housing crisis is one of the biggest contributors to the homeless problem in cities like Washington.

The D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute recently estimated that rising rents alone caused a loss of 7,500 units with rents under $500 a month between 2000 and 2004. From 2003 to 2005, the median price of a Washington home shot up 57%, from $290,000 to $485,000. And more than 18,000 condos, many with big price tags, are under construction in the city.

The District of Columbia isn't alone in struggling to house the homeless. Other big cities, like Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco, are grappling with a growing homeless problem that has been exacerbated by the erosion in affordable housing.

"I don't think anything is going wrong in the district that isn't going wrong anywhere else," said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. "There isn't enough affordable housing and a lot of families are becoming homeless."

Roman said some cities have implemented successful measures to ease the homeless problem. New York, she said, is aggressively building public housing, among other measures. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has moved people off the streets and into permanent housing.

The strategy in Boston — where the number of homeless families is at or near record levels — involves creating mixed-income communities in an attempt to move away from concentrated areas of poverty.

Jim Greene, director of the City of Boston Emergency Shelter, used Washington as an example of the problems caused by the Bush administration's subsidized-housing cuts. "It's a disgrace to go to our nation's capital for conferences on ending homelessness and see the evidence of federal neglect all around," he said.

In the district, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said he supports a 2006 city-commissioned report that offers recommendations on relieving the affordable-housing problem. It suggests designating a certain percentage of affordable units in new developments and creating mixed-income communities.

City officials say they want to move away from shelters and toward housing people. Fenty's administration plans to acquire and rehabilitate housing units for families and has budgeted $1 million for locally funded subsidies. Because of the Bush administration's cuts, no federally funded vouchers have been issued to D.C. residents in the past two years, said Brian Wilbon, interim director of the city's Department of Human Services.

Like many homeless families, Tucker, 22, and Smith, 36, found it difficult to find the road out of the homeless system.

Both worked at fast-food restaurants and had difficulty making ends meet. They were evicted in 2005 from Tucker's mother's home after the mother stopped paying the rent. At one point, they found a place to stay on their own, but Tucker became pregnant, got depressed and quit her job, causing the couple to lose their apartment.

Smith said he has been taking classes to get a commercial driver's license and hopes to drive trucks to help his family get back on its feet.

After seven months in D.C. Village, Tucker got a phone message in January: It was the city telling the family to get ready to move into a new transitional apartment. They finally left D.C. Village. (Tucker noted that the move came after she spoke to several media outlets about her situation and the shelter conditions.)

Tucker, Smith and their daughter, now 8 months old, hope to eventually move into a permanent place of their own.

That place might be in Richmond, Va., or somewhere in North Carolina. But it won't be in Washington, where Smith spent his whole life.

"As of right now, I can't even make it in my own city," said Smith.

Housing boom revitalizes D.C. but displaces low-income families, UT, 22.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-02-24-washingtondc_x.htm

‘Dumping’ of Homeless by Hospitals

Stirs Debate

February 23, 2007
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 22 — For a year, reports have surfaced that hospitals here have left homeless patients on downtown streets, including a paraplegic man wearing a hospital gown and colostomy bag who witnesses say pulled himself through the streets with a plastic bag of his belongings held in his teeth.

Now, prosecutors are hoping a bill introduced last week in the State Senate will give them stronger legal firepower to charge the hospitals.

Of the 55 or so reports of “patient dumping,” principally in the dilapidated quarter known as Skid Row, only a handful are being investigated for criminal activity, said Rocky Delgadillo, the city attorney. Only one hospital has been charged, using a misdemeanor count that has never been tested in court.

The problem is that while California state law requires hospitals to have written procedures outlining follow-up care for patients, it does not expressly prohibit leaving them on the street.

Advocates for the homeless said it was common in many cities for homeless people still requiring medical treatment to end up on the street or at the doors of shelters ill prepared for their medical needs.

“Hospitals don’t know what to do with them, and they think it’s the homeless agencies’ responsibility,” said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington advocacy group.

Mr. Stoops said local and federal laws were murky, at best, over where homeless patients should be discharged.

The proposed California law, written by members of Mr. Delgadillo’s staff and introduced by Senator Gilbert A. Cedillo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, would require hospitals to transport discharged patients to their residence or, if they lack one, to the place they identify as their home, typically a shelter.

“There currently is no law making dumping homeless hospital patients on Skid Row a crime,” Mr. Delgadillo said Thursday at a news conference. “What we really need is legal clarity that specifically prohibits it.”

The bill calls for a jail term up to two years and a fine of $1,000 for anyone violating the law. Hospitals could be fined $10,000 and placed on probation, opening the way to court orders dictating how they treat discharged patients who are homeless.

Mr. Delgadillo said homeless patients often lacked insurance or other means to pay for their care, prompting hospitals to discharge them quickly. Skid Row seems a logical place to take them, with its profusion of shelters and social service agencies, but advocates for the homeless said few places could provide the necessary medical care.

“We are set up to get people back on their feet, but we are not set up as a hospital,” said the Rev. Andrew J. Bales, president of the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row.

Prospects for the bill were unclear. A spokesman for Fabian Núñez, a Democrat from Los Angeles who is the Assembly speaker, said he supported it, but a spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said it was too early to take a position on it. A similar measure Mr. Cedillo introduced last year was unsuccessful.

Among the suspected patient-dumping cases that have drawn attention is one in which Mr. Delgadillo has charged Kaiser Permanente with misdemeanor false imprisonment involving a case last year caught on videotape.

The case that has drawn headlines and indignation more recently involved the paraplegic man found crawling in the street on Feb. 8. A dozen people say they saw a woman driving a van from Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center leave the man in the street, with some saying she got back in the van and spruced up her makeup.

Mr. Delgadillo said he was still investigating the case. Dan Springer, a spokesman for the hospital, said it had acknowledged that its procedures for releasing the patient had not been followed. Mr. Springer said the hospital was taking steps to ensure it did not happen again.

James Lott, an executive with the Hospital Association of Southern California, criticized the proposed legislation, calling it “in a word, stupid,” and an example of Mr. Delgadillo’s “grandstanding.” Mr. Lott said federal laws already required hospitals to treat and stabilize patients before discharge and to provide a plan for follow-up care if needed.

In addition, he said, hospitals downtown agreed two months ago to new procedures ensuring that homeless patients were not left on the street. He conceded the protocol had been violated in the case of the man found crawling in the street.

‘Dumping’ of Homeless by Hospitals Stirs Debate, NYT, 23.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/23/us/23dumping.html