The Paulson Plan: a moratorium on stereotypes against the poor.

It was totally predictable it would collapse. You know, I didn’t know when, didn’t know exactly who, but it was totally predictable. And now they’re running to us and asking us for handouts. Think of what we do to welfare people, when they—you know, everything they have to go through to get, you know, a $500-a-month check, and these people want billions, no questions asked. Unbelievable.
- Dean Baker, co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research

If the Paulson Plan passes and American taxpayers are responsible for at least $700 of Wall Street debt – whether for good or for bad for our economy – never again should the charge be leveled against recipeints of public assistance that they shouldn’t get “handouts”, that they are “milking the system”, or that they are “hurting the economy”.

We are willing to throw $700 billion of unchecked funds at some of the richest Americans and we quibble about the $300-$400 that Social Services gives to those who have the least? The hypocrisy is thick.

Perhaps the recepients of the $700 billion should be subjected to invasive interviewing processes. Perhaps they should be finger-printed to receive a bailout. Perhaps they should wait in line for 4-5 hours and have their bailout “pending” for 45 days.

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AMA Calls for Universal Health Care

Buffalo doctor who heads the AMA issues call for universal health care

By Jerry Zremski – News Washington Bureau
Updated: 09/23/08 10:01 AM

Charles Lewis/Buffalo News file photo

Nancy H. Nielsen of Buffalo said the number of uninsured is “a tragedy and a national disgrace and we need to do something about it.”

WASHINGTON — The Buffalo physician who heads the American Medical Association came to the capital today to reignite the debate on universal health care at a time of great sickness in the American economy.

“You may wonder why we are doing this at a time when Wall Street is tanking, but it just couldn’t be any more timely,” said Nancy H. Nielsen, the Buffalo internist who became the AMA’s president in June.

“We know the number of uninsured is 47 million in this country,” she added at a briefing on the issue at the National Press Club. “These are not people living under bridges. They are our friends, our neighbors, our acquaintances … This 47 million is not a statistic. It’s a tragedy and a national disgrace and we need to do something about it.”

Several of the panelists at the discussion agreed, noting that the number of uninsured is likely to rise if the economy goes into free-fall amid the nation’s financial crisis.

Yet the panelists also agreed that it would be difficult to get Congress to quickly solve the problem, no matter who is elected president in November.

“We don’t really have a health care system; it’s a free-for-all,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “It’s so complicated and so many people have knee-jerk reactions to it that everybody’s going to have to step back and reexamine their assumptions and pause before saying, ‘No, this won’t work.’”

Paul H. Keckley, executive director of the Doloitte Center for Health Solutions, agreed.

“It’s a perplexing problem that’s not going to be solved in four years,” Keckley said. “It took us 60 years to get here.”

And now, a new president and Congress will be forced to try to deal with the problem of the uninsured amid great uncertainty about the American financial system, which the Bush administration proposes spending $700 billion in federal funds to rescue from its bad debts.

“I think the rolls of the uninsured may have expanded recently” thanks to newly unemployed investment bankers, said Brian Kelly, editor of U.S. News and World Reports, which sponsored the discussion along with the AMA.

Kelly also proposed a quick, if flip, solution to the problem of paying for insurance for those who remain uncovered.

“You could fit it into the bailout bill as a rounding error,” he said.

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New York City Settles Homeless Lawsuit Filed in 1983

City Settles Lawsuit Over Homeless Families

By Sewell Chan

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/city-settles-lawsuit-over-homeless-families/index.html?hp

Updated, 1:09 p.m. | The Bloomberg administration has decided to settle a longstanding class-action lawsuit over homeless families’ access to shelter in New York City, ending costly litigation that has dragged on since May 1983, through four mayoral administrations. The settlement, which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced at a news conference this morning, comes as city officials acknowledge that the mayor’s plan to reduce homelessness by two-thirds by 2009 has fallen far short of it goals.

While the number of homeless single adults has fallen a bit, the number of homeless families has risen. There are about 9,000 homeless families, including about 14,000 children, sleeping in city shelters every night this month. City spending on homelessness prevention has risen, to $191.2 million in 2007 from $160.6 million in 2004, and spending on homeless shelters has grown to $603.5 million from $563.4 million, the city’s Independent Budget Office found in a study [pdf] last month.

The main lawsuit being settled, McCain v. Koch, was filed in 1983 by the Legal Aid Society to draw attention to the plight of homeless families, after similar lawsuits had been filed over the rights of homeless men and women. Those lawsuits had resulted in the establishment, unusual in the United States, of a right to shelter in New York City.

The McCain suit argued that the city had failed to provide adequate shelter or develop standards governing shelter for families. (The named plaintiff in the suit was Yvonne McCain, who was evicted from a Brooklyn apartment in 1982 after withholding rent to protest her landlord’s refusal to make repairs.)

Over the years, related lawsuits were filed arguing, like the McCain case, that homeless families were improperly denied shelter or even barred from applying for it; those lawsuits, too, are part of today’s settlement.

A court-appointed panel of special masters had urged an end to the litigation nearly three years ago. But the litigation resumed in 2005, after a two-year hiatus. The city moved in 2006 to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it had taken major steps to transform the system, but the case dragged. The settlement announced today occurred after talks between the city’s top lawyer, Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo, and Steven M. Banks, attorney in chief at the Legal Aid Society.

Under the settlement, the parties agreed a new case would be filed and, following a class action settlement hearing, all cases against the city and state, as well as the new one, would be dismissed. The city will regain full control and oversight of its family services system, “no longer having to enforce over 40 highly-detailed court orders or spend precious staff time and agency resources complying with or litigating these cases,” City Hall said in a statement.

The statement added:

As part of the settlement, the parties have agreed that New York City would continue its long-standing interpretation of state and local laws ensuring safe and decent emergency shelter for homeless families with children. The settlement also includes provisions that outline current agency standards and protocols for assessing shelter eligibility; under the terms of the agreement, these provisions sunset on Dec. 31, 2010, unless the agency were to be found in “systemic non-compliance” with its provisions in a separate successful litigation.

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Buffalo Unemployment Rate Jumped in August

Business First of Buffalo reports that the Buffalo unemployment rate is 6%, up from 4.5% during the same period in 2007. More behind the jump.

Thursday, September 18, 2008 – 1:22 PM EDT

The jobless rate for Buffalo-Niagara Falls increased to 6 percent in August, rising from 4.5 percent in the same month a year ago, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday.

The Buffalo area has the highest jobless rate of the measured metropolitan areas in the state. Also, it is the highest unemployment rate for August in this decade, topping 5.8 percent in 2003.

The unemployment figure, which matched July, coincided with very little private-sector job growth — 100 such positions, or less than 0.1 percent, added year-over-year. The Labor Department said non-farm jobs locally are up 2,000, or 0.4 percent, from last year.

Rochester’s unemployment rate was 5.7 percent, compared to 4.1 percent from August 2007 and 5.6 percent in July. No other market in New York state, however, has suffered as many job losses. The monthly figures show a decline of 4,700, or 1.1 percent, from last year and an overall non-farm job loss of 7,100, or 1.4 percent.

New York state’s private-sector employment increased over the month by 3,000, or less than 0.1 percent, to 7.26 million. The state’s unemployment rate, after seasonal adjustment, increased to 5.8 percent in August 2008 — its highest level since June 2004 — from 5.2 percent in July.

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Harvest House to Build One-Stop Services Agency for Needy Families

From the Buffalo News

Harvest House plans $3.7 million ‘one-stop’ facility for the underserved

The Harvest House Ministry Center today announced a $3.7 million project that will expand human services offered to needy individuals in underserved communities.

The faith-based center is moving forward with a long-planned conversion of a former truck dealership at 175 Jefferson Ave. near N. Division Street into a new site that will aim to be a one-stop resource for families in underserved neighborhoods.

The site will become the new location for the Baby and Children’s Ministry, which supplies families with free items such as cribs, high chairs and car seats.

Renovated space will also be used as satellite offices for various human services agencies. New classrooms will be built for the New Hope Education Center. In addition, the project will free up space to expand free clinics offered through Good Neighbors Health Care.

Harvest House received the 29,000-square-foot building — on the site of the 1983 propane explosion that killed seven — as a gift in 2003.

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US Homelessness Czar Comes to Buffalo

Philip Mangano, Executive Director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, came to Buffalo on Tuesday to give a keynote speech at the Ending Homelessness symposium sponsored by the WNY Coalition for the Homeless and the Homeless Alliance. The Buffalo News reports behind the jump.

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Home Heating Costs to Increase 40% This Winter

National Fuel & Gas recently estimated that home heating costs for its customers would increase by 40% this winter. In other words, what you could heat for $100 last year will now cost $140.

With no signficant increase in utility assistance from either the Erie County Department of Social Services, the Home Energy Assistance Program, or similar community funds (Neighbor-4-Neighbor), many low-income individuals and families face the possibility of gas shut-off this winter, leaving them homeless by federal definition (even if they have a roof over their heads).

Just for the record: the Department of Social Services offers families on TANF (public assistance) $54 per month to cover their heating costs. Why so little? Because the welfare grant hasn’t been raised since 1990. Maybe when George Bush, Sr. was in office, $54 could cover your heating costs, but when McCain or Obama take the presidential seat, $54 is a fraction of the cost of home heating for those living in the Northeast.

If you want to learn more about raising the welfare grant, visit the Hunger Action Network of NYS website.

The following information is for low-income residents of Erie County and case managers of human services agencies. Please be aware of these heating assistance options as costs increase this winter. DON’T WAIT UNTIL IT’S TOO LATE TO ACCESS THESE SERVICES.

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Buffalo News Editorial on Poverty

The Buffalo News Published an outstanding editorial on poverty in Buffalo.  The editorial was the lead Sunday editorial which is considered in journalistic circles as the most prestigious of placements.

The article mentions the Homeless Alliance and we are grateful for the mention.  More importantly however is the fact that the News outlines the same policy recommendations that the Alliance has been making for some time now.

Buffalo slips in standings

But new rank as third-poorest city still stands as a mark of shame

Updated: 08/31/08 6:29 AM

Buffalo earned no bragging rights by dropping from the second-poorest big city in the nation to No. 3. Statistically, there’s not much difference at all. Emotionally, the truth still hurts — more than one of every four city residents is living in poverty.

The latest estimate by the U. S. Census Bureau puts Buffalo at third-poorest and still claiming one of the highest poverty rates in the nation, at 28.7 percent last year. Detroit maintained its No. 1 spot at 33.8 percent, highest among cities with more than 250,000 people, and Cleveland followed at 29.5 percent. That all three are Great Lakes cities does nothing to enhance our image, or our community psyche.

Poor is poor, and slicing the statistics thinly doesn’t much help, according to Wende A. Mix, an associate professor in the geography and planning department at Buffalo State College. “Statistically, there’s no change,” Mix said.

Bill O’Connell, executive director of the Homeless Alliance of Western New York, said he also sees no change from a practical viewpoint and, therefore, no room for political back-slapping. The numbers remain a city disgrace, and to put any kind of a positive spin on the latest ranking would be to miss the point.

Moving people from poverty to economic self-sufficiency should be a factor in community decision-making, and a measure of success in policy-setting and in projects from neighborhood improvements to job-creating attractions on the waterfront. Every strategy and every ribbon-cutting should be backed by the promise of family-wage jobs.

Small neighborhood businesses also must be a part of that mix, encouraged by the city as both a solution to the transportation woes of the impoverished and as cornerstones for neighborhood redevelopment.

With so many residents already living in poverty and many more only a missed paycheck away from disaster, help programs also need encouraging. Experts say millions of dollars are left on the table each year in federal funds for food stamps simply because people are not applying — either because of difficulty in accessing the services, embarrassment in applying or lack of knowledge of available resources.

There’s room here for everyone to help. Western New York’s key charities, the United Way and Catholic Charities, are struggling to gain enough donations to continue providing outreach services and such referral help lines as the 211 number at current levels, let alone expand to meet expanding needs. Job creation may be the goal, but social services programs — whether governmental or charity-based — can provide a needed bridge.

This community should look at poverty not just as a disgrace but as a solvable problem. It’s important to break the pattern of poverty. That can start with viewing economic development through poverty’s lens, and the statistical rankings can provide some focus. Clarity includes recognition that poverty is not always an individual problem. Housing costs, health care, transportation and municipal demolition choices all make a difference in terms of community poverty or success. And what Brookings Institution analysts term “smart policies” that foster more integration throughout metropolitan areas, while linking residents of impoverished neighborhoods to labor markets and private investment, can make a big difference.

So now we’re not No. 2, we’re No. 3. But we still have to try harder — to keep slipping down that list.

Click below to find a .pdf version of the article.

buffalo-slips-in-standings

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What Do Obama and McCain Have to Say on Poverty?

With the 2008 Presidential Election rapidly approaching, you may be asking yourself: what are the candidates’ respective plans for poverty?

A number of large, private foundations pooled their resources and created Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity, which describes candidate stances on poverty and plans to address it.

This is an important step in drawing attention to the public dialogue on poverty.

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If you assault someone while panhandling, you are no longer panhandling

Unfortunately, the stereotypes that surround those who are poor and homeless carry over into the way our media portrays things. Nowhere is it more evident than in the Buffalo News headline “Panhandler Gets 3-Year Prison Term for Assault”. The story is behind the jump.

You will see that a man assaulted an Allentown bar patron with a chain and padlock and got 3-years in jail – a sentence which he clearly deserves.

However, what, if anything, did panhandling have to do with this scenario? It is said that Hicks assaulted the man when he refused to give Hicks money outside Nietzsche’s bar in Allentown. That doesn’t sound like “panhandling gone wrong” – that sounds like a mugging gone wrong. And assault. If I ask someone for money and they don’t give me any and then I beat them up – that is assault – not panhandling.

Some may say that panhandling was merely a step, and that this assault was an escalation of that step. But not so. Asking for money on the street is entirely different than beating someone up on the street.

Those who are poor, those who choose to panhandle (and, keep in mind, are not necessarily homeless), are not criminals – nor are they violent – simply because of their poverty.

http://www.buffalonews.com/258/story/424569.html

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