Consumed by payday loans: State legislators offer haven for lenders deemed ‘predatory’, By Karen de Sá, October 30, 2011, San Jose Mercury News: “Facing government crackdowns around the country, payday lenders are thriving in lightly regulated California, where they lure hundreds of thousands of desperate borrowers a year despite punishing, triple-digit interest rates. Seventeen states and the U.S. military have effectively banned payday loans, which attract low-income borrowers who need a cash advance on paychecks. Georgia has declared payday lending to be felony racketeering. But in California, payday storefronts outnumber Starbucks coffeehouses. Neon-splashed businesses touting slogans like ‘Cash as Easy as 1, 2, 3!’ promise hassle-free, short-term loans, while few borrowers heed the fine print: A two-week loan will saddle them with what amounts to an annual interest rate of 460 percent. Now, the multibillion-dollar industry is looking for more help from a state Legislature that has protected payday lenders for years…”
Monthly Archives: October 2011
States and No Child Left Behind Waivers
After-school tutoring likely to end as dozens of states pursue No Child Left Behind waivers, Associated Press, October 30, 2011, Washington Post: “Dozens of states intend to apply for waivers that would free their schools from a federal requirement that they set aside hundreds of millions of dollars a year for after-school tutoring, a program many researchers say has been ineffective. The 2002 No Child Left Behind law requires school districts that repeatedly fail to meet its benchmarks to set aside federal money to pay for outside tutors. But studies released in the past five years have found mixed results, at best, from the program. They say it has suffered from participation rates as low as 20 percent, uneven quality among tutors, a lack of coordination between tutors and teachers, poor oversight by the states and a prohibition against giving the lowest achieving students priority. Also, they say, there has been no connection between students’ success and tutors’ paychecks…”
Unemployment Benefits Payments – Oregon
Oregon overpays $392 million in unemployment benefits, fraud investigators swamped, By Richard Read, October 28, 2011, The Oregonian: “As unemployment insurance claims ballooned during the past few years, Oregon overpaid more than $392 million in benefits, a U.S. Labor Department analysis shows. That’s about 12 percent of almost $3.5 billion paid in benefits during the three years that ended in June. Some of the money went out the door innocently enough, paid before the Oregon Employment Department determined a recipient was ineligible for benefits. But other checks went to people who fraudulently collected unemployment without looking for work, or who found a job and continued claiming benefits. Either way, Oregon officials aim to recover the money, which originates from employers, not individual taxpayers. But they say fraud cases have swamped the Employment Department, where caseloads at one point reached 400 per investigator, up from 150 before the recession…”
State Medicaid Programs
- California gets OK for large cuts to Medi-Cal, By Anna Gorman, October 28, 2011, Los Angeles Times: “The Obama administration will allow California to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Medi-Cal, a move doctors and experts say will make it harder for the poor to get medical treatment. California plans to reduce rates by 10% to many providers, including physicians, dentists, clinics, pharmacies and most nursing homes, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Thursday. The cuts ‘will have a real impact on Medi-Cal patients’ because fewer doctors will be willing to see those covered by the program, which serves 7.6 million poor and disabled Californians, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access, a consumer group. The head of the California Medical Assn., which represents doctors, echoed the concern…”
- Medicaid costs balloon for cash-strapped states, By Tami Luhby, October 27, 2011, CNNMoney.com: “As stimulus funds dry up, cash-strapped states are facing steep rises in Medicaid spending, forcing them to slash services and trim costs. States will have to spend another 28.7% on Medicaid this fiscal year — by far the largest increase ever, according to new data released by the Kaiser Family Foundation Thursday. Much of the increase comes from the loss of more than $100 billion in federal stimulus funds, which helped buffer states from the massive jump in Medicaid enrollment during the Great Recession. But those federal funds ran out in June, leaving states to shoulder the burden of covering nearly 60 million people on their own…”
- State spending on Medicaid up sharply, By N.C. Aizenman, October 27, 2011, Washington Post: “The expiration of federal stimulus funding for Medicaid has dealt a blow to states still struggling to recover from the economic downturn, according to figures released Thursday. To compensate for the loss of extra federal Medicaid dollars this June, states have increased their spending on the program by an average of 29 percent in the current fiscal year. Nearly every state also has turned to tough measures to trim Medicaid costs, such as eliminating benefits, reducing payment rates to doctors and hospitals, and increasing the co-payments they charge the poor and disabled served by the program. Even so, more than half of state officials surveyed said there was a 50-50 chance their Medicaid programs – which are financed with a combination of state and federal funds – would face a budget shortfall as enrollment continues to rise…”
- Survey: States counting on lower costs as Medicaid enrollment slows, By Christine Vestal, October 28, 2011, Stateline.org: “As states were drafting their 2012 Medicaid budgets this summer, they faced the biggest leap in general fund spending since the program began – a whopping 29 percent increase. That’s mainly because federal stimulus dollars for the program dried up, leaving states to shoulder their traditional share of the bill – about 50 percent. As a result, state lawmakers authorized only a 2 percent increase in overall spending for the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people – one of the lowest growth rates on record. That’s according to a 50-state survey released Thursday (October 27) by the Kaiser Family Foundation…”
Poll of Jobless Americans
Facing hardship, jobless still say they have hope, By Michael Cooper and Allison Kopicki, October 26, 2011, New York Times: “The nation’s lingering unemployment crisis has forced many people without work to dip into their savings, borrow from relatives and do without necessities including health insurance, and most people who receive unemployment benefits said that the money was not enough to meet their basic needs, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll of jobless Americans. Still, despite enduring hardships and being even more pessimistic about the nation’s economy than the general public, unemployed Americans remained optimistic about eventually landing jobs. A little more than half of those polled said they were either very or somewhat confident they would find long-term employment in the next year, and a majority said they expected that when they did find permanent work, it would be at a similar or higher salary than they had received in the past. But the poll found deep unease about unemployment benefits…”
Marriage, Income and Poverty
Fewer marriages, fewer jobs: what’s contributing to poverty?, By Katie Leslie, October 27, 2011, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Losing a job is a quick and certain path to economic distress, as all too many Georgians have learned in recent years. But new census data highlight another, deeper-seated trend with profound implications for the long-term prosperity of middle-class families: the disappearance of marriage as a norm, especially among those who have children. In Georgia, from 2008 to 2010, the poverty rate was higher among single women raising children than among the unemployed — 39 percent vs. 31 percent — according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of 3-year census estimates released Thursday…”
Military Veterans and Homelessness
More Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans wind up homeless, By Gregg Zoroya, October 28, 2011, USA Today: “As wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, federal officials are seeing a growing number of young veterans on the street, according to a joint homeless study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Veterans Affairs released Friday. About 13,000 of the nation’s homeless in 2010 were ex-servicemembers between ages 18 and 30, a disproportionately large number of the nation’s overall homeless veteran population, the study says…”
Weatherization Program – Indiana
Weatherization goal passed: 20,185 homes got improvements with stimulus funds, By Mary Beth Schneider, October 27, 2011, Indianapolis Star: “Indiana has surpassed its goal of weatherizing about 20,000 homes with federal stimulus dollars and hopes to deliver energy-saving improvements to as many as 3,000 others before the program ends in March. Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, standing outside an Eastside home outfitted with a new furnace, water heater and insulation, said Wednesday that the jump in projections is possible because of cost savings that have left some of the $131.8 million in federal funds available. The success marks a turnaround from the program’s slow start. In November 2009, when the first benchmarks were to be met, the state was to have completed work on 2,202 homes. Instead, only 403 were completed…”
Census Data on Mobility
- Many who started in middle class find lifestyle slipping away, By Aldo Svaldi, October 23, 2011, Denver Post: “Joanne Spillman, 50, grew up in a large home in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood, never wanting for anything, and never anticipating she would achieve anything less in her life. ‘We were middle class, and our needs were met,’ Spillman said. ‘I always figured I would grow up and live the same lifestyle.’ But Spillman has struggled her whole adult life to reach the standard of living she once knew, a struggle that the recession and weak recovery have made much tougher. Nearly three out of 10 Americans, 28 percent, born in the middle class drop out of it as adults, according to a recent study on economic mobility from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The study defines middle class as those families making between $32,900 and $64,000 in 2010 dollars, which ranks between the 30th and 70th percentiles of income. The 30th percentile was used as a cut-off point because it is where families typically stop relying on government support to get by, said Erin Currier, project manager for Pew’s Economic Mobility Project…”
- Census: Share of Americans on the move falls to record low amid long-term housing and job woes, Associated Press, October 26, 2011, Washington Post: “Yet another symptom of the economic downturn: Americans aren’t moving. Young adults are staying put, often with their parents. Older people aren’t able to retire to beachfront or lakeside homes. U.S. mobility is at its lowest point since World War II. New information from the Census Bureau highlights the continuing impact of the housing bust and unemployment on U.S. migration, after earlier signs that mobility was back on the upswing. It’s a shift from America’s long-standing cultural image of ever-changing frontiers, dating to the westward migration of the 1800s and more recently in the spreading out of whites, blacks and Hispanics in the Sun Belt’s housing boom. Rather than housing magnets such as Arizona, Florida and Nevada, it is now more traditional, densely populated states – California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey – that are showing some of the biggest population gains in the recent economic slump, according to the data released Thursday…”
Income Inequality in the US
- Utah has nation’s lowest ‘income inequality’, By Lee Davidson, October 26, 2011, Salt Lake Tribune: “More than any other Americans, Utahns live among neighbors whose incomes are similar to their own. The rich live with the rich, and the poor with the poor. But the overall range of Utahns’ household incomes is relatively narrow, too, with comparatively few who are exceptionally high- or low-income. That’s according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau looking at ‘neighborhood income inequality’ between 2005 and 2009…”
- Income inequality lower than average in NW, says Census report, By Jessica Robinson, October 26, 2011, Oregon Public Broadcasting: “New numbers show the gap between the rich and poor has grown across the nation. But income inequality in the Northwest is lower than the national level. That’s according to an analysis released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. Correspondent Jessica Robinson has more. The report is based on survey data collected between 2005 and 2009 — three years of economic growth, plus two years of recession. It uses three different measurements. And in all of them, Oregon, Idaho and Washington have lower-than-average levels of income inequality. That is, the spread between high wage earners and low wage earners…”
- Top earners doubled share of nation’s income, study finds, By Robert Pear, October 25, 2011, New York Times: “The top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, in a new report likely to figure prominently in the escalating political fight over how to revive the economy, create jobs and lower the federal debt. In addition, the report said, government policy has become less redistributive since the late 1970s, doing less to reduce the concentration of income…”
- The rich are getting richer, U.S. study says, By Jim Puzzanghera, October 27, 2011, Los Angeles Times: “The rich got richer over the last three decades – and the very rich got very much richer – according to a new government study. The top 1% of households saw their after-tax incomes grow by 275% from 1979 to 2007, said the study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That was more than quadruple the growth of the rest of the top 20% of the population during that period. Meanwhile, income for the 60% of households that make up the middle of the income scale increased by slightly less than 40%, the study found. The poor – the 20% of the population with the lowest incomes – saw just an 18% increase…”
Schools and Budget Cuts
Already financially hurting school districts brace for more cuts ahead, Associated Press, October 24, 2011, Washington Post: “Educators are bracing for a tough reality: As difficult as budget cuts have been on schools, more tough times are likely ahead. Even in a best-case scenario that assumes strong economic growth next year, it won’t be until 2013 or later when districts see budget levels return to pre-recession levels, said Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators in Arlington, Va. That means more cuts and layoffs are likely ahead. ‘The worst part is that it’s not over,’ Domenech said. Already, an estimated 294,000 jobs in the education sector have been lost since 2008, including those in higher education…”
Foster Care and Adoption
More and more, adoptions being made out of foster care, By Colleen O’Connor, October 25, 2011, Denver Post: “Images of children from distant countries, from Bulgaria to China to Russia, have been the public face of adoption in America. But that picture is overdue for an update. Most kids adopted by U.S. families now come from the child-welfare system: about 52,340 in 2010, up from 15,000 in 1988. In Colorado, the number has increased 125 percent to 1,044 in 2010 from 465 in 1995. The consensus is that it’s good to get children out of ‘the system.’ However, such adoptions can bring with them unanticipated physical and emotional challenges that require ongoing support…”
Medicaid Information System – New York
Taking pulse of Medicaid costs, By Cathleen F. Crowley, October 25, 2011, Albany Times-Union: “Guy Amisano’s soda company sold cases of Pepsi all over Western New York, but he never could put his finger on which sales were the most profitable or whether his price discounts paid off. So in the 1980s, Amisano hired some computer geeks to build a software program to track sales and costs in real time. ‘I was able to see precisely what and to whom I should sell and at what price to achieve optimal profitability without losing volume,’ Amisano said. His profits rose 20 percent and his company grew significantly. Over the next 14 years, Amisano ran Pepsi-Cola Elmira Bottling Co. while selling his computer program on the side. More than half of the beverage industry bought it. In 2000, his family sold the Horseheads-based bottling company to focus on the visual datamining software under a business called Salient Management Company. Now New York’s Medicaid system — the largest in the nation — uses Salient’s software to track the public health program’s $52 billion annual budget, 4.7 million recipients and 60,000 health care providers. Medicaid is the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people. For the first time, top health officials say they can see where Medicaid dollars are going in real time…”
SNAP and Farmers Markets
Minn. farmers’ markets adapt as food stamp program changes to EBT, By Julie Siple, October 25, 2011, Minnesota Public Radio: “Getting fruits and vegetables into the hands of low-income Minnesotans got a little bit easier this summer, as a growing number of farmers markets across the state allowed customers to pay with Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT cards — the replacement for food stamps. It’s part of a national trend, one aimed at making fresh produce more accessible to the more than 45 million Americans who rely on government assistance to put food on their table…”
Suburban Poverty
Outside Cleveland, snapshots of poverty’s surge in the suburbs, By Sabrina Tavernise, October 24, 2011, New York Times: “The poor population in America’s suburbs – long a symbol of a stable and prosperous American middle class – rose by more than half after 2000, forcing suburban communities across the country to re-evaluate their identities and how they serve their populations. The increase in the suburbs was 53 percent, compared with 26 percent in cities. The recession accelerated the pace: two-thirds of the new suburban poor were added from 2007 to 2010. ‘The growth has been stunning,’ said Elizabeth Kneebone, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, who conducted the analysis of census data. ‘For the first time, more than half of the metropolitan poor live in suburban areas.’ As a result, suburban municipalities – once concerned with policing, putting out fires and repairing roads – are confronting a new set of issues, namely how to help poor residents without the array of social programs that cities have, and how to get those residents to services without public transportation. Many suburbs are facing these challenges with the tightest budgets in years…”
NPR Series on Foster Care and Native American Children
Native foster care: Lost children, shattered families, Series homepage, By Laura Sullivan and Amy Walters, National Public Radio: “Nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are being removed from their homes every year, sometimes in questionable circumstances. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is largely failing to place them according to the law. The vast majority of native kids in foster care in South Dakota are in nonnative homes or group homes, according to an NPR analysis of state records…”
Drug Testing and Assistance Programs – Florida
Florida’s welfare drug testing halted by federal judge, By Rebecca Catalanello, October 25, 2011, Miami Herald: “A federal judge in Orlando on Monday temporarily blocked Florida’s controversial law requiring welfare applicants be drug tested in order to receive benefits. Judge Mary Scriven issued a temporary injunction against the state, writing in a 37-page order that the law could violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on illegal search and seizure. ‘The constitutional rights of a class of citizen are at stake,’ Scriven wrote. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the state last month on behalf of Luis Lebron, a 35-year-old Navy veteran and single father from Orlando who is finishing his college degree. Lebron met all the criteria for receiving welfare, but refused to submit to a drug test on the grounds that requiring him to pay for and submit to one is unreasonable when there is no reason to believe he uses drugs…”
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
- Some states adding assets to food stamp qualification, By John Wisely, October 19, 2011, USA Today: “How rich is too rich for food stamps? The answer depends on where you live. In Michigan, if you have $5,000 in liquid assets or a car or truck worth more than $15,000, you’re probably out of luck under new rules launched this month. Earlier this month, the state of Michigan began asking residents about their assets – homes, cars, stocks, bonds, even lottery winnings – in addition to income when they receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for food stamps. The decision to ask about assets rests with the states. Arizona, Texas and Indiana are among the states that ask. Oregon, Oklahoma and New York are among those that don’t, USA TODAY research showed…”
- Rochester region sees food stamp explosion, By Meaghan M. McDermott, October 23, 2011, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: “Since the Great Recession began in 2007, the number of people in the six-county region using food stamps has grown by nearly 50 percent. In that time, spending on the program locally has doubled. Although a portion of that increase may be attributable to a drive to get more eligible people signed up, there’s no denying that the uptick is a sign of ongoing economic distress. It comes at a time when incomes nationwide are down and poverty is on the rise. It’s a symptom reflected in increased demand at local food pantries and mirrors food insecurity trends nationwide…”
- South Floridians on food stamps continue to rise, By Donna Gehrke-White, October 24, 2011, South Florida Sun Sentinel: “Tens of thousands more South Floridians have gone on food stamps in the last year even though the recession has officially ended and the unemployment rate has improved, state statistics show. In Broward County, those on food stamps have jumped nearly 14 percent from September 2010 to last month with 140,010 receiving them, according to the state agency that oversees the federal program. Palm Beach County experienced a 16 percent jump from September 2010 to last month with 91,504 on food stamps…”
- Food stamps fraudsters using Web as tool, By Michelle Miller, October 24, 2011, CBS News: “In this economy, food stamps have become a lifeline for millions more Americans. Just this year, the government is spending more than $70 billion on food stamps. But there’s a disturbing trend: People are buying and selling the benefits online, as correspondent Michelle Miller reports. ‘We had received a lot of complaints about the easy accessibility of these cards,’ explains Steve Lowe, the director for fraud and accountability at the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. ‘It wasn’t just, ‘Go down on the corner.’ You go on the web and make contact and try to make a purchase.’ In a hidden camera video filmed by the department in the parking lot of a large store, an undercover agent was seen buying a card with $200 worth of food benefits on it. She purchased it for $100 after finding out about it on Facebook. ‘Trafficking, what we call where people are selling their benefits on Craigslist or out in a parking lot, that’s a violation of the program,’ U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Kevin Concannon said…”
States and Medicaid Cuts
- Optional Medicaid benefits face state cuts, By Phil Galewitz, October 23, 2011, USA Today: “States are using a variety of strategies to control rising Medicaid costs even as they look ahead to a massive expansion of the state-federal health insurance program for the poor beginning in 2014. The weak economy is driving more jobless Americans into Medicaid, increasing enrollment at the same time that medical costs keep going up. To deal with the higher costs, states are pushing Medicaid recipients into managed-care plans run by private insurers, cutting reimbursement rates to hospitals and doctors and reducing benefits…”
- More states limiting Medicaid hospital stays, By Phil Galewitz, October 23, 2011, USA Today: “A growing number of states are sharply limiting hospital stays under Medicaid to as few as 10 days a year to control rising costs of the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Advocates for the needy and hospital executives say the moves will restrict access to care, force hospitals to absorb more costs and lead to higher charges for privately insured patients. States defend the actions as a way to balance budgets hammered by the economic downturn and the end of billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds this summer that had helped prop up Medicaid, financed jointly by states and the federal government…”
American Community Survey
- Washington region has nation’s lowest poverty rate, By Carol Morello and Luz Lazo, October 20, 2011, Washington Post: “The Washington region had the lowest poverty rate of any major metropolitan area in the country during the past two years, even though poverty is up significantly and continues to rise. About 8.4 percent of the region’s residents lived in poverty in 2010, compared with 6.8 percent before the recession began in 2007. Although the rate represents a steep increase, it is far below the 15 percent national figure and that of urban areas in the West and the South, including Fresno, Calif., and El Paso, where more than 20 percent of people are poor. The region’s poverty rates have been among the lowest in the nation for many years. But although its rate has risen since the recession, other places have struggled more. Even the District, where the poverty rate is a staggering 19 percent, falls midway among other urban centers…”
- Fresno County poverty near nation’s highest, By Russell Clemings, October 20, 2011, Fresno Bee: “Driven by rising unemployment, poverty increased sharply in Fresno County between 2009 and 2010, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. The percentage of people living below the poverty line, the exact value of which depends on family size and age of the householder, rose almost everywhere in those two years. Nationwide, that percentage was 14.3% in 2009 and 15.3% in 2010. But the Fresno metropolitan area, which consists of Fresno County, had a bigger rise – from 21.5% to 26.8%. That means more than 1 in 4 people here now live in poverty, compared to a little more than 1 in 5 before the recession-induced unemployment spike hit its peak. Because the census data is based on a survey that goes only to part of the population, the numbers are considered accurate only within 1 or 2 percentage points. But even that uncertainty is not enough to account for the change in Fresno County’s fortunes…”
- As poverty climbs, Utah’s cash handouts hold steady, By Brooke Adams, October 20, 2011, Salt Lake Tribune: “More Utah families slipped into poverty last year, but that wasn’t reflected in the estimated number of households receiving cash help from the government. An analysis of American Community Survey data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday found about 3.3 million households nationwide received public assistance in 2010, an increase of about 300,000 households from 2009. The analysis looked only at cash assistance, not such benefits as Supplemental Security Income or food stamps. Participation rates increased in 14 states, decreased in 25 and stayed flat in another 11 states – including Utah. That is likely because of Utah’s three-year, lifetime limit on welfare through the general assistance and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF] programs, said Terry Haven, Kids Count director at Voices for Utah Children. While federal law sets a 60-month, lifetime limit on cash assistance, states can set shorter limits or no time frame. In Utah, the limit is 36 months…”
- Census data show NH has nation’s lowest poverty rate, By Lisa Lambert, October 20, 2011, New Hampshire Union Leader: “The ranks of the poor rose in almost all U.S. states and cities in 2010, despite the end of the longest and deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression the year before, U.S. Census data released on Thursday showed. Mississippi and New Mexico had the highest poverty rates, with more than one out of every five people in each state living in poverty. Mississippi’s poverty rate led, at 22.4 percent, followed by New Mexico at 20.4 percent. New Hampshire had the lowest poverty rate, at 8.3 percent, making it the only state with a poverty rate below 10 percent. Twelve states had poverty rates above 17 percent, up from five in 2009, while poverty rates in 10 metropolitan areas topped 18 percent, the data showed…”
- Maine’s poverty rate isn’t the highest, but it’s No. 2 on public assistance list, By Eric Russell, October 20, 2011, Bangor Daily News: “New Census data show that Maine had one of the highest rates of households accepting public assistance in 2010 despite the fact that the state’s poverty rate was not among the highest. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey released this week compared rates of public assistance for all 50 states. In 2010, Maine saw 28,213 households accept public assistance, or 5.2 percent of the state’s population. That was an increase from the 4.9 percent of households that collected assistance in 2009. Maine’s rate trailed only Alaska (6.7 percent) and was significantly higher than the 2.9 percent national rate of households accepting public benefits in 2010. At 1.5 percent, Wyoming had the lowest rate. No state saw a decrease in the number of households accepting assistance from 2009 to 2010…”