- Poverty strikes a smaller percentage in southeast Louisiana in wake of Hurricane Katrina, By Katy Reckdahl, June 28, 2012, New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Southeast Louisiana bucked national trends and became less poor than it was a decade ago, largely because of new investment due to rebuilding efforts and because of the post-Hurricane Katrina diaspora, which forced many of the city’s poor families to find housing outside the region, according to an analysis of U.S. census data released Thursday by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. Calling the post-Katrina exodus ‘the largest population displacement since the Dust Bowl,’ the study noted that it ‘changed the map of poverty’ in the 13-parish region considered southeast Louisiana. Between 1999 and 2010, parishes that flooded after Katrina lost thousands of their poor residents: Orleans Parish lost 50,000, St. Bernard lost 4,000 and Plaquemines lost nearly 2,400. But the rest of the region showed little increase in poverty, suggesting that most poor people relocated outside the region…”
- Poverty strikes health, education across region, By Andrew Nash, June 28, 2012, Pittsburg Morning Sun: “The freezers at the Wesley House are running out of meat. One freezer contains just five packages of hot dogs, while another freezer holds three small packages of edamame beans and one package of deer hamburger. All told, freezers that should be full are empty and becoming more empty. These freezers are supposed to be full of proteins for those who need it – a surprisingly large number in this region. These pantries tend to get low from time to time during the year, but the cupboards are bare a little earlier this year. Bare cupboards and freezers at the Wesley House are just one symptom of an ongoing problem in the Four States region. Declining health statistics and poor economic conditions are two more symptoms. The pervasive problem in this region is poverty, and it’s not going to go away. Pick any figure that details the impoverished, and those in Southeast Kansas and Southwest Missouri will be among the worst of the bunch…”
Daily Archives: June 29, 2012
Student Homelessness in the US
Latest report: More than 1 million U.S. students are homeless, By Kate Santich, June 28, 2012, Orlando Sentinel: “In recent years, you’ve heard a lot about the growing number of homeless students in Central Florida’s public schools. But the problem isn’t limited to our region — or our state. Sadly, data released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education show that, for the first time in history, the nation’s public schools reported more than 1 million homeless students. The number includes children enrolled in U.S. public preschools and kindergarten through 12th grade for the 2010-2011 school year. And the figure actually underestimates the number of homeless children by excluding infants, toddlers, preschool-aged children who aren’t enrolled in public programs and homeless children who are home-schooled…”
Homeless Bill of Rights – Rhode Island
Advocates: RI’s new homeless bill of rights a national model for preventing discrimination, Associated Press, June 27, 2012, Washington Post: “While cities across the nation enact laws against panhandling and outdoor sleeping, Rhode Island is being held up as a national model for protecting homeless individuals from discrimination. Advocates say the state’s new homeless bill of rights goes further than any other law in the nation to prevent discrimination against people who lack housing. The new law prohibits governments, police, healthcare workers, landlords or employers from treating homeless people unfairly because of their housing status…”
More on the Health Care Ruling and Medicaid
- Court’s decision could widen Medicaid gap, By Noam N. Levey, June 29, 2012, L.A. Times: “ President Obama, in his drive for a national healthcare overhaul, strove to provide a new guarantee that all Americans, no matter where they live, would have basic protection against sickness and disease, ending decades of variation among states. The Supreme Court did not dismantle that guarantee Thursday. But while upholding the Affordable Care Act, the court opened the door to something the president and other champions of the law sought to avoid — widening disparities between red and blue states in who gets healthcare. Under the court’s ruling, states will be free to elect not to cover all of their poor residents through their Medicaid programs. That may mean liberal states that have embraced the healthcare law such as California, Illinois and Maryland will effectively offer all of their residents health coverage. . .”
- Health Care ruling clears path for Colo. exchanges, By Ivan Morenokristen Wyatt, June 29, 2012, Businessweek: “Colorado Republicans who decried Thursday’s health care ruling said the state did the right thing by beginning to create insurance exchanges required under the law, rather than waiting for the federal government to create one. Democrats said that the decision clears the path for Colorado’s health plans and that Colorado more than other states would have been tripped up if the health law had been axed. State lawmakers last year created the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange, which forms a virtual marketplace to allow individuals and groups the ability to purchase health insurance at discounts like those in larger risk pools. About 13 percent of the state, or 656,000 state residents, had no health insurance as of 2011. . .”
- U.S. Supreme Court health care ruling leaves Medicaid expansion up to individual states, By Bill Barrow, June 28, 2012, New Orleans Times-Picayune: “In a defining moment in U.S. Supreme Court history, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s liberal bloc Thursday to announce a 5-4 decision upholding the most hotly debated provision of President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul. To do so, the Roberts majority framed the requirement for all Americans to purchase health insurance, along with an IRS penalty for not complying, as a tax, not the argument the administration preferred but enough to leave in place the linchpin of the insurance market changes. . .”