History > 2006 > USA > Poverty (I)

Richard Pyne, his daughter, Kristinlyn, and wife, Suzanne,

moved into a shelter after living in their car.

Keith Meyers/The New York Times        April 2, 2006

Keeping It Secret as the Family Car Becomes a Home        NYT        2.4.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02cars.html

Grocers Seek

Twice-Monthly Food Stamp Distributions

May 14, 2006
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DETROIT, May 13 (AP) — At the beginning of May, the aisles of K&G Food Mart here were flooded with shoppers. But as the month has worn on, the traffic has slowed.

The cycle, familiar to many grocers in poor neighborhoods, has a simple explanation: the start of the month is when people get their food stamps.

A group of small retailers and wholesalers in Michigan is asking for a change in the way the state administers the federal assistance program. The merchants hope that spreading out food stamp distributions can eliminate such swings in customer traffic, which they say make it difficult to keep stores adequately staffed and stocked.

On Monday, the Michigan Food Policy Council is scheduled to vote on the issue as part of its recommendations to Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm on ways to increase the number of stores selling fresh food in low-income areas.

While store owners say their food is always fresh, they acknowledge the selection is better on days that they expect more sales. With business so skewed, they say they have no choice but to adjust their merchandise.

In Michigan, each of the 512,000 households on food stamps receives them within the first nine days of the month. The funds are transferred electronically onto a debit card.

Most states stagger distribution, though eight states issue everyone's benefits on the first of the month, according to the federal Department of Agriculture. Of those that stagger, the number of days ranges from 3 in Connecticut to 22 in Missouri.

Tom Wenning, general counsel of the National Grocers Association, said staggered issuance took hold as a way "to provide some relief both for the consumer and the retailer."

But many retailers in Detroit say the nine-day spread is not enough. The Associated Food and Petroleum Dealers of Michigan wants the state to divide each recipient's food stamps into two payments a month, which federal law allows for but no states currently do.

"If we could get a twice-monthly distribution it would help us maintain the product in the store," said Najib Atisha, who owns two supermarkets.

It would also help store owners with staffing levels, Mr. Atisha said. "You can't just hire somebody for 10 days and then lay them off," he said.

Advocates for the poor say splitting benefits into two payments could create hardships, particularly for people who live far from a store and cannot afford to get there often. But some say they would instead support staggering the distribution of benefits over the whole month as a way to help grocers. That approach is advocated in the draft recommendation the Food Policy Council is to consider Monday.

    Grocers Seek Twice-Monthly Food Stamp Distributions, NYT, 14.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/us/14stamps.html

America's 'Near Poor'

Are Increasingly at Economic Risk,

Experts Say

May 8, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

ANAHEIM, Calif. — The Abbotts date their tailspin to a collapse in demand for the aviation-related electronic parts that Stephen sold in better times, when he earned about $40,000 a year.

He lost his job in late 2001, unemployment benefits ran out over the next year and he and his wife, Laurie, along with their teenage son, were evicted from their apartment.

They spent a year in a borrowed motor home here in the working-class interior of Orange County, followed by eight months in a motel room with a kitchenette. During that time, Ms. Abbott, a diabetic who is now 51, lost all her teeth and could not afford to replace them.

"Since I didn't have a smile," she recalled, "I couldn't even work at a checkout counter."

Americans on the lower rungs of the economic ladder have always been exposed to sudden ruin. But in recent years, with the soaring costs of housing and medical care and a decline in low-end wages and benefits, tens of millions are living on even shakier ground than before, according to studies of what some scholars call the "near poor."

"There's strong evidence that over the past five years, record numbers of lower-income Americans find themselves in a more precarious economic position than at any time in recent memory," said Mark R. Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of "One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All."

In a rare study of vulnerability to poverty, Mr. Rank and his colleagues found that the risk of a plummet of at least a year below the official poverty line rose sharply in the 1990's, compared with the two previous decades. By all signs, he said, such insecurity has continued to worsen.

For all age groups except those 70 and older, the odds of a temporary spell of poverty doubled in the 1990's, Mr. Rank reported in a 2004 paper titled, "The Increase of Poverty Risk and Income Insecurity in the U.S. Since the 1970's," written with Daniel A. Sandoval and Thomas A. Hirschl, both of Cornell University.

For example, during the 1980's, around 13 percent of Americans in their 40's spent at least one year below the poverty line; in the 1990's, 36 percent of people in their 40's did, according to the analysis.

Comparable figures for this decade will not be available for several years, but other indicators — a climbing poverty rate and rising levels of family debt — suggest a deepening insecurity, poverty experts and economists say.

More people work in jobs without health coverage, including temporary or contract jobs that may offer no benefits or even access to unemployment insurance. Medicaid is offered to fewer adults (though to more children). Cash welfare benefits are harder to secure, and their real value has eroded.

About 37 million Americans lived below the federal poverty line in 2004, set at $19,157 a year for a family of four. But far more people, another 54 million, were in households earning between the poverty line and double the poverty line.

"We don't track this group of people, and they are very vulnerable," said Katherine S. Newman, a sociologist at Princeton University who studies low-end workers.

Those suffering a nose-dive say the statistics do not begin to convey their fears and anguish.

Only a year ago, Machele Sauer thought she was entering the middle class. She and her husband, a licensed electrician, owned a large mobile home. He was starting his own business and Ms. Sauer, after bearing their fourth child, hoped to stop waitressing and be a stay-at-home mom.

"We were the ideal family, the envy of others," she said recently as she collected free food and diapers at the Hope Family Support Center, a small charity in Garden Grove, Calif., in Orange County. "And then, boom, everything flipped upside down."

Life fell apart last spring when her husband was arrested on theft charges, linked to a recent drug addiction she says she did not know about. Because of a prior record, he received a long prison sentence.

Now Ms. Sauer, 34, draws on the charity for goods and its director, Gayle Knight, for advice and emotional support, part of a grueling scramble to provide for her four daughters, ages 16 months, 8, 9 and 15. Many days over recent weeks, she dropped them at the baby sitter after school, worked the night shift as a waitress, picked up the sleeping children after midnight then woke up with the baby at 6:30 a.m. before preparing the older three for school.

At first she went on welfare, receiving $600 a month along with paid child care and counseling for herself and the children. As she resumed waitress work—four night shifts and two day shifts a week—she earned about $1,300 a month, which led her welfare payment to be cut to $300.

She receives $200 worth of food stamps that cover bills for just the first two weeks of each month, she said.

"Now the van is breaking down," she said. "With four kids it's really hard to hold a full-time job, and I need to make sure they do well in school." Her goal is to find a way to prepare for nursing school.

The Abbotts, too, sought aid from food banks and other charities, collecting weekly boxes of food and toiletries.

In Orange County, about 220,000 people received food from 400 local charities last year, according to the Second Harvest Food Bank, which distributes donations. Recipients include many families, often Hispanic, with several children and both parents working minimum-wage jobs. Over all, half the families seeking food had at least one working adult, according to a recent study by the food bank.

In the center of Orange County, a world away from its polished coastal towns, borderline poverty is common but seldom visible. On small streets behind strip malls and fast food restaurants, families, sometimes two of them, cram into small, aging bungalows.

What look like tourist motels along Beach Boulevard are mostly filled by working families or single people who stay for months or years, paying high weekly fees but unable to muster up-front money for an apartment rental.

Mr. Abbott, now 58, eventually found a lower-paying sales job. With help from church members, the couple amassed the three months' rent of $2,700 required to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Anaheim.

Describing their last several years, Mr. Abbott kept circling back to the emotional toll. Motels, like the one they lived in for eight months for $281 a week, are "dives," he said, "with lots of screaming and fighting and cops being called."

"It was really stressful," he said, "and still you pay a lot of money."

In a new setback, Mr. Abbott has developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He recently had to stop working and go on state disability, which pays $1,436 a month and gives him health coverage.

Ms. Abbott has no health insurance — if she gets sick, she says, she will go to a medical van that serves the homeless. But a generous dentist from church helped her get new teeth, and now she plans to hunt for work.

    America's 'Near Poor' Are Increasingly at Economic Risk, Experts Say, NYT, 8.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/us/08poverty.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

News Analysis

A City Hall Feeling Its Way in a Renewed Battle on Poverty

April 19, 2006
The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL

After four years of near silence on the issue, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg declared his own war on poverty during his re-election campaign. Soon after his victory, he pledged in his State of the City address to help the poor, and even convened a high-profile commission to strategize on how to fulfill that promise.

But when his aides moved recently to ease rules for obtaining food stamps for a small but significant population, he blocked them, leaving advocates for the poor and elected officials mystified.

Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday that his decision not to seek a federal waiver that would have allowed some able-bodied adults ages 18 to 49 to receive food stamps for longer periods of time was simply part of a fair-minded refusal to reward people who were able to work but not employed.

"I'm a believer that people should have to work for a living," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at a Queens hospital. "You have to have a penalty if there's a requirement to work, and this penalty is one that's appropriate," he added. "The city has a whole host of programs to make sure that nobody goes without food."

But some outsiders say they see something else at work in the decision: a deep ambivalence toward anything that carries even the faintest whiff of welfare, a program that Mr. Bloomberg's predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, famously moved to restrict.

"Everything has existed in the shadow of the Giuliani approach," said Bill de Blasio, chairman of the City Council's General Welfare Committee. "Early on it was clear that Bloomberg wasn't trying to be Giuliani or even Giuliani Lite," he continued, adding that the administration had actively pursued certain programs to help the poor. "But the closer it gets to public assistance, the more there seems to be a fear of seeming permissive."

Indeed, even though Mr. Bloomberg holds some socially liberal ideals dear — he favors gay marriage, supports abortion rights and is pro-gun control — he has seemed far less comfortable championing the immediate needs of the poor, preferring to focus on longer-term goals like economic development, affordable housing and education reform.

In the 2005 mayoral race, for instance, he did not talk aggressively about the city's poverty rate, which has been climbing, until after Fernando Ferrer, his Democratic rival, made it a campaign issue.

"The Giuliani administration was hostile towards public benefits programs, and this administration has been ambivalent all along," said Joel S. Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which represents 1,100 food pantries and soup kitchens, adding that in Mr. Bloomberg's major speech on welfare reform in his first term, "there wasn't a peep about food stamps."

"It's been a really significant omission all of these years that they haven't seen food stamps as work support," Mr. Berg continued, meaning a public support that helps people to secure and keep jobs.

Both Mr. Bloomberg and his human resources commissioner, Verna Eggleston, have been opposed to seeking the waiver in the past, apparently out of a sense that to receive a public benefit like food stamps, people who can work should. But as the city has continued to move people off the welfare rolls, social service officials appear to have shifted their thinking about who is truly capable of working.

"Some people have barriers that make it impossible, or very difficult, for them to find jobs," Robert McHugh, a spokesman for the city's Human Resources Administration, said earlier this week.

But the shift among city officials toward easing eligibility for food stamps — a change endorsed by Commissioner Eggleston — has not yet been embraced in the highest reaches of city government.

Mr. Bloomberg's chief spokesman, Stu Loeser, said the gap over the issue grew out of both the mayor's governing style and substance. Given that Mr. Bloomberg thinks that a frequent fault of government is to avoid trying new things out of a fear of failing, Mr. Loeser said, "it's not surprising that we have people within the administration who are exploring different ways of doing things — it's what we want."

At the same time, he continued, Mr. Bloomberg is the one who is accountable to voters and who has to make choices about how to focus the city's resources. "Are we changing our policy, or do we still have more to do in terms of reaching out to people who are currently qualified for food stamps?" Mr. Loeser asked rhetorically. "The mayor's decision is to focus on that."

This internal debate is playing out even as the Bloomberg administration pursues its own agenda of increasing the number of eligible people receiving food stamps by making it easier to apply.

Meanwhile, City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn plans to make that issue a prominent part of the City Hall budget negotiations, and she outlined her initiatives yesterday. Elected officials like Representative Anthony D. Weiner are making noise about hunger on the way to a likely 2009 mayoral campaign, and advocates for the poor are paying close attention to the shifting thinking within the administration.

"The fact that Bloomberg is focusing on poverty and the fact that we are even having this discussion," Mr. Berg said, "means that people in the administration are talking about this very seriously." Despite the problems he sees with the administration's approach, he said, "there are a lot of really positive signs."

Sewell Chan contributed reporting for this article.

    A City Hall Feeling Its Way in a Renewed Battle on Poverty, NYT, 19.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/19/nyregion/19bloomberg.html

Mayor Seeks to Lower a Barrier for Food Stamps

April 17, 2006
The New York Times
By SEWELL CHAN

The Bloomberg administration, in a significant departure from the welfare policies of the Giuliani era, is pursuing a federal waiver that would make it easier for able-bodied adults who do not have children to qualify for food stamps, even if they are not working.

In his first term, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hewed closely to the groundbreaking changes in welfare policy begun under his predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who criticized what he called a culture of dependence on public aid and whose reforms were emulated in other large cities. But now Mr. Bloomberg is moving to loosen a major provision of welfare reform.

About 43,000 able-bodied childless adults in the city use food stamps, and easing the eligibility requirements would make at least 13,900 more people eligible, according to city estimates, although nonprofit groups that have been pressing for the change since the Giuliani administration predicted that even more could qualify.

Driving the change is a recognition that poor residents are facing growing pressures in paying for food and basic costs. The number of New Yorkers receiving food stamps has steadily risen in the last four years, even as the number of those receiving cash welfare assistance has fallen to its lowest level in 40 years.

"The city expects everyone to do their fair share when taking any form of public help, but we recognize that some people have barriers that make it impossible, or very difficult, for them to find jobs," said Robert McHugh, a spokesman for the city's Human Resources Administration.

With little public attention, the Bloomberg administration has been turning to the federally financed food stamp program over the past year as a way to help needy New Yorkers. Last April, the city began accepting food stamp applications by mail or fax. In September, the city received a three-year federal grant that allowed nonprofit groups to start accepting food stamp applications at food pantries and soup kitchens and to begin processing them online.

In January, in his State of the City address, the mayor announced a plan to build an online information and application system for food stamps, health insurance and other public benefits.

The waiver now being sought by the city, which is expected to be approved by the federal government, would affect adults ages 18 to 49 who are not responsible for a child or incapacitated relative and are not physically or mentally unfit for work. The federal welfare overhaul of 1996 imposed a three-month limit on food stamps in any three-year period for this group, known as able-bodied adults without dependents.

The overhaul allowed states to request a waiver of the three-month time limit for residents of areas with relatively high unemployment rates. Most big cities that have been eligible currently receive the waiver, including Chicago, Seattle and Washington.

"New York has been unusual in being one of the only cities in the country eligible for the waiver that has not had it," said Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group in Washington.

The three-month time limit does not affect those adults who work at least 80 hours a month, participate in job-training programs for at least 20 hours a week, or are enrolled in workfare, performing a job like raking leaves or answering phones in exchange for benefits.

Advocates of programs that feed the poor have long viewed the three-month limit as too harsh. A 1998 study sponsored by the Agriculture Department found that able-bodied childless adults who were receiving food stamps were likely to have incomes far below the poverty line and to have poor employment prospects because they lacked skills and education. Even when they find jobs in the retail or service industries, they have little job security.

"People can take six months and even a year to find new jobs," said James D. Weill, executive director of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger policy organization in Washington. "To say you can only have three months of food-stamp benefits is egregiously harsh and not a sensible public policy."

Joel S. Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which represents 1,100 food pantries and soup kitchens, wrote letters to Mr. Bloomberg each of his first four years in office urging him to accept the waiver. "I didn't bother to send such a letter in 2006 because I assumed this issue was a lost cause with this mayor," he said.

The waiver will cost the city almost nothing. Federal food stamp benefits are financed by the Food and Nutrition Service of the Agriculture Department, although states pay a portion of the program's administrative costs. In comparison, the federal government pays for roughly half of the cash welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, in New York; the state and local governments pay the rest.

The number of food stamp recipients dropped from a high of nearly 1.5 million in March 1995, during the Giuliani administration, to a low of 798,396 in January 2002, Mr. Bloomberg's first month in office. Since then it has steadily risen, to nearly 1.1 million as of February — its highest level since 1998.

The fall and subsequent rise in the use of food stamps mirrors a national trend, driven by unemployment rates and efforts by the federal government to simplify the application process. The average national food stamp benefit was $92.69 a month, per person, in 2005. (In most places, including New York, electronic benefit cards have replaced paper coupons.)

At least three major factors seem to have played into the decision by the Bloomberg administration to accept the waiver.

First, despite a short-lived rise in the welfare rolls, from 2002 to 2004, the number of city residents on public assistance is at its lowest level since 1964, allowing Mr. Bloomberg to ease his position on food stamps without opening himself to attack by conservatives as being irresponsible or encouraging dependence.

"New York City has developed the most extensive work-focused employment program of any large city in the country," the commissioner of the Human Resources Administration, Verna Eggleston, wrote on March 28 to the State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, which is seeking the waiver on the city's behalf.

Second, public pressure on hunger and nutrition issues has been mounting.

Since she took office in 2002, the city's public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, has called for the city to accept the waiver, and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, this month proposed setting aside $260,000 a year to operate a new citywide office to combat hunger and obesity. And Mr. Bloomberg himself has said that alleviating poverty would be a priority of his second term.

Third, there are practical benefits to accepting the waiver. In February 2005, the city began WeCare, a program that offers medical assessments, health care and individual training for welfare recipients who say they are too sick to work.

By easing the work requirements for some adult food stamp recipients, the city will be able to shift caseworkers away from the tedious task of verifying eligibility for food stamps and toward the goal of further reducing the welfare caseload by moving recipients into the workforce.

The city's moves to ease eligibility for such benefits marks a significant departure from past practice. In 1999, the Agriculture Department and a federal judge found that the Giuliani administration was routinely delaying or denying applications for food stamps and Medicaid in violation of federal law.

The Urban Justice Center has twice sued the Bloomberg administration over food stamp issues. In 2002, it asserted that the city was improperly denying benefits to poor people who were too disabled to work. In 2004, it claimed that the city's delays in processing food stamp applications were illegal. Both cases are pending.

Lawrence M. Mead III, a professor of politics at New York University and a conservative scholar of welfare, said he did not believe that easier access to food stamps would discourage people from working.

"To apply for the food-stamp waiver is an important departure from Giuliani's policies, but its practical effect, in terms of producing a large increase in dependency, is probably limited," Professor Mead said.

    Mayor Seeks to Lower a Barrier for Food Stamps, NYT, 17.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/nyregion/17welfare.html?hp&ex=1145332800&en=6793c4c4e913be1e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Appeals Court Bars Arrests of Homeless in Los Angeles

April 15, 2006
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, April 14 — A federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday that arresting homeless people for sleeping, sitting or lying on sidewalks and other public property when other shelter is not available was cruel and unusual punishment.

The 2-to-1 ruling, by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, essentially invalidated a 37-year-old ordinance that the police have used to clear homeless people off the streets.

Legal experts said the case, which they believed to be the first involving the rights of homeless people in public spaces to reach the federal appellate level, would be closely followed by cities nationwide.

The Los Angeles ordinance had gone largely unenforced until recent years when the police began cracking down on illicit behavior in the Skid Row area of downtown, which has one of the largest concentrations of homeless people in the country.

The ordinance states "no person shall sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or public way" under threat of a $1,000 fine and possible jail term of up to six months.

The court, in striking down the convictions of six people charged under the ordinance, called it "one of the most restrictive municipal laws regulating public spaces in the United States" and cited the example of other cities, like Portland, Ore.; Tucson; and Las Vegas, that have enacted similar ordinances but limited enforcement to certain times of day or designated places.

The Eighth Amendment, barring cruel and unusual punishment, prohibits Los Angeles "from punishing involuntary sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks that is an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote.

The Los Angeles police responded by releasing a statement that said: "The condition of being homeless in and of itself is not a crime and should not be treated as such. But the criminal element that preys upon the homeless and mentally ill will be targeted, arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

It added, "The department will continue to work with the city's political leadership and the courts to find solutions to help keep the homeless safe and off the streets."

A spokeswoman for the city attorney's office, Contessa Mankiewicz, said, "We are disappointed, and we are reviewing our options." She said that the ordinance was not often prosecuted but that statistics were not immediately available.

The police in Los Angeles, which has been wrestling with how to reduce a homeless population that by some counts is the largest in the country, have used the ordinance in an effort to clean up Skid Row, a 50-block area east of downtown that has long been home to the down and out.

There, some 10,000 to 12,000 homeless people live near new condominiums and apartment buildings that have arisen in an explosion of gentrification. The ruling said there was shelter for 9,000 to 10,000 homeless people in that area, leaving about 1,000 people or more without a roof over their heads.

"So long as there are a greater number of homeless individuals in Los Angeles than the number of available beds, the city may not enforce" the ordinance, the judges said.

The case was filed in February 2003 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the National Lawyers Guild on behalf of six homeless people who had been ticketed in Skid Row and in some cases jailed briefly or ordered to pay fines. The appeals court's ruling on Friday overturns a district court ruling in favor of the city.

The court sent the case back to the district court to write an injunction barring enforcement of the law.

In a dissent, Judge Pamela Ann Rymer said the ordinance "does not punish people simply because they are homeless," and added, "It targets conduct — sitting, lying or sleeping on city sidewalks — that can be committed by those with homes as well as those without."

She added, "We do not — and should not — immunize from criminal liability those who commit an act as a result of a condition that the government's failure to provide a benefit has left them in."

Legal experts said it was unusual to win a case based on the Eighth Amendment, and even more so because it was directed at regulating the homeless.

Gary Blasi, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles law school who has studied legal issues involving the homeless, called the ruling significant. "This is one of the very few cases, certainly for this level of the judicial system, that says to government that you can't criminalize the mere fact of being homeless," Mr. Blasi said. "The city can regulate times and places, but you can't forbid people from occupying the face of the earth."

Advocates for the homeless cheered the ruling. "The fact this court has ruled on this law in this way has a message, and our hope is cities will get the point that you can't respond to homelessness by trying to eliminate homeless people," said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, a legal advocacy group in Washington.

    Appeals Court Bars Arrests of Homeless in Los Angeles, NYT, 15.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/us/15homeless.html

L.A. vows to end status as US homeless capital

Thu Apr 6, 2006 8:14 PM ET
Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Vowing to end Los Angeles' "ignominious distinction" as the homeless capital of America, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday embraced a $12 billion plan aimed at sheltering the county's 90,000 homeless people within a decade.

"We will not be the city with the ignominious distinction of being the homeless capital of America, but a city with a new model, a new plan, a city on the other side of midnight," Villaraigosa told a news conference.

Despite its image as a haven for rich movie stars, Los Angeles County has the highest number of homeless people in the nation, double that of New York City, according to a census taken last year.

More than 12,000 people released from county jails each year end up living on the streets, according to a report released on Thursday. Most camp out under freeway passes, store doorways and in public parks all over the county, relying on begging and food handouts from charities.

Efforts to help them in the past have run afoul of legal skirmishes between city and county officials over responsibility for their care.

The ambitious plan announced on Thursday was drawn up by a countywide panel and calls for 50,000 new affordable housing units, more shelters and improved mental health and drug services to get homeless people back on the path to self-sufficiency.

Officials agreed to put the bickering of the past behind them to find ways of funding and implementing the plan. Money would come from a variety of sources, including a bond issue, federal funding, and tax and fee hikes.

"On this issue of homelessness, partnership trumps partisanship," said Phil Mangano, who was named the nation's homeless czar by President George W. Bush in 2002. "In this issue, there is no D' or R'; we're Americans coming together to end a national disgrace."

    L.A. vows to end status as US homeless capital, R, 6.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-07T001403Z_01_N06408722_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-HOMELESS.xml

Keeping It Secret as the Family Car Becomes a Home

April 2, 2006
The New York Times
By IAN URBINA

FAIRFAX, Va. — After being evicted from his apartment last year, Larry Chaney lived in his car for five months in Erie, Pa. As he passed the time at local cafes, he always put a ring of old house keys and several envelopes with bills on the table to give the impression that he had a home like everyone else.

While Michelle Kennedy was living in her car with her three children in Belfast, Me., she parked someplace different each night so no one would notice them, and she instructed the children to tell anyone who asked that they were "staying with friends."

Last year, William R. Alford started keeping a car cover over the station wagon where he sleeps. "I originally just had drapes, but the condensation on the inside of the windows was a dead giveaway," said Mr. Alford, who has been homeless here in Fairfax since May 2005.

As with all homeless people, finding food, warmth and a place to clean up is a constant struggle. But for those who live in their cars, remaining inconspicuous is its own challenge, and though living this way is illegal in most places, experts and advocates believe it is a growing trend.

"It's most often the working poor who find themselves in this situation, teetering on the border between the possessed and the dispossessed," said Kim Hopper, a researcher on homelessness for the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, which is based in New York.

The number of "mobile homeless," as they are often called, tends to climb whenever the cost of housing outpaces wages, Dr. Hopper said. Last year was the first year on record, according to an annual study conducted by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, that a full-time worker at minimum wage could not afford a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country at average market rates.

In 2001, officials in Lynnwood, Wash., a suburb of Seattle, passed an ordinance imposing penalties of 90 days in jail or fines of up to $1,000 against people caught living in their cars.

Peter Van Giesen, a code enforcement officer for the town, said that up to 20 cars a night were found with people parking near a park where there were complaints of people using the bushes as a restroom.

"Most of these people were trying to find work," Mr. Van Giesen said.

Living inside their last major possession, the mobile homeless have often just fallen on hard times, advocates and social workers say, and since they are more likely to view their situation as temporary, they are also more inclined to keep it secret.

Though the average duration of homelessness is four months, it tends to be shorter for the mobile homeless, experts say.

"You spend a lot of effort just trying to pass," said Ms. Kennedy, a former Senate page who wrote a book, "Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (With Kids) in America" (Viking Adult, 2005), about her experiences being homeless for several months in 1997 after her marriage fell apart. But residing — and hiding — in plain sight takes guile, and that starts with deciding where to park.

In cities, steep streets with no sidewalks, no overlooking windows and adjacent to woods are ideal because they have the least foot traffic and offer the easiest ability to enter and exit the car unnoticed, according to many who have been through the experience.

The best location is one sparse enough to avoid nosy onlookers but populated enough that the car does not stand out, they say, near enough to walk to a restroom but far enough away to avoid passers-by. Parking lots of big-box retailers are a popular choice. If free, hospital parking lots are also an option. Guards often take pity when told that a car's occupant is waiting to visit a sick spouse, many say.

Finding a place to shower can take ingenuity.

"The key is to be smart about when you enter and leave the building," said Randy Brown, who for the last three months while living in his car has been sneaking onto a college campus near where he waits tables in Fredericksburg, Va., and using a shower that security guards do not realize is publicly accessible.

Like several others interviewed, Mr. Chaney said that when he lost his trucking business after Hurricane Katrina and was evicted from his home, he was lucky enough to have already paid for a yearlong gym membership.

"That was probably the most important thing I had for keeping up appearances," said Mr. Chaney, who moved to Pennsylvania to be near his son, who was in college there.

Mr. Chaney said that while he looked for work, he did not reveal his situation to his son, who was going to school on a basketball scholarship, because he did not want to become a distraction.

While pride is usually the motivation for not telling friends or family, worries about the law and harassment are more often the reason people give for keeping their situation hidden. Safety is also a concern, experts say, since homeless people are frequently targets for crime and physical abuse.

"A lot of what people do to keep the secret sounds paranoid, and some of it probably is," said Michele Wakin, who wrote her doctoral dissertation about people living in their vehicles in California and who is now a professor of sociology at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. "But when you're trying to be discreet and you're spending a lot of time in one area, little things get noticed."

People often develop severe back problems because they resist reclining their seat while sleeping, Ms. Wakin said; if questioned, they want to be able to tell the police that they were just napping. People also build elaborate compartments in their cars to hide bedding, she said.

Mr. Alford said he had learned to move slowly to avoid rocking the car and attracting attention when he was inside. When he has a lot of items to take from his car to the library where he spends much of his time, he makes several trips rather than load his arms and seem like a "bag lady," he said.

"It might seem crazy, but the stakes are pretty high in the suburbs when it comes to staying invisible because it's supposed to be sanitized out here," said Mr. Alford, who works occasionally as a Web developer. "People call 911 in the city to report seeing a homeless person, and the cops laugh. Out here, the cops are out the door in no time when that call comes in."

Experts say there are 2.1 million to 3.5 million homeless people nationally. Ms. Wakin said that the vigilance required to live in a car was one reason there tended to be fewer people who are drug addicted or mentally disabled living in their cars, compared with those living on street grates.

"Keeping the car in working order with the license, registration up-to-date, figuring out an address where offices can send things, and all the while trying to stay off the radar of police and neighbors becomes like a full-time job," Ms. Wakin said.

For some, secrecy can be an obstacle to needed services.

Richard Pyne, who was evicted from his home after losing his job at a factory in North Philadelphia, said he did not seek help because he feared losing custody of his 17-year-old daughter, Kristinlyn, who was living in the car with his wife, Suzanne, and him.

Last April, a social worker noticed the family asleep in the car at a park, and after explaining their rights, the worker persuaded them to move into a shelter.

The strain of constantly finding a place to wash up and the stress of avoiding detection became unbearable, Mr. Pyne said, adding, "You have no idea how exhausting it gets to survive like this."

    Keeping It Secret as the Family Car Becomes a Home, NYT, 2.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02cars.html?hp&ex=1144040400&en=818f2f244457111d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

With an Eye on Politics, Edwards Makes Poverty His Cause

March 26, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

CHAPEL HILL, N.C., March 25 — As he sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2004 and later as John Kerry's running mate, John Edwards talked about poverty more than any other candidate.

But when he spoke on the campaign trail about what he referred to as the "two Americas," he told a conference on poverty here this week, "people called it a downer."

Now Mr. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina and a presumed contender for his party's 2008 presidential nomination, has made curbing poverty the centerpiece of his work and his political approach.

This is his true passion, he said in an interview, and he thinks that voters may be more responsive in the coming years, both because the middle class is becoming less secure and because of a shared sense of fairness.

"I think there is political traction in helping people help themselves," he said, emphasizing that he also believed that "if you can work, you should work, and parents should be responsible for their children."

"I think that for most Americans, what they saw on TV from the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans was just not right," he said, referring to the severe poverty revealed there after Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Edwards was the organizer and the most assiduous note-taker at the poverty conference, sponsored by the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, an organization that he founded and directs.

The meeting drew more than 200 scholars and leaders of private antipoverty agencies to discuss issues like the problems of the working poor and the effects globalization has on labor.

The challenge, Mr. Edwards and other speakers said, is not just to devise better ways to fight poverty but to find strategies with broad appeal.

Some of the scholars offered, if not cheerful data, themes that they said might grab the attention of middle-income Americans. Many of the same economic trends that hurt the poor, the experts said, are also creating "a harsh new world of economic insecurity for middle-class families," in the words of Jacob S. Hacker, a political scientist at Yale.

Mr. Hacker described a decline in shared safety nets, like health insurance, that leave more families confronting medical crises or job losses without assistance.

Rising costs for housing, health care and other necessities have affected middle-class families as well as the poor, said Elizabeth Warren, an expert on family bankruptcy and a law professor at Harvard. Even with more mothers now working outside the home, Ms. Warren said, families have more debt, fewer reserves and more volatile incomes than they did a few decades ago.

"It used to be that if you worked hard you'd be in the middle class and have a secure retirement," she said, "but the rules have changed." Policies to improve the security of the middle class will also help the poor, she added.

Several scholars lamented the racial and class disparities in family assets, including home equity and other savings, a topic that receives less attention than those disparities in income. Income is used to get by, they said, but assets provide a safety net and a means to climb ahead. Helping low-income people buy homes and using tax credits to encourage savings accounts were among the potential answers put forth.

In interviews, several scholars said they were grateful for the chance to discuss research and issues, though they said they knew that Mr. Edwards was most likely banking ideas for a political campaign.

"We'll say whatever we want to say," said Kathryn Edin, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. "But as academics who do this kind of work, we're eager to discuss our work with political leaders."

Mr. Edwards said that after his decision not to run for re-election to the Senate in 2004 and the defeat of the Kerry-Edwards ticket, he talked with friends and his wife about how to spend his time. They all agreed, he said, that "I really lit up when I talked about poverty."

Beyond directing the poverty center, a part of the university law school, Mr. Edwards has campaigned in several states for initiatives to raise the minimum wage and on behalf of unions for service sector groups like hotel workers.

Those attending this week's conference offered no simple answers to the challenge of globalization, which brings consumer benefits but has cost factory jobs, especially here in the onetime textile belt of North Carolina.

Mr. Edwards has shied away from calls for protectionism. But he said that promoting unions, and thus better pay and conditions, in the expanding service sector "is an example where we can have a real impact without endangering our economic position in the world."

"Those jobs aren't going anywhere," he said.

    With an Eye on Politics, Edwards Makes Poverty His Cause, 26.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/politics/26poverty.html

New York Wants Poor to Help Pay in Housing Crisis

March 9, 2006
The New York Times
By JANNY SCOTT

The New York City Housing Authority, landlord to more than 400,000 poor New Yorkers, is facing a budget shortfall of $168 million and has proposed narrowing the gap by charging residents new fees and increasing old ones for everything from owning a dishwasher to getting a toilet unclogged.

The authority says its operating deficit stems from enormous increases in energy and pension costs while its federal financing for public housing has been cut. Since 2001, the agency says, it has spent $357 million from its reserves to close repeated budget gaps; this year, for the first time, it no longer has enough reserves to cover the shortfall.

So it has proposed charging tenants $5.75 a month to run a washing machine, $5 a month to operate a dishwasher, $10 a month for a separate freezer. Parking fees will rise to $75 from $5 a year on April 1.

The authority plans to raise existing fees for dozens of services, like fixing damage to apartments beyond normal wear and tear, and to charge, for the first time, for things like rescuing lost keys from elevator pits after hours. The authority would like to put the fee changes other than for parking into effect around May 1.

The Housing Authority board has asked its senior staff to come up with a plan to balance the budget while preserving basic services, minimizing the impact on the most vulnerable residents and finding what the board called "creative ways to streamline service delivery." The authority has also appealed to federal and city officials for help.

"The chickens are coming home to roost," said Representative Jerrold L. Nadler of Manhattan, who added that the federal government was taking less responsibility for public housing. "The Housing Authority has, by one ingenious means or another, been holding it together with spit and baling wire. This could be really devastating."

Continuing cost cuts are likely to have a profound effect around the country, with the nation's 1.2 million units of public housing in danger of deteriorating, housing experts fear.

New York's Housing Authority, the largest in the country, operates 345 developments around the city, including nearly 2,700 buildings and 181,000 apartments. Half of its operating income comes from its federal subsidy; most of the rest comes from rent from its tenants, whose average household income is less than $19,000 a year.

Arlyne Allen, who lives in the Amsterdam Houses on the West Side of Manhattan with her husband and three teenage children and provides day care out of her home, said of the fees: "It'll affect me a lot. You can't even afford what you have now." If she could, she said, she would move to Pennsylvania to find private housing that she could afford.

According to the agency, expenses have skyrocketed. Contributions to its employees' pension fund increased by 866 percent, to $62.6 million, between 2001 and 2005, in part because of market fluctuations and new state laws, a problem faced by scores of government agencies. Further, utility costs rose by 45 percent, health care costs by 42 percent and workers' compensation by 39 percent.

At the same time, authority officials say, the federal operating subsidy for public housing nationwide has remained flat, and the authority's federal operating subsidy has shrunk by $14 million. The agency is also responsible for 21,000 apartments formerly subsidized by the city and the state that no longer get any subsidy.

As a result, the authority has faced budget shortfalls every year since 2001. The total gap for 2006 is $182 million, which the agency says it has whittled down to $168 million through measures including proposed staff reductions, consolidation of functions and elimination of vacant positions.

Under federal rules, the authority is required to maintain a minimum of about two months' worth of operating expenses, or about $270 million, to weather changes in appropriation levels or delays in financing. In recent years, that reserve has dropped to $320 million from more than $800 million, officials said.

"It's big, it's really big," Howard Marder, a spokesman for the authority, said of the shortfall that the agency can no longer cover. "It's never been like this."

The tenant fees are expected to generate about $1.5 million in revenue. The authority says most of the "utility surcharges" on appliances have long been in place and have not risen in more than a decade.

Tenants say few fees were ever imposed. "Only in extreme cases where a door was bullet riddled or somebody kicked the front entrance door and it was not based on wear and tear," said Gerri Lamb, the citywide chairwoman of the Resident Council of Presidents, a tenant group. "And certainly not this amount of money. I've been in public housing over 35 years and there's never been a set listing of charges that was given to the residents."

Saul Ramirez, executive director of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, traced the budget shortfall to "a steady disinvestment" in public housing at the federal level. "Obviously," he said, "there has been a decline that has gotten to a critical point in the area of operations."

    New York Wants Poor to Help Pay in Housing Crisis, NYT, 9.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/nyregion/09housing.html?hp&ex=1141880400&en=b4442d1739c7ab21&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Report on Impact of Federal Benefits on Curbing Poverty Reignites a Debate

February 18, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

A brief report this week from the Census Bureau, highlighting how welfare programs and tax credits affect incomes among the poor, has fanned the politically charged debate on poverty in the United States and how best to measure it, with conservatives offering praise and liberals saying it underplays the extent of deprivation.

The report, "The Effects of Government Taxes and Transfers on Income and Poverty: 2004," found that when noncash benefits like food stamps and housing subsidies were considered, as well as tax credits given to low-income workers, the share of Americans living under the poverty line last year was 8.3 percent.

This is well below the 12.7 percent of Americans that the government officially says lived below the poverty line in 2004, using the conventional methodology that only counts a family's cash income.

Conservatives have long maintained that poverty levels are overstated, and the new report was hailed by Douglas Besharov, an expert on social policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group in Washington, as a much needed corrective. Mr. Besharov issued a news release saying, "The new data show that real progress against poverty has been made in the last 40 years."

But liberal scholars said the report presented a misleading and partial picture, highlighting uncounted resources available to many poor people but ignoring, on the other side, many new expenses and hardships they face in a changing economy.

"Yes, the E.I.T.C. means a family has more money, and that's good," said Timothy Smeeding, an economist at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, referring to the Earned-Income Tax Credit, which can pay thousands of dollars to a low-income worker. "But going to work can also mean high new expenses for travel and child care, for example, and these aren't included."

"They've added in the extra benefits people get, but not the extra costs," Mr. Smeeding said of the Census Bureau, adding that the report gave an overly optimistic figure of living conditions on the bottom.

All sides agree that the current official methods for calculating incomes, and the poverty line itself, are outdated. Over the last decade, a host of technical studies by the National Academy of Sciences, academic scholars and the Census Bureau have analyzed incomes and needs under varying assumptions.

In a news release this week, the bureau called the report "part of an ongoing Census Bureau effort to understand economic well-being and poverty in America," adding that the bureau "has been working to streamline and simplify the many ways to consider the poverty rate."

Bureau officials did not respond to requests yesterday by telephone and e-mail for further comment on the report and its critics. For Mr. Besharov, a merit of the report was that it "streamlined" the complex data offered by previous studies. "This makes it a lot easier for people to look at the numbers and draw their own conclusions," he said in an interview.

Mr. Besharov said that if additional factors were to be included in income calculations, like the imputed rental savings for people who live together, the value of home equity and unreported public benefits, the share of Americans living below the poverty line would fall below 6 percent.

"I think the real story is that 40 years of benefits haven't eradicated poverty, but we've made some real progress," Mr. Besharov said.

But other scholars counter that many studies, which tried to paint a picture of needs and of uncounted benefits, have often placed more people below the poverty line rather than fewer. That line, many also say, is unrealistically low.

The official poverty line was developed in 1960 and based on the simplest of calculations: the cost of feeding a family, multiplied by three. Since then, the original income cutoff has been adjusted for inflation but not for the radical changes in society and household expenses.

But even as scholars and officials experiment with new data and seek new insights, most agree that the official methods for calculating incomes and the poverty line are unlikely to be changed. This is because eligibility for many major public programs, like food stamps and Medicaid, is tied to the official poverty rate, and any change would have wide repercussions.

The official poverty line, from almost any viewpoint, represents a meager life at best. Currently a family of four including two adults and two children is declared poor with an annual income of $19,157 or less, regardless of location.

The new Census Bureau report is online at www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/effect2004/effect2004.html .

    Report on Impact of Federal Benefits on Curbing Poverty Reignites a Debate, NYT, 18.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/18/national/18poverty.html

Problem of Homelessness in Los Angeles and Its Environs
Draws Renewed Calls for Attention

January 15, 2006
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 14 -It was not the sort of Chamber of Commerce cheer expected from the chief executive of one the nation's sunniest and most tourist-conscious cities.

But Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles stood before the news media this week and declared unequivocally, "This is the capital of homelessness in America."

The mayor was reacting to the bald truth of a report released Thursday, based on what officials called the most comprehensive census and survey of homelessness in Los Angeles County, that found 88,345 homeless people in the city and surrounding communities.

No other county in the country comes close - the five boroughs of New York have 48,155 homeless people, according to figures from its own census last year reported to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But even if he wanted to, Mr. Villaraigosa, six months into his first term, would find it difficult these days to skirt the homeless problem here.

For one thing, he had made a campaign promise to increase the supply of affordable housing and recently pledged $50 million for a trust fund that has helped finance more than 3,500 units for the poor since 2002. Only about 12 percent of the households in the county can afford the median home price, about $500,000.

The Los Angeles County government has allocated $25 million for increased emergency shelters, which advocates for the homeless say are badly needed; there are 18,000 homeless shelter beds, which critics call paltry considering the much higher number of homeless people.

In March, a group of city and county leaders, Bring Los Angeles Home, plans to issue an overdue report on confronting the problem, a spokesman for the group said this week. The group's stated goal is to end homelessness within 10 years.

In addition, much soul-searching came after the Los Angeles police last fall publicly accused several suburban law enforcement agencies of adding to the woes of the downtown neighborhood Skid Row by dropping off homeless troublemakers there. Around the same time, a front-page series by Steve Lopez, a Los Angeles Times columnist, documenting wanton drug dealing and lewd behavior in Skid Row despite years of promises to clean it up, further galvanized public discussion.

Homeless advocates said they were cautiously optimistic that the tide of events might lead to a decrease in homelessness, having experienced previous spasms of interest that eventually faded. They are waiting to see the extent to which the root causes of homelessness here - high poverty rates and a dearth of affordable housing and mental and drug treatment services - are tackled.

"I want this to be a watershed moment," said Lisa Fisher, director of the Westside Shelter and Hunger Coalition, a consortium of groups aiding the homeless. "How many homeless people are enough to move county, city and community members to action?"

Another advocate, Joel John Roberts, the chief executive of the nonprofit People Assisting the Homeless, said he was not sure whether to take all of the results as gospel. A spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development said all the homeless census reports they received would be reviewed to evaluate their reliability.

But Mr. Roberts said, "This is the first time in many years that the city of L.A. and county of L.A. are stepping up to the plate and saying we are deal with this problem."

The new head count in Los Angeles hewed close to previous estimates, but advocates for the homeless and government officials said it was important to quantify the population in order to raise awareness and seek government financing. Indeed, the survey was spurred mainly by HUD, which had asked cities and counties to do the count and uses such data as a factor in weighing grants.

The report held few surprises for people who follow the issue closely, but it did reaffirm some suspicions.

Most of the homeless surveyed in greater Los Angeles, 78 percent, said they were living here before they lost shelter, contrary to popular belief that the warm climate drew the homeless from other places.

"The perception that homeless people come here from other places has allowed a sense that it is not really our problem," said Mitchell Netburn, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which compiled the report. It is based on a count in January 2005 of people in shelters, on the streets and other places. In addition, 3,000 homeless people were sampled to project demographic and other trends in the overall population.

The authority surveyed the homeless in 85 of the county's 88 cities, finding 82,291 homeless people there, and combined its count with separate censuses taken in the three other cities.

Census takers found the homeless population spread out across the sprawling county, with pockets of homeless in generally affluent communities in Los Angeles like Brentwood and suburban expanses outside the city limits like the San Gabriel and Antelope Valleys. The City of Los Angeles had by far the largest homeless population, with 48,103 people.

The report said 49 percent of the population was chronically homeless, meaning they had a physical or mental disability and had been living in a shelter or in and out of them for at least a year. The median age of the homeless was 43, and nearly 39 percent of the homeless were black. Twenty-nine percent were white and 25 percent Hispanic.

Just as politicians sought to emphasize their efforts to resolve the problem, another report, by the National Coalition for the Homeless and National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, was released this week calling Los Angeles among the country's "meanest" cities (ranked No. 18 of 20) in treating its homeless. The report cited an ordinance restricting people from loitering outside libraries and other public facilities and ticketing "sweeps" by the police of homeless people.

Mary Grady, a spokeswoman for William J. Bratton, the Los Angeles police chief, said the police simply enforced the city's laws and went after "those who are actually victimizing the homeless population and mentally ill population."

Mayor Villaraigosa also disputed any meanness, emphasizing the promised effort to aid the homeless.

John Batteste, 60, who has been homeless in South Los Angeles for several years since drug addiction and the death of a son took their toll, said he was sleeping in a park until outreach workers found him and persuaded him to enter a treatment program. He lives in 39 West, the residence for the homeless where the report was announced, and receives counseling and other services there.

"They need more of these facilities here," Mr. Batteste said. "I would probably still be in that park without them."

    Problem of Homelessness in Los Angeles and Its Environs Draws Renewed Calls for Attention, NYT, 15.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/national/15homeless.html