Poverty

DCFS Workers Try To Beat Back Layoffs

Angela Caputo — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:51:38 -0800

When Fred Pennix (right) was hired 15 years ago as a state child welfare investigator in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood -- arguably one of the nation's most devastated communities -- he thought the job would be tough. Turns out, he was right.

Poverty there runs deep and drugs or violence are always lurking around the corner. For many children, Pennix says, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) is their best hope for protection. And he's determined not to let that change.

Today he stood with hundreds of child welfare workers at the Thompson Center to pressure the governor to sign a languishing appropriations bill that would spare 179 child welfare jobs and some other social programs, which will otherwise be eliminated in just 18 days.

Earlier this fall, the General Assembly approved tapping other state funds to inject $220 million into the state's operating budget. But, Gov. Blagojevich -- who made the cuts to help shore up $1.4 billion shortfall -- has yet to sign off on releasing the money.

If the governor fails to act by Oct. 31, scores of caseworkers, investigators, and other front-line workers will be sent packing. Many are frustrated by the governor's unwillingness to explain why he's not signing the bill. But most of all, the employees we spoke with wonder how the agency will manage.

"There used to be a concern that if you had 10 pending investigations, kids were at risk. The it went up to 15. Now it's 20," Pennix said. "There's no spreading the work around. There's no one to spread it to."

Employees who have seniority under a contract negotiated by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union -- such as caseworker JoAnn Washington-Murry -- will have the chance to transfer into vacant jobs should theirs be cut.

One way or another, a net loss of 179 jobs will be realized, according to DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe. Just how the transition will shake out remains an unknown, he said.

"DCFS says they have a plan. We don't know what it is," Washington-Murry says. "Ultimately the service cuts are going to hurt our families."

Bad Economy Tips More Into Poverty

Angela Caputo — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 11:22:41 -0700

As the state's unemployment rate continues to climb, researchers from the Heartland Alliance's Mid-America Institute on Poverty (MAIP) say that an increasing number of Illinois households are now teetering on the brink of poverty.

With 25 percent of the country's workers earning meager wages, it's no surprise that one-fifth of all workers are only a job loss away from impoverishment, as the Chicago-based nonprofit reports. What's perhaps most alarming about MAIP's findings is the toll that such a spike could have on the Midwest, where the poverty rate has grown four times as fast as the rest of the nation over the past eight years.

With that in mind, the Illinois legislature formed the Commission on the Eradication of Poverty last spring. The Heartland Alliance hopes their new research helps the commission quantify the problem and then get at the root causes. Some key findings from the report:

- Nine out of every 10 black and 1 out of every 2 white American adults (age 20 and up) who live out a normal lifespan (defined as to age 75) will at some point experience poverty;

- About 1 in 3 black males, 1 in 6 Hispanic males and 1 in 17 white males are expected to go to prison during their lifetimes;

- Across the United States, median annual earnings of full-time, year-round workers fell in 2006, for the third year in a row;

- Almost half (49.3%) of poverty spells begin when the household experiences a decline in earnings.

The way to go about fixing the problem -- 13 percent of Illinois residents currently lives under the poverty line -- is strengthening programs that are proven to alleviate it, Heartland policy director Gina Guillemette says.

Heartland is calling on the governor to begin by signing an appropriations bill that would stave off major cuts to child welfare and other social services. That bill has been sitting on Blagojevich's desk since October 6 while these safety net services remain in limbo.

Other recommendations include improving technology so people can apply for food stamps, cash or medical assistance on-line and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. Passing a capital bill would also replace lost jobs and generate money for affordable housing.

"The state needs to make investments in making sure that the access to programs isn't the barrier," Guillemette said. "And we need to help the lowest-wage workers to keep more of their earnings."

Urban Farmer Named MacArthur "Genius"

Adam Doster — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:40:59 -0700

The urban agriculture movement received quite a boost today with the news that Will Allen -- the founder of Milwaukee-based Growing Power -- has been awarded the prestigious the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant." Distributed over five years, the grant comes with no strings attached or reporting obligations, meaning Allen gets free reign to expand his innovative farming programs:

Will Allen started a farm in a city, hired teenagers to tend the crops and now distributes the produce to some of the poorest people and priciest restaurants in Chicago and Milwaukee.

For his inventive work in local, urban agriculture, the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation dubbed Allen a genius, awarding him $500,000 to use however he wishes through its prestigious fellowship program.

For more on the burgeoning urban farming scene in Chicago, check out our feature "A Growing Movement."

The Missing Poverty Plan

Adam Doster — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:33:18 -0700

New census bureau data, released today, shows that there were 37.3 million people living in poverty in 2007. That's six times the population of Arizona, presidential nominee John McCain's home state. As such, you'd think the Republican would have a plan to fight poverty, right? Not quite. Think Progress' Wonk Room has the details:

Visitors to JohnMcCain.com can learn where the Republican nominee stands on the Second Amendment, “liberal judicial activists” — even the space program. While John McCain “understands the importance of investing in key industries such as space,” he apparently does not understand the importance of helping the 37.3 million Americans living in poverty right here on Planet Earth.

You can check out Barack Obama's poverty platform here.

(H/T Matt Yglesias)

Illinois Establishes Anti-Poverty Commission

Adam Doster — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:12:01 -0700

Good news is tough to come by in Springfield these days, but on Friday the governor and General Assembly made a valuable contribution to the fight against poverty:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed legislation Friday that creates a panel to study poverty in Illinois and make recommendations on how to eradicate it.

The Commission on the Elimination of Poverty will be tasked with developing a plan to address and reduce extreme poverty in Illinois by 50 percent or more by 2015, according to a news release from the governor's office.

The commission will focus on eight areas, including housing, food and nutrition, health care, education, transportation, wages and child care. State Rep. Robert Pritchard (R-Hinckley) tells the DeKalb Daily Chronicle that the members will determine whether programs the state currently offers are working and should develop new ones if those strategies aren't getting good results.

The Heartland Alliance's Doug Schenkelberg adds that it's an "important victory." As we noted back in April, a study by the Alliance found that "poverty increased in 74 of Illinois' 102 counties" between 2000 and 2006 and now "afflicts more than 1.5 million Illinoisans."

For more on this issue, read John Bouman's recent Progress Illinois column.

Brookings Study Shows Reconcentration Of Poverty

Adam Doster — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:56:28 -0700

Declining poverty rates and nationwide efforts to decentralize poverty caused the urban poor population to fall by 27 percent during the 1990s. Unfortunately, the economic downturn of the Bush years has reversed those trends.

According to a comprehensive new study by the Brookings Institution's Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone, the number of tax filers nationwide living in areas with high rates of working poverty jumped by 40 percent between tax years 1999 and 2005. During the same period, 34 large metropolitan areas experienced increased rates of concentrated working poverty (calculated by the share of Earned Income Tax Credit filers in communities with a high percentage of working poor). By contrast, 24 areas showed declines.

Cities in the Midwest and Northeast are experiencing the highest increases:

Detroit and its suburbs in 2005 had the highest concentrated working poverty rate in the Midwest: 27.5 percent, followed by St. Louis (21.6 percent), Cleveland (21.5 percent) and Chicago—plus its Illinois and Northwest Indiana suburbs—at 17.9 percent. The highest rate in the Northeast was the Philadelphia metropolitan area, at 25.5 percent.

As the landscape in Chicago demonstrates, this problem isn't limited to the inner city.

According to Brookings, five additional suburban ZIP codes now have high rates of concentrated working poverty -- in Riverdale, Harvey, and Hammond, among others -- compared to a net gain of one in Chicago proper. Several ZIP codes in the Chicago region crossed more intermediate thresholds of working poverty between TY 1999 and TY 2005 too, with 20 or 30 percent of their filers now receiving the EITC, many of which fall in the inner suburbs.

The new data indicates that the United States by no means solved the problem of concentrated poverty during the Clinton years. The working poor remained susceptible to economic fluctuations. As a result, the slumping economy -- spurred by the dot-com bust and 9/11 and followed by a slow recovery under President Bush -- led to much of the regression. And the problem has likely gotten worse since 2005:

Poverty rates in this study predate the arrival of $4-a-gallon gas, higher unemployment rates and three years of food inflation, all of which would certainly paint a gloomier picture. "Given the backsliding evident by 2005, and the weak economic forecasts ahead, it seems likely that we will finish the current decade having ceded some of the 'stunning progress' against concentrated poverty we achieved during the prior decade," the authors concluded.

For more, read the entire report (pdf).

Interfaith Worker Justice Fights Wage Theft

Adam Doster — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:52:05 -0700

Next Thursday, America's federal minimum wage will jump 70 cents to a total of $6.85 per hour. This boost is encouraging, especially after the wage remained at $5.15 for over nine years before the Democratic Congress initiated a raise in late 2006. But it's still well below what many consider a living wage.

According to the Living Wage Calculator, a Chicago adult working full-time as the sole provider of one child would need to earn $12.51 per hour to care for the family adequately. And two new reports released this week by the Government Accountability Office show that many minimum-wage earners have difficulty even obtaining all they are owed:

The Government Accountability Office sharply criticizes the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department in two reports to be issued on Tuesday, saying it mishandled many overtime and minimum-wage complaints and delayed investigating hundreds of cases for a year or more.

The G.A.O. also criticizes the division for greatly reducing the number of enforcement actions it takes each year and for not focusing on the low-wage industries where, one report said, it is most likely to find violations. [...]

The G.A.O., which will release its reports at a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee, also faulted the wage division for reducing the number of enforcement actions it pursues each year to 29,584 in the 2007 fiscal year, down 37 percent from 46,758 10 years earlier.

The House Education and Labor Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the problem of wage theft. Testifying was Kim Bobo, the executive director of Chicago's Interfaith Worker Justice, an organization that mobilizes religious communities to improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for low-wage workers. Bobo, whose book on wage theft is set to be published this fall, says two million workers are paid less than the minimum wage, three million are mis-classified as independent contractors instead of employees, and millions more are illegally denied overtime pay. You can watch her testimony here.

(H/T TPMCafe)

The Daily Herald's Giving Garden

Adam Doster — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:32:29 -0700

Hunger is not only a growing problem in Chicago. In an editorial today, the Daily Herald writes that some suburbanites are struggling to put food on the table too, and food pantries that play a crucial role for strapped families aren't receiving the necessary support:

The pantries, in turn, can find it very difficult to keep up with the demand. Requests for food from area pantries is up about 20 percent this year - at a time when there is less food on the shelves to begin with. Donations from traditional sources, such as goods from school food drives, tend to come in at a lower volume in the summer months. But hundreds - in some cases thousands - of people are still coming in for help in feeding their families.

While pantries wait for some federal assistance in the form of Sen. Dick Durbin's Hunger Free Communities Act, donations are always welcome. The Herald's "Giving Garden" program is a good place to start:

The Daily Herald's Giving Garden program also provides food to the hungry by encouraging gardeners to drop off fresh produce at one of the participating food pantries and agencies. In the eight years the program has been in existence, suburban gardeners have donated tens of thousands of pounds of produce to area pantries. To inquire about donating to the Giving Garden, e-mail us at givinggarden@dailyherald.com.

(H/T Prairie State Blue)