- Salem Statesman Journal Series, Raising a Community: The gap of good intentions in school readiness.
- Louisiana sees boost in pre-K enrollment, By Nicole Blake-Johnson, January 4, 2010, Shreveport Times: “Louisiana is making “significant progress” toward preparing youngsters for kindergarten, according to data released last month, but educators say more must be done to provide universal preschool to all children. The data comes from the 2009 Kids Count Data Book on Louisiana’s Children, which uses various indicators such as health, juvenile justice and family economics to measure child well-being in the state’s 64 parishes. In terms of education, pre-K enrollment in Louisiana public schools increased 57 percent between 2000 and 2009, raising the total head count from 21,290 in the 2000-01 school year to 33,438 during the 2008-09 school year…”
Day: January 5, 2010
Home Foreclosures and Renters – Maryland
More Maryland renters caught amid foreclosure, By Jamie Smith Hopkins, December 30, 2009, Baltimore Sun: “Marjorie Benedum and her husband, Mel Harris, knew their landlord was facing foreclosure but were reassured when he said they could keep renting the Southwest Baltimore house after his family lost it. Then Harris, who is 79 and retired, came home from church three weeks ago to find a sheriff’s notice on the door. Get out in 10 days, it said, or be evicted. ‘We weren’t sure what we were going to do,’ recalled Benedum, 62. More and more renters have been caught up in the national foreclosure crisis, and lenders taking back those homes nearly always want them gone. That has proved tremendously disruptive for the tenants, despite state and federal laws enacted in May to try to ease the pain. Maryland law requires that lenders notify renters before foreclosing on landlords, but – as was the case for Benedum and Harris – the letters do not always get into the right hands…”
Eviction and Poverty
Study highlights effect of evictions on poor, By Georgia Pabst, January 1, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Yolanda Luckett had just finished mopping the stairs leading to the three-bedroom upper duplex flat she and her four children moved into last month. ‘I’m in the ghetto, but this is a nice place and I hope I can stay here,’ she said. But the rent is $675 a month, and it will be hard to stretch her Wisconsin Works check of $673 plus the child support she gets to pay for rent, utilities and other necessities, she said. After years of working as a certified nursing assistant and living in one place, Luckett, 36, said she started running into troubles about four years ago. The troubles included getting laid off from her job and a series of evictions from apartments that went from bad to worse. She was able to move into her new place with an emergency assistance grant from Community Advocates. According to a new study, considered the first of its kind on evictions, Luckett finds herself in an all-too-common situation among Milwaukee’s urban poor. The study found that one renter-occupied household in 20 is evicted each year in Milwaukee. In neighborhoods where blacks are the majority, the study found that number jumps to one in 10 renter-occupied households evicted every year…”