Program seeks to aid hard-core homeless, By Alexandra Zavis, November 9, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Prominent business leaders are putting their weight behind a plan that they say could make a major dent in homelessness in Los Angeles County, embracing a strategy that will face significant political opposition. The blueprint they plan to unveil Tuesday seeks to put a permanent roof over the heads of the most entrenched street dwellers, then provide them as much counseling and treatment as they will use. Because the chronically homeless take up a disproportionate share of resources, the plan’s authors argue that focusing on housing them will ultimately free up services for the many more people who need only temporary help to get back on their feet…”
Solving homelessness will require cooperation, Editorial, November 9, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Los Angeles remains the nation’s homelessness capital, with almost 48,000 people living around the county on streets, in cars and in shelters, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority. About a fourth of them are chronically homeless, burdened in many cases by physical and mental ailments that make it hard for them to reintegrate into society. The magnitude and intractability of the problem haven’t stopped policymakers and homeless advocates from offering plan after plan for improving the situation, but none has made much of a dent in the homeless population. On Tuesday, yet another group will weigh in: the Business Leaders Task Force on Homelessness, a project organized by the local branches of the Chamber of Commerce and the United Way…”
Proficiency of black students is found to be far lower than expected, By Trip Gabriel, November 9, 2010, New York Times: “An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented – a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another. But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known. Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys. Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches…”
Report calls attention to achievement gap between black and white male students, By Nick Anderson, November 9, 2010, Washington Post: “Black male students trail their white counterparts in school by alarming margins and for reasons that often are not well understood, according to a report released Tuesday. The report from the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy organization for urban education, suggests that poverty is not the only factor behind the black-white achievement gap. Federal test data show that white male students nationwide who come from families poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches outperform black males from large cities whose families are better off economically, according to the report. The report analyzed fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress…”
Housing benefit cuts will ‘push poor out of south’, experts warn, By Randeep Ramesh and Andrew Sparrow, November 8, 2010, The Guardian: “Large swaths of southern England will become off limits to housing benefit recipients in a little more than a decade because of the government’s proposed plans to cut welfare bills – triggering a huge migration of the poor to the north – according to a study by housing experts. The work, by the Chartered Institute of Housing, shows that before 2025 rents on most two-bedroom properties in the south will become unaffordable to those claiming local housing allowance…”
How Britain’s new welfare state was born in the USA, By Anushka Asthana, Toby Helm, and Paul Harris, November 7, 2010, The Observer: “The gathering was small and discreet and made no headlines at the time – but its significance for the future of our welfare state and for David Cameron’s vision of a ‘big society’ will become clear this week. It was on a warm day in June that Professor Lawrence Mead, who inspired many of the US welfare reforms of the 1990s, strode into 10 Downing Street. The American guru had been invited by Steve Hilton, Cameron’s chief strategist. Also present were senior Whitehall officials from the Treasury and other government departments. They were joined by Neil O’Brien, director of the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange. Mead was immediately struck by how eager the assembled team was to hear his ideas. ‘I was surprised how interested they were,’ he said. Under detailed questioning, he told his inquisitors that attitudes to welfare in Britain had been characterised by a culture of ‘entitlement’ for too long…”
Unemployed told: do four weeks of unpaid work or lose your benefits, By Toby Helm and Anushka Asthana, November 7, 2010, The Observer: “The unemployed will be ordered to do periods of compulsory full-time work in the community or be stripped of their benefits under controversial American-style plans to slash the number of people without jobs. The proposals, in a white paper on welfare reform to be unveiled this week, are part of a radical government agenda aimed at cutting the £190bn-a-year welfare bill and breaking what the coalition now calls the ‘habit of worklessness’. The measures will be announced to parliament by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, as part of what he will describe as a new ‘contract’ with the 1.4 million people on jobseekers’ allowance. The government’s side of the bargain will be the promise of a new ‘universal credit’, to replace all existing benefits, that will ensure it always pays to work rather than stay on welfare…”
