Head Start eliminated services to 57,000 children in U.S. as a result of sequester, By Michael Alison Chandler, August 18, 2013, Washington Post: “Head Start programs across the country eliminated services for 57,000 children in the coming school year to balance budgets diminished by the federal sequester, cutting 1.3 million days from Head Start center calendars and laying off or reducing pay for more than 18,000 employees, according to federal government data scheduled for release Monday…”
Head Start hit with worst cuts in its history, By Adrienne Lu, August 19, 2013, USA Today: “Last year about 1 million of the nation’s poorest children got a leg up on school through Head Start, the federal program that helps prepare children up to age five for school. This fall, about 57,000 children will be denied a place in Head Start and Early Head Start as fallout from sequestration. New estimates about the automatic budget cuts were released Monday by the federal government. The cuts have slashed over $400 million from the federal program’s $8 billion budget…”
Pa. taxpayers end up paying more as public defenders laid off, By Brian Bowling, August 18, 2013, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “In Western Pennsylvania, budget sequestration measures are pushing the federal court system to rely on $125-an-hour private attorneys instead of public defenders who typically cost taxpayers $75 or less for hourly work on criminal cases. That 67 percent increase in providing legal services to indigent criminal defendants is just one way that budget ‘cuts’ will end up costing taxpayers more, while undermining the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of fair and speedy trials, legal experts contend…”
Rapid rehousing: A new way to head off homelessness, By Brigid Schulte, August 18, 2013, Washington Post: “At a little after 7 on an August morning, Contessa Allen-Starks puts on her beige scrubs, pours coffee into a plastic foam cup, locks the door to her apartment and hurries to the A4 bus stop on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SW for an hour-long commute to her job in Dupont Circle…”
To be self-sufficient, first you have to find an affordable apartment, By Brigid Schulte, August 18, 2013, Washington Post: “After nine months of being homeless, all Yolanda Pharr can think about is how much she misses a stove. She’s been living in a Days Inn motel room off New York Avenue with her six boys – four boys to one double bed, she and two boys to another — because DC General is full. She longs for the ordinary grace of cooking dinner…”
Homeless believe remaining in shelter will net them permanent subsidies, By Brigid Schulte, August 18, 2013, Washington Post: “Jordan Love Smith is convinced Rapid Rehousing won’t work for her. She stands outside DC General on a hot summer day, under a cement awning that provides the only shade on the sweltering day. Some residents sit in lawn chairs, eating, doing each other’s hair, yelling ‘Get over here! Now!’ at the children playing on the steaming sidewalk when they get too close to the curb…”
