Another round of food stamp cuts in states, By Jake Grovum, March 26, 2014, Stateline: “A fresh round of food stamp cuts at the state level are underway, on top of federal food stamp reductions that hit millions of Americans twice since November. In some states, policymakers have imposed additional cuts that jeopardize benefits for hundreds of thousands. The impact of the reductions is just beginning to take hold, or soon will…”
Month: March 2014
Miami Herald Series on Florida Child Welfare System
Innocents Lost: a Miami Herald I-Team investigation, series homepage, March 2014, Miami Herald: “After Florida cut protections for children from troubled homes, more children died, often in cruel and preventable ways. To understand the magnitude of the problem — and possible solutions — the Herald studied every death over a six-year period involving families with child welfare histories. This series is the result of a year’s worth of reporting by the Herald’s Investigation Team, and multiple lawsuits to obtain state death records…”
Affordable Housing
- How many hours must minimum-wage earners work to afford rent?, By Jolie Lee, March 24, 2014, USA Today: “Minimum-wage employees must work on average 2.6 full-time jobs to afford a decent two-bedroom apartment in the USA without paying more than 30% of their income, according to a report released Monday from the National Low Income Housing Coalition based on federal data. Perhaps more surprising is that the inability to afford rent is not limited to big cities with high housing costs…”
- More Americans are renting: why the cost is so high, By Mark Trumbull, March 24, 2014, Christian Science Monitor: “For most Americans, there seem to be two types of rental housing in the US these days: pricey and unaffordable. That’s a glib way of summarizing a troubling trend. Despite a sharp plunge in home prices and the conversion of many properties from ‘owned’ to ‘rented,’ the typical family looking to rent has to pay more than 30 percent of its income for a typical apartment, according to an annual survey released Monday. For the 1 in 4 renters who have very low incomes, moreover, it’s common to spend more than half their earnings on rent…”
- California second least affordable state for renters, study says, By Andrew Khouri, March 25, 2014, Los Angeles Times: “California renters must earn more than triple the minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment, underscoring a housing shortage throughout the state, a new report said. A worker earning the minimum wage — $8 per hour in California — would have to toil away for 130 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom, the National Low Income Housing Coalition said Monday. Across the nation, minimum wage workers can’t afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent, the group said. The coalition’s president, Sheila Crowley, said raising the federal minimum wage would ease the burden…”