Poverty persists in N.E. suburbs, By Megan Woolhouse, August 13, 2014, Boston Globe: “New England’s suburbs, often viewed as bastions of sprinkler-fed lawns and roomy SUVs, are also communities of hidden poverty, where one in four families relies on food stamps to stock cupboards with groceries and put food on the table, according to a report to be released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Wednesday. Nearly 2 million people who live in communities surrounding the region’s major cities have low or barely moderate incomes, struggling with the same problems as the urban poor, but without the same services, support, and safety nets, Boston Fed researchers found…”
Day: August 15, 2014
Payday Lending
New York Prosecutors Charge Payday Loan Firms With Usury, By Jessica Silver-Greenberg, August 11, 2014, New York Times: “A trail of money that began with triple-digit loans to troubled New Yorkers and wound through companies owned by a former used-car salesman in Tennessee led New York prosecutors on a yearlong hunt through the shadowy world of payday lending. On Monday, that investigation culminated with state prosecutors in Manhattan bringing criminal charges against a dozen companies and their owner, Carey Vaughn Brown, accusing them of enabling payday loans that flouted the state’s limits on interest rates in loans to New Yorkers…”
Housing Blight – Buffalo
As an alternative to demolition, Buffalo offers homes for a dollar, By Alana Semuels, August 14, 2014, Los Angeles Times: “The breeze carries the tinny jingle of the approaching ice cream truck, so Mike Puma leaves the railing he’s painting on his two-family, electric-blue home to buy a milkshake. He pays more for the shake than he did his entire home. Of course, when he bought this home for $1 this year, it had a demolition notice on the door, walls the consistency of a Three Musketeers bar and mold coating the ceilings…”