Milwaukee County evictions fell with stimulus, study shows, By Georgia Pabst, August 30, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “With a 2-year-old and a baby on the way, Jenny Furne said she started to worry that she and her growing family would be homeless. She said she moved to Milwaukee last year from another state to escape from a domestic violence situation and found a job in sales. But after she lost her job and couldn’t find another one, she fell a month behind in the rent on her north side apartment. Although she signed up for W-2, the state’s welfare-to-work program, she initially received a partial payment of $300, not enough to cover her rent of $510 a month. ‘Two weeks before having my baby, I got an eviction notice,’ said Furne, 24. ‘I was freaking out because I didn’t know if I would have a home to come back to with the baby.’ She went to Community Advocates and explained her predicament. Using federal stimulus money designed to stem evictions and prevent homelessness, the agency paid the $510 rent owed, buying Furne the time she needed to get her W-2 check and get on track. Furne isn’t the only one who has been helped from the brink of homelessness. According to a Harvard University study that looked at local eviction records, the influx of federal stimulus money to help stem homelessness coincided with 836 fewer evictions filed in Milwaukee County from August 2009 to March 2010, compared with the same period the previous year…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty