Anti-Poverty Programs – Kansas

Posted on January 8, 2013 by townsend

• Poverty in Kansas: Some fear rules cast poor families adrift, By Eric Adler, January 5, 2013, Kansas City Star: “A crescent moon hangs in a clear sky above Deer Creek Village. It is a flat and treeless expanse of 92 townhouses where poor families with bedsheets as curtains live side by side in low-rent duplexes subsidized by the federal government. Some have a saying here: One way in, one way out. It is meant to describe the single road, Colonial Drive, shaped like a Q, that encircles the homes. Residents figure it was designed to make it easy for police to come in and hard for drug dealers to escape. Families here also know it refers to their lives and futures. One way in: Poverty. One way out: Jobs and education. These days, the notion occupying many who advocate for Kansas’ poor is that less than three miles away, near the Capitol dome, government officials led by Gov. Sam Brownback are making ‘getting out,’ rising out of poverty, all the more difficult…”
• Kansas’ privatization, limit of welfare orgs worries advocates, Associated Press, January 6, 2013, Topeka Capital-Journal: “Advocates for the poorest Kansas residents say Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration is making it tougher for the state’s needy to rise out of poverty by cutting much-needed assistance. Brownback administrators, however, insist that stricter policies on who receives state assistance are forcing people to find jobs instead of relying on handouts. Ever since Brownback campaigned for governor in 2010, the conservative Republican has declared that lifting children out of poverty is a priority. But advocates for the poor argue that under Brownback’s administration needy residents are being cast adrift and that the coming years will be even worse, The Kansas City Star reported…”