US poverty spikes but help from Washington shrinks as government struggles with debt, Associated Press, April 1, 2013, Washington Post: “Antonio Hammond is the $18,000 man. He’s a success story for Catholic Charities of Baltimore, one of a multitude of organizations trying to haul people out of poverty in this Maryland port city where one of four residents is considered poor by U.S. government standards. Hammond says he ended up in Baltimore three years ago, addicted to crack cocaine and snorting heroin, living in abandoned buildings where ‘the rats were fierce,’ and financing his addiction by breaking into cars and stealing copper pipes out of crumbing structures. Eighteen months after finding his way to Catholic Charities via a rehabilitation center, the 49-year-old Philadelphia native is back in the work force, clean of drugs, earning $13 an hour cleaning laboratories for the Biotech Institute of Maryland and paying taxes. Catholic Charities, which runs a number of federally funded programs, spent $18,000 from privately donated funds to turn around Hammond’s life through the organization’s Christopher’s Place program which provides housing and support services to recovering addicts and former prisoners…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty