Homeless Beatings Widespread on YouTube

There are 86,000 videos available on YouTube depicting brutal beatings of homeless people.

Videos of homeless people, subject to brutal beatings and forced into humiliating acts, are apparently becoming more popular online according to a report released by the AFP. The videos are so horrible that US lawmakers are now taking action against the filmmakers, seeking harsher penalties for hate crimes against those poor and hungry souls living off the streets.
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Unshackling Prison Reform

Rioting inmates in Chino recently torched a dormitory, ravaged five other dorms and destroyed 1,200 beds. Roughly 1,300 convicts participated and 175 were injured. The state caught a break.

No guard was hurt. And no prisoner was killed.

"It turned out better than we thought," says Matthew Cate, the state's prison boss as secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

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'Better to Be Deported Alive Than to Be Dead'

Ulises Martinez received the first call on a cold January morning, a stern voice shocking him through his cellphone. His in-laws had been taken hostage after a grueling border crossing from the Mexican desert into Arizona. Martinez would have to pay $3,000 to secure their release.

"I am not responsible for what will happen to them if you do not pay the money," the voice said. He would dismember the in-laws and dump them in the desert if Martinez didn't pay up. It was $3,000 Martinez, a 40-year-old Alexandria mechanic with a wife and toddler, didn't have and couldn't get.


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Quantcast 'Which Way Home' tracks child migrants' dangerous journeys

It was the anguish of a 9-year-old child that made Rebecca Cammisa vow to press on.

When the filmmaker first met the Honduran boy named José at a detention center in southern Mexico, he was alone, scared and crying. He was one of an estimated tens of thousands of Latin American children who annually try to cross illegally into the United States, many by riding the tops of railroad freight cars, most in search of work or missing parents.


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Stimulus Money to Help Parents Find Work to Pay Child Support

Federal stimulus money has created 21 jobs in the state, that in turn helps parents find jobs so they can pay child support. The Fatherhood Program is a state-provided service that helps unemployed moms and dads find work by paying for job training and connecting them with job placement resources in their communities. Its staff is doubling. With a couple hundred thousand dollars in federal stimulus money, the Department of Human Services is hiring 21 more agents to act as advocates for unemployed parents.

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Stimulus funds start flowing locally to help weatherize low-income homes

The Lovato family's 1954 brick home in central Phoenix is one of the first in Arizona to receive federal stimulus money aimed at making lower- income residences more energy efficient.

With the mercury in 100-plus-degree territory, construction workers Wednesday replaced a leaky duct system, upgraded air-conditioning units and spread insulation in the attic of a home in the St. Gregory neighborhood, the first sign weatherization stimulus dollars finally are flowing into the local economy.

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More low-income kids could be college boun

Washington is having great success so far with a new program designed to get low-income kids planning early for a college education. The state-wide program is called College Bound, and even though it has only been around for two years, this year it has already seen its enrollment double from last year. By catching kids early in their school career, while they still have time to get prepared for college, College Bound promises middle school kids who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch a scholarship covering tuition and books at Washington’s two- and four-year public colleges and universities, and many of its private schools too.

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Workforce Solutions receives stimulus funds to pay for child care

San Antonio-area parents in need of child care as they look for a job, go to school or seek job training will have help from the federal government.

Workforce Solutions Alamo received $17 million from the federal government as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund up to 22 months of child care for qualified parents. The goal of the investment is to provide available child care to single or low-income parents as they either look for jobs or upgrade their skills to get better jobs. Parents will pay a portion of the cost of child care based on their income level and number of children at home.

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Baby steps and big gains

CHELSEA - Two years after opening a small day-care center in her apartment, Jacqueline Bedoya is expanding. Where she was previously allowed to care for as many as six children, her license to operate the business was upgraded to allow as many as 10. She hired her 18-year-old daughter as an assistant, and thanks to the income she’ll get from the additional clients, she and her husband were able to buy a three-family home to accommodate the business.

Bedoya, 37, is one of about 90 Latino entrepreneurs who recently completed a program at the Urban College of Boston aimed at opening or expanding home-based day-care centers, and generating economic activity in low-income neighborhoods. The program has helped Bedoya, who emigrated from Colombia about 10 years ago, transform herself from a low-wage worker cleaning hotels, offices, and hospitals into a business owner with her own home.

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Final Day at Free Clinic

As the Remote Area Medical Foundation’s huge, free health clinic winds up its eight-day run at the Forum in Inglewood this evening, organizers said they expected to be able to treat all patients who were given wristbands – or refer them to doctors who will provide free care.

More photos During the organization’s first venture into a large, urban city -- and its longest-running health clinic in its 25-year history -- volunteer dentists and doctors helped deliver free medical care to thousands of patients. Many seeking care camped out overnight or slept in their cars; hundreds of others were turned away. Some had traveled from as far as San Francisco and Phoenix for the chance to be treated.

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Back to School Summer Splash gets kids ready to hit the books

Nearly 700 families poured into Opa-locka Airport on Aug. 8, but they weren't going anywhere. Instead, nearly 500 children from Miami Gardens, Liberty City and Opa-locka received free book bags with school supplies to help them get a jump on the beginning of the upcoming year.

The Carrie Meek Foundation, in conjunction with Portrait of Empowerment and The Children's Trust, held its first Back to School Summer Splash to reach out to children ``and give back to the community.''

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Joe Arpaio vs. ACLU: New Lawsuit Tomorrow Over Worksite Raid

The Arizona ACLU isn't giving out any details, but they've just issued a press advisory that at noon tomorrow they will announce a lawsuit, "on behalf of two Avondale residents who were illegally arrested and detained during a worksite raid conducted by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office."

Though the ACLU's mum for the moment, my hunch is that the lawsuit will involve the February raid on Handyman Maintenance Inc., a county vendor located in Phoenix. During that bust, some 60 suspected illegal aliens ended up being arrested.

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Homeless housing programs move forward

Three Snohomish County agencies will share more than $2 million to increase housing units for low-income and homeless families and individuals.
 
Under the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), Snohomish County Human Services will distribute nearly $2.2 million to the Housing Authority of Snohomish County, Washington Home of Your Own and Home For Good. Each will construct new properties at foreclosed locations or purchase foreclosed homes for rent to low-income and homeless families.

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Low-income families in Brown County face travel hurdles, data show

Low-income families in Brown County continue to need cheaper, more reliable transportation to help them get food, shelter, jobs and medical care, according to recent data collected by Brown County United Way and other agencies.

Calls to the 2-1-1 information service and online use of that data, which is provided through a program funded by the Brown County United Way that links people with social services in the community, indicate that families continue to need assistance for gas money and bus fare.

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Immigration official says agents will no longer have quotas

The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced today that he has ended quotas on a controversial program designed to go after illegal immigrants who have ignored deportation orders and that he planned to make more changes to the program soon.

John Morton, who took over as head of the federal agency in May, said during a meeting with reporters in Los Angeles that the program needs to do what it was created to do -- target absconders who have already had their day in court.

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Atlanta homeless shelter another victim of poor economy

The Salvation Army will not open its nearly completed homeless shelter for families because the tanking economy has left the nonprofit without money to operate it.

Maj. James Seiler, the Salvation Army’s Atlanta area commander, said donations dropped at the same time more people asked for help.

It has given out $665,000 more in emergency aid this year than last. That wiped out more than the $600,000 estimated cost to run the new shelter for its first year.

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Helping foreclosed homes, families at the same time

Habitat for Humanity does good work. To place families in homes is to build communities and to make the world a better place.

Now, in cities around the country, Habitat has turned its attention to foreclosed homes. Rather than build from scratch, Habitat refurbishes houses that have been left vacant by foreclosure. It’s a brilliant idea, again placing needy families into homes, but in the process filling empty houses and lifting the spirits (and property values) of neighborhoods.

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Small immigration victories

Last week I discussed the first of two relatively small victories in the ongoing battle against the inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants. The first occurred in nearby Roswell, New Mexico and the second is national in scope.

On August 6 the Obama administration announced plans to revamp the scattered network of immigration detention centers into one centralized system designed for civil detainees. The primary motivation seems to reduce ongoing rash of needless deaths of immigrants in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or their private contractors such as the Corrections Corporation of America.

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State schools get $1.6M for homeless kids

Programs funding the education of homeless children attending public schools in Wisconsin are expanding, thanks to federal stimulus money.

Gov. Jim Doyle and State Superintendent of Schools Tony Evers announced on Monday that $1.6 million in grants have been awarded to 30 school districts across the state to provide a variety of assistance to homeless children and their families.

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More U.S. students to need free meals

WASHINGTON — The number of U.S. students who receive free and reduced-cost meals at school could soar to a 41-year high this school year, as record job losses and high unemployment push thousands more children into poverty, many for the first time.

According to projections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, at least 18.5 million low-income students are expected to participate in the National School Lunch Program each day during the 2009-10 school year. More than 8.5 million are expected to take advantage of the federal School Breakfast Program.

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Downturn Brings A New Face to Homelessness

PONTIAC, Mich. -- The lowest point in Lawanda Madden's life came in February, when she woke up on the floor of her friend's run-down house in this city battered by recession. She was shivering with cold. She remembers turning to her 8-year-old son, Jovon, and thinking: "How did this happen to us? How did we become homeless?"

Only 15 months before, Madden, 39, had a $35,000-a-year job, a two-bedroom apartment and a car. She was far from rich, but she could treat Jovon to the movies. She occasionally visited her sister in Chicago and bowled in a local league. She dreamed of going to law school. Then she was laid off and lost everything.

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Low-income children on brink of losing health insurance coverage as state budget cuts hit home

SACRAMENTO - Several hundred thousand low-income children face losing their health insurance beginning Oct. 1 under a decision Thursday by the state panel that oversees California's Healthy Families program.

The vote is a result of $175 million in cuts to Healthy Families as part of last month's budget-balancing package. It came despite an $81.4 million contribution to the insurance program from a statewide commission that gets money from a voter-approved tax on tobacco products to pay for early childhood efforts.

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Children's Walk

This video is from August 7. 2009 Children's Walk for Family Unity. The kids do the talking here. Adults everywhere can learn from this.

A Government Hand in Helping the Poor Save

Should local government help the poor save for a rainy day?

Middle-income Americans are already encouraged to save through a variety of government policies such as 401(k)’s and Individual Retirement Accounts. In addition, tax breaks on mortgages encourage home ownership as another means of saving money.

These kinds of inducements happen almost exclusively through the tax code and largely bypass the poor. The poor are less likely to own homes or have retirement accounts. And since they pay little or nothing in the way of taxes, tax breaks are not effective incentives.

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IMPROVING SAVINGS INCENTIVES FOR THE POOR

Low-income workers have a low rate of saving their after-tax income. The Federal Reserve reports that only one-third of families in the bottom fifth (incomes of less than $20,291) saved any of their income in 2007, compared to almost three-fifths of households in the middle fifth (incomes between $39,000 and $62,000). Without savings, low-income families have no resources to invest in efforts to increase their human capital, such as education and job training to improve their skills, or in physical assets such as housing and transportation to help them move out of poverty, says D. Sean Shurtleff, a policy analyst with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

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Obama Sets Immigration Changes for 2010

Mr. Obama predicted that he would be successful but acknowledged the challenges, saying, “I’ve got a lot on my plate.” He added that there would almost certainly be “demagogues out there who try to suggest that any form or pathway for legalization for those who are already in the United States is unacceptable.”

But in the most detailed outline yet of his timetable, the president said that he expected Congress, after completing work on health care, energy and financial regulation, to draft immigration bills this year. He said he would begin work on getting the measures passed in 2010.

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Back to school spree: Billionaire, feds give out $175M to aid neediest students around the state

A $200 back-to-school giveaway for needy kids sparked a mad rush for money on the streets of New York on Tuesday.

"It's free money!" said Alecia Rumph, 26, who waited in a Morris Park, Bronx, line 300 people deep for the cash to buy uniforms and book bags for her two kids.

"Thank God for Obama. He's looking out for us."

Thousands of people lined up at banks and check-cashing shops to withdraw the cash that magically appeared on their electronic benefit cards.

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Low-income families often rely too heavily on costly financial services

Millions of low-income families rely on check-cashing companies, money orders and payday loans to handle basic financial needs -- costly services that can undermine tight household budgets -- even as evidence shows many are receptive to buying on layaway and even contributing to retirement savings plans.

"In a sense, we are living in the richest nation in human history, yet it's stunning that nearly 50 million people are living below a living wage," said Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University who contributed to the book, "Insufficient Funds: Savings, Assets, Credit and Banking Among Low-Income Households."

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Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?

IT’S too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it’s almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the ’80s and ’90s. “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.”

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Sales-tax holiday on school supplies starts Friday

Back-to-school shoppers will get a break next weekend with Virginia's sales-tax holiday on many education-related purchases.

For three days beginning Friday, the state is waiving its 5 percent sales tax on school supplies priced under $20 and clothes and shoes under $100. A provision in the law allows all retailers to absorb the tax, if they chose to participate. Many retailers, including Wal-Mart, will extend the discount to such items as computers and other electronics.

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“Working Poor” report: Nearly 30 percent of US families subsist on poverty wages.

A report released in October 2008 by the Working Poor Families Project reveals that more than 28 percent of American families with one or both parents employed are living in poverty.

The report, "Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short," is based on data for the period from 2004 through 2006 gathered from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey and the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey.

The report finds that 9.6 million households can be described as low-income or "working poor"—defined as families that earn less than 200 percent of the official poverty level. There were 350,000 more such families in 2006 than in 2002. More than 21 million children now live in low-income working families—an increase of 800,000 in four years.

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Horizons program helps bridge educational gap for low income Roslindale kids

Using a "phonics flipper," Patricia Hicks turns over a series of cards that show different animals and objects to her young students, who are just learning to read and write. When a dog's head appears, the 11 kids say "da-da-da," sounding out the first letter of "dog."

"Put your hand in front of your face - do you feel the air?" Hicks asks the students, the first to take part in the summer enrichment program Horizons at Dedham Country Day School.

Sixteen children about to enter first grade are in the program - nine from Dedham, and seven from Roslindale and Hyde Park. Horizons aims to counter the summertime loss of academic skills that is most pronounced among students from low-income families.

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Over 30 Percent of Hispanics Lack Health Insurance

With the nation watching, Washington, D.C., has become consumed with its health — for better or worse, and especially bad for those who can’t afford it.

Meanwhile, 45 million people remain uninsured, with the majority being people of color.

According to the Centers for Disease Control 30.4 percent of Hispanics and 17 percent of blacks are uninsured.

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City Plans to Increase Beds For Families During Winter

D.C. officials unveiled a plan Thursday to expand the number of beds available to the homeless in winter by 10 percent to ward off cases of hypothermia.

But activists feared that the increase won't be enough as District residents continue to lose jobs and families are thrown out of their homes in a troubled economy. Space is tight in the city's network of shelters in summer, when demand is typically low. The need for shelter usually spikes in winter.

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Obama aims to overhaul immigration jail system

Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration announced plans Thursday to transform the nation's immigration detention system from one reliant on a scattered network of local jails and private prisons to a centralized one designed specifically for civil detainees.

The reforms are aimed at establishing greater control over a system that houses about 33,000 detainees a day and that has been sharply criticized as having unsafe and inhumane conditions and as lacking the medical care that may have prevented many of the 90 deaths that have occurred since 2003.

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U.S. to Reform Policy on Detention for Immigrants

The Obama administration intends to announce an ambitious plan on Thursday to overhaul the much-criticized way the nation detains immigration violators, trying to transform it from a patchwork of jail and prison cells to what its new chief called a “truly civil detention system.”

Details are sketchy, and even the first steps will take months or years to complete. They include reviewing the federal government’s contracts with more than 350 local jails and private prisons, with an eye toward consolidating many detainees in places more suitable for noncriminals facing deportation — some possibly in centers built and run by the government.

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Low-income Atlantans go green

About 380 low-income Atlantans have received energy-efficient lightbulbs and others were given low-flow water kits as part of a new “green” city initiative, officials announced Wednesday.

Officials estimate the new initiative will save the residents and the city a combined $4 million on their water and energy bills over the lifespan of the devices.

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Number of Homeless Families on the Rise

CBS) There are signs the economy is turning around, but not fast enough for the many Americans left homeless by the recession and the foreclosure crisis.

The government says that the number of homeless nationwide is holding steady at more than 1.5 million. But that number now includes more people who are part of homeless families - 44,000 more.

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Stimulus funds to help low-income working families with child care

Child care is a luxury that many parents are not able to afford. Help, however, is on the way with new government funding.

The Tennessee Department of Human Services has received funding for the Child Care Development Fund through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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New IRS Data Shows 88 Percent of EITC Benefits in 2007 Were Paid to Low Income Families

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The annual Individual Income Tax Returns report released yesterday by the Internal Revenue Service provides more evidence that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is actually better equipped to target poverty than other policy tools, including the July 24th federal minimum wage increase.

According to the report, Statistics of Income, tax return data from 2007 shows 88 percent of refundable EITC benefits -- a total of $37.3 million -- were paid directly to families with incomes of less than $25,000 a year. Employment Policies Institute (EPI) research from Syracuse University shows that an overwhelming majority (83 percent) of the benefits of minimum wage increases go to families above the poverty line. The average family income of those who will benefit from the 2009 minimum wage hike is over $47,000.

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Women’s Center receives $1M to prevent homelessness

AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs announced a significant award of federal stimulus funding to an area nonprofit designed to mitigate and prevent the effects of homelessness for individuals who are homeless and for the communities where they are located.

TDHCA awarded $1 million to the Montgomery County Women’s Center to provide services to rapidly rehouse homeless residents or prevent individuals from falling into homelessness. The award was made through the Department’s Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program, an innovative program created by the federal American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.

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Prolonged Aid to Unemployed Is Running Out

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

Because of emergency extensions already enacted by Congress, laid-off workers in nearly half the states can collect benefits for up to 79 weeks, the longest period since the unemployment insurance program was created in the 1930s. But unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious, and a wave of job-seekers is using up even this prolonged aid.

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Faults Found in Apartments for Homeless Families

An inspection of dozens of apartments where the city houses homeless families revealed leaking pipes, water damage, doors without locks, a stained bathtub and infestations of mice and roaches, according to an audit released Friday.

The audit, conducted by the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., included one Midtown hotel and six so-called cluster housing sites — apartment buildings with social services nearby — in the Bronx.

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Harlem Program Singled Out as Model

This is the starting point for the Harlem Children's Zone: the womb. Geoffrey Canada's nonprofit has created a web of programs that begin before birth, end with college graduation and reach almost every child growing up in 97 blocks carved out of the struggling central Harlem neighborhood.

Canada was raised poor in the South Bronx and went on to earn a graduate education degree from Harvard. Years ago, he grew frustrated that his successful after-school program was not decreasing Harlem's tally of high school dropouts, juvenile arrests and unemployed youths. He set out to devise an encompassing program to "move the needle" and improve the lives of poor children in a mass, standardized, reproducible way.
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State helps low-income students attend private schools

For what it would cost Oristela Schwend to send just one of her three children to private school, she sends all of them.

Schwend of Plantation has sent her children to private schools in Broward County for several years using a state program that pays for tuition with money that would otherwise have been available for public purposes

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Law change will help low income parents get off welfare for good

Gideon Woodcook will be able to finish the welding program at Southeast Community College under a new state law aimed at helping parents get off welfare for good.

Currently, parents are allowed to attend a vocational school for just 12 months before their Aid to Dependent Children benefits end, under the state's welfare to work program.

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