Sep/Oct 1999
Issue #107
Moving Out of Poverty
We’ve had the longest sustained period of economic growth in decades. Unemployment is the lowest it’s been since World War II. The number of people receiving “welfare” is about half what it was a few short years ago. And yet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1998 nearly one in three U.S. workers had jobs that pay at or below the federal poverty level. The Department of Health and Human Services informs us that 44 million U.S. citizens lack medical insurance, and a major study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows us there is no place in America where a full time, minimum-wage worker can afford to rent a decent apartment. This issue includes an interview with HUD Assistant Secretary Cardell Cooper, and a look at a growing movement to train people to become entrepreneurs, as well as a writeup of the Pennsylvania Low Income Housing Coalition’s experience as a provider of electric power for low-income households. While the profit was not what they’d hoped, the effort did provide new opportunities for advocacy and important savings to their low-income constituencies.
Cardell Cooper
On August 11, 1999, HUD Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development and former mayor of East Orange, New Jersey, Cardell Cooper returned home for a few hours, joining U.S. […]
Community Power
Community Power has taken on a whole new meaning at the Pennsylvania Low Income Housing Coalition (PALIHC), the state’s largest affordable housing advocacy organization. Community Power is PALIHC’s wholly-owned, for-profit […]
Urban Horizons
Scents drifted from a kiosk in the lobby of the Urban Horizons Center for Food Production and Entrepreneur Support, which trains low-income women in culinary arts and serves gourmet and […]
A Helping Hand
In 1991, Common Ground, a nonprofit developer in Manhattan, purchased the Times Square Hotel to rehab the single room occupancy housing structure and develop supportive services. Completely refurbished in 1993, […]
Moving Out of Poverty
We’ve had the longest sustained period of economic growth in decades. Unemployment is the lowest it’s been since World War II. The number of people receiving “welfare” is about half […]
Shelter Shorts
Journalism of Note Following Up on Welfare Reform An extensive article series by Donna McGuire in The Kansas City Star (August 8-9, 1999) followed up on those who have left […]
Approaching Corporations for Funding
For more than 30 years, the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel has published an annual report called Giving USA, which analyzes trends in philanthropy and measures the extent of giving […]
“No Evictions. We Won’t Move!”
“This land is too valuable to permit poor people to park on it.” —Justin Herman, former executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, 1970 The land Herman was referring […]
Millions of Working Americans Still Lack Affordable Housing
Despite the booming economy, affordable rental housing is unavailable to millions of working Americans, concludes the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) in its annual Out of Reach report on […]
Housing Legislative News
Congress Guts CRA The bill that emerged from conference committee negotiations over the financial modernization bills, H.R. 10 and S. 900, would gut the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The new […]
Business Consultants for Everyone
Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship, and the Rebirth of Local Economies, Ernesto Sirolli. New Society Publishers, 1999. 151 pp. Cloth: $14.95. As a young man working for an […]