poverty

Rarely do we get to see such in-depth reporting on poverty as has just been produced by Claudia Rowe and Mike Kane for the Marguerite Casey Foundation.

In a series of articles written for the foundation's Equal Voice online newspaper, Rowe illuminates how the recession has devastated families across the U.S. with lasting generational consequences.

Together with Kane's compelling black-and-white photography, Rowe's reporting drills down on the systemic failures and problems of perception that are at the heart of class disparities in the United States.  

I used to work with both of them at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, so I can attest personally to the diligence and discipline that they bring to their respective fields. Check it out for yourself at www.equalvoiceforfamilies.org.  

There was the Detroit hotel and restaurant owner who tried to kill himself.

Then there was the Maryland political analyst who lost her $760,000 home to foreclosure. Aaron Heideman found her living in a Toyota Camry.

And who could forget the guy running a food bank in Georgia who said he was going into debt at the rate of $1,000 a month to help his neighbors?

Those are just three of the hundreds of stories Aaron Heideman, aka The Man In A Van, collected on a cross-country odyssey to hear from Americans, in their own words, how their lives have been affected by the recession.

“How has the recession affected you?” A sign atop his van asks.

“Tell me your story,” beckons the van’s side.

Laid off from his job at a paint store in southern Oregon, Heideman decided he would do a conceptual art project, driving his pencil-yellow Dodge van through California, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Florida, up the Eastern Seaboard and through New England to Grand Rapids, Mich.

[caption id="attachment_6365" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Heideman outside a Wallingford laundromat"][/caption]

That’s where he entered himself in the annual ArtPrize competition in September, hoping to win the $250,000 prize.

He didn’t. So he recently moved to Seattle, where he went to art school and lived for some years. That’s where I caught up with him.

A South Florida news reporter who met Heideman in the summer described him as “not-surprisingly scruffy” because the bearded, sandal-clad artist was living in his van. This week the clean-shaven 29-year-old was dressed in a light-blue button-down shirt, neatly pressed grey slacks and shiny black shoes. He’s job hunting.

Utah's social safety net for its poorest and most vulnerable citizens is starting to fray. Numbers tell the story. There are 250,000 people without health insurance in the state, of which only 10 percent qualify for state health plans. More than one-third of the 1,550 people who were receiving "general assistance" emergency funds from the state have been cut off since the last Legislative session because the state slashed the assistance period from two years to one. And the number of families going to food banks for survival has surged from 52,000 to 90,000 in the last few months.

Food banks were able to accommodate the surge with help from federal stimulus funds.

But that funding is temporary. The hunger is not.

The increasing pressure on the safety net is happening just as the state faces a possible $750 million budget shortfall, writes Cathy McKitrick of the Salt Lake Tribune.

Advocates for low-income citizens spoke during a "People's Summit on Poverty" this week. People find themselves suddenly poor because of any number of bad breaks - from divorces to layoffs to illness.

Many of these folks rely on state aid temporarily while they figure out how to get themselves back on track.  Without aid, they are at risk for slipping into homelessness, addiction, despair, or any of the other myriad afflictions of poverty that cost the state more in the long run.

The number of Oregonians on food stamps has increased 28 percent, and now about one in six residents of the state is eligible, Oregon Public Broadcasting's Kristian Foden-Vencil reports. A family of four is eligible on earnings of $800 a month or less.