Areas Needed to End Poverty

Photo by Cheryl Jones--one of the 2008 graduates of the Photo project in Cleveland.

Outstanding Issues for Administration Ending Poverty in America

The new Administration earned a B- for the first semester efforts to end poverty. This is not bad for a time of two wars, a housing bubble, and a financial collapse, but they could do better. Grades get tougher as we go through the administration, because expectations are raised. Here are the areas that they need to address over the next few months.

1. Katrina Housing: The administration has not ignored the problem, but we have yet to start building housing on a grand scale. We need a massive investment in a large number of affordable housing projects.
2. Jobs are starting to trickle in from the Stimulus, but Ohio, Michigan, and most of the South are still suffering and their needs to be more work on this issue. How about a WPA style jobs program?
3. The summer is a good time to work on an overhaul of the school system in America.
4. College needs to be made more affordable. The student loan program needs overhauled, and the proposed legislation needs passed.
5. The new homeless law needs to be implemented with protections for the privacy of homeless people, and the creation of a simple way to determine whether a person is homeless or not.
6. We need some actions on civil rights issues which keep people poor. There is no progress on hate crimes against homeless people, fair housing violations, or equal rights for women and homosexuals.
7. We still have not seen any progress on the problems facing the rural or urban poor.
8. There was a good start on debt issues with the credit card reform bill, but we still need bank, payday loan, and mortgage lender reform.
9. We need a moritorium on foreclosures as soon as possible, while we figure out what to do.
10. What are we going to do with the millions of housing units sitting empty in our cities?
11. We appreciate the transparency of the White House website, but we need the same from the departments.
12. There are still lower level staff vacancies at many of the Departments that are not filled at this point.
13. The White House site lists strengthening families as a goal. We have not seen much progress on strengthening families especially very low income households losing their housing.
14. There are impressive gains in the services to veterans especially homeless veterans, but there is more that we could do to provide mental health care to all veterans.
15. There is a lot of talk about health care reform, but we are waiting for a bill. Under health care issues that need more attention include the poverty level checks sent to those on disability, and more attention to the AIDS/HIV crisis.
16. We need more attention to Re-Entry issues, and what are we going to do with all the people returning to our city as casualties of the war on drugs.
17. It is time to look again at the entire entitlement system. From cash assistance, social security, child support and unemployment to repair the safety net across the country in a sensible and humane manner.

A tall order, but the current president ran on the platform of Hope and Change.

Brian
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