Friday, May 08, 2020

Did Somebody Say Neighborhood Poverty??? There are 8 Census Tracts Here In Downtown Mesa . . . The Spread and Persistence of Neighborhood Poverty: Lessons for the COVID-19 Response

So how's District 4 Mesa City Council member Jennifer Duff dealing with that?
. . . and the other five District Council representatives.
If you don't know who they are - they all earn salaries and benefits to serve citizens living in their home Ground-Zero - for goodness sake go find out!

The Spread and Persistence of Neighborhood Poverty: Lessons for the COVID-19 Response

The Economic Innovation Group (EIG) recently launched the Neighborhood Poverty Project with two new reports analyzing the spread and persistence of high-poverty neighborhoods throughout the United States over the last four decades. The research finds that while the last national economic expansion brought growth and prosperity to many areas, it failed to reverse the spread of high-poverty neighborhoods the country has experienced going back to 1980.

On May 13th, the authors of the report will host a webinar to discuss the project's findings and the implications for the policy responses to COVID-19's economic fallout. Joining them in the discussion are Alan Mallach and Alan Berube. Alan Mallach is a senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress in Washington, D.C., and author of The Divided City. A city planner, advocate, and writer, he is nationally known for his work on housing, economic development, and urban revitalization. Alan Berube is a senior fellow and deputy director at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and coauthor of Confronting Suburban Poverty in America. He has also authored dozens of publications on economic and demographic trends in metropolitan areas and the role of cities in a globalizing economy.

Join us Wednesday, May 13, 2020, from 1:00 - 2:30 pm ET.

Visit EIG's website to read our latest reports, The Expanded Geography of High-Poverty Neighborhoods and The Persistence of Neighborhood Poverty, and explore our interactive map of high-poverty neighborhoods across the United States.

More on The Neighborhood Poverty Project

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HUD INCREASES AND EXPANDS FLEXIBILITY OF FUNDS FOR PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITIES TO FIGHT COVID-19

HUD NEWS

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – Dr. Ben Carson, Secretary

Office of Public Affairs, Washington, DC 20410

HUD No. 20-060 FOR RELEASE

HUD Public Affairs Tuesday

202-708-0685 May 5, 2020

HUD.gov/press

HUD INCREASES AND EXPANDS FLEXIBILITY OF FUNDS FOR PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITIES TO FIGHT COVID-19

Funds for sanitation, transportation to health units and testing, childcare, food, and medical supplies

WASHINGTON – U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson today announced the allocation of $380 million in supplemental administrative fee funding to all Public Housing Authorities (PHA), including Moving to Work (MTW) PHAs. The two months of additional funding may be used for traditional administrative fees as well as for new costs related to protecting assisted families and employees throughout this coronavirus pandemic. The funding, made available by the CARES Act legislation President Trump signed into law on March 27, 2020, will be awarded to PHAs across the Nation.

“We must do everything in our power to protect all American families from this invisible enemy, including our vulnerable in the Housing Choice Voucher Program,” said Secretary Carson. “These new flexibilities and additional funds will properly equip Public Housing Authorities across the country with the resources they need to combat this virus.”

The Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCV) includes the Mainstream Program, which provides tenant-based vouchers that serve households that include a non-elderly person with a disability and serves over 2.4 million families.

The new eligible coronavirus-related activities include, but are not limited to, the following:

Procuring cleaning supplies and/or services to maintain safe and sanitary HCV units, including common areas of PHA-owned Project Based Voucher (PBV) projects.
Relocation of participating families to health units or other designated units for testing, hospitalization, or quarantine, or transportation to these locations to limit the exposure that could be caused by using mass transportation.
Additional costs to supportive services vendors incurred due to coronavirus.
Costs to retain or increase owner participation in the HCV Program, such as incentive or retention costs (e.g. the PHA offers owner an incentive payment to participate in recognition of added difficulties of making units available for HCV families to rent while stay-at-home orders or social distancing practices are in effect).
Costs for providing childcare for the children of PHA staff that would not have otherwise been incurred (e.g. children are at home due to school closings, PHA staff are working outside of regular work schedules, etc).

A list of allocations can be found here.

After President Trump signed the CARES Act into law, HUD acted immediately to allocate its first wave of funding, over $3 billion to assist communities and non-profits, help protect the homeless and Americans with compromised immune systems, and assist Tribal communities in their COVID-19 response efforts. Last week, HUD announced an additional $685 million for PHAs to prepare for, prevent, and respond to a coronavirus outbreak for the public housing program.

“HUD is committed to assisting PHAs during this time so that assisted families can stay safe and healthy,” said Hunter Kurtz, Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing. “Providing these additional funds to PHAs will give them more tools to address local needs and respond to the Coronavirus pandemic as effectively as possible.”

For more information on HUD’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic and the actions the Department has taken, please visit Hud.gov/coronavirus. Public Housing Authorities across the Nation have jumped into action to help assist their tenants and their communities during this unprecedented time. Read more about their stories featured in HUD’s Neighbors Helping Neighbors campaign, here.

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HUD's mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. More information about HUD and its programs is available on the Internet at www.hud.gov andhttp://espanol.hud.gov. You can also connect with HUD on social media or sign up for news alerts on HUD's Email List.

You can follow Secretary Carson on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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May 8, 2020

Gene Sperling's New Book: "Economic Dignity"

The World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth - World Affairs ...

Glad to see you are interested in government
To borrow a few phrases from POLITICO
This week its gets really, really real — We’ve had one bad GDP number and lots of really bad unemployment claims numbers (and will get another on Thursday). But the true ugly toll of the Covid-19 impact on the American economy will punch us all in the face on Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. when the government reports the April jobs numbers. . .
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NEW ON THE BOOK SHELVES — Gene Sperling’s new book, “Economic Dignity,” officially out on Tuesday.
Here’s a recent piece by Gene in the NYT.
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Here's E.J. Dionne on the word dignity:

the word dignity has two different meanings, both of them enlightening about our political moment. The first, Merriam-Webster tells us, refers to “seriousness of manner, appearance, or language,” which is precisely the opposite of the day-to-day behavior of the current occupant of the White House.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush made a pledge to “restore honor and dignity to the White House” a standard part of his stump speech. It was his way of referencing Bill Clinton’s sex scandal without mentioning it. In 2020, that promise has more relevance than ever.

But my focus is primarily on the second meaning of dignity, “the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed.”

Americans in large numbers feel excluded from this state of grace. . .

Gene Sperling, a top economic adviser to both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, has gone further than anyone else in the policy world to describe what it would mean to make dignity “the singular end goal for economic policy.”

In an important article in Democracy that will be expanded into a book this spring, Sperling argued that economic dignity rests on three pillars:

(1) “the capacity to care for family and experience its greatest joys”

(2) the “pursuit of potential and purpose”

(3) “economic participation without domination and humiliation.”

READ MORE >> The Atlantic

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Gene Sperling: Economic Dignity