Tag: poverty

Los Angeles cannot track money spent on homeless programs, independent audit finds

  • An independent audit commissioned by a federal judge raised serious concerns about how Los Angeles city and county are handling the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on the homelessness crisis. 

Sergio Moreno’s business sits in the heart of Skid Row, where he sees homeless people overdosing on drugs. 

“There were days we’d see two to three overdoses,” he said. 

The things Moreno has witnessed made him suspicious on how the city has managed the response to the homeless crisis. 

“It’s not dollars we’re talking about,” he said. “Those dollars translate into people’s lives.”

His feelings have been heightened following the independent audit released on Thursday. It claims that Los Angeles city and county leaders cannot account for the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on the homeless crisis last year. The LA Alliance for Human Rights pressed for a series of audits in recent years. 

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, an attorney for LA Alliance for Human Rights. “It’s atrocious. It’s immoral. It’s unjustified. But, what it is not, is surprising.”

Many of the problems identified were at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA. 

The auditors said the agency’s paper trail was so poor that tracking the $2.5 billion spent last year was nearly impossible. 

“It is an actual infrastructure disaster,” Mitchell said. “The truth is everybody is in charge and nobody is in charge. There are no checks and balances.”

The office of LA County Supervisor Linsey Horvath called for accountability, results and an end to this “nightmare.”

“This audit is another reminder of what we already know – the current homelessness services system is broken,” she said in a statement. “We need accountability and results right now, which is why I’m proceeding with the creation of a consolidated County department that will end this nightmare.”

The president of the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council believes there are other record-keeping problems. 

“Even the homeless count is not accurate,” Claudia Olviveira said. “Nothing is accurate and based on data.”

Keep reading

Arkansas Senate Passes Bill To Use Medical Marijuana Revenue To Fund Free Breakfasts For Students

The Arkansas Senate has approved a bill to set aside revenue from medical marijuana taxes to pay for free breakfast for students.

The legislation, SB 59, would supplement federal free and reduced-price meal funds with money from a state Food Insecurity Fund, paid for by cannabis taxes as well as private grants and money from the state’s general fund.

Bill sponsor Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R), noted ahead of the floor vote that “25 percent of our kids wake up food insecure every single day when they go to school.”

“Sometimes that meal that they get at school is the only nutritious meal they get in a day,” he said. “These kids have no way to feed themselves, and if they have parents that aren’t willing to sign the cards or send them with money, those districts are required to feed them, and they build up debt. But this would allow every kid in the state of Arkansas to be entitled to have a free breakfast.”

The legislation would provide meals to students regardless of whether or not they qualify for free or reduced-cost food under federal law.

“We would ask the first of federal dollars that are available be utilized, and anything else that’s remaining,” Dismang said. “The state of Arkansas would pick up utilizing the medical marijuana dollars to help make that district whole for providing that breakfast.”

The measure passed by a vote of 26-2 days after it was unanimously approved by the Senate Education Committee. It now heads to the House of Representatives for consideration.

The Senate’s passage of SB 59 follows an endorsement of the proposal last month from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), who previewed the bill in her State of the State address. Notably, Sanders, a former press secretary under the first Trump administration, has historically resisted cannabis policy reform.

“We will also use those funds to make school breakfast in Arkansas completely free for any student that chooses to participate,” she said in the speech, saying the use of medical marijuana funds would make the program “sustainable for years to come.”

Keep reading

Inflation Storm Leaves Americans More Reliant On Food Banks

Emily Engelhard, Vice President of Research at Feeding America, told Bloomberg that elevated and persistent inflation ushered in a “new era of food insecurity,” emphasizing that “this is no longer an unemployment issue.” 

Feeding America, the largest charity working to end hunger in the US, has a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies.

“Everyone sees prices getting high — for food, clothes, everything,” Kersstin Eshak told Bloomberg, who recently visited a food bank in Loudoun County, Virginia. She said the inflation nightmare over the last several years depleted her pocketbook.  

America’s cost-of-living crisis mostly erupted during the Biden-Harris regime’s first term. 

Ethan Amos, the head of the Flagstaff Family Food Center in Arizona, said his food bank broke records in 2022 by serving an average of 28,000 meals per month. That figure has now surged to a staggering 40,000 meals per month, driven by the inflationary pressures unleashed during the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous “Bidenomics.“

Believe it or not, Washington, DC, has a hunger crisis. The largest food bank in the area, Capital Area Food Bank, distributed 64 million meals last year—five million more than the previous year. Data from the food bank shows that food insecurity has risen most sharply among households earning $100,000–$150,000.

Keep reading

AT&T kills home Internet service in NY over law requiring $15 or $20 plans

AT&T has stopped offering its 5G home Internet service in New York instead of complying with a new state law that requires ISPs to offer $15 or $20 plans to people with low incomes.

The decision was reported yesterday by CNET and confirmed by AT&T in a statement provided to Ars today. “While we are committed to providing reliable and affordable Internet service to customers across the country, New York’s broadband law imposes harmful rate regulations that make it uneconomical for AT&T to invest in and expand our broadband infrastructure in the state,” AT&T said. “As a result, effective January 15, 2025, we will no longer be able to offer AT&T Internet Air, our fixed-wireless Internet service, to New York customers.”

New York started enforcing its Affordable Broadband Act yesterday after a legal battle of nearly four years. Broadband lobby groups convinced a federal judge to block the law in 2021, but a US appeals court reversed the ruling in April 2024, and the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case last month.

The law requires ISPs with over 20,000 customers in New York to offer $15 broadband plans with download speeds of at least 25Mbps, or $20-per-month service with 200Mbps speeds. The plans only have to be offered to households that meet income eligibility requirements, such as qualifying for the National School Lunch Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Medicaid.

AT&T’s Internet Air was launched in some areas in 2023 and is now available in nearly every US state. The standard price for Internet Air is $60 a month plus taxes and fees, or $47 when bundled with an eligible mobile service. Nationwide, AT&T said it added 135,000 Internet Air customers in the most recent quarter.

AT&T has pitched Internet Air as a long-term replacement for DSL Internet in areas where it doesn’t plan to build fiber. AT&T has said it won’t build fiber home Internet in over half of its wireline footprint and will focus its fiber builds on more densely populated areas.

Keep reading

US Credit Card Defaults Soar To Crisis Highs As Inflation Storm Crushes Working-Poor

The party is long over for the bottom third of US consumers, as maxed-out credit cards and depleted personal savings have pushed credit card loan defaults to their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis.

Financial Times cited new data from BankRegData revealing that credit card companies wrote off $46 billion in “seriously delinquent loan” balances in the first nine months of the year—an alarming 50% increase from the same period last year and the highest level in 14 years.

US credit debt recently surpassed $1 trillion and continues to expand rapidly. Making matters worse, annual percentage rates (APRs) on credit card debt have hit record highs, compounding the financial misery for cash-strapped consumers in the era of failed ‘Bidenomics’. 

Despite the interest rate cut, the average APR on credit card debt reached a new record at the end of the third quarter. 

Keep reading

US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people

The United States saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country, federal officials said Friday.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said federally required tallies taken across the country in January found that more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless — a number that misses some people and does not include those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own.

That increase comes on top of a 12% increase in 2023, which HUD blamed on soaring rents and the end of pandemic assistance. The 2023 increase also was driven by people experiencing homelessness for the first time. The numbers overall represent 23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S., with Black people being overrepresented among the homeless population.

“No American should face homelessness, and the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring every family has access to the affordable, safe, and quality housing they deserve,” HUD Agency Head Adrianne Todman said in a statement, adding that the focus should remain on “evidence-based efforts to prevent and end homelessness.”

Keep reading

Demand At Food Banks Has Soared To Record Levels All Over The United States

Why is demand at food banks all over the country higher than it has ever been before?  The media keeps insisting that economic conditions are just fine, but it has become quite obvious to everyone that this is not true.  In particular, the rising cost of living has been absolutely crushing households from coast to coast.  In the old days, most of the people that would show up at food banks were unemployed.  But now food banks are serving large numbers of people that actually do have jobs but that don’t make enough to pay for all of the basics.  The ranks of the “working poor” are growing very rapidly, and this is creating an unprecedented crisis all over America.

Perhaps you think that I am exaggerating.

Let me share some specific examples that will prove that I am not.

In Pennsylvania, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank saw “its highest need on record this past year”…

A new report shows the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank saw its highest need on record this past year. It comes as we mark Hunger Action Month across the country.

Toi Payne of Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood gets emotional thinking about how the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in Duquesne and other local pantries have been lifesavers for her for the past 30 years.

“We need these places,” Payne said. “Without the food banks, I think a lot of people would be struggling even more, you know, and it helps like the elderly and people like me that’s on disability.”

We are also seeing record demand in Montana…

North Valley Food Bank in Whitefish served 613 families a Thanksgiving meal – a record high.

They anticipate more than 1,000 food bank customers for their Christmas holiday distribution on December 18-19.

“Year round here we’re feeding over a 1,000 of our neighbors every week and the need goes up during the holiday season,” said North Valley Food Bank Director of Development Mandy Gerth.

And in the San Francisco area…

This holiday season, food banks say they’re facing greater need than ever before. In Silicon Valley, they say 1 in 6 people are coming in for food assistance. In San Francisco, that number is 1 in 5. But the organizations say donations are not keeping up with demand.

For all the food banks, December is a big month. Both in terms of need, and in terms of fundraising. And they say what happens now will impact the entire year ahead.

In some parts of the nation, food banks are absolutely shattering all of the old records.

Keep reading

SF says homeless tents down 60%; homeless haven’t gone anywhere, just tentless

Amid a tightening mayoral race, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the number of homeless tents have declined 60% since peaking in July 2023. Meanwhile, homeless individuals say they’re still around and have simply ditched their tents to avoid being arrested under the mayor’s new enforcement of anti-camping laws. 

 In July 2023, homeless tents peaked at 609, and homeless vehicles at 1,058. By July 2024, those numbers had declined to 319 and 474, respectively. Since Ninth Circuit overturned a regional ban on enforcement of anti-camping ordinances in July — in a case, then ruling supported by Breed and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — Newsom has since issued an executive order banning encampments from state property and ordered municipal governments to take similar action. 

San Francisco began enforcing anti-camping laws after the ruling, arresting but not detaining homeless individuals who have refused to leave their tents. While there is no data available for August or September, the newly released October count has homeless tents and vehicles down to 242 and 548, declines of 24.1% and 3.4% respectively, since the ruling.

“Every day our City workers are out in San Francisco offering help, bringing people indoors, and cleaning up our neighborhoods and we are seeing the results,” said Breed in a statement. “We are a compassionate City that leads with services, but we also will continue to enforce our laws when those offers are rejected.”

According to the San Francisco Standard, homeless individuals are leaving their tents to avoid arrest, but are still remaining on the streets; Standard reporters found no increase in utilization of shelter or bus tickets elsewhere.

Breed and her two opponents are neck and neck, with Levi Strauss heir and homelessness expert Daniel Lurie holding a narrow lead at 51% if the election were held today in the city’s ranked-choice voting system that allows voters to rank their first 10 choices for a given office. The candidate with the least amount of votes is dropped in each round, with that candidate’s votes distributed to voters’ next preference on their ballot, until a candidate has a majority.

While Breed would get 38% of first-round votes and Lurie just 21%, Lurie’s popularity as citizen’s second choice brings him to 51% by the fourth-round. Aaron Peskin, who sits on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and thus has one of the consolidated city-county’s most powerful positions, nearly tied Lurie in earlier rounds of voting in the survey, but fell behind due to Lurie’s hold as voters’ popular second choice. 

Keep reading

Minnesota food pantry bans white people, says ‘resources’ are only for ‘Black & Indigenous Folx’

A Minneapolis, Minn. food pantry is only giving food to “Black and Indigenous” people, those who are hungry and white are told not to take the “resources” available. Mykelo ‘Keiko’ Jackson, who runs the food pantry, was awarded a Minnesota State grant to open the food pantry.

The sign on the pantry reads: “The resources found in here are intended for Black & Indigenous Folx. Please refrain from taking anything if you’re not.” An August post emphasized the mission, saying “With the help of our community and MDH: African American Health Office we’ve distributed 2,249 lbs of food to Black & Indigenous Folx in North Minneapolis. This is what liberation looks like on a small scale. We’d like to say THANK YOU to everyone that has supported this initiative, donated their time or resources to be in aid of commUNITY.”

Jackson’s policy forced the food pantry to close down and open in another location. After opening on July 27 on the north side of the city, near the Sanctuary Covenant Church, Jackson let it be known that white people were not welcome to the food for the poor. Local chaplain Howard Dotson, 54, said that he went to the food pantry but was denied entry due to his race. He’s white.

“This is not building community, it’s destroying it,” he told Alpha News. “I went over there and confronted her. I told her that I saw the sign and I asked if she really thought she could take grant money from the state and discriminate against poor white people.” He filed a complaint, which Jackson said was an exhibition of his “white privilege.”

Keep reading

Migration, Assimilation, and the Limits of Compassion

As I write this I am sitting on a balcony thirty feet above the Plaza Mayor in the center of Madrid Spain. Madrid is a fantastic city and, in my opinion, one of the last cities in the world where the idea and reality of what a healthy city should be still exists. This is my sixth visit to Spain where my wife lived during her Junior year of college, and brought me shortly after we were married. This trip is even more fascinating than the others. The reason for the difference is due to the dismaying contradictions posed by an exciting, safe, and strongly interactive urban giant such as Madrid and the declining, almost Third World, cities that now characterize much of America.

Madrid is dynamic, energetic, diverse, and full of an amazing range of disparate people, both residents and a horde of extremely varied tourists from seemingly everywhere. That spirit is disappearing in Western European nations that are struggling to cope with a flood of immigrants—legal and otherwise, as well as a generation of migrants from other lands who for a variety of reasons have failed to culturally or politically assimilate into the nations that provide homes, education, and opportunity. For some the issue even goes beyond non-assimilation. A significant number of second-generation individuals whose families migrated to Europe detest or hate the new nation of their birth and maturation.

Examples are easily found. Paris is experiencing serious ethnic strife and conflicted diversity related to a disturbing degree of non-assimilation of new entrants. London, where I lived on three occasions and still love dearly, is barely holding on to the vestiges of its cultural identity as a flood of migrants from cultures extremely different from what has been called “Britishness” have supplanted a significant part of London’s spirit and culture. The more cynical have even referred to London as “Londonistan.”

Stockholm is beset with rising crime, addiction, and “culture shock” as a result of large-scale immigration into what had been a well-intentioned immigration policy by a compassionate Swedish nation. The conflict over immigration doesn’t stop there. Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark are increasingly “closing the gates” in an effort to protect their traditions, identity, and culture.

In America, cities such as New York, Washington, DC, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, and a disturbing number of other significant urban areas are disintegrating, and with crime, homelessness, and educational dereliction.

I am sharing these thoughts because of my concern about the inability of major Western democracies to cope with the massive flow of migrants and refugees from disadvantaged and dangerous countries who seek new lives for themselves and their children because they are trapped in a vicious reality of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, little or no opportunity, corruption, and violence. The World Bank, United Nations, and other institutions have predicted huge movements of refugees taking place between Third or Fourth world nations, those in which conflicts and persecutions exist that create special levels of danger and persecution for identifiable classes of people to the degree they deserve to be termed “refugees” under international law. Along with this are people granted Temporary Visa Status due to natural disasters or war in their countries.

All that sounds great in the abstract as a matter of compassion. But the US and Western Europe appear to be the only nations that are expected to take care of the tens of millions of people who leave their own country for various reasons, including economic advantage, while the rest of the world somehow escapes any responsibility to contribute to the alleviation of what is happening.

Keep reading